danbruno.net

Tufts gives all seniors an interminable (and mandatory) survey to complete online prior to graduation. I’ve been clicking radio buttons and check boxes and drop-down menus for the past hour. Below are some of the nuggets of wisdom I provided for the poor saps who have to read all of these things.

Survey question: Did you do a senior thesis?

Answer: No.

Survey question: Why not?

Answer: Towards the end of my junior year, I visited my advisor and asked him, “Should I do a thesis?” And his response was “Nah.”

Survey question: Is there anything Tufts could have done to make you consider doing one?

Answer: If he hadn’t said “Nah,” I might have considered it.

Survey question: Why did you double major?

Answer: No big reason. I like English, but I also like music.

Survey question: How did the double majoring affect your experience at Tufts?

Answer: Frankly, if I had just majored in English, I don’t know what I would have done with all the free time.

Survey question: Which course best characterized what a truly excellent college course should be?

Answer: Music for Multimedia II.

Survey question: Why?

Answer: When I took this course, there were only four students, and we learned to use state-of-the-art recording software in a fancy computer lab. We went on a class trips to visit a recording studio video game developer. It should be on the cover of every Tufts pamphlet.

Survey question: Any additional comments about your Tufts experience?

Answer: Tufts was pretty great. My high school guidance counselor encouraged me to apply to Harvard — we didn’t have enough Ivy-bound students, I think — but I told him I’d rather be here. I think I made the right choice.

I’ll be in Cambridge, MA at ROFLCon this weekend, and then CBC Saturday night with the MetaFilter folks. If you see a bewildered-looking dude with a mess of black hair, come say hi.

Web-savvy users have long known that YouTube has some of the dumbest comments on the internet, but the idiocy is really thrown into sharp relief when you put them side by side with MetaFilter comments. I credit the $5 signup fee.

Ammon Shea, in the Oxford University Press blog, writes about some of the weird stuff he found while reading the Oxford English Dictionary:

I’ll confess that on several occasions I thought that the editors of the OED were having a joke at the reader’s expense. The entry for unpoetic gives no definition, but there is a note that tells the reader to ‘cf. next.’ The reader dutifully looks ahead to the next entry which is unpoetical, the definition of which reads ‘cf. prev.’

Sure has been quiet around these parts, huh? Well, get ready for it to be a whole lot quieter!

Inspired by sites like The Brainy Gamer which explore video games from a more critical, intelligent angle, I’ve started a new blog about video games called Cruise Elroy. So far there’s only one real post, but I think it’s about as long as everything I’ve written here for the past two months put together. Take a look, won’t you?

Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away this morning at his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He was 69.

I was never a D&D player, but I have indirectly felt his influence through video games for years. Alec Meer at Rock, Paper, Shotgun writes:

Would we ever have had PC RPGs without Gygax’s laying down of roleplaying foundations back in 1974? Oh, probably - in some form, anyway. But would we have had Ultima, Fallout, Diablo, World of Warcraft, even Deus Ex? Probably not. Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights and Planescape Torment? Definitely not.

In short, he was an enormously influential figure in interactive entertainment, and will be missed.

For further reading, the MetaFilter thread eulogizing Gygax has some great stories.

This is great:

When you send a text message on the Verizon network, you can address your text by choosing a name out of your contact list, or you can address it by typing in a phone number. You can also type in a name. And if you type in L-E-I-L-A, then– bizarrely– your text will come to me.
This is a blog about the texts I have received. All of them are from strangers, intended for other Leilas, but obviously they missed their marks.

I hope she has a good text messaging plan. (via)

Five things I am excited for:

1. ROFLCon
2. Super Smash Bros. Brawl
3. Béla Fleck and Chick Corea at Symphony Hall
4. Ryanhood at Club Passim
5. Spring break

One thing I am not excited for:

1. Graduation

For Randall Munroe’s LimerickDB:

A young boy set out on his own
To restore Princess Z. to her throne
Ere he took on the horde,
Said a man with a sword,
“It’s dangerous to go alone.”

I could do this all day.