Autobiography (Lud the Gamer)

Youth

I was born and raised in New Minneapolis, Canada. Went away, came back, continue to spend most of my time here. Hope to die here, and not someplace else.

Egg Tooth visited the city once, when I was young. Vivid memory. He was quite a monster, back then.

Later I lived in the Egg Tooth neighborhood, went to college, had some adventures. I always hoped to meet Egg Tooth, or at least Bob Dylan (nonfiction), but neither happened.

Jack the Reader was a long-time resident of the neighborhood. He was a few years older than me. I wouldn't say that we struck up a friendship, but we both spent a lot of idle time at The Nested Radical, so I did get to know him somewhat. This was how I first heard about the Gnomon Algorithm, scrying engines, ENIAC -- things like that.

College

I was young, attending college, living in a Bohemian neighborhood. You will want to know if I tried Extract of Radium.

You know the slogan, Humans Love It!?

I can personally attest: they do, they do!

During this time, I was invited to appear on Who Wants to Be a Chronometer?, the reality TV show. Damned appealing offer, almost impossible to say no. But I said no, I do not want to be chronometer.

Some other guy, one of my classmates by the name of Cranshackle, agreed to be on the show. I remember we talked about it. He was devoted to the idea of becoming a high-end wristwatch with precision jewelled bearing -- real old-school, no modern electronics. Later I saw that he was bumped from the show early in the season and got converted into a metronome, which is technically a chronometer, I suppose, but totally a burn for that guy.

Later I would find that a lot of Extract of Radium users got that invitation. It was a thing, an ephemeral fad-profit-nexus.

Speaking of ephemeral fad-profit-nexi, Euphoriolanus played a gig at The Nested Radical once. He was a big-time spokesman for Extract of Radium in those days, and he deployed his trademark rudeness with equal excesses of gusto and pride. But I spotted the telltale ivory shavings in his shirt cuffs -- it was obvious that scrimshaw abuse was taking its toll.

When I wasn't busy reprogramming myself with Extract of Radium, or waking up long enough to attend class, I watched a lot movies. The student union organized a showing of Johnny Got His Gun (movie), with a guest appearance by Dalton Trumbo. I got to meet him, briefly, after the movie. Nice guy. Year later, he would introduce me to John Brunner.

Work

Around this time, the Antikythera Team approached me with a job offer. This was totally unexpected, and since the Chronometer business, I was wary about all things clock-related.

But it seemed like the coolest job in the world, so I dropped out of school and did some reverse-engineering work on the Antikythera mechanism.

Later it would turn out that my work had side-effects which annoyed Anarchimedes, making us enemies for life.

I knew nothing of this at the time, although I did find evidence that Anarchimedes and Daddy Warbucks were involved in the Spirograph weaponization program.

Working with the Antikythera Team was okay, but a majority of the team members were pushing a new project, the Shakespeare-Magellan Expedition, and of those team members, several were fanatics on the subject of A Clockwork Bard for Liebowitz.

I didn't think the Shakespeare-Magellan Expedition stood any chance of success, and as for the Clockwork Bard business, I was feeling nervous about all things clock-related -- flashbacks to the Chronometer? days.

Canterbury Scrying Engine

Canterbury scrying engine computing simple display of the Mandelbrot set (nonfiction) using the statue of Lanfranc (nonfiction)

So I gave notice with the team, intending to go back to school and major in scrying engines. I put my stuff in storage, sub-let the apartment, and headed to England, where I visited the Canterbury scrying engine.

It's not the oldest, nor the largest, nor the most powerful of scrying engines. But it runs simple calculations flawless, and the cathedral-size monitor makes an impressive display.

It certainly made a hell of an impression on me -- from that point on, I devoted my life to programming. I was going to write my own scripts, run my own calculations, change the world. Not starting with the Canterbury engine, of course. It's among the most expensive engines in the world, and I was still a novice programmer. But someday. Someday!

Babbage simulators

I spent a lot of time teaching myself how to assemble analytical engines into scrying engines, and over time I started to attract attention from talent scouts.

Babbage simulators were just coming into vogue, and I wrote several plug-ins which became temporary fads, if not cult classics, with Babbage (nonfiction) fans.

I enjoyed life in England. They have the word "bloody" over there, for one thing, and it's a bloody useful word.

But I grew increasingly homesick New Minneapolis, and proportionately resolved to move back home.

