Category: ultranerdy

Alpha Male

If you know me, than you probably know that I’m a big fan of science fiction. Why hide my spots, right? I make an effort, though, not to impose my enthusiasm on those who don’t share it. It just invites snickering and rolling of the eyes.

Jonathan knows what I mean. He knows to avoid the indifference of some friends, and share the enthusiasm for others.

When we first met at this past Summer’s Blogmeet it came up in conversation that I’d been totally taken with my rediscovery of Space: 1999, a show whose charms he also understood. He told me about his best friend Kit, a sci-fi enthusiast who’d built made replicas of the show’s sets and costumes, which were — and you should see them for yourself — outstanding, at least before the show’s American backers called for some unfortunate budget cuts. Since I was clearly a fan and not just a curiosity-seeker, he promised me that I’d get to see Kit’s handiwork if I ever came to London.

Sunday, when I met Kit (who’s just a sweet, handsome gem of a fellow), I was blown away. I was also encouraged to indulge my fandom. May I now present then, my adventures in the Alpha Room:

East Side Ecstasy

If you watch any documentary before you die, you really ought to watch East Side Story, an incredible look at communist musicals in East Germany and the soviet Union. Man, it’ll get your heart pumping to watch those men sing about the glories of their tractors, or watch textile-mill ballet sequence. Of course, now that I think about it, you also should make sure that before you die you see such other incredible documentaries as Grey Gardens, Crumb, and Trekkies. Any of those will be a great reminder that reality can be so much more fascinating than fiction.

On a totally different pop-culture note, I’ve found myself talking with lots of guys recently about how they also always thought that Aquaman was totally hot. So it’s not just me. It’s almost weird how often this has been happening, like some great pent-up surge of homosexual zeitgeist blowing a gasket. A friend spontaneously got me a totally hot Aquaman poster by Alex Ross for my birthday. Another announced he’s planning on fulfilling a lifelong dream and getting an Aquaman tattoo. Various other guys, when I’ve started to mention who the hottest superfriend was, beat me to the punch by screaming out, “Aquaman!” This has been even more startling than the realization a few years back that the homos all seemed to have a thing for Boba Fett.

A Plea to the Nerds

Do you have a math or science background? If so, maybe you can give your old pal Sparky a hand. I’ll gladly barter trinkets or prominently featured links to your web site You see, in a little while I’m going to be a doing a week-long consulting gig for Princeton University Press, configuring certain features of their typesetting system and showing them how to set equations, formulas, and other kinds of mathematical notation. I’m trying to collect examples of as many kinds of mathematical typesetting as I can find to use as examples and reference materials for them, but most of what I’m familiar with is specific to the needs of mechanical engineers. Do you have any textbooks or academic publications you could browse through for me? Any photocopies or scans would be totally fantastic. I’d really appreciate it. Also, any pointers toward a chart on the Web listing the names of various math characters would be cool.

On a less geeky topic, I’m trying to track down this incredible punk cover I once heard of the song “Find It,” sung by the Carrie Nations in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Does ay one know who did the cover? Know where to find it? Lemme know!

Geekiness Ain’t All Glamor

This may come as a shock but I’m pretty damn sick of being a geek right now. For most of the last two weeks, just about all my time has been spent cabling, networking, installing software, troubleshooting, settling preferences, handling tech emergencies my clients were having — basically playing one-man IT department. You know what? It sucks like a Hoover. Sure, maybe I was able to pull the new iMac out of its box and connect it to the Internet three minutes later, but I swear to god that every other thing you want to add or change after that simple action makes the whole set-up much more prone to catastrophe.

Actually, that’s not too big a swipe at Apple. It’s always been like this, and it’s like this for every type of computer I’ve ever used. When you make a more complex system out of disparate pieces, the chances for conflict increase. At least I’ve been geek enough to fix everything as it came along, although not always right away, and not without lots of swearing and pounding of the desk with my fists. (that’s a little secret for the people who know me. Although I’ve never lost my temper in front of anyone but one ex-boyfriend, I throw plenty of tantrums when I’m alone and pissed off.) But, when all is said and done, I love the new computer, I love all the new USB thingamajigs, I love the high-speed DSL (yes, finally connected after 8 months of failed attempts!), I love the digital camera, and I’m a happy boy with my new toys.

The new, sexed-up iMacAnd I’ve got to give Apple credit for fixing just about everything I ever hated about the design of the iMac, especially since they never even asked me for my input. I actually loathed the whole product line when it first came out — the garish colors, the flimsy access panels, the microscopic keyboard, the worst mouse ever made, the whole semi-transparent-shell concept that suggested that it would show the innards without actually doing so. These new babies are really, really pretty. I’m officially a convert. The colors are richer and more subdued, the flimsy access panels have either been removed altogether (The new CD/DVD player has a much sexier way of just sucking in a disc without use of an external tray. It’s almost dirty.), the full-size keyboard is a million times more comfortable (and prettier), the transparent optical mouse is truly beautiful, and all the plastic casings are now fully transparent, showing off the real guts for nerds and gadget freaks like me to see.

