Catching up part 2

Thursday morning was spent swimming, then there were a pair of Pickup Jeepform games. Well, only one of them, Doubt was a proper Jeepform  The other game was a Freeform put together by some people who run Jeepforms called Let The World Burn. It's a lot of fun. For those who don't know what a Jeepform is, it is the antithesis of ethical gaming within the social contract, as a matter of fact it is as far from being a larp while using the same tools as being a sailor is from being a mountaineer. Both careers involve heavy use of the use rope skill and care about weather, that is about it. Although, fun fact something I found out about Jeepforms and the use rope skill... never mind. In a normal Larp the separation between character and self is essential to sustain a game world and the suspension of disbelief, not only that but to  properly make a sustainable environment people have to have actions in character not affect or be strongly affected by actions out of character. Jeepforms encourage a thing called Bleed. Bleed is when you take context, emotion and out of character desires and motivations and impose them on your character in order to use the character to explore those things in a consequence light environment. Jeeps are specifically crafted to maximise Bleed. Freeforms of the same school allow Bleed and function when players are bleeding  but it is not expressly necessary for the game to function and while the structure of the game allows it, it does not specifically try to induce it. Due to the personal nature of the Jeepform experience I will not be telling anyone how it went especially not in an open forum like this one.
Thursday evening we all had empanadas and discussed making a squirt gun based larp  called Urban Island in which you save poor unfortunates from heatstroke. You start with a sponge and work your way to fire hose. It still has some teething troubles.
Friday morning, More swimming followed by the Iron GM competition. The ingredients were Phasm, Potion factory, and Payback. I came in third, got some cool prizes. If you want to see more about it it was totally televised on the net and for all I know on espn 8 'the ocho' The winner was one of the guys from Hitmouse, an Indie RPG studio that I love and respect. I'll be glad to see him at Gen Con. Then the EOE team played in Live action space marine. It was cool. It was a lot of fun, the props were excellent, they had randomizers built into nifty guns, provided costumes for everyone, the sets were great and the game was terrific . There were a few teething troubles as this was the first time the game had been played. Also it emphasized to me just how much of the base Warhammer mechanics are luck and rely on massive troop numbers to have strategy have any meaning by letting the law of averages play out.  Then drinking, then sleep.

So much for habit forming

<p>The convention i have recently attended, dexcon, kicked all of the ass. The only problem was an overwhelming lack of internet. So i have not written my 200 words since Wednesday. As i write this it is Monday. This means 1200 words today. And since my phone my desktop and my laptop are all recovering, this is coming to you from an unfamiliar tablet. I am significantly discomfited by the missing click and press of keys as I type. But now is the time to learn the new way of doing things. I has an oddly similar moment reversed yesterday. When trying to get some files from someone we used my kindle as it was the only device with a sufficiently robust connection. For several minutes my friend poked at the screen and grunted in nearly simian frustration. "It`s not working." He had grown to accept as standard that any piece of technology would have a touchscreen and any icon would be responsive to his will. The small keyboard and navigational pad had completely passed him by as tools. He presumed them to be vestigial attachments like the ones on my smartphone. After a few moments of shuffling a cursor around the skills of a lifetime of window icon mouse and pointer returned and it all worked out in the end. This entire enterprise shocked me. This was a man who had published with Linotype&#160; on dead trees. How quickly the habits of years have melted away before this new interface. Right now i am reduced to a variant of hunt and peck, but as i type blue streaks follow my fingers when i do not lift them quickly enough tempting me to try this new typing as calligraphy method. I don't think it will work out well. My vocabulary does not lend itself to the method. In fact i used it to try to type the previous sentence and it took more than a dozen tries to swipe the word vocabulary. In the end i had to type it, blue streaks mocking me all the while. </p>
<p>Sadly, I can not remember the details of the entire convention. Some was lost and never put in long term memory. Some was&#160; erased by tiredness, some by alcohol and some by promises of secrecy. On the whole this may be better than having written my thoughts of the moment as many would have been uncharitable before i later received context. Then again some things that seemed perfectly innocent became more sinister with time. Enough dithering, here was my convention.</p>
<p>Wednesday. We split into two teams. Jax, Alex and I on team A, Aisling, Jocy, Susan, and Tasker on team B. Team A arrived at 3 am on site so we could help with setup at 8, and set up we did. Dexcon, unlike most conventions I have seen keeps many careful metrics of who exactly does what to whom, where and when. Their methods of tracking guest behavior, likes, dislikes and trends are more professionally and competently recorded and assembled than many sociological experiments i have seen. Like the realm of the sciences, this takes a lot of prep sign in sheets, big boards with schedules and descriptions,  rules and warnings, rewards and puzzles all must be placed just so and in tim and with a workforce that is often untrained and entirely volunteer. Our team integrated easily and quickly into this hive of activity and in the afternoon was joined by team B. They too took to the organisation like a fish to tartar sauce. Not necessarily willingly but very well. In the evening we attended opening ceremonies. As it turns out, they had a spotlight and no light tech. Alex is an excellent light tech and during the ceremonies even got to engage in some tech humor with the comedians. This led to some later comic misunderstandings, but more on that later.