SOEP

But before I could arrange for transportation, the SOEP cartel tripled the price per barrel, and declared that all major air lanes were henceforth "under Petrel protection".

The Petrels were serious, too: Stomach oil (nonfiction) attacks were known to bring down even large birds, and downed birds quickly die.

Bottom line, I decided that sea travel and air travel were both out of the question, until the cartel relaxed their trade policies.

Sunspotting

On the premise that taking up a quintessentially English hobby would help pass the time, or at least stiffen my upper lip, I took up sunspotting.

I remember one old fellow, made no big impression at the time, but later I decided that he was probably Albert Saskatoonian.

Crime fighters

I met and befriended Edward Lear during this time.

Lear was the first crime-fighter I had met in person, and in later years I would look back on our meeting as a turning point in my life.

Lear and Barragán worked together on a number of cases. These two men had very different temperaments, but when they collaborated as crime-fighters, they seemed to function as a single entity.

They captured The Eel, who was a slippery character indeed, and imprisoned him in the Nacreum.

Daddy Warbucks

Daddy Warbucks declared war on Lear and Barragán, and he had the means to back up his threats. But as usual, Warbucks was stingy with his fortune, and his lateness in paying troops and contractors triggered work slowdowns and a wave of petty theft.

Songwriter

... Paul Simon ...

... Software in the Rain ...

