My own personal madhouse

General

• Alert Level: Yellow. Uni work is somewhat pressing, and yet I keep finding other things to do to take up my time. I'm smart like that.
  
• The month in three lines:
  I started day-logging using LJ again.
  I bought a tuxedo
  I joined Wave
  

Media

• Reading: The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman
  
• Watching: Last thing I saw was G.I. Joe
  
• Hearing: Hold Your Fire, by Rush. After Merlin Mann mentioned them somewhere.
  

Personal

• Eristic influence: enthusiasm and people
  
• Aneristic influence: guilt (and people)
  
• Right now I'm grateful for: money and circumstances
  
• Right now I wish... I could be a writer or something like that
  

Watched G.I. Joe last night. Synopsis - I wouldn't pay money to see it at the cinema, but it's a bunch of fun and explosions and hey, the Baroness wears a latex outfit! What were you expecting?

To be honest, it feels somewhat like a "gamer movie" in the tradition of The Mummy. You can tell when the players are introduced to the main plot, get excellent equipment, go through the stage of rolling dice against some mooks and basically having a whale of a time. Then the GM goes "Ah, crap!" and ups the difficulty level. For a lot of the movie, the players are desperately trying to do something, but end up being window dressing as the plot advances. And finally, at the end, you have everyone trying to fulfil their own goals, which is why you end up with two ninjas fighting in an underwater base at the North Pole.

I should probably be Christmas present shopping today, but I'm not! Hah! Instead I'm going to try and get through the hundreds of tasks on my to-do list and maybe even do some programming for my bot. We'll see about that though.

Get to go to a cocktail party tonight, which means tuxedo time! However I feel that while I'll get to wear clothes, I'll probably be bored out of my skull at the actual event. We'll see.

Things today:

• Group lunch: accomplished!
  
• Group meeting: accomplished!
  
• Tutoring: accomplished!
  
• Advisor meeting: accomplished!
  
• New catalyst: accomplished!

In addition, it looks like my latest wave invites are starting to trickle in, in dribs and drabs. I'm tempted to get my research group on here, but, well, I know what most academics are like. I will likely get one person in the group interested, and then four others won't care for it at all.

I get to speak at group meeting next week, and I'm really tempted to do somethign about how to use web2.0 stuff for collaboration. DropBox, Wave, some homebrew RoR stuff I've been working on...it has the potential to be really shiny, but again, most of the things on there will be "That's cool but I'll never use it" material.

Still, we have to try.

Movie night was a decent success. We ended up watching Volcano High and Flight of the Navigator, plus, yknow, eating chips and cake and the usual hubbub. Stayed the night, which means I eventually woke up at 9:30 this morning and ate pancakes, before watching QI and heading back here.

( In the meantime... )

General

• Alert Level: Orange. Uni work is pretty engulfing right now, but there's no real deadline, just lots of work.
  
• The month in three lines:
  I became president of SAGA Inc., the University gaming club
  I got my first crystals!
  I started doing aerials
  

Media

• Reading: The Northern Lights, by Philip Pullman. Finally getting around to reading this
  
• Watching: QI season 5
  
• Hearing: Big City Rock, by Big City Rock. Yes, again.
  

Personal

• Eristic influence: imagination
  
• Aneristic influence: time
  
• Right now I'm grateful for: everything I have
  
• Right now I wish... I had more. Ungrateful bastard that I am.
  

I figure that some of you don't check either my twitter or my facebook, so here's some announcements of werewolf-related projects I've been doing. For those of you unaware of what werewolf is, check this page. Note that even if this is the first time you have heard of werewolf, you are welcome to participate in either of the following things.

PBEM Werewolf is happening! If you send an email to werewolf.nz at gmail.com you will find the server. If you have the word "HELP" by itself on a line in the body of your email, it will send you some help. Some future iteration will actually detect whether or not you have ever emailed the server before and give you a quick tutorial, but for the moment that will have to do.

Since I have slight server hosting issues at the moment we aren't quite up to speed. However, if you email the server, you will get a reply back when it's up and running again. The server itself is technically in beta, so the occasional bug will get through. I will fix bugs as they arise.

Werewolf in the Park is happening this summer, for all of you local folk! The plan is to pick a day (possibly Monday) and go out to Hagley Park after dinner and play werewolf from 7pm until 10pm or however late we go. The day and time are yet to be announced - I plan on starting it after university ends, so club events won't be happening and we should have lots of daylight. If you are interested in getting announcements about the event, you will wish to sign up here.

General

• Alert Level: Yellow. Ph.D. stuff is not always fun and games, it turns out!
  
