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WIL WHEATON dot NET
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50,000 Monkeys at 50,000 Typewriters Can't Be Wrong

random thoughts from vancouver

Posted on 19 August, 2010 By Wil

I have a late call today, so I have some time to write. Yaaaaay. Here's a few things that have been on my mind in the last, oh, 36 hours or so.

So that silly thing Paul and Storm and Adam and I did sort of took off, didn't it? I'm thrilled that so many people found it as entertaining and amusing as we did; it was a lot of fun to put it all together.

You know, it almost didn't happen. Storm suggested it on Thursday, and I was on my way to Vancouver on Friday, so I wouldn't be able to do my part until Saturday, and we were positive that someone else would beat us to the punch. It was pretty cool when Saturday morning rolled around and nobody had done our joke, yet, so we all soldiered on. Paul and Storm took their photos backstage at a show, Adam did his picture in his secret underground evil genius lair (it's not a secret that he has one of those, right? Because if it is, let's just forget that I said that, okay?) and I just figured that I'd bug Felicia to take my pictures … but she was working second unit all day Saturday, and I had to figure out a way to do it all on my own.

First, I tried holding my cell phone camera, but that didn't work and left me with just one hand to gesture and stuff, so I thought that I could maybe use photobooth on my Mac. I knew it would look like I'd used photobooth, so I thought it would be fun to take advantage of that and embrace its limitations. That's how I ended up putting in all those fake backgrounds. (I have to say, the Paris one is my favorite.)

The app I used on my iPad is called Penultimate. Molly Lewis turned me on to it, and for what it does, it's totally worth a couple bucks.

I also wanted to make sure that The Chive was properly credited: we're just standing on their shoulders, riffing on their original idea, and this obviously wouldn't have happened on its own.

Speaking of w00tstock: I just heard that the San Francisco w00tstock shows are selling out, fast. Thursday has more tickets available than Friday, but I'm pretty sure both shows will be SRO, because SF seems to really like our show.

===

Yesterday, Stan Lee had a cameo on Eureka. I can't divulge any details, but I can say that he's one of the nicest people I've ever met – certainly the nicest living legend – and he was just wonderful to everyone. It was adorable how excited and nerdy everyone in the cast and crew was, and how great Stan was to all of us. Also? The cameo they wrote for him was just fucking perfect. I just know it's going to kill when this episode airs.

===

Facebook continues its all-out assault on its users' privacy with the new Places feature, which is (of course) on by default, with no warning. Lifehacker has the lowdown, including how to turn it off. As I've said before, if you dig Facebook, I'm not going to give you a hard time about it, but I strongly encourage you to turn this feature off. The world doesn't need to know where you live, and when you are (and aren't) home. Also: Fuck you, Facebook, for turning this on by default and not warning your users about it. You're one of the most profoundly immoral companies in the history of the Internet.

===

When I was at Gencon, I got to play this storytelling RPG called Fiasco that is simply amazing. I will write an entire post about it in the near future, but until then, check out Gnome Stew and Critical Hits for posts about the greatest storytelling RPG this side of A Penny For My Thoughts. One of the great thing about Fiasco is how easy it is to write settings for the game, like this time traveler setting my friend Will is developing. (Warning: if you haven't played the game, this is not a good setting for your first time.)

===

I keep running up against content and licensing restrictions, since I'm in Canada. It's making me show my rageface a lot, but that's a rant for a Techland column, I think. The short version: it's really fucking stupid to apply geographic restrictions to the Internet, which is sort of its own place that doesn't give a shit about geography. Media companies could go a long way toward combating piracy simply by acknowledging this reality and making it easier for honest people like me to watch the goddamn on-demand videos they bought from Amazon while they were in the United States, regardless of what country they're currently visiting.

===

I've been taking pictures and Twittering like crazy from the set. If you are interested in that sort of thing, you can follow me on Twitter for more updates than you ever wanted to see.

===

One last thing: Slacker Radio works just fine in Canada (go Slacker!) and I've been enjoying the hell out of my Camera Obscura and Catherine Wheel stations. The problems I used to have with the Android app have all been fixed, and it's been a real joy to walk around Vancouver, streaming music right into my head. (Right now, it's playing Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which is weird to hear outside of Rock Band.)

It's unlikely I'll have time to write again before the weekend, so let me take this moment to wish you all a great weekend. Take deep breaths, and be kind.

Thanks for spending this moment with me.

In which I am a HPOA

Posted on 17 August, 2010 By Wil

I'm working very long hours on Eureka, so I don't have a lot of time or energy to post more than silly things on Twitter, but I did this over the weekend, and I wanted to share:

The w00tstock organization wishes to post the following photo correspondence from “Wil”—which is most certainly not a hoax, and is not just a derivative attempt to cash in on some meme that was funny for 36 hours last week—without comment.

We will, however, attempt to rise above this hardship and continue somehow. The next w00tstock shows will occur September 16 & 17 at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.

We’re working our contact for “Wil’s” last name.

Wil Wheaton "quits" w00tstock, whiteboard-style

This idea was entirely Storm's. He wrote most of it, and then we all brainstormed (brainSTORMed! HA! HA!) some of the other bits. I improvised the photo effects part, and it was Storm's idea to put me on a boat.

