While not a scientific study, this list of geek behaviors present during conversations strikes me as fairly useful both for “geeks” and “non-geeks”.
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I’ve been falling behind somewhat in keeping track of my tasks. That’s not to say I haven’t been productive, it’s just that most of my productivity has been focused in things I’ve been working on obsessively, like preparation for the roleplaying campaign I started running last week, Vim customization, and Python workflow coding.

It would be good to track other things better than how I’m doing it right now, but somehow returning to TiddlyWiki for my task management wasn’t appealing. I used it for quite a while, but a bare install of it doesn’t seem to quite work for task management, even though it’s still really good for keeping notes about things in general. I’m going to try d-cubed, a TiddlyWiki-based tool, instead.
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I’ve been using the vector graphics editor Inkscape a fair bit over the last few days, and in the last few months have given it something of a workout. It’s been quite impressive. I was never a really heavy Illustrator user, but Inkscape seems to compare to it much more favorably than, say, GIMP compares to Photoshop. It’s a later-generation product, so perhaps that’s not being fair, but regardless it just feels a lot better to use. Maybe there are killer features that Illustrator has that Inkscape doesn’t, but since I don’t know what they are, I don’t miss them…

I’ve mainly been using it for map-making (related to this), and for that it’s been really good, and I’m rather glad it exists, because doing the same kind of work in a bitmap editor would probably be incredibly frustrating. I haven’t read through the documentation, but whenever I’ve needed to find out how to do something I’ve been able to without much trouble, so it seems that they’re doing a good job on that as well.

I played Killer Instinct a lot in the mid-90s. It didn’t have the multiplayer depth of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, but I wasn’t playing it multiplayer much—rather, I was trying to get the longest combination move I could.

But what does this have to do with text editing?
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I just registered for the 2010 Northern California CrossFit Sectional competition. I’m doing it for the experience, as I know that my chances of qualifying for Regionals are zero. Despite that, it should help my motivation for training and (just as important) for eating properly. It’s 27/28 March, seven weeks out—we’ll see how fit I can get by then.

One of my goals for 2010 was to celebrate my birthday. Yesterday I did just that, and had a great time. Thanks to everyone who came out! To those who couldn’t make it, I missed you and I’m sorry I gave you such short notice! Next year’s birthday goal will be to celebrate it and give people more reasonable warning…

Last Wednesday, I ran a roleplaying game for the first time since late 1994 or early 1995. It was a one-shot, using the same broad setting and rules system hybrid that I’m planning to use for a campaign later this year.
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Happy New Year!

Once again, my goals for the coming year.
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In 2009 I achieved some significant things that weren’t on my list of goals, although they’re not concrete achievements in the same sense.
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I had eight goals for 2009, and all of them that I’m going to get done I’ve already completed. Time to review.
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My best pieces this year. If I write an outstanding post in the next three days, I’ll cheat and add it to this list later.
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To all my friends, even those who don’t read this blog: love and best wishes for the season[*] and the coming year.

I hope we see more of each other in 2010, and that we make our time together as meaningful, focused, and fun as possible.

I wrote about this in early November, and I think things have only deteriorated since then… from a fairly bad starting point.

Arthur Silber has another take on it, and Who is IOZ also covers it.
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While talking to my friend Jeff recently, I realized that I’ve played quite a few different roleplaying games—by which I mean Sit Around The Table roleplaying games, and not MMORPGS, LARPS, or computer ”RPGs” like the Final Fantasy series—and my list-making tendencies more or less decided at that point that a blog post would have to be made.
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I’m not a doctor, and this isn’t medical advice.

I am, however, currently deficient in Vitamin D, and apparently so might many of you be—particularly those of you living in less-sunny climes.
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Yeah. Unlike the five previous times I’ve attempted to set a month-ish target for myself, it’s just not working.
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I hope that you readers don’t hate reading these weekly notifications of zero progress as much as I hate writing them. It’s been a bad month, and I’ve been almost completely unable to get anything at all done with the fantasy novel. I’ll keep trying to get somewhere for at least a couple more weeks, but I’m starting to have some serious doubts.

It’s traditional on Thanksgiving to list things you’re thankful for. It struck me today that I should be extremely thankful for the existence of free software, and the contributions of thousands and thousands of programmers who have made their work freely available for others to use.
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It is both a bug and a feature of self-imposed arbitrary deadlines that you can arbitrarily move them yourself. Right now, I’m choosing to regard it as a feature, and am extending my deadline to 14 December. Thus I am now participating in what could be more accurately titled along the lines of “NaNoWriMo-and-a-half”.

It’s still not going well.
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Unfortunately, this attempt to write my fantasy novel in a month isn’t going well. In my experience, there are two critical things that you have to do in order to produce written material at a good rate:

• Start.
• Write even when it’s not flowing.

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They beat the Philadelphia Phillies in six games, finishing it last night with a stellar performance from Hideki Matsui, a solid outing by Andy Pettitte, and the usual lethal efficiency from Mariano Rivera. 27 titles is by far the most in baseball, and is also the most in the “big four” US sports of baseball, football, basketball, and ice hockey (the Montreal Canadiens have 24).
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I’ve always detested Brussels sprouts. In the past people have repeatedly made the claim that this was because I hadn’t have them cooked right, that my previus bad experiences were due to poor preparation (usually overcooking was cited), and that these would be different. At which point I would try the ones on hand, and gag. It isn’t mere dislike, but a strong negative reaction to them that makes it difficult to eat them at all.

This pattern held, invariant, for more than a decade. Until tonight. Tonight’s Brussels sprouts, made by my friend Joke, were actually palatable, and I voluntarily had more than one. I said I felt that some award should mark the event, she suggested a blog post, and here we are.