“I am a citizen of the world, known to all, and to all a stranger”
Chris Crawford’s Random Ruminations on Irrelevant Topics
This website has been in operation since 1996. It is older than Google, Netflix, Facebook, and Amazon. It still runs on a server using vacuum tubes.
My magnum opus, Le Morte D’Arthur, is now available to play. It’s not finished — it never will be finished. But it is playable, and it’s pretty good.
Recent additions:
November 27th: We won’t colonize Mars
September 25th: The Absurdity of the Electoral College
September 2nd: A solution to interactive storytelling
August 29th: My ongoing effort to revivify the gargoyle
July 23rd: Legitimacy
June 3rd: “Psst! Wanna Get Rich?"
May 9th: More on Life In the Sun
May 8th: An idiotic user interface blunder on the part of Apple
May 1st: The threat of acceleration of progress of technology
April 29th: Rationalism in the body politic
April 28th: Three methods of creativity
March 17th: Snowstorm causes pine tree delamination.
March 15th: A lesson on happiness from my little dog Roxy.
2023
November 23rd: a new section (Families of Skunkies) and its first entry: The Secret Button.
November 20th: I have reincarnated my entry gargoyle.
August 30th: Another political forum bereft of intellectual integrity: Medium
July 19th: No, Eunice Foote did NOT discover the greenhouse effect.
July 11th: the key to successful interactive storytelling is intuition.
July 8th: a sad example of authors’ political agenda intruding into scientific analysis.
June 27th: a rousing tale of grit, ingenuity, and pluck in the face of determined technological opposition: Accessing Star Trek
June 26th: Screwed by eBay. I’ll never use them again.
June 22nd: I am forced, much to my regret, to replace teaching by lecture with teaching by video.
June 11th: the silly worries about AI
May 18th: Introducing the newest member of our critter family: Tenzing
May 10th: Where we went wrong with interactive storytelling
May 4th: Generative AI using TLMs (Tiny Language Models) in 1991
May 3rd: Thoughtful critiques of Le Morte D'Arthur
April 16th: Threats and Opportunities of AI
March 13th: Balancing Options in Le Morte D'Arthur
February 22nd: an analysis of player performance in Le Morte D'Arthur
January 28th: a fascinating exchange with Jason Rohrer about Le Morte D'Arthur
January 7th: Analytical techniques for Le Morte D'Arthur
2022
December 19th: Advice for frustrated players of Le Morte D'Arthur
December 18th: analysis of the first week of play data for Le Morte D'Arthur
December 11th: Le Morte D’Arthur is now available for play. Warning: unconventional!!!
December 2nd: a much improved explanation of the Geminid project almost exactly 50 years ago.
November 19th: The role of feedback in interactive storytelling
November 7th: Now we’ve done it: ruining the jet stream
October 8th: Re: Feedback on Le Morte D'Arthur
October 5th: A fictitious Message from Space
September 29th: An unfortunate inevitability: I cannot get ideal feedback for Le Morte D’Arthur because it’s radically different
September 15th: Why is the sound of a jet aircraft flying overhead uneven?
August 27th: Is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot alive?
August 18th: Evolution does have directionality! Just not the way you thought.
August 17th: two essays on politics and the likelihood of a new American civil war.
July 12th: finding history in word frequencies
July 8th: I am launching the funding campaign for artwork for Le Morte D’Arthur. Go check it out here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/68841252
June 11th: a rant about poor user interface design in software: Verb Riot
May 15th: The first public annnouncement about Le Morte D’Arthur: what it is.
March 22nd: Computing basic story structures
February 24th: A chilling analysis of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
January 31st: Re-raising trees bent down by the big snowstorm
January 31st: Why do icicles have ribs? Here’s my guess.
January 29th: How I would approach a project to build interactive storytelling if I had big funding.
January 28th: Observations of a weird phenomenon generated by the visual cortex.
January 15th: Can you trust the news?
