How nerdy are you?This week Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, died. A whole generation of pasty dice-obsessed nerds owes him big time. Me included.
So, in his honour, how nerdy were you? Are you still sunlight-averse? What are the sad little things you do that nobody else understands?
As an example, a B3ta regular who shall remain nameless told us, "I spent an entire school summer holiday getting my BBC Model B computer to produce filthy stories from an extensive database of names, nouns, adjectives, stock phrases and deviant sexual practices. It revolutionised the porn magazine dirty letter writing industry for ever.
Revel in your own nerdiness.
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chthonic, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 10:32)
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I don't know how bad I am in the traditional sense, but musically...Okay, I'm a physics postgrad (tick), who recently tried to learn IDL but defected back to C++ because I preferred its string handling (tick). I also had a fairly unsociable childhood (tick) which involved an awful lot of old computer games (tick) which were wrenched to life on an unwilling 486 which needed frequent trickery to provide enough RAM (tick), and on which I was quite proud to being able to run DOS 6.2 (tick). I also dabbled for several years with Warhammer 40K (tick twice*) after I got bored of Airfix kits (tick?).
However, my own niche in nerditude is in the volume of useless musical paraphernalia my memory soaks up. For some reason, when I start listening to a band, I will, shortly after reading the sleeve notes, have memorised the names of every member of the band**, even bands that I don't really care that much about. (Even down to such minutiae as the 3 line-up changes Hooverphonic went through between their 1st and 3rd albums)
And God help me if it's a band I'm really into. Soon, I will not just know their names, I'll be able to recite tracklistings from memory. Even long ones, like The Who's Tommy - I think I could probably recite all the lyrics to that one as well. In fact, I've listened to enough Who and Pink Floyd that I can tell which vocalist is singing which song.
Why does my brain store this crap? Should I be proud, or should I be ashamed of what is clearly not a useful skill?
Apologies for length. Tommy's is longer....
*I maintain 40K is geekier than normal WH. Probably tick as well for using the "40K" abbreviation...
**Haven't yet tried this with the Polyphonic Spree...
(, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 17:31, Reply)
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