Nat Budin

Concom Minutes
22 June 2008

Thanks to bleemoo for taking notes.  Minutes are behind the cut.

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Crossposting this from my new blog - I'm beginning to suspect that most people who used to read my LJ aren't actually reading it.

It looks like I’ve got an extra ticket for the Rush concert at the Tweeter Center on Sunday, June 15, at 7:30 PM. This is a reserved open-air seat.

I think the ticket was something like $45, but I’ll have to check it once I get home. Any takers?

OK, I know I've threatened to do this before, but this time I am actually going through with it. Seriously.

I don't know that I much care about the recent actions that SUP, the new owners of LJ, have taken. But I'm somewhat disturbed by what seems to be their general attitude towards their customers, and more disturbingly, with the fact that this company is no longer located in the United States of America and therefore not bound by US law.

I also happen to run my own web server, and free blogging software has gotten quite good in the last few years. Upshot: this is my new blog.

I'll still be keeping my LJ account so I can see friends-only posts, and so that I can reply to people's posts, but I do encourage you all to join me in not just complaining about LiveJournal's new owners, but actually doing something about it. I'll be happy to provide anyone who wants with free advice about how to migrate your posts and how to set up your own blog under your own control on your own server.

Just jumping on the ol' bandwagon here and reporting on the once and future LARP cons.

Intercon H

Since I was at the ops desk for most of the con, I don't really have as much to report about H as most other people do. I'll basically just say that I had a great con, things seemed to go very smoothly overall, and that we had a very good first run of "The Last Seder." Also, I got a chance to play larpwriting and sophistbastard's "10 Bad Modules in 100 Bad Minutes," which was a hilarious campaign-oriented take on the "10 Bad LARPs" series. Highly recommended.

I also want to thank everyone who came by the Ops desk to help this weekend - you guys were incredibly helpful and we totally couldn't have done it without you. In particular, those of you who helped Renee in the Con Suite are heroes and deserve many, many thanks.

Festival of the LARPs

Festival of the LARPs signup is now open! If you want to go to a FREE LARP CONVENTION from April 4-6, this is your chance.

I'm signed up for:

The Last Seder (as a GM)
Snaf University (GM)
Last Stop
Miskatonic Archaeological Expedition
Marin County New Age Society Cocktail Party

If you want to sign up for any of these awesome games, go to our web site!

Stolen from rigel.

Age: 24
From: Hastings-on-Hudson, NY. For those from the New York metro area, that will roughly read as "white boy land."
Languages: English, obviously. Some Spanish, but not fluent by any means. Lots of programming languages, if that counts.
Parentage: First son of a grad school professor and a children's librarian. My dad's family is all from Russia and western-bloc former SSRs, and my mom's family is half Russian and half Hungarian.
Education: BS in Computer Science and Philosophy from Brandeis University.
Relationship/Domestic Status: In a serious, long-term relationship with v_cat. She and I live together along with three other friends.
Vocation: Web Applications Developer at DataSynapse, Inc. Previously worked at PatientKeeper and Novell.
Astrology: Aries and Year of the Pig, but I don't put any stock in superstition.
Totem: It's an okay media player, I guess. (Yes, I understand the meaning of the question, and am deliberately evading it. See answer to Astrology question.)
Food and Sex: Preferably separate, thanks. In terms of food, I'm a chocoholic and also love BBQ and Indian food, and generally am a sucker for anything spicy. In terms of sex... that's for me to know. :)
Sexual Orientation: Ostensibly straight.
Piercings: None.
Tattoos: None.
Health Foo: Very obviously overweight. Childhood asthma, which isn't around anymore, thankfully. Allergic to cats. Occasionally prone to pulled leg muscles, which I think are stress related.
Hobbies: Gaming (LARP, board games, old school PC adventure games). I play guitar and like to sing, both with instruments and karaoke. LARP increasingly is my life.

I heart Leonard Cohen:

Jazz police are looking through my folders
Jazz police are talking to my niece
Jazz police have got their final orders
Jazzer, drop your axe, it's Jazz police!

The past week or so has been really, really hectic in Nat-land. Things usually get like this around Intercon, so it's all good. ( Read more... )

White people will often say they are “spiritual” but not religious. Which usually means that they will believe any religion that doesn’t involve Jesus.

