Moving to my own web host let me resurrect the travel blog that my brother and I ran when we biked across the country way back in 2000!
Read all about Max and Mark’s cross-country bicycle trip!
Category Archives: Life
blog migration
So, I finally moved my blog over to my hosted domain. I mostly did this so I could install some cool widgets and other code into the page. I got side-tracked by all the cool themes I could install and check out. I think I like this one.
Also, I figured out how to use my del.icio.us bookmarks as my blogroll/links list, but in order to make it categorized, I had to arbitrarily tag some of them as “misc” which of course doesn’t help the collective social network at all. Ah well…
Now that del.icio.us works, though, I’m going to have to start using it more. 😛
I think I will bookmark more permanent links there and share newsy stuff using the Google Reader widget. Neat!
Up next, I need to install itty Bitty RPG. 🙂
Oh and with this blog move, I was able to resurrect the old Chang’s Mongolian Grill Posse posts though I was unable to retain who authored each one. Now I have to fix my links so they all work… bleh.
And, finally, know what’s crazy? Within 3 hours of installing this WordPress blog, I had 75 spam comments awaiting moderation. Wow.
GLS day 3 (the aftermath)
I’ve been meaning to post photos from Saturday in Madison soon… this space reserved.
[Edited Thursday… finally!]
So, after a night of way too much beer…. (and I should note that when I say way too much I mean our tables had 2 pitchers courtesy of Kurt too much which basically went undrunk… undrunken.. undrinked…? whatever. and NOT that I had way too much beer since as most of my friends know, I don’t really drink beer.)
Anyway, after a night of way too much beer for our tables, Moses and I walked to his place (partly alongside Kurt and Josh). When we got there, we were setting up the air mattress and stuff when his roommate entered (about 2:30-3:00 AM) with not one, but TWO women he had picked up or something… they went to his room and he came out to the kitchen to fix up a cocktail once they got settled. While passing us on his way to the kitchen he said something like, “holy shit.” Whispered incredulously. This was a proper time to use “holy shit” if any, I thought. We figured he was implying that he was just about to do what many men fantasize about. Ha.
Ok, so I digress from the trip to Madison. You’re probably more interested in hearing about the arts fair the next day. 😛
Yikes! Surgeons General felt pressure from White House…
I missed this because I was at the Games Learning Society conference, but it is damn newsworthy…
Surgeon General Sees 4-Year Term as Compromised
Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona said that Bush administration officials tried to weaken or suppress health reports.
All the people I met at GLS
I met a ton of people for the first time at Games Learning Society. Here’s a brain dump of who I can remember (I’ll link to each of them soon… running out of steam right now… 🙁 ):
- Rebecca Black
- Samantha Blackmon
- Ian Bogost
- Ted Castranova (well, technically, we didn’t meet, but I saw him…)
- Mia Consalvo
- Ben DeVane (and wife Amanda)
- Josh Diaz
- Julian Dibbell
- Elonka Dunin
- Shree Durga
- Debbie Fields
- Justin Hall
- Erica Halverson
- Chris Holden (and wife Sarah)
- Tori Horton
- Aaron Hung
- Dan Hunter
- Shawna Kelly
- Lane Lawley
- Thomas Malaby
- Dan Norton
- Nathaniel Pope
- Alice Robison
- Lauren Silberman
- Dave Simkins
- Bert Snow
- Doug Thomas
- Bill Tomlinson
- Mark Wagler
- Dave White
- Lee Wilson
- Moses Wolfenstein
- Suze Woolf
- Eric Zimmerman
- Renata
- Matt
- Dana and I think her boyfriend from Florida
- Carole?
- Tim?
- a bunch of people at the LAN party whose names I’ve forgotten
And people I’ve previously met:
- Lisa Galarneau
- Jim Gee
- Betty Hayes
- Henry Jenkins
- Liz Lawley
- Brett Shelton
- Kurt Squire
- Constance Steinkuehler (big wit baby!)
And, of course, people I go to or went to school with:
- Laurie McCarthy
- Tom Satwitcz (now at U of Georgia)
- Jen Stone (former adviser, now at U of Alaska Anchorage)
GLS day 2, evening
After the conference was over, I met up with Moses to drop my stuff off at his place since he kindly offered an air mattress for me to crash on for the night. BTW, ladies, Moses is the man. Guys, you too should know; Moses is like the coolest man in the world.
Anyway, a bunch of folks went off to some party but Moses and I happened to meet up with a guy named Josh Diaz before Moses had to take off for said party. So, I ended up hanging out with Josh, walking around the capitol talking, and having dinner with him at The Old Fashioned.
I forgot to take a photo of dinner, but here’s an image someone else took of the same menu item, The Old Fashioned House Burger. It was amazing. Perfectly cooked medium, with two thick crispy strips of bacon, smoked cheddar (good cheddar–but I’m a cheeseburger snob), and a medium cooked egg–not too runny, not too dry. The egg added a surprising complexity and binding flavor to the whole affair, making for possibly the best burger I’ve ever had. I’ve had egg on burger before, but previously it was greasy as all hell. This time it was fantastic.
GLS night 1, dinner and a party
Dinner at the Overture Center for the Arts was fun! I met Rebecca Black, Bill Tomlinson (whose EcoRaft project I posted about earlier), Dana and her friend from Florida but originally from France so he had a cool accent, and a couple of other people whose names I’ve forgotten already (again, though I think they were Greg and William, and one of them knows Beth Kolko pretty well…).
GLS Day 1… well, more like Day 0
The conference itself doesn’t really start until tomorrow, but it pretty much took the whole day to get here, so I’m counting this as part of the experience. I’m typing this blog post while listening to a live free concert at the capitol building in Madison, right outside my hotel window. Apparently, there’s a summer concert series every Wednesday. Tonight’s theme is Russian composers. Freakin awesome.
Anyway, here’s my day in photos:
Google vs. Sicko
Found on The Stranger’s blog, SLOG…
Is Google getting so big that it inevitably has some complete idiots–or, worse, evil-doers–on its payroll?
We don’t know the people we cite
So, I had a cool drinks-at-Lisa’s-place get-together with Lisa and temporary Seattlelite Liz Lawley. They did most of the talking, mind you, which was fine by me because I soaked it all up like a sponge. I got at least three names to follow-up on and am amazed at how well connected some people are.
Towards the end, Liz got an email from Nick Yee who explained a little about the crazy shit going on in his life recently. Apparently, while finishing up his doctoral degree at Stanford, he went through some serious health issues. Yikes!
That got me to thinking… I just cited him in my general exams, and I’m amazed at how little I actually know about him and his life and the lives of all the other people I cited. Again, why does academic writing need to be so disconnected? Are ideas the only thing of value about our colleagues?
But the fact that Lisa and Liz then started reading Nick’s webpage and kept saying how great a person he is… Well… okay, ideas aren’t the only thing we value… but there’s this sort of hidden side to academics that is not apparent in our writings, and it seems to me that there’s this personal side to it that is extremely important that is not transparent at all… (thinking about Brandt‘s writing on sponsorship here… and what I wrote previously about how you have to go to conferences just for the social networking…)
I met Nick two years ago at DiGRA in Vancouver. A bunch of MMOG scholars had drinks at a bar. (I also met Lisa in person for the first time there and was introduced to Daniel Pargman and Jonas Heide Smith there… which just proves my point about conferences…) Nick IS a great guy. But again, I hardly know him, and, frankly, I hardly know any of my colleagues (or future colleagues if you consider me an apprentice-type) or the people I routinely cite in my writings.
Is that sad or what? Is it a problem with me, the system, and/or my lack of money to go to conferences?