Everybody's got goals, everybody's got their plans for how to be famous before they die. I don't claim these things will make me famous, but...hey, they're things to do...

Roleplaying Games

One of the best ways I've found to engage my imagination in a social context is role playing games. Now, I know it's your typical geek pasttime, but still, there's something to be said for the social aspect. And it kills less brain cells than partying.

Right now, I'm playing in a really good GURPS game. It's a very cerebral game (I don't think there's been a fight scene yet, and the GM has to roll very seldom for us), but the whole group is a really good group of roleplayers. It's been a blast thus far.

My favorite game systems are the aforementioned GURPS, In Nomine, and a distant third is D&D 3rd edition.

The Jihad...no not what you're thinking

Of course, not all the roleplay I do is tabletop gaming. The Jihad (not the one of the Muslim persuation we've all gotten to know so well the past few months) is a net.game that keeps getting more and more complicated the more we get into it. And we write stories about our characters instead of tabletop gaming.

Two guys have put in a ton of work on making the system coherent, and I'd like to give them props before I go on. So yeah, thanks, guys. It's awesome.

To find out more about the Jihad, see www.jihad.net. To see some of my writings, go to www.retstak.org/jihad/.

Putting my pen to paper...

If you look at both my projects page and this page, you can see that writing is pretty much a constant in my life. In third grade, I once made the mistake of telling my mother that I didn't need math because I was going to be, in my words, "a bookwriter".

Right now, I've gone on a multi-year slump in my creativity and will to write, but I'm hoping that's coming back soon. (It seems to be.) The reasons for it are many and varied, mostly because I want to put time for some of my other projects, and school seems to be taking a lot of time as well. It's a never ending cycle.

I'm hoping to start up writing on a regular basis again sometime soon. In the meantime, I've been keeping in practice by updating my journal most every day. Even if it is just a bit of randomness on the latest in my life.

Bookworm. Guilty as charged

Also, if you couldn't guess by the first project on the project page, I'm quite a bookworm. My main interests are fantasy and science fiction, but I've got quite a variety of books on my shelf, and I've been known to read the ingredients on the catsup bottle when I can't find anything better to read.

I have a fascination with the written word. Does it show?

/home/technophile

I also am interested in computers. For a while, I was proud to be the first humanities major ever to become site manager (chief sysadmin) of the UC Berkeley Open Computing Facility, a position I held for three semesters. I've always been interested in computers and how they affect society.

The intellectual challenges and the socialization I've been able to find through them is pretty amazing too. One of my favorite projects I've ever done in school is a paper on the Jihad for my Ethics of Computing class. You can find it listed on the Jihad page.

But yeah, computers are fun. And you can't have too many of them. Just ask this guy.

o/~ today's music ain't got the same soul... o/~

I have a very varied taste in music. I can stand most types of it (though rap can sometimes send me fleeing), but I tend to like very folksy type music. My first great love for a musician's words was when I made the acquaintance of Paul Simon's work, but I've branched from there. Simon remains one of my favorite musicians though.

The mp3 revolution, despite the problems with copyrights, has probably broadened my musical horizons above anything else I could do. I have found a lot of groups I've liked by friends pointing me to obscure groups and musicians. Some of this stuff is things the major record labels would never sign.

And it was simply this interest in digital music that pushed me into the direction of studying how this impacted society. Between the MPAA and the DeCSS fiasco, and the RIAA and mp3s, I grew more interested in the ramifications of copyright in the digital age.

To a lesser extent, the music got me into playing guitar, but unfortunately I've had to put that down for quite a while due to an RSI injury to my left hand.

"Those who do not know their history..."

Being a history major taught me two things: a) how to get to the meaning of a text and analyze what the author is saying and how it fits into the historical record and b) that I'd never make it as a professional historian. I've got this crazy idea of history as a story. Most professionals frown on that, and the more's the pity, because I've found people get interested a lot more quickly if history is taught as a story, and not as a bunch of cold and dry facts.

Still, though, I've never lost my wonder and awe at being an amateur historian, and I like reading random books on the subject. I also like telling people history, as a story, a trail of randoms that lead to something happening.

It sounds silly, but it's something I enjoy.