Turnaround time

Well now that I've been home, spent a day at work its time to pack again for another con. Dexcon this time. It's a lot of fun,  I get to run the same pony nonsense as I did in Bronycon but also the new Champions piece and good old Changeling. God willing and all his little angels nothing important will explode, be damaged or be stolen by kleptomaniacs in strollers. There's a story behind that but not a good one. I've been doing my best to keep up correspondence with the various Californians I've met and rationalists and its been largely hit or miss, but its silly season for them too. I think I'll be doing more long form prose in another week or so when I have more than a few seconds to breathe. On the plus side, new Terry Pratchett "The Long Earth". Am I the only person who when they order Amazon things to themselves always fill out the gift card with a note to myself so I can remember the context under which I ordered the object? Or maybe just a reminder because the post will come later. I bought a book for myself with some surplus I had and wrote to myself on the book. "I hope you had a good date. If you have not made the time for her, do that now." knowing that I would be mad superbusy and not take the time to really care for my partner. So we went out today, her favorite restaurant. It was a calm moment in the eye of the hurricane and worthwhile.  Interesting part is I almost never remember writing the note, but notes delivered with a gift have greater impact. The rationalists call this "doing something to affect your future self." Me I am not certain the notes are coming from my past self as I only have Amazon's word for it, but whoever is sending them the advice is good. I'm pretty sure past me is the same shortsighted jerk that present me but hey. Have kept up the good work! (time travel tense is weird)

Watashi Wa Nezumi Da

So, I'm home again after Bronycon and I might have stopped in the most American place in the world. I passed through a crowd of Chinese nationals buying electronics to send home, past a booth where a man was selling illegal fourth of July fireworks, and into a Walmart that had a McDonald's inside. This was the first time I had seen such a thing. All of the ones near me have Little Caesar's. I was looking for the bathroom and the first three people I saw, blue clad workers,  spoke no English.  In fractured Spanish I found out where the potty was and became like many visitors in this strange land. I showed up, commented on the decor, took a giant dump and left. Pausing only to use some of their resources. Unlike many  visitors to this American metaphor, I stopped and was briefly grateful to each person who had helped me on my way. I then promptly bought the most overpriced thing I could find (A fountain Coke) out of a feeling of obligation to the people whose wherewithal I had used for my own personal enrichment. We drove home. Now the reason for the post title is I have made it home to my bedroom and people have compared my room to a rat's nest many a time. It's a large wodge of blankets and pillows haphazardly mixed with stuffed animals and clothes. But recently I have accidentally acquired a desktop so it is now also overrun with thick surge protector cables  that criss cross the environment, lacing between fans, computer parts, portable devices in mid charge and old crt's. The cables are kept away form the cloth because of  fire safety and all. All and all I feel most comfortable here with the hum of the wires and the fan. There's an rpg I'm playing where several of the npcs have mistaken me for one of the prolific species of that world, rats that take human form. They don't mean that in a bad way. They're good folk, the Nezu, and pillars of the community. But I think I see their point.

exercise in frustration

well this is an exercise in frustration. i am writing this post from the back of an undersized sedan heading for seacaucus new jersey. i am writing it on my new phone, largely to see if i can. with the exception of the shift key not functioning and a few other quirks it seems to be going ok. however, i can not capitalize, use punctuation besides , and ? and. nor can i make numbers or contractions. it is interesting. i feel like e.e. cummings. so i am in a small and worrn car with three lovely women heading to bronycon in hopes of bringing larp to bronies. I am now writing this post on my new asus trasformer. The real pity is I can not for the lifeof me make anything copy to clipboard and then paste back out elsewhere. I am not sure If I will ever make this work. I can't type properly even using this dock. If anyone out there knows how to properly make this thing work I'd love to know.

Two Hundred Words A day

As part of my rationality training (lesswrong.com) I am attempting to write 200 words per day. I picked this number since it was approximately the length of the features I used to write for radio and I figured I'd be able to handle 200 words  per day even if I was at a convention from my kindle or something else. Sometimes I might post old writings but they don't count unless 200 new words have been added to the text. Well as I have burned up 83 of those words being meta I suppose I ought to have something of substance in this last bit. The thing I learned about in the Minicamp that I retained best is timeless thinking. http://lesswrong.com/lw/r1/timeless_control/ The understanding is not far from the mode I use when writing a book or working on a project. The rule is if I am not doing it I am not going to do it so do it now. ON a related note, every time I have explained Timeless thinking I have gone and flossed. Its complicated and weird but more on that if you want to know. Tomorrow we do mages most likely.

I could write a book

So I did.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1832603818/champions-live-action

So here's my brother talking about similar things.

His book is about love and things. Mine is about superheroes.