January 8th: The Great Christmas Snowstorm of 2021
January 1st: How I got married
2021
December 23rd: Have I been wasting my time trying to teach Process versus Object?
December 21st: Uneducated observations on music
December 17th: A brief note on a silly action movie, “The Tomorrow War”.
November 21st: A short essay about why Deep Space Nine is the greatest of Star Trek productions.
November 20th: Fun with computers! See how easily I solved a difficult technical problem.
November 3rd: a weird contradiction in my auditory sense: Contradictory Auditory Perception.
October 28th: A possible case of cross-species mirror neuron function
October 25th: Some erudite insults for the truly discriminating snot
October 17th: Apple has lost my respect for its blunders
October 16th: The Generic Boomer Lady
October 9th: A few of my better comments on discussion boards
October 4th: Catching Canopus: what’s the northernmost location from which the star Canopus can be seen?
September 9th: living as a starving student in the late 60s and early 70s
September 2nd: Another obscure person from history: Sit-Snefru
August 6th: Apple joins the ranks of Skunkies with its Numbers spreadsheet program.
June 13th: It might be possible to build language-based interactive storytelling using special language platforms
May 31st: Is language-based interactive storytelling possible?
May 9th: A review of a book about the formation of life on earth.
April 27th: Two fundamental strategies for interactive storytelling
April 20th: an incomplete explanation of my “Mayan Algorithm” for tracing lines without division
April 17th: politics: The Decline of Daily Kos
March 22nd: What we can learn from comics and commercials: Concentrated Essense of Story
March 14th: An essay on a crucial requirement for storytelling: Physical Law Versus Dramatic Law
March 4th: Why do so many people have so much difficulty with process-intensive thinking?
February 14th: Dim Prospects for Life On Mars
February 12th: the backstory problem in interactive storytelling
February 6th: book review: Why the West Rules — For Now
February 1st: Another Good Question: How to Learn about Art
January 29th: An interesting question raised by Abdenour Bennani.
January 19th: Who wants to rebuild the 2013 version of “Balance of the Planet” to run on the web?
2020
December 30th: The “Meaning” of Life
December 22nd: an article I wrote for Computer Gaming World in 1982 (?): “Games You’ll Never See”
December 11th: tree rings and wood-burning stoves
November 16th: a fundamental change in my strategy for interactive storytelling: Gamers or Storytellers?
November 14th: believe it or not, a design diary for Le Morte D’Arthur (fourth try)!
November 7th: a discussion of a new approach to sequentiality in Le Morte D'Arthur
November 1st: a short reference to material about Wumpus software
October 26th: The mind doesn’t wander; it cleanses itself and we call it daydreaming.
October 24th: an odd essay on Pornography as Art????
September 8th: A new section on the Encounter System technology
August 18th: An important essay on the architecture of encounter-based storyworlds
July 26th: An obscure Egyptian priest known to history for his execrable penmanship: Hor of Sebennytos
July 23rd: Two Japanese physicists in Hiroshima were way, way ahead of everybody else in 1940.
July 4th: Gemma, the finest human being I have ever known.
June 25th: Evaluating Personality Models
June 19th: How complex systems (ecosystems, financial systems, and civilizations) fail.
June 1st: Meditations on my seventieth birthday
May 19th: I have uploaded the complete contents of The Journal of Computer Game Design, Volume 5
May 12th: I have uploaded the complete contents of The Journal of Computer Game Design, Volume 4
May 9th: An odd scientific discovery of no significance
April 25th: announcing the next iteration of my course 'how to make the computer a medium of artistic expression'
April 24th: an unusual speculation about how the pandemic will affect civilization
April 13th: Here’s the design for a game about the Covid-19 pandemic that YOU can build!
April 13th: A new section in the library about people who were ahead of their times
April 6th: Should I make more videos, or continue expressing myself in text here on this website?
