rob vincent dot net

Zachary Byron Helm has written an interesting post about the slow death of social interaction.

Save the date: April 4 is the next pillow fight in Union Square.

The possibility of my attending this year's Defcon has been upgraded from "well, it'd be nice" to "a definite maybe."

My friend Cableflame disapproves of prank calls, but I successfully got her to laugh at one last night.

Dave Makes has posted an interview with Eric Michaud on the subject of hackerspaces. Eric successfully puts into words so much of what is wonderful about the hackerspace concept, in newbie-friendly terms.

Firefly walking, Firefly tired
Firefly take a little snooze

Last night I slept for one and a half hours instead of my usual necessary biological allotment, which is upwards of More Than That.

I am at work now and luckily there is a machine which can urinate free caffeine into a paper cup for me.

LOVELY LOVELY MACHINE URINE.

Sleep, however, is even yummier than machine urine. Have I ever told you folks how yummy sleep is? I highly recommend sleep (in the form of naps and/or sleeping) for those like me right now who are tired. Science has proven that sleep cures tired, without the use of artificial flavors or colors or generically modified organisms. Sleep protects children and clears the mind of such things as needing to sleep. I know because I was there.

Pillows are soft. I'll bet my pillow at home is still warm from my nightly radiating head heat.

Shmoocon was lots of fun! I learned a lot, caught up with old friends, made new friends, spent some quality girlfriend time with Nicky, gained fame and fortune by way of French scifi, and more.

Rather than do a detailed writeup I shall haphazardly list some personal highlights.

• Seeing so many of my old friends finally and/or again. The trouble with an international hacker community is however tight-knit you get, you still tend to live miles apart from one another. Cons like this are a great chance to add some rare RL shenanigans to the mix. I met a bunch of my pals in-person for the first time, and caught up with others I've met before but still don't see nearly enough.
• Spending quality girlfriend time with my beloved Nicky.
• The pre-con dinner for the Hackerspaces community, hosted by the extraordinary humans at HacDC. It's in a church!
• The party the next night, also at HacDC. Did I mention it's in a church? You haven't lived until you've danced the night away with your significant other and friends in front of rows of pews, while a DJ does his thing in a pulpit and laser graffiti shines around a hanging crucifix. If everything else in Christian church were like this, I'd consider converting.
• Meeting Nicky's friends from Chicago 2600, and attending their presentation about repeatedly owning each other.
• Seeing professional government freeloader Matthew Lesko hanging out in a hotel bar. Yes, he was wearing That Suit.
• Exploring the depths of the hotel with Phone Losers of America alumni
• Searching for a rumored hotel room party with Nicky, Cableflame, Bernie S, Tiffany Rad, and others; in the process having our own elevator party and stumbling onto various hidden goodies around the Hotel.
• Eating lunch at an outdoor cafe in warm, sunny weather in February. WTF?
• EPIC SUSHI.
• PLA stickers and post-its everywhere.
• Winning the "crowd favorite" category in the Barcode Shmarcode contest. My entry was a Multi Pass inspired by The Fifth Element which I made from scratch.
• Attending a Cuong Nhu-inspired self defense workshop with Nicky, during which we were encouraged to practice on one another. OMG DOMESTIC VIOLENCE! All I want is my name...
• Taking back most of the snarky things I've said to Grey about ShmooCon over the years, while still maintaining that their ticketing scheme is unnecessarily exclusive and batshit insane.
• Witnessing the various brilliant fake ShmooCon badges, from Openfly and NYC Resistor's laser-cut replicas of varying accuracy to Altalp's ingenius low-budget ID-sleeve-and-sharpie creation (which worked all con!)
• Offering the Doctor a jelly baby.
• Playing a round in a Halo tournament against Nicky, and having her move onto the next level with 0 kills because I managed to kill myself twice.
• Cableflame taking me on a detour to the National Portrait Gallery on the way to my bus home, and showing me a whole lot of really neat art.
• Getting a head start on looking forward to next year. See you then!

I didn't use my camera much at the con, because Nicky's camera is smaller and better and contains a much more well-behaved imp. So, enjoy these photos and con reports from her and others..

• Nicky's blog and photos
• RBCP's blog and photos
• Grey's blog and photos
• Jon Callas' photo of my Multi Pass

This weekend I shall be flitting down to DC to catch up with some old friends and attend my first ShmooCon. This promises to be fun!

If you're going as well, please feel free to get in touch and say hello!