We Can Be Heroes

Hello. This is my post-terrible-election blog. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

I've had a lot of thoughts and feelings over the past week. I haven't been very productive, writing-wise. But here, I think, is some much-needed perspective:


https://youtu.be/SHG0ezLiVGc

To wit, nobody should be surprised to learn that America—overall, historically, demonstrably—is racist as fuck. Non-white minorities have always known this. If you look like any kind of brown person, it's something you have to deal with every single day. (I could tell you stories. Oh boy, could I tell you stories. But later.)

So. Racism wins: not that surprising. Still devastating, yeah. Many of us hoped for better from our fellow citizens. But we are ready to face this.

Remember back in the year 2000, in DC Comics, when Lex Luthor was elected President of the United States? That's right, evil supervillain Lex Luthor. And that motherfucker was a straight-up murderer.

That storyline had some logic issues, as pointed out in the article linked above, but my point is: we've been imagining dystopias for, well, ever. 1984, Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaid's Tale, is any of this ringing a bell?

This situation is nothing new. We've been seeing it for years, in fiction and in other nations' oppressive regimes. The difference is that now, we get a chance to fight for real. We are the Rebel Alliance. We are the Maquis. We are the Green Martians.

So fight, if you haven't already been fighting. Fight for the oppressed. Fight for those who are weaker and less privileged than yourself. Donate money if you can. Volunteer if you have time. Fight for truth, justice, and the goddamn American way. Because this is where heroes are made, in the crucible of change.

And never forget—this is important—always remember, we are stronger together.

We all have a choice: to kneel before Zod, or to rise up with Alexander Hamilton.

What will you choose?



P.S. If you don't know where to start, HOLY FUCK THE ELECTION might help.

1,356,976,800 Seconds Old (Approximately)

I turned 43 years old this past Saturday. We celebrated without much fanfare, and that was by choice: I guess I'm now on the even-numbered-birthdays-blowout plan, after the big Trek puzzle hunt for my 40th and the karaoke extravagana for my 42nd.

But despite being low-key, we did manage to pack in quite a few things:

One week before my actual birthday, I livetweeted my binge-rewatch of the first season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the best damn show on television. See my Storify for #CXB43.

The night before my birthday, I gathered some friends for drinks and dinner at the Multnomah Whiskey Library, followed by dessert at Petunia's Pies & Pastries.

On my actual birthday, D and I had breakfast (featuring waffles!) at Gigi's Cafe. Then I met some friends to do "Kidnapped!" at Portland Escape Rooms, which we did escape, taking just six minutes longer than the current record time. We rounded out the evening with Bridget Quigg's one-woman comedy show Techlandia at Funhouse Lounge, and filled the intervening hours with stops at two different McMenamins.

On Sunday, we dragged our friend Darla to the Portland Art Museum, where among other things, we saw this camel. Then we stopped at Lapellah for happy hour.

Finally, on Monday, we met another friend for dim sum and chatted about escape rooms and general puzzling.

Is that an accurate snapshot of my life right now? More or less. It doesn't encompass any work activities (writing, freelancing, etc.), but otherwise these are pretty much the things we love doing: hanging out with friends, watching shows, eating and drinking, and playing games. Not necessarily in that order.

I Am One Year Older Than I Was

On August 2, 2014, my wife DeeAnn drove me home from Seattle, where I'd just finished the Clarion West Summer Six-Week Workshop.

The week before the workshop started, we were in California for our nephew Jared's wedding. DeeAnn drove me to the Sacramento airport while we listened to the audiobook of Neil Gaiman's novelette "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains." We hadn't reached the end of the story when I got to the airport, but I had enough time to download the text version before boarding, and finished reading it on the plane.

It's not exactly what you'd call a romantic story, but it helped me feel connected to my wife as I was leaving. (I did see her a few times, online and in person, during the workshop, but this was going to be the longest time we'd lived apart since 2000. It all turned out fine in the end. Well, not for the guy in that story. Never mind. Moving on.)

After I landed in Seattle, erstwhile volunteer Caren Gussoff drove me from the airport to the sorority house where I'd be living for the next six weeks. She was only the first of many fantastic humans I'd meet and get to know during that time.

