Geekier than I thought

I bought a new Tom Smith CD at Penguicon, and I’ve been listening to it lately and getting addicted to a few songs. One of them is “Dead Again”, and it prompted me to change my Google Talk status message to “Hah! The Wumpus got you!” to show that I am, in fact, and old geek. I expected some younger people to be confused by this, but I started getting asked by people fairly close to my age, “What’s a wumpus?“.

Hmmph. Wumpus awareness is apparently tied more to computer geek level than age. Or possibly the year in which one became a computer geek.

One friend looked it up, saw somebody’s depiction of a wumpus, and said his son just drew a “troar-oh-don” that looked more frightening than my wumpus. To which I responded that it quite possibly was, “but if the lights go out, it will probably still be eaten by a grue.”

He: “What’s a grue?“

Me: <headdesk>

They’re going to burn Hollywood to the ground!

Who is? Angry comics fans, that’s who. On the brink of a much-anticipated movie adaptation of Watchmen, it seems 20th Century Fox (already much hated for Fox TV killing Firefly) may trash the entire thing by filing a lawsuit against Warner Brothers (the studio making the movie).

New geeky pet

I’ve added to my collection this weekend. Now in addition to 2 dobermans, 1 basenji, and 4 miscellaneous cats, I also have a “betta”, also known as a Siamese fighting fish. So what makes it a geeky pet? Well, aside from the affinity between aquariums and computers, I just happened to get asked what I was going to name it at about the same time I got a new article submission e-mail for Debian Package of the Day. Since I’ve got a male betta (because the males have prettier fins), I couldn’t name it Debbie… so I named it Ian.

One of the classic blunders

The most famous of which is misquoted (but still with much humor) by UserFriendly today.
I’m not sure if Illiad deserves credit for making the joke, or if he should lose geek cred for flubbing it slightly.

HDTV receiver and network device

I’ve been working for a while towards getting my home into the HDTV age. HD is a much sweeter picture than standard definition TV. The problem is, it’s expensive. HDTV sets are expensive. Fortunately, most computer monitors are HD capable. The challenge with computers is to get an HD receiver. Now I have found HDHomeRun… a standalone receiver that can accept two different input sources, and output the signal over a standard home network. With built in Linux support, this look like a good choice for me, and the price is in the affordable range of $150-200. It comes with instructions for setting up MythTV (think Tivo), so I never need to fiddle with a VCR again. And no monthly Tivo fees.

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Earth 2 – Gliese 581c?

    It’s too soon to say for sure that this planet, poorly named Gliese 581 c, is an Earth-like world, but the scientific and geek communities are sure keen on the idea that this large-ish planet near a red dwarf star has the right temperature to support Earth-like life. The SETI folks are sure to pay a little extra attention to this area of the sky now, but I’m not taking any bets on whether or not there’s intelligent life out there. I’m just hoping for life at all. Heck, I’d be happy if it was colonizable. At a “mere” 20 light years away, it’s potentially explorable, although not so much so in our lifetime without some major advances in interplanetary travel.
    Thinking. Wondering. I read about this right after waking up, and all day I have been trying to imagine life on this foreign planet, so close to a dim red star, with a much larger gaseous planet between itself and the sun. I bet the view is extraordinary. I’m having trouble finding details (or perhaps just trouble understanding the terms used) about what its orbit is like, or how long its day is, but its year is a mere 13 Earth days, which would make for some really bizarre weather shifts if it has seasons anything like our planet does. And they say the weather in Michigan changes in 5 minutes….

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What is this crazy thing?

For those of you who have no idea what Penguicon (or any con) is like, I found a really good write-up of it from a non-geek (girlfriend of geek) perspective. Heck, I’ve been to Penguicon all 5 years, and I learned something by reading this. Pictures still to come. Today was (and still is) a very busy day.

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Penguicon, to be continued

5.0 is over. Can’t wait to see what niftyness awaits us with 6.0 next year. I closed the con out with a panel on Creative Commons & Giving Your Stuff Away For Free (or some such title) that wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be, but was informative and entertaining nonetheless. I found out that there’s an International Pixel Stained Techno Peasant day tomorrow in response to the Hendrix “webscabs” comment I recently blogged about. I’m looking forward to seeing all of that. I also attended Making The Most Of The Web, which talked about a whole lot of things I already knew, and a couple I didn’t. The guy running that panel created a del.icio.us group for it, so that you too can see some of the web tools we talked about. On my way out the door, csixty4 found me, and said hi. I always think it’s tremendously cool when a realspace stranger says “You’re Wolfger?”. I’m glad I made a point of finding and commenting on some Penguicon blog entries every night. Pictures to come in the near future.

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Penguicon, day 2

Today was filk day, with concert by da FuMP and Tom Smith. Also went to an MST3K style showing of Tron, hosted by Tom and The Tron Guy. Between those and lunch and dinner, the day is pretty much all over except for the partying, so let the room parties commence!

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Penguicon is here

And so am I. Signed up a short while ago, and checked into my room at the Troy Hilton. The (scheduled) fun starts in about an hour, when I have to choose between an “LJ” (and other social networking) meet’n'greet or a Bruce Schneier panel on Security and Psychology. Then it’s Opening Ceremonies, then another choice between a Worm Quartet concert and an intro to Python. After a short pseudo-mandatory break, there’s a Chaos Machine presentation conflicting with the Chocolate Ritual, conflicting with the beginning of Ars Till Dawn, which runs, as the name suggests, until the wee hours of the morning. Somewhere in there I need to squeeze in a dinner, and a good bit of beer and caffeine. Also starting around 11 is an open singing circle, which I will probably drift towards when/if Ars gets boring.

And Saturday is when most of the stuff happens… Yikes! Busy weekend.