It's funny, laugh. :)

Rush tickets go on sale tomorrow.

Anybody in?

Oh, and Something*Positive fans may be interested to know that Randy Milholland will be coming to Intercon H! Woohoo!

BTW, those of you following stuff here on this journal may have noticed that I'm not [redact]ing names anymore. After due consideration, most people don't really see the point of it, and it seems like it was an overreaction to be doing it in the first place.

Where possible, I'm linking to people's LJ usernames (e.g. v_cat) instead of mentioning their real names. If they don't have an LJ username, I'll mention the real name instead. If anyone doesn't want to be mentioned, or wants to be mentioned in a particular way, please comment here and let me know.

Part 2 will be posted friends-only. Sorry, general public, but there's things I don't want to discuss with the whole world.

Arisia 2008 was by any rational measure very successful for me, for Intercon, and for Alleged Entertainment. Some highlights:

( Read more... )

Went out to my car this morning to find the front passenger-side window punched in.

They'd obviously been through the glove compartment, but all my stuff was still there.  They didn't take the ($80) iPod adapter, they didn't take the ($200) GPS unit.  They did, however, take the (less than $10) GPS holder that was attached to the windshield.  ?!?!

Auto glass people are coming out to fix it this afternoon.

Welcome to Somerville, I guess.

UPDATE: They're not coming out to fix it this afternoon like they said; now I have to go out to Watertown tomorrow morning to have it fixed.  Grrr.

I know I'm a little bit late to the party on this, but I'd like to go and see The Golden Compass this weekend.  With ringing endorsements like this, I've pretty much got to. :)

If possible, I'd like to organize a movie/dinner mob to do so.  Who's with me?

Stolen from tpau.

So, for "first pet," since I've never owned a pet that I named, I'm going with "first computer" instead.  My first computer was named Sonic.

1. Your rock star name (first pet, current car): Sonic Echo

2. Your gangsta name (fave ice cream flavor, favorite type of shoe): Peanut Butter Moc

3. Your Native American name (favorite color, favorite animal): Yellow Loris

4. Your soap opera name (middle name, city where you were born): Lang New York

5. Your Star Wars name (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 of your first name, followed by the first two letters of your mother's maiden name and the first three letters of your hometown): Buna Lahas

6. Superhero name (2nd favorite color, favorite drink): Orange Baileys

7. NASCAR name (the first names of your grandfathers): Bill Joseph

8. Stripper name (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy): Shiseido Reeses

10. TV weather anchor name (your 5th grade teacher's last name, a major city that starts with the same letter): Marcus Moscow

11. Spy name (your favorite season/holiday, flower): Winter Tulip

12. Cartoon name: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you're wearing right now): Apple Pants

13. Hippie name (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree): Coffee Redwood

14. Porn Star Name (the name of your first pet followed by the street you first lived on): Sonic Rosedale

Yoinked from gruyere.

1. Put your music player on "random." Skip songs with not-very interesting titles (such as "Concerto #4 in E minor").
2. List the titles of the first 25 songs to come up.
3. Put "in my pants" after each title.

As an added bonus, I've put snarky comments next to those where I could think of them.

1. Maggie's Pancakes In My Pants - Enter the Haggis (mmm, pants pancakes...)
   
2. Red Integra In My Pants - Honest Bob & the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives (those are probably some big pants)
   
3. Walk of Life In My Pants - Dire Straits
4. Six Guys, Ten Teeth In My Pants - Paul & Storm
   
5. Dark Angel In My Pants - VnV Nation
6. Wind-Up In My Pants - Jethro Tull (hmmm....)
   
7. I Think I'm Going Bald In My Pants - Rush (some would enjoy that kind of thing)
   
8. Green Fingernails In My Pants - The American Song-Poem Collection
9. The Lie In My Pants - Bad Religion (I don't tend to lie about that, but I guess some people do)
   
10. She's Actual Size In My Pants - They Might Be Giants (see 9 above)
    
11. Brave Foot Soldiers In My Pants - Wolfstone
12. Bridge In My Pants - Marillion
13. Harvest of the Moon In My Pants - Steeleye Span
14. Liquid Dreams In My Pants - Liquid Tension Experiment (it's just too easy)
    
15. Let Me Be In My Pants - Pentangle (yeah, who are you to tell me not to wear pants!)
    
16. 21st Century Schizoid Man In My Pants - King Crimson
17. Walkin' With Mr. Lee In My Pants - Lee Allen & His Band
18. Five Per Cent for Nothing In My Pants - Yes
19. Operators Are Standing By In My Pants - They Might Be Giants
20. Out of Control In My Pants - Oingo Boingo (yeah, yeah...)
    