Having attended Viable Paradise in 2008, I knew generally what to expect from Clarion, but I could not have imagined the precise dimensions of what my experience would be: as wide and deep as any ocean, and similarly teeming with strange and wondrous life.

I cried a lot in Week One (ahead of schedule, I know). Jim Kelly said he'd blurb my first novel. In Week Two I saw Snowpiercer and witnessed Kij Johnson reading "Spar" aloud and literally sparring with students. (As in wrestling. Bourbon may have been involved.) Ian McDonald guided us through improv exercises in Week Three, our regular movie nights began turning into a Kurt Russell film festival, and I received an offer of representation from Sam Morgan, who is now my literary agent. (For the record: I spent fifteen days researching JABberwocky before signing the retainer.)

I may have made Hiromi Goto's Week Four classes more difficult than necessary, but I'm glad our whole group could talk about how magical Negroes and hysterical women are Bad Tropes. (And then we watched Steven Universe!) Week Five with Charlie Jane Anders was a whirlwind of karaoke, half-price sushi, and poetry. Week Six ended with Ted Chiang, illegal beach bonfires, and John Crowley telling dirty jokes (not all at the same time).

And, oh yeah, I wrote some stories too.

"Paradise Lost" will almost certainly never see the light of day. I'm retooling "Space Race" right now. "It's Complicated" doesn't really hold together, but I'll probably strip-mine it for thematic material later. "My Labour and My Leisure Too" was a weird experiment. "Destination: Murder!" probably needs to be longer. And "Moonrise" is too big for me to contemplate at this very moment, but it's a novel I need to write someday.

Meanwhile, I've sold two other novels and two three other short stories since coming home last August. The first novel, Waypoint Kangaroo, will be published by Thomas Dunne Books next summer. My story "Laddie Come Home" is in the 2016 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide, due out early next year. And "Ten Days Up" is in the Baen anthology Mission: Tomorrow, now available for pre-order. ADD_2015-08-07: How could I forget "It's Machine Code" in The Journal of Unlikely Cryptography?

As the kids say: What is even my life anymore?

This isn't everything I could tell about my six weeks at Clarion West. It wasn't just a boot camp for writers, and though I'd certainly call it "life-changing," that term doesn't fully encompass what I got out of CW.

I was changed--for good, even--but more than that, it inspired me to actively work at changing my life, and myself. Those six weeks showed me what I was doing right and how I need to improve, and introduced me to some amazing people who will be lifelong friends. I am incredibly grateful for all of it.

This wasn't the end of my journey. It was just the beginning.

And I'm not stopping for a long time.

I Have Trouble Asking for Help

I was going to rant and rave today about how badly The Newsroom crashed and burned in its last season, but honestly, that ship has sailed. Do go read Abigail Nussbaum's breakdown, though; she's much more articulate about the situation than I would ever be. (I also started this Facebook thread, which has some good insights by other folks.)

Instead, I'm going to fill this week's column-inches (OH GOD I'M OLD) by juxtaposing two TED talks by amazing women:

Amanda Palmer: The art of asking

http://youtu.be/xMj_P_6H69g

Brene Brown: The power of vulnerability

http://youtu.be/iCvmsMzlF7o

I'm a writer, and many of my friends are writers or creative artists of some kind. (Yes, that includes puzzles.) And we all struggle to figure out how to make money doing what we love.

There is, I think, an essential tension between confidence and vulnerability here: an artist needs to have the confidence to believe that people will find value in her art, and to put herself out there to connect with people (some of whom may be jerks--you never know); but an artist must also retain a sincere vulnerability (especially online, but also in person) to make her supporters feel good about supporting her work and helping her out, either financially or by donating their time (assisting with promotion, sharing food, providing couch-surfing space, etc.).

I've seen this dynamic played out in many a failed project on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and any number of other crowdfunding sites. Because those are the places where the intersection of an artist/maker's confidence and vulnerability are laid bare. You have to self-promote your project, but you can't seem like a jerk when you do it. And that can be a very fine line to walk. (#PROTIP: when in doubt, be humble, be grateful, and be nice. In all things, really.)

