27 May, 2008

I'm Such a Geek

I just pre-ordered Batman and Philosophy: Dark Knight of the Soul.

I own Lord of the Rings and Philosophy.

One entire wall of my room is filled with Sandman stuff.

Yep. I'm a geek. Just so's you know.

Share your geeky goodness with me. Bonus points to whoever knows where this Parthian shot comes from:

"Well, that was fun. Who's for Chinese?"
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6 comments:

NP said...

I don't know the source of your quote, but I, too, am a geek.

I regularly check Fforde's website. I wanted to name our cat Pickwick. I'd love to name a daughter Thursday (or a son Friday).

I'd rather read Strunk & White than E. B. White. My summer reading consists of Gothic novels and literary theory.

I can diagram sentences and correct grammar on billboards at 70 mph.

May 27, 2008 at 7:53 AM
Efrique said...

My geekiness is all over the place.

I guess I've been a Speculative Fiction fan since I was 8 and pilfered one of the novels my Mum was reading for a long (6 hours or so) bus trip with my grandmother. In secondary school (yrs 7-12) I was reading several books a week, and at some stages when I had free time, a novel a day. Usually science fiction or fantasy of some form. I introduced my Mum to LotR - sort of paid her back for getting me into science fiction. We went to see Star Wars (yes, back in 1977) together.

These days I don't get time to do much fiction reading (I read a lot still, but it's mostly papers or nonfiction books), but I do at least manage to watch some stuff on TV. However, SF and related genres gets such short shrift these days I'm tending more toward just buying it on DVD.

I've been a boardgame geek since, oh, I was about 11.

I've been a roleplaying geek since 1981 (I would have started earlier, but there were no opportunities where I was at the time). I still game semi-regularly with some friends I met more than 25 years ago. I still go to a roleplaying convention I helped start at about the same time.

As is already obvious, I'm a bit of a mathematics geek; one of my favourite esoteric bits of mathematics geekdom is nomography. I'm quite the fan of nomography.

Another little mathematical sideline for me is tournament scheduling (specifically, for multiplayer board game tournaments); I've written software to do it, and it's a nifty area - I figured out a lot of stuff about it on my own, before I finally stumbled onto the name under which the relevant problem is known in the mathematical literature. (My software is used by a major hobby boardgame company to schedule their tournaments.)

Apart from those bits of esoterica, I'm a puzzle fan, particularly mathematical/logical ones. [That's rubbed off on my daughter - since before she was 5, she's been leaning over to tell me which numbers go where in Sudoku (and yeah, it's kinda freaky to have a little kid tell you how to do your puzzles).]

I'm lots of other kinds of geek besides, but that'll do, eh?

May 27, 2008 at 7:11 PM
Efrique said...

Gah, the boardgame geek link got screwed up:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/

(It's a repository of information on thousands of board games, card games and so on.)

May 27, 2008 at 7:15 PM
Dana Hunter said...

Nicole, Enfrique: We are total geeks.

Good thing geeks rule! LOL

May 27, 2008 at 10:37 PM
Woozle said...

My books are almost all in boxes, and have been for about 6 years. Not enough shelf space. Much sadness.

But in those boxes I have a complete collection of Analog magazine going back to 1967 (assuming none of them have gone missing; no way to check at the moment) and a few going back as far as the 1950s. I also have a pretty decent collection of Galaxy, and the first 4 issues of Asimov's.

I was a Star Trek fan before Star Wars made Hollywood take notice of SF. I was a Dr. Who fan before he was heard of in the US (saw him in England in 1973-4; the series ended with Pertwee regenerating into Baker, and then I had to wait about 8 years for the next episode).

(Note to Nicole: Isn't E.B. also the "White" in "Strunk & White"? Oh, wait, this is the 21st century, I can check Wikipedia. *checks Wikipedia* *wins* *hopes this doesn't sound like one-upsmanship*)

My first computer was a PDP-8/L in 1972. (Well... using the word "my" somewhat loosely: the first one I interacted with.) My second computer (same definition) was a Tektronix graphics computer (it must have been a 4052, because I remember the write-thru mode) in 1975, the same model used in the 1970s Battestar Galactica. I used the pen-plotter to make pretty pictures based on discrete non-sequential sampling of sinusoidal functions (at the time, they were just "pretty pictures that sometimes look a little like snowflakes"). One of these days I'll find them again; I know they made it into this house...

My first paid job was in my mom's computer store (tech and shipping), and my first real job was programming in FORTRAN on a PDP/11-23.

I have two oscilloscopes in the basement. And a web server. With no chassis. And an original IBM PC with two full-height floppy drives. And lots of leftover electronic components I will probably never use but which I refuse to toss heartlessly into a landfill.

My home-assembled computer (the one I'm using now) is basically internal components screwed to a couple of pieces of wood. (I am of the "chassis covers interfere with upgrades" school.) It runs Linux.

My other computer (which goes through a KVM switch to the same monitor) runs Windows 98, because I've refused to give Microsoft any more of my mostly-nonexistent money ever since they committed Windows XP.

My other other computer is a laptop which I assembled out of parts from Ebay. It also runs Linux. It has a semi-complete collection of Discworld books on the hard drive, from which I read to my hypertwin every night.

...in a Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy narrator voice.

I eat dinner in front of my computer, usually while reading and sometimes while programming.

I have more friends online than IRL, although this wasn't true 5 years ago. (Yeah, okay, now I'm just showing off, right?)

And finally (cue dramatic finish music) mine offspring (who wasn't my idea and sadly doesn't live here, but she's awesome nonetheless) is named after the quintessential mad scientist, Nikola Tesla.

May 28, 2008 at 3:43 PM
Dana Hunter said...

Woozle: I stand in awe. You are the master geek. Your daughter's name: classic!

May 28, 2008 at 10:49 PM

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