Cable-icious!

What the Public sees

So how many computer-/design-nerd details can you see in that picture, huh? Tell me how many you see and I’ll send the viewer with the sharpest eye a prize.

Good Gadget Grief

In the ongoing saga of my acquisition of new computer equipment, all my new peripherals arrived at my home today while I was at work haggling with Apple and my credit card companies trying to sort out why it’s so difficult for me to get them to accept the thousands of dollars I’m trying to spend. Luckily, I think we’ve got it all sorted out and the computer will go out tomorrow, so soon there’ll be something to connect to all these new peripherals.

But let me rant for a bit about some distressing things I’ve noticed about this new wave of computer equipment design (bullets, P.J., it’s all about the bullets):

  • Big-ass AC adapters are not a good solution. sure, I’m sure a lot of these vendors are into the idea of making all these new candy-colored gadgets seem light and sleek by removing the heavy parts of the power supply, but those honkin’ big adapters that came with my CD-RW, scanner, USB hub, router, DSL modem, et al., do not all fit on a power strip! Nothing was wrong with traditional power cords. Additional extension cords snaking around my floor will be problematic.
  • And speaking of all this candy-colored nonsense, I find it pretty apalling that the iMac-ification of contemporary product design results in such a horrendous waste of plastic. I don’t need a full set of replacement handles in all the colors of the rainbow for my scanner.
  • And a waste of space! All this curviness that the kids dig these days is just a freakin’ veneer that tries (ironically, while making the truth very obvious thanks to all the transparency) to disguise the fact that all these components are still little rectangular things on the inside. My CD burner is just a normal box, but it comes inside a big, curvy plastic shell that makes it unstackable and increases its volume needlessly by half. And the DSL modem, router, and USB hub are all just basically circuit boards of about the same size, but they all come in curvy plastic boxes of various shapes and sizes to ensure that I can’t stack them in one neat little pile. There are smooth little plasticy things piled all the fuck over the place now. Pain in my butt.
  • Ooooh, but I’m still so excited. I love new treats.

Turn and Face the Change

Change is afoot here in the Rumpus Room. You’ll notice that I didn’t make that a link, because I’m not talking about the web site. I’m talking about my bacheloser pad, the actual Rumpus Room.

  • The most obvious change is the shocking drop in overall temperature. One of the nice side effects of living a large, damp, basement loft is that it’s nice-n-cool all summer long. One of the bad side effects is that it’s bone-chillingly icy during the winter (when the obnoxiously loud industrial heater isn’t on to send the temperature skyrocketing all the way up to 60°F). Now is the start of the awkward in-between period when it doesn’t make sense to turn the heat on yet, but I realize it’s time to keep piles of sweatshirts lying around, and time to get the down comforter out its plastic bag. Geez, I was at the freaking beach last week.
  • And even though it’s time to break out the winter clothes, I’m going to have to wait until they’re sanitary enough to wear. I’ve learned that old cardboard boxes tucked away in a forgotten corner do not make a good place to store leather jackets during the summer. I took out all my coats the other day and found all the leather coated in mold. Eeeeeeeeeeeew. And that stuff just ain’t cheap to clean.
  • On the lighter side, I finally ordered my new computer. Yay! Treats! It will be a delight to do away with the old beast that can barely keep up with me anymore. And I’m getting all the fixin’s with the new machine, too: new scanner, new CD burner, new Zip drive, and — to my relief and yours, no doubt — a digital camera so I can finally add some more visual stimulation to the sites.
  • And because I’m a nerd who doesn’t already have enough to do, I picked up the Linux distribution for Power PCs so I can totally wipe the ol’ 6500 and turn her into a Linux box so I can play around with it. Thank you, Neal Stephenson for filling my head with such ideas. (Did I mention that I recently read Cryptonomicon and got my world rocked?)
  • I also unearthed so many tabletops while cleaning for my birthday party that the whole place looks organized, which makes it feel like I’ve done a lot of redecorating. Most of the space is usually pretty orderly, but the small, tax-deductible corner where I sit and work most of the time usually looks like a twister hit it, so this is a pretty significant turnaround. It’ll never last.
  • I’d love to say that the last change is that my DSL has finally been hooked up, but six months into the process and I’m still waiting for the various vendors involved to coordinate and get their collective shit together.

For Science!

I’m writing this entry on my trusty Palm V, just because I can. This little client is cool as hell, but this is likely to be a pain in the butt until I can get myself one of those sexy collapsible keyboards.

Here’s a fun tidbit that’s been hanging on my refrigerator for months: The Periodic Table of Rejected Elements. I can just imagine the filmstrip explaining the industrial uses for Delerium.

Endless Dreariness

One of my freelance gigs is a consulting project for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, doing some research about a computer system they want to buy. (Yes, I am also a nerd-for-hire by other nerds. Who knew?) Today, I will be sitting through a couple hours of software demos, which would not be much of a treat under the best of circumstances. After my unfortunate bout of insomnia last night, all those PowerPoint presentations and all that corporate jargon will surely kill me.