It's ridiculously easy for things to go wrong online, especially when you're compressing your deep thoughts into 140 characters or fewer. Even if you think you're saying the right thing, other people might interpret it differently. I'm fairly paranoid about this, so I always re-read my tweets and e-mails (and blog posts!) before sending them into the ether. I'm painfully aware that I will be judged harshly for any perceived breach of etiquette because reasons.

There's another reason I've always had trouble asking for help. Whether it was computer programming or fiction writing or even just cooking dinner, I always felt that I was "stupid" if I didn't know something and couldn't figure it out on my own; and if I had to go to someone else for help, that made me a failure, and that was shameful. Maybe that's a common neurosis, but in my case, I always suspected it was a conceptual hybrid of Chinese academic pressure and American cowboy independence. I'm finally getting over that now, in my forties, but it's worth saying out loud. Everyone needs help sometimes. Learning to recognize that, and knowing how to ask for help, is a big part of being a grown-up. (Writing: cheaper than therapy, folks.)

Back to the main point. I don't know if (or when) I'll get into a situation which many other artists have encountered, where they're facing financial ruin due to some health or other personal issue and decide to turn to their friends and fans for help. I don't know how I would handle that, because--other than asking for a raise at my first job--I've never been in a situation where I had to ask someone for money. Again, cultural taboos, blah blah blah. But I hope I'll have figured it out by the time that becomes an issue.

I Think It's Gonna Be a Happy New Year

(with apologies to RENT)

2014 was a very good year.

My writing life continued to go well. I self-published a flash fiction collection in January, went to Clarion West in the summer, signed a literary agent in July, and started trying to sell my first novel.

Also? I am now an Associate Member of SFWA. I can't even tell you how amazing that feels. Top of the world, ma!

I continued to be involved with various puzzle hunt events. Puzzled Pint expanded to twelve cities in three different countries, DeeAnn and I ran T.I.M.E. QUEST on JoCo Cruise Crazy 4 and at GameStorm 16, we helped our friends in Portland run DASH 6, and many of us participated in the 8th annual Game Control Summit.

DeeAnn and I also recorded twelve podcast interviews with awesome women who make puzzle games.

Both our cats are doing well, as is Food Robot.

I got to see the second NASA rocket launch of my life in December, and we're traveling to our first PAX South and our fifth JoCo Cruise in just a few weeks.

2015 is looking pretty great so far. Some exciting new things are in the works, and I'll say more about them when I can!

I Dream of Google

Three things you should know about me:

1. I still hand-code my HTML (yes, even this blog post)
2. My favorite Autobot is Jazz (voice of Scatman Crothers)
3. I used to work at Google

And I have only ever dreamed about one of those things. (I guess that's actually four things. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!)

I worked at Google for a little over four years. Yes, I started before the IPO; yes, I had stock options; yes, I was a paper millionaire for, like, two seconds before I had to pay the taxes. I'm not rich, and I haven't retired (unless you count moving to Portlandia).

The first two years were the best. I started when the company only had about a thousand employees. I was hired into a team of four people--I was the fourth--to build internal tools for the Online Sales and Operations division (Sheryl Sandberg's group, for what it's worth; I saw her pretty regularly around the building, and briefly met her at an internal book club meeting once, but even then, she had no idea who I was).

When I dream about being at Google, I dream about the good things. The intelligent and passionate people there. The opportunities to solve interesting problems. And, of course, the various free and subsidized personal services, which helped keep employees "on campus" as much as possible, to maximize the potential for unplanned collaboration (and exempt overtime). All the crazy perks depicted in that movie The Internship? All true, and not half of what was available when I was there. Who knows what else they've added since then.

There were a lot of good things that would have kept me at Google, but in the end, I had to move on.

By the time I left, in early 2008, the company employed well over ten thousand people worldwide. My team had grown by an order of magnitude and was on the brink of being politicked out of existence. I won't go into details, but suffice it to say that even though Google may be the best workplace in the modern world, it is still a commercial corporation: a machine built to produce profit. It's a big company. And no organization grows to that size without picking up a few parasites along the way.

Those last two years were, to be sure, still better than the year I spent at my previous employer, working with one of the worst managers I have ever endured. But since I can make the comparison, I have to say that it may--may--be better to struggle against incompetence than to fight active malign intent. Easier, in any case. No villain ever thinks he's the bad guy, and when he has more powerful allies than you do, the battles can be very discouraging.

