1. What is your name?

    Sam Hughes.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. What do you hope for E2's future?

    For somebody with vision to buy the site, then execute that vision.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. Who would play you in the Everything2 movie?

    I don't know.

  11. 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.)

  12. 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.

Everything2 Decaversary Interviews

If you have questions or comments, please contact sam512 or Jet-Poop.