(no subject)
Today has been a good day.
It open late, as my recent days are wont to do, and began with nothing much. Ate and waited, for it was goddamn hot and I needed to go into Troy, which I did around three.
IT IS TOO GODDDAMN HOT WHEN, TRAVELLING AT FULL SPEED ON A BIKE, YOU ARE STILL TOO HOT. And I mean full speed; there is one good way on a bike from RPI to downtown Troy, and it is very, very downhill.
Had a nice day setting up bank stuff. Still behind on the at-home bank stuff, but not going to go into that.
On the way home, literally at my doorstep, ran into Colin Popell, a now-Sophomore at RPI who I now via both the Warren crowd and Games Club.
Kevin has also been taking today off, as he's on vacation this week. So we got to telling various gaming stories (read: Aria) and from there went into various philosophy, mostly revolving around the sense of the self with regards to things like destructive-read replication and mental upload / augmentation / sublimation, etc, which were in essence explorations of what we each considered to be ourselves.
Suffice to say, I have an unusual idea of self. Kevin came up with some very good questions, most of which I don't remember.
In and amongst this I had checked the Sufficiently Advanced Forum (links later, but it's a post-singularity scifi RPG), where I'd recently started a thread for a civilization idea called the Unbound (named after Homeworld's Bentusi, but almost entirely inspired by The Culture). Colin, the guy who wrote SA and is putting together the expansion, "really likes them and wants to hear more." Well, I've had a problem. I have this mostly formed idea in my head of what the Unbound are, but I don't have that many good ideas about how to convey it. The best of those ideas is in story form, so for the first time in a very long time I tried to write some fiction. I suppose at this point it's more like a rough listing of plot points wrapped in prose, but hey, I don't do this often. (Links at bottom)
Then, I pick up the copy of Singularity Sky lent to me by Paul (as the book came up during our discussion, it being a very prime inspiration for SA), read the first page of the prolog - and throw the book down because it is too goddamn awesome. No, seriously. And that's what I actually wanted to say, but figured I could include the rest of it.
PS - The author? Yeah, he's also a serious coder. Links!
SA Wiki - http://suffadv.wikidot.com/start
Unbound Thread - http://suffadv.wikidot.com/forum/t-64944/the-unbound-mind (Fiction should be at or near bottom for a while longer)
Charles Stross, author of Singularity Sky: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/
It open late, as my recent days are wont to do, and began with nothing much. Ate and waited, for it was goddamn hot and I needed to go into Troy, which I did around three.
IT IS TOO GODDDAMN HOT WHEN, TRAVELLING AT FULL SPEED ON A BIKE, YOU ARE STILL TOO HOT. And I mean full speed; there is one good way on a bike from RPI to downtown Troy, and it is very, very downhill.
Had a nice day setting up bank stuff. Still behind on the at-home bank stuff, but not going to go into that.
On the way home, literally at my doorstep, ran into Colin Popell, a now-Sophomore at RPI who I now via both the Warren crowd and Games Club.
Kevin has also been taking today off, as he's on vacation this week. So we got to telling various gaming stories (read: Aria) and from there went into various philosophy, mostly revolving around the sense of the self with regards to things like destructive-read replication and mental upload / augmentation / sublimation, etc, which were in essence explorations of what we each considered to be ourselves.
Suffice to say, I have an unusual idea of self. Kevin came up with some very good questions, most of which I don't remember.
In and amongst this I had checked the Sufficiently Advanced Forum (links later, but it's a post-singularity scifi RPG), where I'd recently started a thread for a civilization idea called the Unbound (named after Homeworld's Bentusi, but almost entirely inspired by The Culture). Colin, the guy who wrote SA and is putting together the expansion, "really likes them and wants to hear more." Well, I've had a problem. I have this mostly formed idea in my head of what the Unbound are, but I don't have that many good ideas about how to convey it. The best of those ideas is in story form, so for the first time in a very long time I tried to write some fiction. I suppose at this point it's more like a rough listing of plot points wrapped in prose, but hey, I don't do this often. (Links at bottom)
Then, I pick up the copy of Singularity Sky lent to me by Paul (as the book came up during our discussion, it being a very prime inspiration for SA), read the first page of the prolog - and throw the book down because it is too goddamn awesome. No, seriously. And that's what I actually wanted to say, but figured I could include the rest of it.
PS - The author? Yeah, he's also a serious coder. Links!
SA Wiki - http://suffadv.wikidot.com/start
Unbound Thread - http://suffadv.wikidot.com/forum/t-64944/the-unbound-mind (Fiction should be at or near bottom for a while longer)
Charles Stross, author of Singularity Sky: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/