April 4th: I have now uploaded the complete contents of The Journal of Computer Game Design, Volume 3
April 2nd: How will the Covid-19 Pandemic Affect American Asabiyah?
March 30th: some politics: the Threat from Progressives
March 26th: Here are the complete contents of The Journal of Computer Game Design, Volume 2
March 17th: Why people can’t explain things
March 16th: Another exercise in cantankery! Video capture software.
March 1: I have added the entire contents of the Journal of Computer Game Design, Volume 1
February 26th: A Small Memory Trick
February 10th: A fundamental obstacle to interactive storytelling
Februrary 9th: I really blew it trying to teach people something they don’t want to learn
January 27th: Artificial Personas
January 26th: Origins of the Scientific Revolution, Ptolemy, and Commerce
January 23rd: Stenka Razin, a Cossack who gave true meaning to the term ‘robber baron’.
January 22nd: What do words mean?
January 20th: Bobby FatHead helped make modern science.
January 6th: Passwords are like Immune Systems, plus digital hygiene.
2019
December 24th: Random Remarks on User Interface
December 10th: The Borg versus the Dinosaurs
November 24th: bitching and moaning about being a dinosaur, and realizing that I need some help
November 24th: An essay on game design: Ya Don’t Gotta Play the Game
October 28th: After a period of secrecy, I am opening up my new Design Diary for public inspection.
October 21st: Well, I am back to Sandvox after a six-month long digression.
October 16th: This time I've REALLY fixed all the source code files I could find.
September 18th: I've fixed all the source code files to my old games.
September 10th: Sketch for Le Morte D'Arthur Design
September 9th: Tree Structures for Encounter Systems
September 5th: The Greatest Algorithm
September 4th: Making Encounters Central
September 2nd: Musings on a new approach to interactive storytelling
August 19th: The Rocket Science prototype game is operational again. Anybody want to finish it?
August 10th: Three Formats for Information Presentation
August 9th: A Furious Rant Against WordPress
August 2nd: Too Many Tasks
August 1st: Elizabeth Gattermann
May 29th: Forty years of failure
May 22nd: A Solution to the Fermi Paradox
May 14th: Fiction: Pastim
April 19th: Plan B for interactive storytelling.
April 17th: Burning a slash pile to reduce the risks of a wildfire
April 16th: Whither This Poor Pilgrim? My website manager has been abandoned by its publisher, and I’m screwed
April 9th: Two Kinds of Men
April 5th: Crawford’s laws of software design
March 16th: How to build a safe Internet
March 13th: Essays I wrote elsewhere: Aging Programmers, Against Universal Suffrage, and A 21st Century Economy
March 7th: Complexity is destroying civilization
March 5th: Fun in the snow, along with some serious danger.
February 20th: I’ve run into some celebrities in my time.
February 18th: Pejorative gender labels
January 27th: I am offering Version 2.0 of my course on making computers a medium of artistic expression
January 15th: The March of Senility, a grand project brought low by senility
2018
December 28th: Numbers and Meaning
December 27th: Science fiction from Roman times: True History, by Lucian of Samosota
December 17th: an interesting observation in a parking lot.
December 2nd: Sentences are fundamental to interactive storytelling. Stop trying to make movies.
November 22nd: Google Maps idiocy
November 11th: a short piece on the belief in the afterlife that raises some powerful questions.
October 29th: a sad tale of prejudice among academics
October 26th: a depressing essay on The Politics of Anger
October 24th: I have now finished the first twelve chapters of a course I’ll be offering over Skype.
June 27th: an interesting hypothesis on The Evolution of Stories
June 20th: I deliberately practiced nonconformity as a teenager to strengthen my resistance to social pressure.
June 13th: Why I am ending further work on interactive storytelling… with an interesting ending.
May 31st: an important essay on the role played by storytelling in cognition
May 9th: Oddities: Words Beginning with “sn” an unfinished set of observations.
April 26th: I have written a pessimistic assessment of the summit between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim.