To Do

A better world than this A bitter swell to follow A Wrench in the Monkey Works Abalonia Abomynous Ada Lovelace Alan Turing Albert Lea Anti-Spectator Aldermania Alexandria Expedition of 1807 Alien (documentary) Analytical Engine Anna Morandi Manzolini Anon Antebellum, cerebellum, whatever it takes Architectural criminologist Aristotle Asclepius Myrmidon Axiom Antics Ayn Rand Bad Job Brewery Bad News Said The Late Herald Barragán Bascomb Rudeworthy Bathysquare Beautiful inappropriate boundaries Because Taurus Benji Benoit Mandelbrot Bernoullirama Bertrand Russell Better Not Ask (crime team) Blazon medicine Bless the Beasts and Wild Things Bonaparte's Gull Brainiac Brainiac crying log files Braunschweiger of the Vanities Brawniac Buddha Bulky and Hoodwinkle C. Wright Mills Carnevale Tenebre Carnivorous dirigible Casio + N = CasiNo Catamite Catch phrase Charles Stuttering Pines Chatauqua Cherry Blossom Green Clarifications and conundrums Clear and present patriot Clowns, Prostitutes, and Firemen Comeuppancer Computer simulation Conius Maculatus Cookulation Counter-Siege of Algeciras (1278) Crimes against mathematical constants Croesus Management Cryptographic numen Cuic Cuic's Pig Curious Forage Dalton Trumbo Dard Hunter movies Dard Hunter versus the Shape Thief Dard Hunter, Glyph Warden Dard Hunter: The Final Symbol Database Database Death By Flint Death by xylophone Death of H. P. Lovecraft Death wish Delta Crisp Demonstrative Pilgrimage Deniable litigation Deplorabilia Descriptino Diagramaceous soil Diaphrasm Disambiguum Do Blade-Runners Shave Their Electric Sheep? Doctor Dead Dogs Eat Food Dollop Whey Stick Dorothy Sucher Douchument Dowser pig Dragon curve Dragon curve (drug) Dreams of the Green Ring Dymaxion Lunchmobile Earnest Low Edward Lear Elder Gods Electric S'Mores Empyrées Endemica Essay Evil Balloon Vendor problem Excerpta Latina Barbari Excursus (villain) Falling men Fecal Roll Call Fictino Fictional mathematical function Fictional mathematician Forbidden ratio Forenses Frank Miller Fraud Free sample yesterday From impulse to order and back again Fructolepsy Fulgent Hotrod Wardens Gambitology Gastromo Geometry Geometry solvent Gerard Butler Gil Kane Glad Hidings Glyph poacher Glyph Warden Gnomon Algorithm Gnotilus Gold Ruster Gray light Green Lantern Green Lantern Acres Green Lantern franchise Green Ring Green Ring Show Green War Grievous Mitochondria H. P. Lovecraft Hasegawa Tōhaku Havelock Helleborus (criminal) Hemlock of the Month Club Hirality ensues! (Not!) Hollerith Hopalong Perfidy Hoplite Island How to Bet It All on Nothing in No Time Forever Howard Zinn Human Flea Circus Humanity and other non-essential services Humans love it! I Am Joe's Rifle Igloo of Solitude Impulse to Order In for a penny wise, in for a pound foolish Insidium Jan Kochanowski Jerry Siegel Jesticule John Brunner John Venn Johnny Got His Gun Johnny Got His Gun (movie) Kale Browity Karl Jones Keylined in Penang Kodar Law of suspects Law of Suspects (legal counsel) Lethal Mermaid Lethal Mermaid (film) Liberace's Bathtub Like a marble in a Codd-neck Klein bottle Literature London Has Swollen Loose lips sink ships Lord Atrox Lords of the Phantom Zone Lox in their frocks Lubin Manufacturing Company Luck-monger Lud the Gamer Lud the Gamer (business) Malleable Past, Useless Future Manaus Butterfly Manhattan Project Mare's Nest Engineering Marie Curie Mark Jacobs Mark Twain Martin Gardner Mathematician Mathematics Max Beckmann Medusa Obligata Mega-bonsai Metachondria Minimalism Minute men Mispent Youth Mountain of Coins Nacreum Napolean Bonaparte National Razor National Trilogy Nearly Everything Neptune Slaughter Neptune? or Net-Poon? Nero +1 Nero and the Ring Niles Cartouchian Non-fictino Nysa on the Maeander One More Thing One more time, without feeling Pachinko logic Peeveless Gossamer Perpetual motion and time machines Petasos (villain) Phrenocracy Pi catastrophe Pika Pilgrimage Pilgrimic Emergence Pilgrimic sense Plausibility denial Plimpton engine Poem Portable envy Posthumous holography of H. P. Lovecraft Postminimalist detective Prenex Prey to visions Prey to Visions (company) Propinquity Associates Psycho-trinket Questionable defenestration Raisin Bone Rapunzel Relentless Pandering Retractable hair Reverse parachuting Reverse Tamagotchi Reversible Drain Bamage Richard Tuttle Robert Bruce Foote Rock astrology Roger Zelazny Rogue weave Rosenwald sheets Rubrics Rubricus Rulestone (medieval) Rumbustious lightning Rumbustius Rutilated Quartet Salvatore Satire Scandalabra ScoboCop Self-diagnosis program Serpin Shiny Dull Sigmund Freud Silent Spring Simulada Sleepy web Snakes on a plane Snakeskin Delirium Snippets So Rank, Hung Lo Fat Socrates Spacecraft Sphere and Tetrahedron Spoil the cake and parade it too Squanderosa Standard Flow Time Stately Condition Stencil Stencillum Stomach Oil Exporting Petrels Stuart Davis (painter) Stuttering Pines Stylistic device Stylite Stylus machine Sub-cellular sports franchise Submarine ballooning Super-Curie Superintelligent gelatinous cube Superman Sweet, sweet crude oil Symbiosis and Her All-Girl Orchestra Sympathy for the Devil for Peace Tactical oops Tamdoodle Tar for Tar's Sake Tar-Baby Tar-Baby 9000 The Adulteration of Bergamot The Aestivation of Henry Adams The Alexandrias The Boxes The Chuck Yeager of Hyperbole The Ecstasy of Civilization The Eel The Ensoilment The Flying Lunchcar The Frantic Doxologist The Green Ring Show The heat-death of those who deserve it The Human Wars (Abalonia) The Id The Jerry Bruckheimer Enterprise The Man Who Would Not Say Hello World The Mind-Wheels of Your Will The Noel Harrison Sensation The Nolongerability of Thatinthere The Patrick Device The Sigil (crime fighter) The Sorceror's Amanuensis The Spock of Satirists The Treadmills of Your Mind The Uncials The Unruly Submarine The Waking of the Slate Thinker for the Dead Three is the Color of My True Love's Hair (analysis) Tick off all the boxes Tim Berners-Lee Tim Powers Time bomb Time traveler Time traveller Toffoli Rad Tom Swift Tom Swift and His Elder Gods Communicizer Tom Swift and his Electro-Dragnet Transdimensional corporation Transdimensional law Transdimensional prison Transdimensional resource extraction Transdimensional travel agency Transdimensional trust Transit drug Trim the thumbnails of my mind Triumph of the Wheel Turing friend Turing machine Turpentine Turpentine delight Tyler Tork Unfungible Unlicensed Freelance Moralist Valentine, Nebraska Venn diagram Vuvuzela of Doom War to the World (song) Weaponizing Spirograph Web rouser Whatever Happened to the Nested Radical? When Two Meditate Together It Is Good Where It Sat Where the coal-face meets the road Where The Wild Things Were Why Brainiac Cried William Walton Worcester Lunch Car Company (research division) Wrestlers from the id Wumpus-compass

