The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: slink on October 14, 2003, 10:44:13 pm
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"Epic and Nvidia are teaming up to create the first annual Unreal University, a two-day tutorial covering techniques for creating mods for the Unreal Tournament 2004 game engine. It'll be held at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, on November 8th and 9th, 2003"
So, you gonna get me some tickets JL?
Damn travel costs.
Plus I've done this shit before, but I'm not that up to date on the UT codebase for modding. I only worked on Quake (good ol' QC) and Half-Life (ditto).
I really wanted to make use of the free UT2k3 engine source, but I'd never get a team together in time to do anything with it.
Alas.
[geek rant over]
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Wow.
That is pretty geeky.
Props.
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I find it amusing that I have to hear news about what's going on at the university where I both work and attend grad school from a guy who lives in England.
That is really cool. Who wants to come visit me now, eh kids?
Pedro asked me to tell you some stuff but after ascertaining that his fingers are not, in fact, broken, I told him to post it himself.
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I used to struggle with making Doom II levels, does that count for anything?
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I find it amusing that I have to hear news about what's going on at the university where I both work and attend grad school from a guy who lives in England.
Woah, it is the Uni you work at then. I wasn't sure, what with some cities having a couple.
I was about to be very surprised that you didn't know it was happening, but then it is very geeky, and I only found out about by reading slashdot.
It would be a great thing to turn up at. Much like I really wanted to make it to the Maya users 3D show at the Millennium Dome, but alas couldn't afford the trip at the time. Let alone going back to Holland for the Blender3d crews get togethers.
Then there's the Lan parties that I always want to go to. Maybe I should try and get some sponsors and hold one locally!
Mapping somewhat counts August. You'd make the team if you could up date it to full 3d structuring with scripted instances and great architecture.
Man, I'm far too proud of being a geek!
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Man, I'm far too proud of being a geek!
This is the Achewood board, man! Let your freak flag fly!
Well, insofar as it still needs to be flown, anyway.
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This is the Achewood board, man! Let your freak flag fly!
Well, insofar as it still needs to be flown, anyway.
Well, quite!
The worst part is that I hate it vehemently when people call geeks nerds. Slashdot, back in it's day used to annoy me for being a nerd site, but now most of it's viewers are nerds so I guess it's fitting.
If you're wondering what I, and all the geeks I know, consider the difference, it's that geeks are obsessed by and know how to do most everything with a computer. A nerd just thinks they can. I used to get plagued by a bunch of nerds at High School who were convinced I was interested in what they were saying as my friends and I exploited all the loopholes in the network and installed Quake to play DM's during IT.
Geeks will rule the world one day. Nerds will get beaten up by the jocks the geeks hire to protect them from the nerds.
Sorry. This is what happens to me when I get up at 5.30am. I lose my mind and bimble on about something utterly pointless and then stumble out of the room with hair like Christopher Lloyd. One day I'll get used to allthis randomness and maybe...
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I don't know, I guess I just think of a geek as a nerd with fashion sense and social skills.
Where the hell is Pedro? He has an elaborate classification system that I'm sure he'd love to tell you about...if that's not geeky, I don't know what is.
Also, the fact that a photo like this could be taken without being posed and without my noticing makes me a geek among men. (There are, like, 10 of these that Pedro took in series before I noticed...in my defense, the flash was off.)
(http://mywebpage.netscape.com/jldunston/gamer_grrl_square.jpg)
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I don't know, I guess I just think of a geek as a nerd with fashion sense and social skills.
Where the hell is Pedro? He has an elaborate classification system that I'm sure he'd love to tell you about...if that's not geeky, I don't know what is.
Also, the fact that a photo like this could be taken without being posed and without my noticing makes me a geek among men. (There are, like, 10 of these that Pedro took in series before I noticed...in my defense, the flash was off.)
Ah but you see no uber-geek would fail to know the benefits of synchronous FSB timings over asynchronous! Admittedly that's getting into serious geekdom, not just game geekdom which I admit there are whole other criteria for. Unfortunately, mix the two and you can't afford to get PCZone every month because you've just spent £500 on hardware...
Plus you end up reading the index every month to see if it has anything you're particularly interested in. Then there's Edge!
I'm intrigued to know Pedro's classification system.
I could rant for hours on the differences, but just because I get stupidly pissed everytime someone around me says nerd when I think they mean geek. I really should get help about it I guess. It's not like my classification of the word affects how they're using it.
Classy picture all the same. I'm still searching for a girl who takes interest in gaming and computers.
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I'm still searching for a girl who takes interest in gaming and computers.
Both of us are on this side of the pond, and one of us is already married. :wink:
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Both of us are on this side of the pond, and one of us is already married. :wink:
Hmmm. So what's the number of this other girl?
Well, unless it's Killcreek, in which case I'd be too sheepish to talk more than utter gibberish to her!
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I'm still searching for a girl who takes interest in gaming and computers.
