About Anthology

Getting to know a database - A generation ago, the author got advice from a woman in new technology business: Get a database. He was not sure what she meant, was it software or content? “Both” is the answer. Now he has a database of text. He speculates on how it can be a money-maker. 1603 Words. vp100312. ©2010 Bill Ritchie

Hidden Messages

On the trail of a game - This art professor—who has no university—would like nothing more than to create a digital game for learning that is a work of art as well as a wonderful, meaningful game. He wants to hide all his assets in this game for students to find. How can he do it? 983 Words. vp100202. ©2010 Bill Ritchie.

Story Arc

Good games have good back stories - An Emeralda Game Inventor has a routine going for him. To invent a game, he must play it. How do you play a game that hasn’t been invented? It’s like asking, How do you follow a star that hasn’t yet risen? It’s the artist’s way, and game invention is art. 359 Words. vp100123. ©2010 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Getting Started

Notes on a minigame - He would teach printmaking online, but he would not choose the path other people are taking. He would make his own path, and leave a trail. To start, he must give his students a list of things they’ll need to go on a path in the unknown printmaking world. 1080 Words. vi100113. ©2010 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Teaching Prints

A proposal to teach printmaking online - These times are right to teach printmaking online, writes this professor. For three decades he believed he could teach printmaking at a distance when his time came and technologies were available to the people who want to learn printmaking out of the box. 461 Words. vp100103. ©2010 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

More On Metaphor

In the metaphor, you're in a car museum. You see an auto mechanic's toolbox. It's locked. One drawer opens with a key you found on the floor. In the drawer you find a wrench. With the wrench you can tighten the hood ornament on a car, which lets you find the car key to start the sports car, which turns on the lights, revealing a coin. Put the coin in the juke box and music plays.

In Printmaking Camp, you open the box of accessories, you find useful things, such as the blankets, test plate, the user's manual, the certificate of authenticity, and the disc. Each item branches to another level, another challenge. In the backstory, you must trace the pathway of the forger and do as he does. You may find Issey being the one to narrate this pathway, solving the puzzle.

Treatment Plan

Back story for a hundred years - He wants to write a treatment for Act II of a screenplay about a woman who is on a rescue mission in a strange, heavily guarded but lovely artist’s paradise—front for a doomsday plan requiring the artists creative process to end human life sustainability. 1137 Words. vp091020. ©2009 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com