List

A better world than this A bitter swell to follow A Clockwork Bard for Liebowitz A Wrench in the Monkey Works Abalonia Abomynous Ada Lovelace Alan Turing Albert Lea Anti-Spectator Aldermania Alexandria Expedition of 1807 Alien (documentary) Analytical Engine Anarchimedes Anna Morandi Manzolini Anon Antebellum, cerebellum, whatever it takes Architectural criminologist Aristotle Asclepius Myrmidon Axiom Antics Ayn Rand Babbage simulator Bad Job Brewery Bad News Said The Late Herald Barragán Bascomb Rudeworthy Bathysquare Beautiful inappropriate boundaries Because Taurus Benji Benoit Mandelbrot Bernoullirama Bertrand Russell Better Not Ask (crime team) Blazon medicine Bless the Beasts and Wild Things Bonaparte's Gull Brainiac Brainiac crying log files Braunschweiger of the Vanities Brawniac Buddha Bulky and Hoodwinkle C. Wright Mills Canterbury scrying engine Carnevale Tenebre Carnivorous dirigible Casio + N = CasiNo Catamite Catch phrase Charles Stuttering Pines Chatauqua Cherry Blossom Green Clarifications and conundrums Clear and present patriot Clowns, Prostitutes, and Firemen Comeuppancer Computer simulation Conius Maculatus Cookulation Counter-Siege of Algeciras (1278) Cranshackle Crimes against mathematical constants Croesus Management Cryptographic numen Cuic Cuic's Pig Curious Forage Daddy Warbucks Dalton Trumbo Dard Hunter movies Dard Hunter versus the Shape Thief Dard Hunter, Glyph Warden Dard Hunter: The Final Symbol Database Database Death By Flint Death by xylophone Death of H. P. Lovecraft Death wish Delta Crisp Demonstrative Pilgrimage Deniable litigation Deplorabilia Descriptino Diagramaceous soil Diaphrasm Disambiguum Do Blade-Runners Shave Their Electric Sheep? Doctor Dead Dogs Eat Food Dollop Whey Stick Dorothy Sucher Douchument Dowser pig Dragon curve Dragon curve (drug) Dreams of the Green Ring Dymaxion Lunchmobile Earnest Low Elder Gods Electric S'Mores Empyrées Endemica ENIAC ENIAC (SETI) Essay Evil Balloon Vendor problem Excerpta Latina Barbari Excursus (villain) Falling men Fecal Roll Call Fictino Fictional mathematical function Fictional mathematician Forbidden ratio Forenses Frank Miller Fraud Free sample yesterday From impulse to order and back again Fructolepsy Fulgent Hotrod Wardens Gambitology Gastromo Geometry Geometry solvent Gerard Butler Gil Kane Glad Hidings Glyph poacher Glyph Warden Gnomon Algorithm Gnotilus Gold Ruster Gray light Green Lantern Green Lantern Acres Green Lantern franchise Green Ring Green Ring Show Green War Grievous Mitochondria H. P. Lovecraft Hasegawa Tōhaku Havelock Helleborus (criminal) Hemlock of the Month Club Hirality ensues! (Not!) Hollerith Hopalong Perfidy Hoplite Island How to Bet It All on Nothing in No Time Forever Howard Zinn Human Flea Circus Humanity and other non-essential services I Am Joe's Rifle Igloo of Solitude Impulse to Order In for a penny wise, in for a pound foolish Insidium Jan Kochanowski Jerry Siegel Jesticule John Brunner John Venn Kale Browity Karl Jones Keylined in Penang Kodar Law of suspects Law of Suspects (legal counsel) Lethal Mermaid Lethal Mermaid (film) Liberace's Bathtub Like a marble in a Codd-neck Klein bottle Literature London Has Swollen Loose lips sink ships Lord Atrox Lords of the Phantom Zone Lox in their frocks Lubin Manufacturing Company Luck-monger Lud the Gamer Lud the Gamer (business) Malleable Past, Useless Future Manaus Butterfly Manhattan Project Mare's Nest Engineering Marie Curie Mark Jacobs Mark Twain Martin Gardner Mathematician Mathematics Max Beckmann