April 6th: last August I wrote a series of essays on the reason why we can’t design for computers. I didn’t finish it so I forgot about it. But there’s a lot of useful material in there, some of which I have presented elsewhere. Now I am rescuing them from their dusty crypt:
Why Software Sucks
What is the Essence of Computing?
Why We Don’t Understand Computers
The Language of Process
A Simple Example
April 3rd: another essay in the How to Think series: Greeks Were Freaks
February 26th: a fun-filled essay that will leave you rolling on the floor laughing: death
February 21st: What is the meaning of life? Here’s an answer you wouldn’t expect.
February 10th, 2018: announcing my webinar course: How to Think.
January 14th, 2018: An essay on my favorite movies, along with an explanation of WHY they are my favorites.
January 4th, 2018: A new design diary for Sappho, the general-purpose encounter editor
2017
November 13th: The American economy must shift radically
November 5th: Here’s what is holding back both entertainment software and educational software: Mathophobia
September 25th: an essay on intellectual integrity guaranteed to infuriate half of its readers
August 23rd: My experiences with the total eclipse
August 17th: The most idiotic user interface design I’ve ever seen!
August 8th: Mirror neurons, empathy, and joy
July 29th: an essay explaining the profound difference between Chinese and Western technologies
June 20th: A plea
June 13th: Version 1.00 of the Encounter Editor, with a proper user manual, is ready.
May 31st: The Encounter Editor is now available for download!
April 6th: A trip to Italy
March 1st: Finally a new essay: The Fall of Homo Sapiens. Fun, fun, fun!
January 29th: An Existential Controversy
January 19th, 2017: The costs of climate change, in personal terms
January 7th, 2017: Roughing It, a tale of grit, courage, and dirty underwear
2016
December 25th: book review: The Sixth Language, by Robert K. Logan
December 23rd: book review: Sapiens, a Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari
December 10th: The crisis of legitimacy in America
November 13th: How California (and other states) can Legally Secede from the Union
November 9th: The American Century is over.
November 6th: Book review: The Mind in the Cave, about prehistoric cave art.
November 1st: A new strategy for Siboot
October 16th: Going to Mars is a bad idea. We could never establish a self-sustaining colony there.
October 13th: The “One Size Fits All” solution to our political problems
October 13th: Three quick book reviews
October 9th: design notes on how to calculate threat in Siboot.
October 8th: why I bury marbles.
September 30th: an essay on the long-term social forces that bode ill for the survival of civilization
September 25th: Wondering where I’ve been for the last few months? In Lupron Land.
September 22nd: an interview on YouTube.
July 4th: Did I anticipate “deep learning” AI 40 years ago? Read about it and decide for yourself.
June 26th: an Ancient Wargaming Computer, circa 1976
May 28th: Should the Ontology of Interactive Storytelling Recapitulate the Phylogeny of Human Social Relationships?
May 7th: another book review: Religion and the Decline of Magic, describing the decline of superstition in England
May 3rd: book review: Homo Mysterious, about oddities in human evolution.
May 1st: an explanation of why instructions for any specific trait are spread throughout the genome.
April 13th: a new book review: The Closing of the Western Mind, about early church history
April 12th: an important new essay: The Algorithm is the Message
March 6th: another book review: Debt, The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber. A real stinker.
March 4th: book review: Europe Between the Oceans, by Barry Cunliffe
February 20th: What is this rock? A strange rock I found on my land.
February 5th: a demonstration of earth-based heating
January 23rd: a proposal for a course this summer explaining my mental regimen: How to Think
January 2nd, 2016: a new essay in the History of Thinking: Astrology
2015
December 26th: a new Skunkie award to Verilux for a device equipped with a difficult-to-use power switch.
December 21st: a different take on Star Wars Episode VII. I hated it.
December 17th: book review: The Sleepwalkers, by Arthur Koestler, about the onset of the scientific revolution
December 15th: a long and weighty essay on the role of social identity in human society
December 15th: I have posted on YouTube a version of the lecture I gave on interactive storytelling.