• The month in three lines:
  I did lots of gold catalysis, taking a break from my major project
  I built my PBEM werewolf server
  I saw Chess, the musical
  

Media

• Reading: Chasm City, by Alistair Reynolds.
  
• Watching: Ong Bak 2, which is not as good as Ong Bak 1, and possibly not even as good as Tom Yum Goong.
  
• Hearing: Junior, by Royksopp.
  

Personal

• Eristic influence: Emotions
  
• Aneristic influence: Reason
  
• Right now I'm grateful for: Technology
  
• Right now I wish... I had more time. In general.
  

( Turns out the bus is a good place to write )

And here we go! Thankfully I've posted more than just noise to this over the past month.

General

• Alert Level: Green. Uni is going well, no immediate deadlines, and I'm keeping up with personal projects
  
• The month in three lines:
  I met harena and woozle! (A lie, but I couldn't fit them into last month's three lines
  I went to California and San Fransisco, meeting artemisfowl2nd!
  I made my PBEM werewolf server, I guess
  

Media

• Reading: Computer Lib, by T.H. Nelson
  
• Watching: Moon, this evening
  
• Hearing: Awful Lot of Running, by Chameleon Circuit. Or I would be, except AS I WAS TYPING THIS the courier came up the drive and handed over Junior, by Röyksopp (gone on, watch that youtube clip).
  

Personal

• Eristic influence: longing
  
• Aneristic influence: logic
  
• Right now I'm grateful for: music
  
• Right now I wish... I could be back in America. Some citizen of the Commonwealth I am
  

OK so! I showed you pics of Computer Lib before. Now I'm going to talk about it, since I've actually read some of it!

Computer Lib is a pretty awesome book. It was written in 1974, when the computer was a foreign object to a bunch of people. The author's basic premise is that in the future, computers will be everywhere, and in order to function in the future world, we will need to know how to operate a computer, whether we want to or not.

Computers at that point, he states, were run by the computer-literate, who didn't want people to understand computers (either because they liked the feeling of power or because it was just too much work). To everyone else, things happened because "the computer does stuff". And all the usual stereotypes about computers that you still see today about computers, generally anthropomorphising them or ascribing mystic powers to them.

The book itself, as I have commented, is hodge-podge of columns, sections, hand-drawn pictures, pull-quotes and sidebars. I haven't even started on the second book, Dream Machines, so I can't comment on that. Any "current" information in the book is completely out of date, but that's OK, because you don't read this book as a guide, but as a snapshot of the computer culture of the 70s.

And the thing even has a wikipedia page! That's how awesome it is!

Book review done!

Grabbed today from the cancelled books section of the library - Computer Lib/Dream Machine, a double-book written in 1974 about the state of computers. I got it not for its antiquated ideas, but for the book itself. Check it out:


Old-school binding! Type-written title! What could go wrong? Wait until you see the inside!

Being a double-book, it gets an inside cover at both ends. Once you get into the book, it's a three-column affair broken up by illustrations and things all over:

Oh yes, and it contains ASCII porn.

Conclusion: I have yet to read this, and I already love it.

So I have a few ideas for stuff that I'd like to do in the next year or so. These are all pretty social things, requiring people to join in, so I thought I'd first gauge interest to see what will fly:

PBEM Werewolf
This one is pretty straightforward. Werewolf, played by email. I have half a client written up to parse commands to that we can have completely unmoderated games, and I figure that anyone, anywhere can play! (Which greatly increases my number of players).

Summer Werewolf
Related to this is the idea of running local games of werewolf, at a location to be decided. I was originally planning on seeing how much it would cost to rent out the ballroom in the University, but we could also do it outdoors. Everyone can bring a chair to Hagley Park and we play Werewolf there.

PBEM RPG
I'm also interested in starting up a PBEM (or PBF) RPG. After playing Exalted over the weekend, I'm pretty keen on doing an Exalted-type game, more into talking and intrigue than fighting. This would also be good as I could easily arrange for it to be GM-less (or at least, one where I don't have to be a GM all the time). I'm really tempted to custom-write some fora for it, but I could also easily do it via an email group or RPOL.net or similar.

Diplomacy Afternoon
Finally, I'd be interested in running a game of Diplomacy at some point. This is the easiest to realise - I'm pretty sure I can get seven people, and then we just grab the LCR for an afternoon.

So! Who wants in on any of these?

It's the entry you've been waiting for/dreading! The really long one that details our adventures in the US!