Medusa Obligata Mega-bonsai Metachondria Minimalism Minnesota Minute men Mispent Youth Mountain of Coins Nacreum Napolean Bonaparte National Razor National Trilogy Nearly Everything Neptune Slaughter Neptune? or Net-Poon? Nero +1 Nero and the Ring Nested Radical New Minneapolis, Canada Niles Cartouchian Non-fictino Nysa on the Maeander One More Thing One more time, without feeling Overheard in my mind Pachinko logic Paul Simon Peeveless Gossamer Perpetual motion and time machines Petasos (villain) Phrenocracy Pi catastrophe Pi disaster Pika Pilgrimage Pilgrimic Emergence Pilgrimic sense Plausibility denial Plimpton engine Poem Portable envy Posthumous holography of H. P. Lovecraft Postminimalist detective Prenex Prey to visions Prey to Visions (company) Propinquity Associates Psycho-trinket Questionable defenestration Raisin Bone Rapunzel Relentless Pandering Retractable hair Reverse parachuting Reverse Tamagotchi Reversible Drain Bamage Richard Tuttle Robert Bruce Foote Rock astrology Roger Zelazny Rogue weave Rosenwald sheets Rubrics Rubricus Rulestone (medieval) Rumbustious lightning Rumbustius Rutilated Quartet Salvatore Satire Scandalabra ScoboCop Scrimshaw abuse Scrying engine Self-diagnosis program Serpin Shakespeare-Magellan Expedition Shiny Dull Sigmund Freud Silent Spring Simulada Sleepy web Snakes on a plane Snakeskin Delirium Snippets So Rank, Hung Lo Fat Socrates Software in the Rain Spacecraft Sphere and Tetrahedron Spoil the cake and parade it too Squanderosa Standard Flow Time Stately Condition Stencil Stencillum Stomach Oil Exporting Petrels Stuart Davis (painter) Stuttering Pines Stylistic device Stylite Stylus machine Sub-cellular sports franchise Submarine ballooning Sunspotter Super-Curie Superintelligent gelatinous cube Superman Sweet, sweet crude oil Symbiosis and Her All-Girl Orchestra Sympathy for the Devil for Peace Tactical oops Tamdoodle Tar for Tar's Sake Tar-Baby Tar-Baby 9000 The Adulteration of Bergamot The Aestivation of Henry Adams The Alexandrias The Boxes The Chuck Yeager of Hyperbole The Ecstasy of Civilization The Eel The Ensoilment The Flying Lunchcar The Frantic Doxologist The Green Ring Show The heat-death of those who deserve it The Human Wars (Abalonia) The Id The Jerry Bruckheimer Enterprise The Man Who Would Not Say Hello World The Mind-Wheels of Your Will The Noel Harrison Sensation The Nolongerability of Thatinthere The Patrick Device The Sigil (crime fighter) The Sorceror's Amanuensis The Spock of Satirists The Treadmills of Your Mind The Uncials The Unruly Submarine The Waking of the Slate Thinker for the Dead Three is the Color of My True Love's Hair (analysis) Tick off all the boxes Tim Berners-Lee Tim Powers Time bomb Time traveler Time traveller Toffoli Rad Tom Swift Tom Swift and His Elder Gods Communicizer Tom Swift and his Electro-Dragnet Transdimensional corporation Transdimensional law Transdimensional prison Transdimensional resource extraction Transdimensional travel agency Transdimensional trust Transit drug Trim the thumbnails of my mind Triumph of the Wheel Turing friend Turing machine Turpentine Turpentine delight Tyler Tork Unfungible Unlicensed Freelance Moralist Valentine, Nebraska Venn diagram Vuvuzela of Doom War to the World (song) Web rouser Whatever Happened to the Nested Radical? When Two Meditate Together It Is Good Where It Sat Where the coal-face meets the road Where The Wild Things Were Why Brainiac Cried William Walton Worcester Lunch Car Company (research division) Wrestlers from the id Wumpus-compass