Current Projects

As people who know me will tell you, I like to keep busy. Here are some of the ongoing projects I am involved in:

Game development, including Wind and Water, a storytelling card game based on shoujo themes that emphasizes narrative structure and cooperation.

Mobileread.com Moderator - MobileRead is an online forum dedicated to the discussion of ebooks. I have been a participant since 2006. I was invited to become a moderator in December 2007.

InnerLife
A Second Life Project

The InnerLife project is a service by which people from all over the world would be able to connect to one "virtual world": a three-dimensional rendering of a realistic, yet mystical setting designed to encourage inner development using biofeedback and other activities and events. InnerLife builds on the theme of the collection and sharing of wisdom scattered throughout the peoples and traditions of the world.

We submitted a proposal to the Second Life Game Developers Competition in the summer of 2005 and generated considerable interest, but encountered technical obstacles (network lag through the XML-RPC interface) which have limited the project since then.

Apart from being the primary initial founder, I also continue to act as the curriculum specialist and media developer. Of particular interest might be:

Comparison of Chinese Textbooks for Adult/Teen Students
Comparison of Chinese Textbooks for Elementary Students (Link coming soon)
Sample Chinese Lessons and Activities for Elementary Students
Chinese Preschool Activities by Topic
Chinese Language Learning Software Development (Link coming soon)

YaWPS Generic Database Module
"YaWPS" (Yet another Web Portal System) is a hybrid between a content management system and a web portal for medium- or small-sized Internet- or Intranetsites, initially developed in Perl by Adrian Heiszler.What it lacked was a generic database module, which I provided. This module is now included as part of the standard distribution.

The Wild Divine Project uses a USB-based biofeedback device as the input method for an engaging "game" which teaches relaxation and breathing techniques, among other things. In addition to being a regular participant on the Wild Divine fora, I also worked on a prototype Wild Divine Event Editor/Player.

Runtime Revolution Documentation Working Group
Runtime Revolution is a "HyperCard-Like" development environment (for those who remember Hypercard on the Macintosh system). It allows those who are relatively inexperienced in developing software to create custom cross-platform applications. It also has an impressive range of advanced features for more sophisticated developers, such as internet access and multimedia controls. I've become involved in the Documentation Working Group to help improve the documentation set for new users.

Gaea Cooperative Online Bookstore
There are plenty of online bookstores out there. This one was intended to provide a couple of (in my mind) critical distinctive features:
- Reviewers would make a commission on books sold due to their reviews (using standard online bookseller affiliate/partnership programs at Powells, B&N, Amazon, ABE, Booksense, and more.)
- Part of the review process would involve catagorizing the books and authors to make it easier to find similar books (an idea I got from Otakuworld).
- Reviewers would need to complete simple training and pass a simple assessment, similar to that of the Zeal search engine system.
- Eventually I'd also like to add "rate the reviewer" metamoderation functionality, or "Friends" similar to Slashdot or Motley Fool, to improve the quality of recommendations.
This project is currently on hold, but I hope to be able to move forward with it sometime in 2004 or early 2005.

PerlMUD is a MultiUser Dimension (MUD), a text-based environment that allows multiple users to converse, explore, and interact. PerlMUD is written in Perl 5 and is provided by Boutell.COM, Inc.

My project involves modifying the PerlMUD code to something I call "PerlMESS" (Multiplayer Episodic Storytelling System), a system designed to allow for more personal online roleplaying game experiences (rather than having new players just get lost in the crowd on a huge world). Research lines include more complex non-player characters, the ability to save "episodes" and "scenes," and the ability for players to form a "cast" of their choosing. While PerlMUD is the codebase I am currently working from, it may not be the codebase used for the final product. I am also investigating graphical chat services like Second Life and The Palace, or may end up writing my own interface using Runtime Revolution.