I stopped fighting, at some point, because I simply didn't know why I was bothering to do it any more. I had come to Google with the romantic notion that it would be the last place I ever worked--how could any workplace ever get better than this?--and that's probably why it hurt so much when the truth of it slapped me in the face, metaphorically.

I didn't belong there. I didn't want to work for a big company. I didn't want to work for any company, really. Even though I appreciated all the support systems offered by the organization--the free food, the flexible work hours, the on-site massages--and even though I still believed in the cause, I simply couldn't stay after having seen how ruthlessly some would pursue a brass ring. I would always be wary of being betrayed again.

Maybe I was lucky. Maybe it's a good thing that I learned, before I turned forty, that I was not fitted to be a salaryman. Maybe it's better that I moved away from the endless one-upmanship of Silicon Valley.

Maybe I'm happier now than I would have been otherwise.

Sometimes, at night, I dream about being back at Google. But I always wake up.

I Enjoy Hunting for Puzzles

The statement above should come as a surprise to exactly no one, but I thought I'd use this space to clarify the spectrum of my liking for various puzzle and presentation types.

But first, just in case you've wandered into this blog totally at random:

Hi. I'm Curtis Chen, and I'm a puzzle gamer. I first played The Game at Stanford University in 1996, and I ran my first Game in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2001. Since then, I've run or helped run more than fifty different puzzling events, including:

• the Hogwarts Game (2006);
• annual Game Control Summits (2007-present);
• Puzzled Pint (2010-present);
• the JoCo Cruise Crazy puzzle hunts (2011-present); and
• WarTron (PDX 2012, Boston 2013).

You could say I have a bit of a Gaming habit. Possibly even an obsession. (Sadly, not a career; I have been paid less than half a dozen times for doing puzzle-hunt-related things.) But I don't love all puzzles or puzzle events equally.

To the layperson, all puzzlers may appear very similar, but--as with any special interest group--there are many fine distinctions and gradations within our ranks. Certainly, there are those who love any kind of puzzle (broadly defined), whether it's a logical brain teaser or something math-related or pure wordplay. Some people just want to SOLVE ALL THE THINGS. But I suspect most are like myself, with definite preferences and dislikes.

I've been credited with coining (or at least popularizing) the term "underwear puzzles." I'm not a big fan of puzzle events that are just a bunch of puzzles you could have solved by yourself, at home, in your underwear; i.e., which don't take advantage of real-world interactivity. I prefer Games that actually get me out of the house and put me into unusual situations to have new experiences. I'm not really into the great outdoors per se, but if you tell me there's a puzzle hidden somewhere in the forest, I may spend a ridiculous amount of time searching for it. Because that's something I would probably never do otherwise, and I might never visit that location ever again.

It's all about the reward. I've tried a couple of "conference room" puzzle hunts--of which genre the granddaddy is, of course, the MIT Mystery Hunt--and they're just not my bag, baby. I do enjoy the intellectual challenge of any given puzzle, but I get bored very quickly. And for me, getting more puzzles to solve is not really a compelling reward; I want something else, like a new location to visit or a new bit of story or even an amusing video clip. Just give me a break before dumping another bucket of puzzles on my head.

Related to that, I enjoy team-play events more than solving by myself, but I prefer "linear" hunts to the "batch" model. (BTW, I'm just making up words here; feel free to suggest better terminology in the comments.) In a conference room hunt, you may have a huge team--say twelve people--and a large number of puzzles "unlocked" at any given time, which means that very often you'll end up with sub-teams of two or three people working on different puzzles. It then becomes impossible for any single person to solve, or even see all the puzzles, since you're racing against all the other teams to finish first. (Or possibly second, to subvert the tradition of the winning team running the next event.)

I approach puzzling events from more of an audience perspective, as opposed to a competitor perspective. When I'm reading a book, or watching a show, I want to enjoy the experience as it's happening--and if I'm really in love with it, I may not want it to end. I rarely watch a show or read a book just to be done with it, and I certainly don't compete with others to read faster or more than anyone else. Similarly, when I'm playing a Game, I don't care too much about my team's ranking relative to other teams (as long as we're not last!)--I care about whether we're all having fun. And it's more fun to solve puzzles at our own pace, without the added pressure of an artificial competition.

