being a geek is about having a great community

Posted on By Wil

In a couple hours, I'm heading down to San Diego for the craziest, most exhausting, most awesome four days of the year: Comicon.

Earlier this morning, Felicia and I were Google Plussing about how to survive the con. I'm assuming some of you are not among the eleventy billion people who have the G+, so I thought I'd reprint it here, especially for you (yes, for  you):

Felicia said:

If you are at Comicon this weekend a few things:

1) Bring deodorant, it's hot
2) Here's an updated Guild signing/panel schedule: http://t.co/K2NtZG0
3) If you see me rush by, I'm not being rude, I'm probably just late for something. Feel free to tweet something about how pale/short I am, that's relatively common reaction.
4) Have fun with your friends, because being a geek is about having a great community most of all.

Then I said:

I can add a couple of things to this:

5) Wear comfortable shoes. It isn't uncommon to walk five miles a day.
6) Stay hydrated. It's hot, you're excited, you're walking five miles a day. You're going to need water. Soda and coffee dehydrate you, so they don't count. If you find yourself thinking, "Man, I am really drinking a ton of water," then you're doing it right.
7) Be patient with your fellow fans, and with the people you're there to see and meet. For some of the big movie and TV stars, this will be the first time they've ever been around a hundred thousand superfans like us, and it scares the hell out of them.
8) For the love of the FSM, don't stop in the middle of a walkway to look at your phone.
9) Come to w00tstock on Thursday!
10) Come to the Eureka panel on Friday!
11) Come to the Nerdist podcast on Saturday!
12) Support the indie artists!

Here are five rules I wrote Concerning Conventions in my Geek In Review column at Suicide Girls a few years ago (This page is SFW, but the site is deliciously NSFW) http://suicidegirls.com/news/geek/22107/Wil-Wheatons-Geek-in-Review-Concerning-Conventions/

And to reiterate what the short and pale +Felicia Day said: Have fun with your friends, because being a geek is about having a great community most of all.

We all talk about how Hollywood has pretty much taken over Comicon, and fundamentally changed it forever. That has its up and downsides, but regardless of how the final math on that shakes out, there is one scientific fact: We who attend conventions get to decide how awesome they are going to be. A promoter can set the tone, and volunteers can keep things running smoothly, but there are more of us than there are of them, and if we commit to being awesome to each other and to the guests, the con can't help but be awesome in return.

Oh, and don't forget: it is dangerous to go alone!

an update on the wheaton and son homebrewing experience

Posted on By Wil

Today, Ryan and I racked (that's fancy homebrew language for "moved") our beer from its primary fermentation into its secondary fermentation. We know now that we probably moved it a little early, but since we're learning and everything, we'll just chalk it up to experience and hope for the best.

I've been worried about our beer (I know, I know, that's explicitly contraindicated by the system's operating instructions, but it's part of my firmware), because we made some mistakes: we didn't oxygenate it nearly enough after the coldbreak, we didn't rehydrate the yeast, and we forgot to put liquid into our fermentation lock for close to 24 hours.

Whoops. Kind of important things, there, it turns out. I understand that it isn't the biggest of deals, and we're going to learn from our mistakes for our next batch, but I still feel a little silly for making, well, rookie mistakes.

I never saw bubbles in the fermentation lock (our primary was a bucket), even after we put some vodak into the fermentation lock, but I just hoped for the best … and got a plesant surprise a few days ago when I bumped the lid and the lock bubbled, indicating positive pressure inside, and GOOD THINGS HAPPENING GO YEAST GO HUZZAH! This morning, we took a SG reading and saw that it had moved from 1.045 to 1.022 (temperature corrected). I couldn't find anything in our notes or on the recipe that told me when it was safe to rack it to secondary (which, I also know, isn't something you need to do with an APA, but a choice we made anyway) so I assumed that, since it was a bit more than a week later and the SG had fallen, we were safe to move it and let it keep fermenting in the carboy.

I think we may have racked it too soon, because I'm told by the Twitters that I should have waited until it was closer to 1.018 … and I may have screwed my FG if I didn't get enough active yeast into the secondary.

But even if we messed up, I'm not all that upset about it. It was still really fun and exciting to see and smell our beer for the first time since we locked it away in the fermentor. We're not giving up on this one, and we planned to do another batch pretty soon, anyway. In fact, I have two kits coming from the Brooklyn Brew Shop that we're going to make next week.

Question for the Homebrewers: did we screw up? If we did, how badly did we screw up? I don't think we got enough yeast into the secondary, because there was a huge yeastcake on the bottom of the primary when we were done. Can/should we pitch some more yeast into the carboy?

probably the best idea i’ve ever had

Posted on By Wil

Last week, I saw this at Reddit.

I KNOW RIGHT?! I told the Twitter and the Google Plus and the Tumblr that we all need to print these things out and hang them up everywhere (it's legally allowed for us to do so. cough.) For the past four days, I've gotten lots of image links from people on the Twitters who have done precisely that, and it amuses me greatly each time I see it. This morning, Think Geek picked it up and tagged it #OldMan, which is also amusing … but gives the thing a signal boost that can make this ZOMG EPIC.

Ready for this? Okay, here's my idea:

We take tons of these flyers to Comic-Con, hang them up (where it's legally allowed for us to do so. cough.) and make this A Thing. I think that would be hilarious and awesome and also awesome and hilarious.

And you know why? Because it's silly, and not everyone will get it … but the people who do get it will love it. That's why.

(Major thanks go to Redditor possibly_all_3 for making this in the first place.)

“There’s only one rule that I know of, babies: Goddamn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

Posted on By Wil

The list of Stuff I Need to Write About just keeps getting bigger and bigger … so instead of trying to tackle it right now, I give you this, from my Twittersbox a little bit ago:

When you're fortunate enough to have success and love what you do, you have a choice: Be kind and grateful, or be a dick. I choose the first.

When I see someone who is successful, whose work I enjoy, treat other people badly, it just makes me sick inside, and sad for them.

So I do my best to live by example, treat everyone with kindness, and never lose perspective on how lucky I am. Okay, thanks for listening.

It's easy to be a dick, to never be happy with what you have, and to treat someone else's success as your failure … but how does that make you happier? How does that make you feel good about yourself? Every single day, we have hundreds of opportunities to make a choice: Kindess or Cruelty, Gratitude or Bitterness, Generosity or Selfishness … the list goes on and on forever.

Our lives are the result of our choices, and every choice we make affects another person, often in ways we can't even imagine.

…so what kind of life do you choose to live?

(title quote from Kurt Vonnegut)