So, I admit it: I’ve really been slacking as far as this final project goes, particularly in the “keep Jim Groom and the other two readers informed” area. But better late than never, I guess.

Unfortunately, this is as much an update about what I have not done/will not be able to get done, as much as anything else. Good news first: I pretty much decided on a story with a storyline, have most of how I’m hosting it figured out, and am a couple thousand words into the actual writing of it. I’m in the process of actually getting it up so that there’s half a story or so there, so you don’t have to wait until I’m done to see the whole thing. Hopefully that will be up soon.

The bad news, though, is that this is going to be a lot less “distributed” than I was planning. Right now, most of the story itself is going to be on a blog, with links outward to various stuff that’s part of the story. There will be other things to go to, but most of the action will be spreading out from one central place.

The reasons for that are fairly practical. I was having serious trouble working the story I had in mind – or any real story – into a form where I could tell it without a central text of some sort. I’m absolutely sure it can be done, and it would be really cool, but I quickly realized that it was beyond the scope of this class. (Or at least, more than I could handle this semester.) I’m going to try and involve as many different things as I can, but ultimately it’s going to be much less grand than I was planning. Practicality and content won out over form, in this case – which I find is unfortunate, but probably not unexpected. (All accusations of me selling out can be made in the comments!)

To be a bit more specific — I realized I didn’t properly explain this, so I’m editing this in — I realized that I wouldn’t be able to tell the story that I wanted to tell within a single semester, particularly since I didn’t start thinking about the final project until a month or so in. While I can edit the timestamps for things like blogs, I can’t do that for twitter/facebook/other stuff, which limits it a lot. To properly utilize those resources, I’d had to have started working sometime last November. So I will be incorporating what I can, but time issues (And time in an absolute sense, not only in a “David is taking classes that have lots of homework” sense) were a barrier that I didn’t properly account for early on. The moral of the story: Consider the limitations of your tools in every possible respect!

Anyway, as a consolation, here’s a picture I made awhile ago, but never posted! I seem to have an odd affinity for putting pop songs by female singers onto pictures.