"But wait!" you may say. "Isn't Puzzled Pint exactly the kind of sit-around-and-solve event that you hate?" Well, first of all, I never said I hated conference room hunts; they're just not my favorite. And Puzzled Pint does get people out of the house, albeit to just one location. I don't know if I would play Puzzled Pint if I weren't on GC, but I support any attempt to draw puzzlers out of their shells to meet and interact with each other, and PP has certainly done that in Portland, Oregon.

Let's face it: we puzzlers are mostly just the kids who were good at homework, all grown up and looking for more problem sets to do. We may not all be introverted xenophobes, but we're all socially awkward to some degree--and even if that describes most of the human race, we may be more painfully aware that our particular hobby is way, way outside of the mainstream. It usually takes me five to ten minutes to explain puzzle hunts to any given stranger, and the two most typical responses are either "I could never do that" or "what do you win?"

And that's why I support all puzzling events, even if they're ones I wouldn't personally play in. Do you want to run Puzzled Pint in your city? Talk to us, we'll help you get started. Are you opening a new puzzle-related business? I will pimp it as hard as I can.

Because we're all in this together, and encouraging more people to have fun by exercising their minds will make the world a better place.

We few, we happy few, we band of puzzlers;
For he to-day that solves this Clue with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This Game shall gentle his condition!

(with apologies to William Shakespeare)

Fresh Meat

As you may have heard, our Tuesday podcast is going on hiatus for the holidays, and returning next year on an irregular monthly schedule. And I also ended my Friday flash fiction project back in August, so... I guess it's time for a new weekly feature on this blog.

I'm calling it "The 'I' in MEAT," but don't worry, I'll never mention that again. (Except in the label/tag/whatever the kids are calling that meta-data now. Think of it as an internal code name.) The point is, I'm going to write about something I care about, and every post title will begin with "I." For example: "I Have a Blog Now HO HO HO" (not an actual title).

If that becomes too obnoxious at any point, I'm sure y'all will let me know, and I'll figure out something else. :)

At the moment, I'm targeting Wednesdays, which means that yes, the first two posts will appear on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. You're welcome.

SnoutCast #198: Listener Mail - Should We Stay or Should We Go?

Thanks to Jeff, Chris, Greg, and Steve for responding to last week's call for feedback! Now how about some ladies speak up? We know you're out there. ;)

[ Download mp3 - 30 MB ]

00:59 - "decisive"
31:15 - The End

What Else?

• Portlanders: come say hello to the Puzzled Pint crew tomorrow night at OMSI After Dark
• Add your event to Puzzle Hunt Calendar

Tell us we're wrong on the Internet! E-mail podcast@snout.org or post a comment at www.snout.org/podcast.

Music: instrumentals from "Code Monkey" and "The Future Soon" by Jonathan Coulton

[ Subscribe to SnoutCast / iTunes link ]

  

My 40th Birthday Survey Results

TL;DR: Despite an unfair advantage, my sister still wins. :)

Back in September, I asked people (by e-mail and social media) to fill out a quick survey describing how long we've known each other, where we met, and their first impressions of me in five words or fewer. It turned out to be the second best birthday present ever! (The best was, of course, The Double Secret Game.) Below are the results of this completely unscientific study.

I received 110 total responses, the first on September 4th (DeeAnn, testing the form) and the last on October 2nd, the day after my actual birthday. The majority of the responses--71 people, or just over 65%--came in during "opening weekend" (Thursday, September 5th, through Sunday, September 9th).

Mmm... pie chart...

Not surprisingly, the biggest segment of responders was in the 2-5 year range (2008-2010). We moved to our current home area--Portland, Oregon--in late 2008, and about a year later started making a real effort to get out of the house and meet people. There's another big cluster of responses in the 1-2 year range (2011-2012), which includes several Sea Monkeys and more awesome Portlanders.

The second biggest segment was the 10-20 year range (1992-2002), which includes some college friends, my wife, and other people we know from living in the San Francisco Bay Area for over a decade. Many of those are Gamers, and all of them are fantastically creative and generous, because that's how we met them: through doing cool stuff for fun!