Both of us are on this side of the pond, and one of us is already married. :wink:
I have a ten year old daughter who seems to be shaping herself into one. Don't get any ideas...
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Not to get too far off-topic into geekly semantics, but the "geeks can do mad cool computer tricks, nerds only think they can" classification confuses me -- I will freely admit that my computer skills extend only about as far as HTML, and that I could never get a date with Beef that did not revolve around the shame I've brought to my family, but I still do a lot of stuff that can only be classified as "geekly." And, uh, I can go out in public enough not to be a nerd, AFAIK.
This is confusing! Can't we all just go back to being dorks?
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Not to get too far off-topic into geekly semantics, but the "geeks can do mad cool computer tricks, nerds only think they can" classification confuses me -- I will freely admit that my computer skills extend only about as far as HTML, and that I could never get a date with Beef that did not revolve around the shame I've brought to my family, but I still do a lot of stuff that can only be classified as "geekly." And, uh, I can go out in public enough not to be a nerd, AFAIK.
This is confusing! Can't we all just go back to being dorks?
Well in my mind part of it's about attitudes. Nerds tend to think they can do *everything* and then utterly fail. Like PC World tech support people - they're usually nerds. They tell you something and you go, ermm, no, that's so not how it works.
Best is to go into a notoriously bad computer shop and ask one of the team if the computer comes with LRF3000's. 9/10 times they proceed to tell you about how wonderful the new 3000 revision is, and how powerful it is. LRFs of course are the little rubber feet on the bottom of the case.
Nerds just refuse to not know something, yet they know very little.
If however you are perfectly open about not knowing lots of geek stuff, but partake of some, then you have levels of geekiness. Nerds to me are a whole 'nother breed!
Though being scarily geeky I tend not to count WYSIWYG html programs as HTML. But that's just 'cause I had to learn back in the day when they didn't exist and since I've just done it all in textpad.
The day you start overclocking your processor by tiny increments to get that extra little bit out, you know then there's no hope for you anymore!
Shit, see, you got me started again! :)
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Back in high school I did quite a bit of thinking on this. Mainly because I had way too much free time on my hands. I devised the scientific field of clique techtonics (and later breastology, but that's for another time).
The way it worked in my mind was this: There were two warring factions of popular people, the Preps and the Freaks. They were discernable mainly by color scheme and hair styles, and if you listened to their groupings long enough, you would find that there was little else separating the factions. Those that did not fit into the people generally liked by large groups of people were the Dorks. Dork was an all encompassing term for everyone from the math-whiz to Cletus the slack-jawed yokel. Dorks just weren't well liked by any large group of people.
Here's where it gets interesting. There were two subclassifications that most Dorks fell into. These were the Nerds and the Geeks. They were both made up of intelligent Dorks, but where the Nerds were a severly book-smart bunch who shunned the company of others, Geeks were passably book-smart with a sort of odd specialization. These specializations were generally community things. You had Band-Geeks and Drama-Geeks, Computer-Geeks and Role-Playing-Geeks. Each specialization had its own small community, and within this small community, the Geeks were popular. If you fit into enough of these communities, you really weren't much of a Geek any more (because lots of people liked you and so you didn't qualify for Dork status at all), you were just kind of weird. People liked you but thought you were weird. This is where I aspired to be.
Looking back, I think I achieved that aspiration by the end of high school. I liked computers, role playing games, acting, and Japanese animation. All geeky endeavors. I also invented Clique Techtonics and shared my new findings with others. That certainly marked me weird enough.
This post was way too long, and I never really touched on the Geek-Posers you were talking about. (Which have to be the lowest form of scum this side of ... er. Something scummy.)
\/_ Dorktastic! \/_ (http://www.qwantz.com)
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Actually I'm absolutely with you there Pedro.
I was the same through high school, still am really. Since I was like, you into computers, acting, literature, anime, music and bands and such...
It's just more recently, where apart from the creative side of me that does these things to some extent (some to many extents) I spend most of my time being a computer geek.
But I do certainly agree that geek doesn't just apply to computing.
And it is more that I think of nerds as the geek-poseurs, since the nerds I knew, of any real kind, weren't actually intelligent or knowledgable on any real level. Best they tended to be was unimaginative enough to be good at maths and little else.
And hell, I've spent far too long going on about this now!
I just have too much time waiting for my new CPU/Mobo...
*cough*
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Another key is that the geeks tend to thrive on their self-segregation. A geek knows he's not popular on the whole and shuns those who everybody likes. The Superfriends on the Simpsons fit this geeky mold.
Nerds are convinced either that they are accepted and popular on the whole or that by doing even nerdier things that they will be soon. Nerds often look down on the sepratism of geeks, usually as an emulation of the cruel popular cliques. Screech and most David Spade characters fit into this category.
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This is confusing! Can't we all just go back to being dorks?
(http://students.washington.edu/sjlimmer/TMP81.JPG)
My bookbag. Sorry for the poor quality; I don't have a digital camera, so I had to use the flatbed scanner in my lab.