December 5th: travelogue report on my trip to Copenhagen to deliver a keynote lecture at the ICIDS conference
November 24th: book review: The Copernican Revolution, by Thomas S. Kuhn
November 9th: Re-reading old favorite books
October 18th: Comparing modern computing technology with its ancestors — The Bad Old Days
October 5th: A bit of physics: Information is the Reality of the Universe
September 19th: An addition to the History of Thinking: the role of the Western educational system.
September 6th: How’s this for mundane: a motor speed measuring circuit. But there’s a twist.
July 16th: More than 40 years ago, I saw Pluto. Here’s how I did it.
April 29th: Software is Getting Worse
April 14th: Does an Excursion Add to or Replace an Emotion?
March 29th: Dreamspace animations in Siboot.
March 22nd: book review: Dave Barry in Cyberspace. Twenty years old and still funny, because computers still suck.
March 15th: New Face Expressions
February 27th: the use of pupils in Siboot
February 25th: Alterations to the Face Editor
February 21st: Seven WordSockets
February 14th: Moods versus Emotions
February 12th: Should I dump beads?
February 7th: Ways of detecting lies in Siboot
February 6th: Selfies by Special People, and a new Siboot essay.
February 4th: book review: 1493, describing the Columbian Exchange.
January 14th: book review: Civilizations and a Siboot essay: Pushed Back
January 12th: More agonizing over deals
January 11th: What are the costs of a deal?
January 10th: Violence begets Violence
January 9th: Details of Deal-Making
January 7th: An Interesting Question of Design Style
January 6th: Redesigning Deal Structures
2014
December 23rd: The Next Round of Verbs for Siboot
December 16th: Busy, Busy, Busy
December 8th: I Hate Java, Volume XXIX
December 5th: Anecdotes (nee ‘interstitial stories’) in Siboot
December 3rd: I got dem ol’ management blues with Siboot
November 30th: simplifying the interstitial story coding system
November 29th: book review: The Lever of Riches, by Joel Mokyr, about technological and economic progress
November 26th: More on faces
November 25th: Programming mood shadings
November 24th: Interactive storytelling’s time has come (I think)
November 22nd: a fascinating possibility has opened up from a consideration of a larger problem.
November 19th: book review: Louder than Words, about embodied simulation as a basis for thought.
November 18th: Blacklisted by the Game Developers Conference!
November 18th: the second draft of the Interstitial Story Markup Language
November 14th: Siboot! It’s alive!
November 12th: some ideas inspired by the television show Downton Abbey
November 11th: book review: The Recursive Mind, by Michael C. Corballis, about a powerful human ability.
November 11th: the algorithm for dream combat turns out to be easier than I expected.
November 7th: two pieces about authoring interstitial stories for Siboot plus a sample interstitial story
November 6th: Interstitial Stories
November 5th: The Revolt Against Modernity is the underlying force behind our current political battles.
November 4th: Mechanics of Lies and A Modest Proposal for Siboot
October 30th: A brutal decision for Siboot: Answers are where you find them
October 28th: a new project plan for Siboot
October 26th: I have completely revised the presentation of my old Balance of Power book.
October 26th: Reconsidering the project plan for Siboot
October 23rd: Cleaning up the Siboot novel
October 22nd: How should I publish my books?
October 19th: A short answer to a common question: What is Interactive Storytelling?
October 18th: Rewriting the Novel. Good criticism is hard to find
October 16th: More on GamerGate: can I offer a constructive solution?
October 15th: Why seven species in Siboot?
October 13th: Siboot essay: Another Plateau
October 10th: two essays on gender issues: Women in Games and Misogyny
October 9th: The Next Plateau in Siboot
October 5th: another book review: The Man of Numbers, by Keith Devlin
October 2nd: Book review time: Information, by James Gleick
September 29th: Should I Dispense with Uncertainty?