My favorite part, though, is the five-word first impressions. Here's the word cloud (minus seven people who opted out of this public analysis):

"IN NO MORE THAN FIVE(5) WORDS: what was your FIRST IMPRESSION of me?"

Of course, some of those individual words don't make much sense out of context. In no particular order, here are a few of my favorite five-word first impressions:

• "Tall guy likes Star Trek"
• "quiet, tall, and hungry"
• "Quiet, but lots in there."
• "Kind of mopey, I think."
• "inclusive trekkie asian ambitious nice"
• "Guy interviewing me" (from a former co-worker)
• "He looks like Mr. Spock."
• "He likes everything I like!"
• "Intriguing -not normal"
• "still waters run deep"
• "someone I'd like to meet"
• "Clever non-aardvark Bastard"

But honestly, it's the entire collection of responses that is most striking. You can see some of that in the word cloud--I am clearly known far and wide for my love of Star Trek, and also for being tall and quiet. I guess I knew a lot of this already, but it's nice to have actual data. You know, science and all that.

I also provided a form field labeled "Anything else you'd like to tell me?" in case five words wasn't enough. Some of those responses were pretty great, too:

• "Yes, but I had a stroke so I can't write it."
• "Don't make a fucking W with your fingers.
  
  It's been great getting to know you over the years through games, social events, and those crimes we agreed never to discuss. Here's looking forward to another 9 years! Cheers!
  
  Corby"
• "Dude, if I could remember things that happened years ago, I wouldn't have got into the habit of writing stuff down. So, uhm, don't trust that memory of your first impression too far. Oh, wait, I write stuff down, so I don't have to remember: Here's the earliest mention of you on my site: http://lahosken.san-francisco.ca.us/anecdotal/hunt/5/05.html#happybirthday"
• "Funny, the 'how long have we known each other' question was surprisingly difficult to answer. I played in your Hogwarts Game in 2006, but don't really think that counts - I was looking for some kind of definitive 'social' connection. I decided to go with what I could mine from Gmail:
  
  Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2008 00:23:59 -0700
  To: Jeff Phillips
  From: Facebook
  Reply-to: noreply
  Subject: Curtis C. Chen confirmed you as a friend on Facebook...
  
  ~Jeff"
• "I like you. I don't want to punch you in the face."
• "Your creativity inspires me!"
• "I think it's a very good reflection on my taste in friends that many of them are able to reinvent themselves, take chances, create new amazing things, and involve others in their projects. You can do all that (and more), and it is for that reason you're my friend."
• "Thanks for introducing me to Larry Niven!" (his books, not personally)
• "The first time we met, I totally profiled you.
  
  Our section of the airport was nearly empty. We were both waiting for our connecting flight to Martha's Vineyard to attend Viable Paradise. I saw you working on a laptop that had a bunch of stickers on it. Laptop and stickers somehow screamed 'science fiction nerd' even though I couldn't see what the stickers were exactly. I consulted my own machine, saw that there were two distinctly Asian names on the VP student list. You looked more like a Chen than a Ha (though of course you could've easily been a Terhune, Johnson, or Kloos). I approached cautiously, half-expecting you to explode: 'What? So you see an Asian guy in an airport and just assume we all write science fiction??!' To my perhaps visible relief, you just smiled and shook my hand.
  
  Happy 40th, Curtis!" (from a VPXII classmate)
• "You introduced me to the Hollywood Bowl. I've been following classical music ever since." (from a high school friend)
• "It was my third date with Wei-Hwa and I remember him inviting us along to dinner with you guys. It was a great time."
• "You know the line from the theme from the movie Shaft that goes 'who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks? Shaft!'
  
  Well, if you were black, and a detective, and hugely promiscuous, and your name were Shaft instead of Curtis, I would think that song would apply perfectly to you.
  
  And even though you are none of those things, I think the song applies to you anyway.
  
  Happy birthday, Mr. Not an Aardvark!"
• "I heard 'I'm an Aardvark' on my kid's Sesame Street playlist just last week!"
• "Welcome to the old-timers club, sonny."
• "You have only two years to plan your next birthday project. 42. It is the number after all."

