Geek News and Musings

MIT Police Suspended For Trashing Student Newspaper
Apparently, two police officers at MIT have been suspended after they decided that students at the university shouldn’t see a front page story about another MIT police officer caught dealing drugs — so they dumped hundreds of copies of the paper in the trash (well, actually a recycling bin — they may want to censor, but not clog landfills, apparently). Of course, it really makes you wonder what they hoped to accomplish. The MIT paper, The Tech, is available online, including the article in question. Throwing out the papers probably did little (if anything) to stop people from reading about the incident — and simply ended up calling more attention to questionable activities by MIT police. All of this, of course, highlights yet another nice benefit to online newspapers: people can’t throw them out to try to hide what’s in them.

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Psychology of nerding and the joy of reckless tech
Wormbook has a lovely meditation on the hacker mindset and the satisfaction of breaking and fixing computers, quoting from Ellen Ullman’s Close to the Machine, “still the best book I know about the psychology of nerding:” “My computers are not broken, but at times like these I like the look of delicate circuit boards open to the naked air. Several hours ago, in a fit of restlessness, I decided to install a pre-release version of a new operating system. Then there seemed to be problems with some of the internal devices. So I took them out, one after the other. Now they lie all around me—cards, wires, memory modules, screws—all in a jumble. To test components, I do what I’m absolutely not supposed to do: run the machines with the covers off. I’m supposed to discharge static electricity before touching anything. But I scuff around on the carpets, grab things with two hands, hold metal to metal. I recognize the nastiness of this mood, reckless and rebellious, like I could get away with breaking the laws of physics. There’s a perverse comfort in broken machinery.”

Reading this, I realised that the rage is itself an attractive part of the process because it feels so good when it is over, and everything dissolves into order. There is something in this process of destruction and recreation that resembles the state that long articles and still more radio programmes get into, just before they get right: everything is spread out in ways that look chaotic to everyone except me, and even I can’t quite explain how they will go back together. I can only show, if I keep my concentration. The element of risk makes it far more attractive than the times when everything goes smoothly and by routine. You feel you have discovered a hidden order to the universe. Alternatively, as sometimes happens, you take it all apart and it never ever goes back together properly. All you are left with is a heap of broken junk. But that’s more common with words than with computers.

Creative destruction (via Memex 1.1)

Wil Wheaton teaches his son to slay dragons
Wil Wheaton is leading a kitchen-table game of Dungeos and Dragons with his teenaged son and some of his son’s friends, and documenting the campaign in his blog. This is absolutely charming, a heartwarming tale of our proud geek heritage being passed down through the generations.

D&D was the first thing to capture my attention as thoroughly as reading had. I remember just falling head over heels for it — the miniatures, the painting, the storytelling, the dice, the paraphernalia, the social circle. It was all I could think about for years. I haunted the downtown D&D stores like The Four Horsemen and Mr Gameway's Arc (which had a full-scale replica of the bridge of the Enterprise on the top level!), and hoarded graph-paper like it was going out of style. Reading this brings it all back to me.

As John Rogers notes, “They are, in the end, about a father sitting down at a kitchen table, for hours, teaching and telling stories with his son.”

He looked up at Nolan and their other friend. “If I get behind her, I can get out of reach of her claws, and I do all kinds of cool stuff when I’m flanking someone.”

Yeah, this kid is really into being a rogue.

They agreed that he could go for it. I decided that this was incredibly difficult: DC 20.

“Make an athletics check,” I said. Then, “are you sure you want to do this?”

But the die was out of his hand. It rolled across the table in front of him and landed at the edge of the map: 19.

“What’s your athletics bonus?” I said.

“Plus 1,” he said.

“Well, I can’t believe you pulled it off, but you did it.”

“YES!” He said, with a major fist pump.

“Let’s see if the Dragon hits you, as you leap away,” I said. She rolled a four.

“As you crouch down to leap away, she looks down at you and snorts contemptuously. She slashes at you with her left claw, but when it snaps closed, you’ve already lept through her grasp! You lock your hands around the neck of this statue, and spin around it, tucking your feet in and avoiding the wyrmling’s bite. You let go of the statue, somersault in the air, and land on your feet behind her.”

“That was so cool,” Nolan said.

His friend and I both nodded. I realized that I was having a lot of fun visualizing the action in my head, and describing it to them all as evocatively as possible.

and so the campaign begins… (Part I)

and so the campaign begins… (Part II)

and so the campaign begins… (Part III)

and so the campaign begins… (Part IV)

a few thoughts and lessons learned from behind the dm screen

Classic Gutenberg project books read aloud by Roy Trumbull
Roy Trumbull, a talented reader, is working his way through the best of Project Gutenberg’s texts, reading them aloud in a podcast called “Story Spieler.” He’s got a lot of classic science fiction, Bierce’s “Devil’s Dictionary” and lots more. Roy read some of my work aloud and did a fantastic job with it, and I’m really enjoying listening to his work on these stories, too. It’s a great way to mine the past for some of the great and forgotten works of literature.

Story Spieler Podcast

Podcast feed

Wil Wheaton teaches his son to slay dragons
Wil Wheaton is leading a kitchen-table game of Dungeos and Dragons with his teenaged son and some of his son’s friends, and documenting the campaign in his blog. This is absolutely charming, a heartwarming tale of our proud geek heritage being passed down through the generations.

D&D was the first thing to capture my attention as thoroughly as reading had. I remember just falling head over heels for it — the miniatures, the painting, the storytelling, the dice, the paraphernalia, the social circle. It was all I could think about for years. I haunted the downtown D&D stores like The Four Horsemen and Mr Gameway's Arc (which had a full-scale replica of the bridge of the Enterprise on the top level!), and hoarded graph-paper like it was going out of style. Reading this brings it all back to me.

As John Rogers notes, “They are, in the end, about a father sitting down at a kitchen table, for hours, teaching and telling stories with his son.”

He looked up at Nolan and their other friend. “If I get behind her, I can get out of reach of her claws, and I do all kinds of cool stuff when I’m flanking someone.”

Yeah, this kid is really into being a rogue.

They agreed that he could go for it. I decided that this was incredibly difficult: DC 20.

“Make an athletics check,” I said. Then, “are you sure you want to do this?”

But the die was out of his hand. It rolled across the table in front of him and landed at the edge of the map: 19.

“What’s your athletics bonus?” I said.

“Plus 1,” he said.

“Well, I can’t believe you pulled it off, but you did it.”

“YES!” He said, with a major fist pump.

“Let’s see if the Dragon hits you, as you leap away,” I said. She rolled a four.

“As you crouch down to leap away, she looks down at you and snorts contemptuously. She slashes at you with her left claw, but when it snaps closed, you’ve already lept through her grasp! You lock your hands around the neck of this statue, and spin around it, tucking your feet in and avoiding the wyrmling’s bite. You let go of the statue, somersault in the air, and land on your feet behind her.”

“That was so cool,” Nolan said.

His friend and I both nodded. I realized that I was having a lot of fun visualizing the action in my head, and describing it to them all as evocatively as possible.

and so the campaign begins… (Part I)

and so the campaign begins… (Part II)

and so the campaign begins… (Part III)

and so the campaign begins… (Part IV)

a few thoughts and lessons learned from behind the dm screen