It seems I'm certainly no geek, but I think of myself as quite the nerd, thank-you-very-much. Evidence:
-I've had the same HP calculator for over 13 years, and I'm so used to RPN now I can hardly work with anything else.
-Right now, I’m wearing a short-sleeve button-down shirt and a tie*
-I'm an engineering grad student
I think I've made my case.
* This isn't usual for me, but I have a poster and an interview with some NSF representatives today, so I figured why not. And no, I don't own a pocket protector, and my glasses are quite stylish
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Pedro's point that there are all kinds of geeks is so right. You can be a geek in any subject. I was an animal geek long before I was paid to work with animals. I am a cooking geek even though I cook very little anymore - because I just possess so dang much information.
I think geekiness is a basic personality thing that tends to extend to anything you get interested in. Like you can't just read a webcomic every day, you have to read a messageboard about it and keep the web links to the interviews with the author after he takes them down from the site and reread the archives all the time... Geekiness is the impulse to turn everything into a learning experience and a research project and amass a ton of information about it no matter how apparently trivial the subject.
I think everyone in the world can be divided into geeks and non-geeks. Non-geeks think that when you are finished going to school, you never need to learn anything again for the rest of your life. Geeks feel that every time they get out of bed and get dressed they should read ten books and fifty web pages on the subject first. I found that a lot of my frustration in life with other people was explained when I realized this difference.
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I'm probably one of those geek-poseurs you're fond of scorning. I play at being geeky, but I can never quite achieve the level of fanaticism and obsession that is required to truly be a geek.
I guess I'm kind of a literature geek, and a web design geek, and certainly a film geek, and for a while was a music geek, but none of these things really identify me as a person - they're just interests. Things which I'll focus on for a while and then they'll pass.
I think to achieve true geekdom you need to keep your focus narrow, and know your subject deeply. Geekism is like a water well.
Essentially, geeks get the shaft.
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Geekiness is the impulse to turn everything into a learning experience and a research project and amass a ton of information about it no matter how apparently trivial the subject.
That's it!
I totally have to learn everything eboug something if I show interest in it.
My friend (who is a comparison geek) compares us to film duos all the time, and he decided, rightly, that in Dogma, I would be Bartleby, simply because I amass those kinds of amounts of knowledge about anything I become interested in. I could probably make a great researcher, but I enjoy putting the knowledge to practical use too much when it comes to computers, so I'd be a researcher who's just off changing the fan and adding heatsinks to his graphics card (that was this afternoon's little sojourn).
Geekism is like a water well.
Essentially, geeks get the shaft.
Dear me, and you locked threads for puns!
Though thanks to the line break it did make me snigger.
I think, Jough, your outlook is probably very wise. Grounding yourself to not letting things identify you. I reckon I probably just think too much to manage something like that.
And a lot of times my interests, geeky or not, will pass over time, some things I'll look into once and never pay much attention to again, but others kind of last long term, like computers, which have been a part of my life since the moment I could interact with one.
There are really many other things I am that geeky about - film, music, literature, science... hell, information in general!
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[backpack image]
My bookbag. Sorry for the poor quality; I don't have a digital camera, so I had to use the flatbed scanner in my lab.
You need to meet Adam Brodsky.
http://www.adambrodsky.com/pressphotos/headshotcolor.gif
That's obviously a temporary tattoo on his forehead but he has a real version of that on his arm.
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I also invented Clique Techtonics
You deserve the Nobel Prize for that, friend. And massive university funding to create a National Clique Tectonics Institute.
Other than that... I am both far more educated about the nature of the geek and far more confused as to where I actually fall. I think that counts as enlightenment.
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I agree that the dichotomy between geeks and nerds lies in social skills... but I also dig the defenition of geekdom as the obcessive accumulation of knowledge... I definately recognized myself in that definition: Music geek, 20th century literature geek, myriad other geekeries are mine. It is a good life.
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I'm probably more aligned with Jough on this one. Based on this definition I am not a geek because my focus isn't sufficiently narrow.
Don't misunderstand -- I am a voracious information consumer. I am interested in anything and everything. I am constantly reading, constantly seeking new interesting bits of information (which is why I'm addicted to the damn intarweb.)
But I'm more of a generalist. I don't feel compelled to know everything about any particular subject. I more interested in knowing something about everything. Granted, some things I am more interested in than others, but I don't consider myself a geek on any particular thing.
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I used to think that you could separate Geeks from Nerds by their social skills and ability to blend into a crowd.
This was very hard during my HS days (the 80s) because everyone dressed a little funny (except the rich prepsters with their pink polos and deck shoes).
I sort of went the Ducky Dale route. I guess I was a geek too...but there are 24 picures of me in the yearbook - so I don't know how that works into Dr Pedro's calculations.
Still can't dance, but I do anyway. And I still don't care.
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I'm probably more aligned with Jough on this one.
Gasp!