But all that said, I think this is my single favorite overall response (from my younger sister):

Thank you to everyone who participated, and thanks for reading all of this rambling analysis! Those interested can view all the public raw data and do the math yourself. Feel free to share your own conclusions in a comment below. :)

I'm Sure You're Shocked...

...by the results of this online quiz I just took. Procrastination!

Your results:
You are Jean-Luc Picard

Jean-Luc Picard 65% Worf 65% Mr. Scott 60% Geordi LaForge 60% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 55% Uhura 55% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 55% Spock 52% Beverly Crusher 50% Mr. Sulu 45% Will Riker 45% James T. Kirk (Captain) 45% Chekov 40% Data 38% Deanna Troi 35%

A lover of Shakespeare and other fine literature. You have a decisive mind and a firm hand in dealing with others.

Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character am I?" quiz...

This is 40

The last ten days have been full of so much awesome, I can hardly believe it. I'm forty years old now, and I am incredibly happy and grateful to know such wonderful people in the world.

I'll write more later, but meanwhile, check out this slideshow from my surprise puzzle hunt and early birthday party (photos by Britta):


http://youtu.be/m3Mv0riLu6o

And a few of my random photos from The Famine Game:


https://picasaweb.google.com/116737692309729475506/TheFamineGameHighlights?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCIfA-_PJwdWUew&feat=directlink

Like the song says: life begins at forty. My adventures are just beginning.

Be a Part of My 40th Birthday Project

TL;DR: Tell me how we met! :)

Back in 2010, I ran a birthday art project called "37 Postcards" which went very well. It's taken me a while to come up with a sequel, as it were, but here it is now, in the form of a short survey which should only take you a few minutes to complete!

(scroll down to see all questions)

Embed not working? Go to http://snout.org/40survey

Please respond by the end of this month (Monday, September 30th, 2013). I'll share some of the collected data on this blog the following week.

Friday Flash Fiction: "Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years?"

Read "Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years?" at 512 Words or Fewer

This week's story gets its title from what I believe may be one of the most hated interview questions of all time. Right up there with "describe your biggest weakness."

The title also signals a moment of retrospection for me: I've been cranking out these 512s for almost five years now--since October, 2008--and living off my savings in the meantime. I'm plausibly closer to building a career as a writer, but I haven't actually done it yet. And all that aside, whatever I end up doing to pay the bills, my ultimate goal is to never have to actually interview for a job ever again.

But that's another blog post.

Friday Flash Fiction: "Who Died?"

Read "Who Died?" at 512 Words or Fewer

I like to imagine Jeremy Irons performing this particular monologue. YMMV.

And now, apropos of nothing, some a cappella:


http://youtu.be/tJT4L7HGKzQ

It's been a rough couple of weeks. I guess I'm still processing Matthew's death.

(edited to remove emo coredump)

SnoutCast #166 : The "I" in Team

What's the deal with "the Game community?" A sort-of follow-up to our one hundredth podcast.

[ Download mp3 - 21 MB ]

00:59 - "singular"
03:46 - does solving puzzles make you smart?
06:20 - yet another half-baked hypothesis
09:40 - makin' community out of nothin' at all
13:03 - sharing is caring
17:31 - is puzzle hunting a one-way street?
19:37 - "MAYBE IF PEOPLE HAVE THOUGHTS THEY WILL E-MAIL US AT PODCAST@SNOUT.ORG"
22:04 - The End

Tell us we're wrong on the Internet! E-mail podcast@snout.org or post a comment at www.snout.org/podcast.

Music: instrumentals from "Code Monkey" and "A Talk With George" by Jonathan Coulton

[ Subscribe to SnoutCast / iTunes link ]

 

SnoutCast #157: Dilettantism

In which we discuss the importance of belonging to a variety of different social circles.

[ Download mp3 - 23 MB ]

01:00 - "gregarious"
...
(Show notes? You want show notes, after we've been at sea for a whole week and running a live puzzle hunt event? Sorry, no-can-do's-ville, baby doll.)
...
24:36 - The End

Tell us we're wrong on the Internet! E-mail podcast@snout.org or post a comment at www.snout.org/podcast.

