I thought it would be fun to tickle Madeline, so I suggested that to her. She had a different response.

"Daddy, I'm holding a drink. Nice green shirt Drink? I don't think so!"

9/8/05

The NIME conference looks cool. Just the idea of new interfaces for musical expression appeals.

But alas, too many ideas, not quite enough time.

Me and my marshmallow gun. The plan for Wednesday was for me to install the new Free Maps server at the colo in Fremont, then kill some time before going to Dorkbot.

I had a trunk full of marshmallow gun components and had thoughts of pelting the audience.

One thing lead to another, mostly involving things taking way way longer than they should in any reasonable universe, and a dead CPU, and I ended up at Dorkbot around nine pm. I was in time to say hello to Cliff Skolnick as he was leaving.

There were lots of friends there! It was very very cool. And there was one annoying guy. Loud, interrupting, clapping inappropriately. Some people were getting visibly upset at him, fuming. According to Anselm, who was closer to him, people kept turning to him to tell him to shut up and he kept whispering 'don't touch me' 'don't look at me' 'dont even talk to me'

I wasn't fuming so much, but after a bit I actively covered my ears, and winced when he spoke, or clapped. It caused me psychic, nearly physical, pain.

Actual pain. It was actually physically painful to be there listening and to know that at any damn moment some strange shit was going to come from his quadrant.

Which is sort of interesting in an 'odd how the spoon squicks when I use it to dig out my own living flesh' sort of way.

Someone else suggested Aspergers as an explanation, saying that the "don't touch me" business is telling. Personally I'd prefer to think that he was 'ill' or 'put together differently' rather than 'boy what a flaming fuckwad.'

But that's not what this post is about. No, this post is about marshmallow guns. Specifically, it is about my marshmallow gun

I set it up on the sidewalk and shot it across Eddy Street in the 100 block. That was fun. Karen took a movie, and you can check out the September Dorkbot page, with other photo links.