Transneptune

The internet is a weirdly wonderful place sometimes.

I was playing TF2 last night, and first off, I ended up playing with some of my internet idols: Lore Sjöberg and Mark Rosenfelder. I knew I was playing with Lore—both recognizing his voice and having his steam username. But when I was playing as a medic and healing someone with the username Zompist, I knew it was Rosenfelder, and was excited.

And the internet makes that kind of contact easy—we were all there to play a game together. I just happened to wander into the right place. It’s not like there was much meaningful communication, as we were mostly focused on the game, but that’s almost the point. It was casual.

Later, with different people, there was another weird and awesome moment. In an arena game, it had gotten down to a Sniper and a Heavy. Without words, they faced each other and the Heavy swapped to melee. So did the Sniper. And they duked it out hand-to-hand. The Heavy even gave the Sniper his Sandvich.

OK, that paragraph won’t mean much to you unless you know TF2. But it was cool.

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On another note, I’m increasingly thinking about grad school and what I’ll do there. I’m quite excited. I have an apartment, I have friends, I have research questions. The latest notion to pop into my head is that twin languages are really interesting. We’ll see if I keep at that, but it serves as a good reminder for me of all the strange little corners of human language that don’t get enough attention.

Posted in computers, life, linguistics. Tags: brunching, research questions, tf2, twin languages, zompist // 2 Comments »

I went to a bit of Swarthmore’s Alumni Weekend. Two-year reunion for me, and five-year for my friends in ’05, many of whom were there. It made me think about (among many other things), my recent trip to Ireland.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” as Santayana put it. I think it’s quite easy to forget one’s own past, and visiting old friends and old haunts, as I did today and as I did in Ireland, reminds one of things.

In both cases, though, I very much felt like I was intersecting those past experiences from a new angle. Of course, figuratively—I had new experiences and thoughts and such under my belt, and so do the other people involved, and things are always changing. But also literally—in both cases, I interacted with the physical space differently, different spots had meaning. I feel like I should say something about memory and thought being at least partially physically instantiated, but I am not entirely sure I want to go that route. It could be a side effect of the recent high dosage of Swarthmore.

I feel like I’ve become more clear to myself lately. Some people say that self-discovery is not, if you’re doing it right, pleasant. I’m not so sure. What one sees may not always be pleasant, but honesty has, for me, an intense joy. Or perhaps this isn’t self-discovery, but self-understanding. I’m being purposely vague, but ask me about these thoughts if you care. The essence is that one’s past self does things that make more sense seen not just in hindsight, but from the different angles afforded by returning to past sites and people. Reunification. With friends, and, if I want to be pretentious enough, of the self.

tl;dr version: I like my friends. They help me better understand myself.

Posted in life. Tags: Friends, history, ireland, swarthmore // Add Comment »

Dublin was great. Good friends, good places, got in some cricket-watching at TCD, stopped by Devitts (briefly, but did it at least—missed the session) and even got the bus down to UCD for the day. For FoWA, actually. Which was pretty great. I’ve gotta go over the pages of notes I took on the talks and digest them a bit, but there were some really interesting things said, some advice and admonitions, some interpretations of trends, and some analyses of what this whole “cloud” malarkey actually means.

I hope to get back sooner this time. Three years is too long. Thing is, Dublin is the right size, and Ireland is the right size. As Aoife put it, “you meet one gamer in this country, you meet them all.” More thoughts on this later, if I remember.

Posted in life. Tags: dublin, fowa, gamers // Add Comment »

FoWA conference was great. Good speakers, but the audience was kinda dead. After, party with friends here, tempered by cigarettes. I managed as best I could, but now my clothes smell smoky. Urk.

Posted in life. // Add Comment »

I am here. Flying in, I felt my spirits lighten. It just feels plain better here. I can’t really account for it. I don’t think I want or need to, though.

I got in, a spring in my step despite Ryanair being the awful thing it is, and went straight to the center of town. Just to orient and root myself, I stopped by the old Bank of Ireland headquarters. I absorbed some magic there, and then struck off for Chapelizod. It’s a part of town I’ve not been to before, but it’s lovely. Nestled right between Phoenix Park and the Liffey.

Most importantly though: it’s fantastic to see Brian and Karen. I missed them a lot, and it’s been a lovely evening staying with them. My UCD friends are so dear to me.

Posted in life. Tags: air travel, gaming, home, ireland, north // 3 Comments »

I will be going to CU Boulder in the fall, enrolling in their Linguistics department’s PhD program. Color me excited.

Posted in life. // 5 Comments »

Waiting in SFO at 4:40am on a rainy Wednesday, I see a billboard: Verizon advertising service in Mexico and 220 other countries. Aside from the weirdness of this claim given that they are a CDMA network and the world is GSM, so their phones won’t work in other countries, what 221 countries are they thinking of? There are 203 sovereign states in the world, according to the internet.

Posted in life. Tags: cell phones, countries, strange claims, why am i awake // 6 Comments »

Lightning trip to SF for a job interview. This is a truly wonderful city; it has what I like about NYC, offset with a certain undefinable Pacificness.

The company makes browser-based games, particularly Facebook games. (remember when it was The Facebook? Yeah.) I’m particularly curious about their game design process; I can code, sure, but with the years I’ve put into thoughts about gameplay and setting design, I’d like to get to try my hand at that, too. It has been implied that I might. We’ll see. Updates as I have them.

Oh, also: Facebook as medium for ARGs? How do you, should you, monetize that? Molly, we should talk about this.

Posted in computers, life. Tags: games, jobs, san francisco // 8 Comments »

Blogging is hard. I forget to do it.

So let’s see. Spring is happening—cleaning, enjoying the air, enjoying the light. I’m looking for jobs, but also thinking about how feasible it would be to freelance. The issue is finding enough work, as always. But I think I can do it. If anyone wants web apps or other things developed, hey, I’m game.

And I dance, and I sing. I don’t play enough music. I see friends, and I plan a trip to Ireland in May. That’ll be good. I look forward to seeing friends. I’ve been contemplating the reduction in my wanderlust. I think it’s basically that I don’t want to go anywhere but These Isles, and maybe Canada. I need North. I don’t want to go to these warm places where the air is full of spices. I want to go places where the wind whips over the North Atlantic and the light is clear and silver, and then the sky is filled with slugging grey clouds and the air is filled with drizzle.

And my thoughts, my mental life? Awakening from hibernation. Thinking about what I can do that is useful to the world, and interesting to me. Wondering how making a living fits into that.

Posted in life. Tags: ireland, north, work // Add Comment »

We’ve had a lot of them. This makes TN and everything hosted on it go down. While I can’t really redress the power failures, I can make it easier to tell what the deal is. So status.transneptune.net embeds the status Twitter (@transneptune) and may provide additional info.

Posted in system status. Tags: power failure, status, twitter // Add Comment »