And no, I'm not really quitting w00tstock.

epic wil … ll … ll

Posted on 11 August, 2010 By Wil

WiL+LL+LL

That's me, Will Hindmarch, and Will Schoonover, making the most epic Wil … ll … ll gang sign, ever. I loved that, because I only have one L in my name, I had a hand to make the W. (I don't remember who owns the hand making the I, but I'm pretty sure it's not someone called Wil(l).)

(Photo by Dammit Liz, our w00tstock Dungeon Master, who kept me company at GenCon and didn't get her copy of Munchkin because I needed to get geeky soap.)

i have the heart of a dragon (no, really, i do)

Posted on 9 August, 2010 By Wil

Home from GenCon.

Happily exhausted.

I killed a dragon with one hit.

Now, it's time to sleep for two days.

Game on: GenCon info, chapbooks, and dice. Lots and lots of dice.

Posted on 3 August, 2010 By Wil

I leave for GenCon in about 3d12 hours. While I'm not thrilled about getting up at 4am on Thursday, knowing that the reward for dragging myself out of bed at areyoufuckingserious o'clock is three days of gaming and geeking makes it all worthwhile.

I'm blessing dice, taking pictures, and signing books, pictures, bodies and other interesting things for about 3 6 hours each day. I'm trying to set it up so I have a 2 3 hour session in the morning and a 1 3 hour session in the afternoon, but I won't know precise times until I'm on site, and I get a sense of how many people want to get stuff signed and whatever. I'll announce times on Twitter once I'm at the con.

I don't have any books, because I ran out and wasn't able to order new ones in time for GenCon. However, I'm bringing a limited-edition Chapbook in the style of Wil Wheaton's Limited Edition Chapbooks. This one is entirely gaming-related stories, and I'm really, really happy with how it has turned out. Here's the introduction:

Of all the things that make me a geek, nothing brings me more joy, or is more important to me, than gaming. I am the person I am today because of the games I played and the people I played them with as I came of age in the 80s.
This is a small collection of stories about gaming in its various forms, from cards to dice to computers to our beloved tabletop RPGs. Most of these stories were originally published in 2009, when my son Ryan was away at college, and my son Nolan was 17.

Keep playing games. Games are important. Games matter. When you play a game – any game – you’re using your imagination to bring a world to life, and that’s truly special, because while all destruction is essentially the same, when you create something, it’s different every single time. When you create something together, you’re building bonds with your fellow gamers that could last for your entire lives. The Venn Diagram of my best friends, my gaming group, and people from high school I still hang out with is one perfect circle. I suspect that for many gamers of my generation, that’s equally true … and I know that my kids will be saying the same thing in 20 years about people they’ve never met face to face, but interact with almost every day in an online game that will make Call of Duty look then like Pong looks today.

Roll 20s,
Wil Wheaton
August 3, 2010

I'm bringing 200 chapbooks. When I did this at PAX Prime last year, I sold out in about 5 hours, so plan accordingly if you really want one.

Oh, this is really important: I got the Swine Flu at PAX Prime, and it was the worst two weeks of my life. When we went to PAX East, all of us (Jerry, Mike, Kurtz, Straub, Paul and Storm, The Professor and Mary Ann) all agreed that we wouldn't shake hands, give hugs, or engage in human contact with people, to limit the introduction of infection vectors. Most people understood, and we gave each other the old Iron Guard Salute (not the fascist thing, the gaming thing that looks like like "love" in ASL). The result: a few people were cheesed off, but none of us were too upset about that, because none of us got sick. It was the first con I've gone to in my whole life where I didn't get some form of Con Crud, and I'd like to repeat that until we turn out the lights on Planet Earth. So, tl;dr: I'm not going to touch people at the con. I know it seems weird, but I hope you understand why. I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm trying not to get sick. (Edited to add: in comments, a non-zero number of readers seem to have a real problem with this, and people on the rest of the Internets are already giving me a hard time about it in very unkind terms. This makes me really sad; I hoped for a little more empathy and understanding. Not that it should matter, but I have Epstein-Barr, so my immune system isn't as robust as a normal person's; it is very easy for me to catch viruses and other nasty things. I'm not going to apologize for not wanting to get sick, especially after two weeks of Swine Flu. If you can't understand that, it's your problem, not mine.)

My panel is called I'm Wil Wheaton, and I'm a Gamer. It is on Friday morning, at 11. If you have one of my T-shirts from Jinx or shirt.woot, and you wear it to the panel, you can be in a group picture either just before or just after the panel.

The rest of the con, I plan to find and play as many games as I can, because holy shit I'm finally coming to GenCon!

Games I want to play while I'm there:

  • Savage Worlds
  • Dragon Age RPG
  • Magic: The Gathering
  • Zombie Dice
  • Cthulhu Dice
  • Button Men
  • Munchkin
  • A Penny For My Thoughts

I have one request, which I hope isn't unreasonable: I'd like to test the theory that you can't have too many dice. If I see you at GenCon, would you give me one gaming die? I'll bring home as many as I get, dump them all on my office floor, and take a picture. I think it could be pretty cool … or very, very sad. Either way, it will be something, you can be sure of that.

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