21. Obviously In My Pants - Jesus H Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse
22. Dogs & Ferrets In My Pants - Steeleye Span (ouch!)
23. Tennessee Stud In My Pants - Doc Watson (awwwww yeah)
24. The Miracle In My Pants - Queen
25. Attacked By Snakes In My Pants! - The Aquabats (double ouch!)

Since my last few posts have been fluffy meme-age, I wanted to take a few minutes and talk about something real I've been working on: the next version of Journey.

Most of you probably don't know what Journey is, although a lot of people may have used it without realizing. Journey is a web-based questionnaire engine that I wrote for LARP casting questionnaires. To date, it's been used by three LARP groups: Alleged Entertainment (the group I belong to), Foam Brain Productions, and Immortal Sociopaths.

Journey works pretty well, generally speaking, and I've been happy with it. It certainly works a lot better than LACE, the older questionnaire script I wrote in mod_python to cast the first run of Snaf University. For about six months now, there haven't been any new features introduced in Journey, because it pretty much just works well enough for people to use it.

Or, at least, that's what I've been saying to some people who ask about it. Actually, what's been going on is that I've been preparing a whole raft of improvements that pretty much have to be added all at once. I think it's looking good enough that I'm comfortable telling the world about it. So, this post constitutes the first public announcement of Journey2, the new, improved Journey.

( What Journey does well )
( What Journey does not so well )
( The Future )

I've really enjoyed working on Journey so far, and I hope you've all enjoyed using it. If you have any comments or suggestions about it, I'd love to hear them.

Gmail users: now you can use IMAP instead of crappy POP3.

Yes, v_cat, I'm looking at you. :)

- How did you choose your LJ name? What does it mean?

"Nat Budin" is actually my real name. Well, my full name is "Nathaniel Lang Budin." I go by "Nat" because "Nathaniel" sounds very old-fashioned. "Lang" is my mom's maiden name, and it's also the middle name of my two younger brothers, thehumanclams and Jeremiah.

Nathaniel (I'm told) means "gift of God." My brothers also have Biblical first names, presumably because my parents thought that would be cool.

Lang, or so the family story goes, is an Ellis Island name. Nobody knows the original family name, but the ancestor that first came over to America had bright, flaming red hair (hmm, must be a recessive trait). "Lang" is Hungarian for "flame."

The origin of the name Budin is lost to the mists of time. However, many of my Spanish-speaking friends find it pretty funny, because in Spanish, Budin means "pudding." Hence my IRC nick, mrpudding.

- Is it a handle you use in other parts of your online life?

Yes, except:

* on IRC I'm "pudding" or "mrpudding" (see above story)
* on online games I'm usually "Collini" (generated by a name generator, I liked the sound of it)

- How well do you feel the name "describes" you? Do you identify with it?

It better! It's my real name!

- Have you ever considered changing it?

No, but there was a period of time when thehumanclams was considering inverting his middle and last names ("Budin Lang" instead of "Lang Budin"). This was because my mom's generation was going to be the last of the Langs, and he didn't want the name to die out. For some reason he never did it - maybe he can tell you that story.

- If we met online, what name did you first know me under?

Almost certainly my real name.

Hello, folks! Last night, at the Festival of the LARPs 2008 kickoff meeting, we settled on two possible weekends for the convention, but we didn't have a strong preference as to which one it should be. Our decision was that we should post a poll on LiveJournal to determine which weekend to use.

The pros and cons of each weekend, as we saw them:

April 11-13 is a week later, which will give us more time to prepare for the convention. However, it's pretty close to Passover break, which means professors might be piling on more work then, so people might be less busy over the weekend of the 4-6.

So, it's up to you, dear readers. Which weekend would YOU prefer Festival 2008 to be held?

Poll #1070155 Festival 2008 Dates
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Which weekend should Festival of the LARPs 2008 be held on?

If you put "other", what weekend would you like it to be on?