The inescapable narrative structure of the TV sitcom

Beyond its television ‘half-hour’ time-limit, the sitcom is commonly distinguished from drama or soap-opera by having what is described as a closed or “circular” narrative structure. Narrative theory explores the relationship between character actions, traits and story, and how together they enable the narrative structure (Chatman 1978). If the narrative is the sum of the character’s actions this paper will examine the plot points where the character’s actions advance the narrative and determine the effect of their choices at those points. The objective is to explore how the key character generates the unique shape. Lisa Trahair, in her text The Comedy of Philosophy: Sense and Nonsense in Early Cinematic Slapstick (2007) in utilising psychoanalytic theory demonstrates that comicality is enabled through the tension arising between the pleasure principle and primary processes that drive the character and in opposition to the reality principle that comes to bear on the character through the narrative. Extending on my presentation at the 2015 SRN conference that examined the nature of the characters in the sitcom, I now observe that, in response to the diegetic reality brought to bear through the narrative, key characters make choices that maintain their idealisation; in so doing they contribute to the definitive closed narrative structure of the sitcom and reinforce their entrapment. This paper will examine the comic operation of the sitcom at the level of the narrative in order to extend our understanding of how the plot reinforces the key character’s psychical tension; further how their choices at certain points ensure the re-situation and ‘perpetual entrapment’ and the ‘closed narrative’

Sandwich

Proposal for a TV series. A comedy about mid life - when everybody needs you and nobody wants you. The full script, Sandwich was awarded 4th place Best Television Pilot London Film Award

Ehrenfest regularization of Hamiltonian systems

Imagine a freely rotating rigid body. The body has three principal axes of rotation. It follows from mathematical analysis of the evolution equations that pure rotations around the major and minor axes are stable while rotation around the middle axis is unstable. However, only rotation around the major axis (with highest moment of inertia) is stable in physical reality (as demonstrated by the unexpected change of rotation of the Explorer 1 probe). We propose a general method of Ehrenfest regularization of Hamiltonian equations by which the reversible Hamiltonian equations are equipped with irreversible terms constructed from the Hamiltonian dynamics itself. The method is demonstrated on harmonic oscillator, rigid body motion (solving the problem of stable minor axis rotation), ideal fluid mechanics and kinetic theory. In particular, the regularization can be seen as a birth of irreversibility and dissipation. In addition, we discuss and propose discretizations of the Ehrenfest regularized evolution equations such that key model characteristics (behavior of energy and entropy) are valid in the numerical scheme as well

Modular tool for creating games with artificial intelligence

Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá návrhem a implementací nástroje pro usnadnění tvorby umělých inteligencí. Nástroj používá vlastní univerzální komunikační protokol, podporuje více typů her, je rozšiřitelný o další hry pomocí dynamických knihoven, podporuje zobrazení ladících informací z umělé inteligence a je lokalizovaný do českého a anglického jazyka.This bachelor thesis describes the design and implementation of tool for facilitate the creation of artificial intelligence. The tool uses its own universal communication protocol, supports multiple types of games, is extensible for other games using dynamic libraries, supports the display of debugging information of artificial intelligence and is localized in English and Czech.