Music: instrumentals from "Code Monkey" and "I Crush Everything" by Jonathan Coulton

[ Subscribe to SnoutCast / iTunes link ]

   

SnoutCast #131: WARTRON the Hard Way

This week, by listener request: an extra-long episode discussing behind-the-scenes ups and downs of WarTron GC! (Just to be clear, the request was for "a peek behind the curtain," not the extra length.)

[ Download mp3 - 51 MB ]

00:59 - "collaborative"
02:26 - MORE THAN TWO YEARS IN THE MAKING
06:32 - goal tracking
07:20 - On Inconvenient Selfishness
12:07 - poly-ticks?
16:20 - On Our Amazing Overachieving Volunteers
21:45 - over-communication is almost enough documentation
25:47 - On How Debug Code Saved the Finale
28:28 - last-minute changes at Keller Fountain and the Canby Ferry
39:57 - things we learned the hard way
46:16 - script shooting success!
50:01 - MOAR EVENTZ: Puzzle Hunt Calendar, BBSB's Ravenchase travelog, BANG 33 Rerun
52:24 - The End

Tell us we're wrong on the Internet! E-mail podcast@snout.org or post a comment at www.snout.org/podcast .

Music: instrumentals from "Code Monkey" and "Skullcrusher Mountain" by Jonathan Coulton

[ Subscribe to SnoutCast / iTunes link ]

   

Ignite Portland 10: Win, Kill, or Rock

Last night, I gave a presentation on "A Homebrew Cat Feeding Robot" at Ignite Portland 10. It was very well received. In fact, depending on who you ask, I achieved one of the following:

• "won" (1 2 3)
• "killed" (1 2)
• "rocked" (1)
• "brought the house down" (1)

Thanks again to everyone on Twitter who gave positive feedback!*

Now I'd like to talk about the "brought the house down" moment, which was as gratifying as it was surprising--to me, anyway. (This is your cue to TL;DR.)

I did not expect this particular slide, a graph of our cats' weights during 2011, to get such a huge response. I knew I found it amusing, but it was one of the last slides I'd created, almost as an afterthought:

Our friend Richard suggested that after all the stories I'd been telling about the cats and their auto-feeder, this image simply nudged me "over the top" in terms of hilarity. (DeeAnn actually, literally wept with laughter. That reaction may have made me the happiest of all. I mean, I like all y'all, but I love my wife.)

Does this somewhat unwitting success mean that I've attained "unconscious competence"--i.e., that a particular skill has become second nature to me? I don't know. That seems a bit presumptuous after a single performance that went well. But it is encouraging. No less than six people came up to me after my talk and complimented me in person. That's huge, especially when you consider that this wasn't a traditional "show"--this was a bunch of geeks getting together to share their crazy ideas in five-minute chunks. I hadn't expected to connect so strongly with the audience.

I'm not lingering on this to crow over my triumph**, or stroke my own ego; I am honestly trying to figure out how I did so well. Because this has a bearing on other skills I'm working to develop and hoping to make a living with. To wit, writing fiction. (Making puzzle hunts is a distant, pie-in-the-sky second--as far as I can tell, nobody has ever succeeded in turning our particular type of events into a viable, consumer-driven business.)

At the moment, the only thing I can identify as a contributing factor is the thing everyone already tells you to do: practice. Put in the hours, do the work, keep doing it until you improve, and then do it some more.

I directed a lot of focused effort into the five minutes I did at Ignite, and that was backed by many years of experience giving presentations and performing in front of an audience. It's going to take a lot longer before I have the same kind of handle on fiction writing--which, if not a more complicated undertaking, certainly comes with less immediate feedback. I think of it as the difference between driving a car and making a car. A lot more work needs to go into the latter, because you can't make adjustments on the fly, as you can in the former situation.

Automation is hard. I guess that was the main point of last night's talk. But it is doable, and anyone can figure it out, if you're motivated and persistent.

So I'm practicing. I'm working. I'm not stopping. We'll see what happens.

(Photo by @geekportland)

* other words used to describe my talk included "great" (1 2 3 4 5), "loved" (1 2 3), and "awesome" (1 2); and at least two people ranked me among the best talks of the evening (1 2). Woot!

** I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS. (Sorry, had to say it.)