September 28th: My Reach Always Exceeds My Grasp
September 25th: First experiment with face mood displays
September 24th: More on face displays
September 22nd: A radically different approach to face display
September 20th: Walking to the Moon with Siboot.
September 19th: Mr. Bear shows up for a video!
September 17th: Another ‘typical’ day working on Siboot
September 16th: a progress report on Siboot. See a screen shot and a transcript of the action!
September 14th: How to calculate uncertainty in Siboot P2 values
September 13th: book review: The Earth Moves, about the trial of Galileo
September 11th: Circumferentiality rears its ugly head again!
September 10th: book review: Apocalypse, about the obsession with fantasizing our doom.
September 10th: You can never have too many backups!
September 7th: Evaluating the merits of a deal in Siboot
September 7th: A new face design for Siboot?
September 6th: Book review: 1215: The Year of the Magna Carta
September 5th: Mr. Bear makes a grand appearance!
September 1st: Screwed Again by United Airlines!
August 12th: Does great art evoke stories?
August 11th: BNumbers are obsolete. Long live the Blend operator!
August 10th: book review: Spillover, about how viruses jump from animals to people and become deadly.
July 30th: A nice idea for Siboot: using perceptive ability as both an economy and a resource.
July 27th: yet another Siboot essay: More Stupid Screwups
July 23rd: Siboot essay: Whut the Hay-ell???
July 21st: Siboot essay: Tricky Problems with Auragon Counts
July 20th: book review: City of Fortune, by Roger Crowley, about the rise and fall of Venice
July 16th: another idiotic problem in Siboot
July 12th: How to Screw Up a simple technical problem in Siboot
July 7th: Plodding along with Siboot
July 7th: book review: The Sea and Civilization. ho-hum
July 2nd: an old newspaper clipping my brother found of a speech contest I competed in
July 1st: a political piece on professional climate change deniers
June 30th: Another snag with Siboot
June 29th: A Skunky Award to the entire computer industry
June 26th: want to know how bad a programmer I am? Read The Neanderthal Versus the Professor.
June 25th: a difficult algorithm for Siboot
June 22nd: book review: Reason and Society in the Middle Ages, by Alexander Murray
June 21st: the new Face Editor for Siboot art
June 13th: no surprise here: Sappho sucks
June 11th: back to the storyworld in Siboot
June 9th: an essay for The History of Thinking hyperbook, about the role of education in rationalism
June 8th: Huzzah! The first flight of Siboot!
June 7th: are irrational numbers possible?
June 5th: a new essay on paradigm shift in game design
May 31st: A student astronomy project
May 31st: Siboot: About that Rightmost Panel
May 30th: Culling my Library, a painful experience.
May 29th: A decidedly unsettling discovery with Siboot
May 27th: Back to Square One with Siboot stages
May 25th: The complexities of space and time in Siboot
May 24th: Some more display issues in Siboot
May 22nd: another Siboot design diary: Where to put the period?
May 22nd: an essay on Rejection of Science
May 21st: Is interactive storytelling stuck?
May 18th: The terror of change in the code for Siboot
May 16th: book review: The Most Powerful Idea in the World, by William Rosen
May 14th: Knee-Deep in Digital Gore
May 12th: Day of the long knives
May 9th: A big change in the code for Siboot
May 8th: How I got a job at Atari in 1979
May 7th: a new interesting person from history: Ludowicke Muggleton
May 6th: another Siboot diary
May 5th: 2D versus 1D Sentence Displays in Siboot
May 4th: A tough technical decision about Siboot
May 3rd: The Engineer Versus the Artist
May 2nd: a new screen layout for Siboot
April 30th: Siboot design diary: Mapping BNumbers to Quantifiers
April 29th: Siboot design diary: Crowdsourcing Desirabilities
April 28th: Siboot design diary: How quickly should the truth out?
April 26th: book review: 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed, by Eric H. Cline
April 25th: A trip to New York City