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What is your name?
Sam Hughes.
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Tell us something about you, your background, and what you've been up to lately?
I joined E2 while in secondary school. Since then I have obtained a
degree in mathematics and started a career in software engineering. I
currently work for an international company which makes machines. For
business. I have been a persistent member of Everything2 for almost all
of that time. My fields of expertise are programming, software testing,
computing, mathematics and time travel. My website is http://qntm.org.
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How did you discover Everything, and how did you become a noder?
I was introduced to E2 in - presumably - late 2001 by a friend of
mine at school. At the time, school was the only place I had internet
access. While my registration date says 27 December, I didn't write any
nodes until November of the following year. My first nodermeet was
Growing (almost) old disgracefully: drinking, dancing and deviant party
games in honour of Wntrmute's and The Debutante's birthdays: Bristol,
November 2006. This was the first time I met noders and probably sealed
the deal.
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What are your favorite writeups -- both your own and from other noders?
I am always extremely sparing with my C!s, so a brief glance at the
list of
writeups
that I have C!ed will show you the writeups that I enjoyed the most.
Some early favourites are the funny ones: THE LOUD NODE, The Squeak
Kitty Game, that old Philip Glass knock knock joke and dead rat
game. E2 shifted focus away from comedy after the early years so I also
like factual nodes which are the most non-Wikipedian (i.e. informative,
but opinionated and/or light-hearted): Logitech MX1000 laser mouse,
Yttrium, The in medias res serial killer plotline, aneurin's
writeups on contemporary British politics and of course Wikipedia reject
Fictional Black African-American DC animated Superheroes with the
power to manipulate electricity.
Probably the most important writeup to me is Amazing what you can do
with a paperclip and a snapped elastic band by texty, which is what
inspired the Ed Stories, starting with March 9, 2003. I am also a
great fan of The DJ of the future by di5tortion. This writeup was
one I admired long before I had the power to C! writeups, and I
deliberately noted it down and cast my first C! for it. The reason I
enjoyed it so much was that it felt like an accurate snapshot of a real
and extremely chilled moment in time, albeit a moment from a
not-too-distant fictional future. I must also mention Chase Scene by
The Custodian and i am tha god a speed by futurebird, one of very
few E2 poems to get an upvote from me, let alone a C!.
By far, my best-received writeup is Standing on a mountaintop in
northern Siberia under the rapidly descending bulk of asteroid McAlmont,
with a calculating expression and a baseball bat. I'm pretty sure the
excessively long title isn't the whole reason why this was such a
popular writeup. I think the text holds up well, though I do see
problems with it now. To my irritation, I've never successfully
recaptured whatever it is that makes "McAlmont" what it is.
This is followed by my highest-rated factual, How to destroy the
Earth, although the E2 version of this essay is much shorter than
the master copy that I keep on my website.
HTDTE was hugely popular and even got some media coverage, although
grander plans for a documentary and/or a book fell through.
I also rather like Incomplete two-word sentences with which to end
your life. This last writeup is admittedly not totally original, being
based on a concept invented by some friends of mine during a drunken
overnight punting trip. Very few of my writeups are straight comedy (it
takes a lot of confidence) and this one had a pretty slow start with
respect to voting, so I was glad when it began to take off.
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What are your favorite and least favorite memories from E2's history?
I love drama as much as the next guy, but the bad times are better forgotten.
For me, the best times on E2 have been spent in the real-world
company of other noders. We britnoders have got up to a lot of
entertaining antics over the years: Growing (almost) old disgracefully:
drinking, dancing and deviant party games in honour of Wntrmute's and
The Debutante's birthdays: Bristol, November 2006, Cake By Numbers: A
Birthday Noder Party Meet in Swindon, A nodermeet on a shoestring and
shoe leather. London, April 2008., Running the Reality Checkpoint: a
Sun-dappled Nodermeet in Cambridge, Electronica, Deep House and Soy:
The London Boozemonkeys welcome mkb., Wntrmeet 2008: A Birthday Noder
Gathering in Edinburgh, Beer! Mermaids! Jazz! The grand Copenhagen
birthday-meet of 2009, A Decade of Decadence: Britnoder Memorial Pub
Crawl, You've been a Noder how long? A Completely Token E2versary
Pretext for a London Britnoder Picnic and of course Sam512's
Nodingmeet In Winchester Without A Clever Title. I wrote most of those
up. Edinburgh and Copenhagen in particular were great cities to visit,
and any occasion catered by The Debutante and/or la petite mort is
guaranteed to be delicious. I've also had any number of informal drinks
with odd noders while passing through big cities where noders happen to
live.
A very recent great memory is the most recent nodermeet, at my house, where I
forced all attending noders to sit down and actually node,
something I feel has been conspicuously absent from previous nodermeets.
We ended up collaborating on a single science fiction story, which,
while rough around the edges, turned
out to be pretty strong. I enjoyed the experience immensely.
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What keeps you coming back?
Everything2 is people.
The E2 Chatterbox is the regular home of a bunch of very good friends
of mine and is always my first port of call when I am in desperate need
of an intelligent conversation. Very few other places on the net are
simultaneously as full of smart people and full of nice people.
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What do you hope for E2's future?
For somebody with vision to buy the site, then execute that vision.
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What does E2 mean to you?
It's a place I go. It's a bunch of people I know. There's a lot of
good text content. It's one of several places where I make my writing
available.
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Who are your favorite noders? Which ones do you miss the most?
My memory for people is poor and I never kept adequate notes. I
apologise to anybody missing from these lists. Excellent people whom I
have met in reality are BaronWR, Wntrmute, TenMinJoe, fondue,
Andrew Aguecheek, DTal, Clockmaker, The Debutante and Dimview.
Excellent people whom I should like to meet one of these days are The
Custodian, Aerobe, IWhoSawTheFace, Jet-Poop, jessicaj and
Ancientsnow.
I invented YellowOstrich for my fictional daylog, January 14,
2008 (written in 2004). He then unexpectedly turned up in reality. I am
not entirely sure how.
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Who would play you in the Everything2 movie?
I don't know.
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Please fill in the blank: "E2 is to the Internet as ___ is to the world."
Steam power. (A great invention of its era, superseded but still of historical interest.)
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Any questions that I didn't ask that I should've?
I opened this one up to the catbox.
Which E2 user would you execute first?
nate.
What's the biggest death ray that you've ever built? A wattage range is an acceptable response.
The FGMX-AXP1 "Herakles" Massively Distributed Hypermaser, built on
an array of 3,515 near-Earth asteroids in anticipation of a possible
Apocalyptic Fusion Cessation Event known as "Contingency Omega".
Herakles was designed to harness the entire power of the exploding Sun
to instantly, pre-emptively, destructively "read" the entire exposed
surface of the Earth into memory and broadcast the resulting data packet
to "Location B", a Sol-like system 33 parsecs away where the planet and
people would be reconstructed. Under ideal conditions, Herakles would
have had a total peak instantaneous output equivalent to between 60 and
62 million Suns. It was never fired.
How do you think you've changed since you joined?
I am now ten years older.