( trip start )

( New York )

( Origins )

( California )

And too soon, we were back off to New Zealand. We took a somewhat staggered route down the coast, stopping in LAX (where we made a friend by playing travel Settlers of Catan in the departure lounge). 13 hours later, we were back in Christchurch.



Conclusion: I'm glad we did it. I could write hundreds of words more, about how different it is, about how it didn't fit my expectations, about how meeting one your best friends for the first time is a strange sensation...but I won't bore you with it. It was totally worth it, especially meeting everyone I've been talking to for so long (I'm looking at you, sorcyress, musikmaker21, tolkeinkookad, drama_angel3189. werewulf, artemisfowl2nd, harena, woozle, and anyone I've missed) and making new friends. We plan to be back, hopefully in a couple of years. We'll see how that pans out.

Back in New Zealand! A bigger update later, but for now, your monthly status!

General

• Alert Level: Green. All relaxed! Not looking at work yet, just wrapping up holiday stuff.
  
• The month in three lines:
  I went to America!
  I visited kdsorceress for the very first time ever! And it was awesome!
  I went to Origins, the second-largest gaming convention in the world.
  

Media

• Reading: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling. Getting through the series, slowly.
  
• Watching: Middleman! (Middleman!)
  
• Hearing: Big City Rock, by Big City Rock.
  

Personal

• Eristic influence: friends and aspirations
  
• Aneristic influence: obligations and promises
  
• Right now I'm grateful for: having so many people think I'm awesome
  
• Right now I wish... I could travel places as I wished.
  

We're in CA now. It's horribly hot, and I'm missing the constant geekiness of the Empty City, back in MD. Nevertheless, I'm doing all the stuff that we're here to do, like meeting up with artemisfowl2nd and going to an amusement park. We generally don't have them back home, so it's quite an experience. We went to Great America, and went on a few rides. It turns out I'm not a roller-coaster person, but the water rides were pretty good.

I'm taking photos, and when I get home I'll make a giant post with our adventures in it.

I am in America! I just got back from Origins! I went to New York! You people seem to be arguing over gender! I'm not sure why! If you want to make an argument, I'll try and rebut this here!

I believe I have dinner now. Don't expect any updates until I get back, which will be in a few weeks.

So I'm fully recovered from my illness again. The bout of...well, depression, I guess...that hit me while ill is still hovering in the wings - whether it actually goes away, or just decides to hang around me in those moments that I'm not talking to anyone, we'll see.

In the meantime, things are busy in the next couple of days, as I try to say goodbye to everyone I feel I should say goodbye to and organise all the last-minute stuff. We leave in less than two days now. It still doesn't feel like I'm about to go off to America - I think I'll have to wait until I'm on the plane for that to kick in.

If you'll excuse me for a moment, I'm going to make a personal "here's my life" post, which is incredibly boring but I feel I should make it.

I'm feeling a lot better now, all recovered and so forth. We head off to the US in just under two weeks, and it looks like I'll be able to bring my doctorate to some sort of close before I leave. Nothing much else to report.

Well, illness has cleared up now (thank goodness) and I'm almost back to normal.

General

• Alert Level: Yellow. US Trip is creeping up (now less than 16 days before we leave)
  
• The month in three lines:
  I got ill, and contemplated life
  I got my AINSE scholarship, meaning I will be heading to Australia in the near future
  I got glasses!
  

Media

• Reading: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling. I started reading the series when I was ill and needed something fuzzy to read. And I'd be amiss if I didn't finish it now I'd started, wouldn't I?
  
• Watching: Q.I., with Stephen Fry
  
• Hearing: Love Don't Let me Go, by David Guetta/The Egg. And I need to dance to it sometime.
  

Personal

• Eristic influence: I've been pretty free of eristic influences over the past few weeks, but I guess the desire to interact with people is giving the most chaos and character to my life.
  
• Aneristic influence: The dull requirement of everyday things, and the requirement to travel to see people.
  
• Right now I'm grateful for: friends, opportunities, vision and imagination.
  
• Right now I wish... I could live forever.
  

It's the worst in the mornings and the evenings. During the day I hardly notice it. I can keep up with everyone else, smile, be bouncy and all the rest.

Symptoms at this stage are a loss of appetite and energy, stomach...not really pains, just a slight queasiness I guess. Lack of enthusiasm for anything, ranging to a deep melancholy. While ill, everything seems a dull drag, and it seems like time passes incredibly slowly. An end to the illness seems impossible, leading to a further drain on the energy.

Tomorrow is work. We'll see how that goes. No further updates will probably indicate that I am well again. Let's hope for that.