The Guestbar!
A tiny, guest-edited blog!

Rudy Rucker

Rudy Rucker is a writer, a mathematician and a computer scientist. Born in Kentucky in 1946, Rucker moved to Silicon Valley when he turned 40. Rucker has published twenty-five books, primarily science-fiction and popular science. He was an early cyberpunk and an editor at Mondo 2000. He often writes SF in a style is characterized as transreal. His most recent novels were Frek and the Elixir, a far-future epic about a boy's galactic quest to restore Earth's ecology and As Above So Below, a historical novel based on the life of the sixteenth century painter Peter Bruegel.  Rucker is a professor emeritus of computer science at San Jose State University, where he created a number of freeware programs relating to chaos, artificial life, cellular automata, higher dimensions, and computer games. He is presently working on The Lifebox, the Seashell and the Soul, a nonfiction book about computers and the nature of reality. Rucker's website can be found at www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker or at www.rudyrucker.com.


Penultimate Postday

When my blogging stint ends, I'll be going back to "just" doing more of this. (Registration required.)

Back to the ol' grindstone

posted by Marc Laidlaw at 12:10:45 AM | permalink


What Money Gets You

When it's finally possible to run looping digital movies on your clothes, I don't expect people will be meeting my eyes any longer, because I intend to wear this on my shirt. A friend of mine wants it to run continuously on the side of her car. This little movie conveys something deep and true about the nature of friendship that I have never seen captured before...not even by Miyazaki. (Apologies if you're my brother-in-law and can't play this or Half-Life on your Mac.) (Thanks Robin and Maggi)

Sing along

posted by Marc Laidlaw at 2:04:24 PM | permalink


Burn and Dodge

I am fortunate to work with some really amazing people at Valve. I could just link for days to cool stuff they have done, but they're so damn secretive not even I know what they're up to half the time. Anyway, a couple years ago, I did this little smeary painting with Photoshop. It turned out well enough, but it's not like I would have put it on the internet or anything. Then Viktor Antonov, our Bolosorovan art director, said, "Give me that, damn it." He took it away for a few minutes and then mailed it back to me. What a difference an art director makes.

Before:

After:

As soon as Viktor gets his damn Vulkan Brothers website working, I will supply links to it, in triplicate. In the meantime, as Spot1019 used to say, "Taste the Feel."

Discuss

posted by Marc Laidlaw at 1:44:54 PM | permalink


Steal This Blog

Speaking of pranks, this is of course only one of the finest books ever created. I'm happy to see it's still in print, hopefully preventing Vale from selling his jammies on ebay. Fly, little book! Inspire a new generation!

Discuss

posted by Marc Laidlaw at 1:31:02 PM | permalink


Vile Archives

People often ask me how the heck I broke into the games industry. I have to say that when I was first starting out, I found a series of essays on level design to be very helpful: This one and this one. I did not, however, find this one to be much use at all.

It's not nice to point

posted by Marc Laidlaw at 11:06:19 AM | permalink


7 Seconds in July

Soooo...about that uprising thing... I had embarked on a high-minded campaign to seal the borders of the column, annex the guest-blog, and secede from the main page. But about seven seconds later I realized that a bunch of my stuff was stored on xeni's and cory's sites and could conceivably be used against me in the inevitable civil suit that would follow the bloody but ultimately fruitless nucular strike. Plus I got a look at the Retired Guest-Blogger's Lounge, and wowee-wow-wow. It's all, like, toe-fingered S.R.L. chicks and jazz bearded Java gurus war-driving between the paisley couches. My kinda place. So I'm resigned to my last couple days. Plus, I really had to blog this.

Discuss

posted by Marc Laidlaw at 10:43:39 AM | permalink


they think i can't hear them but i can i can hear them in the underpinnings with their oh-so-friendly-to-your-face faces yeah you rock good posts the sinister ukelele themes they think that's all i hear but i hear the other things too the whisperings about replacing me i think he's done did you read that one about the mantiliss and then the teabagging piece and i barely stopped him from blogging about the cough-fetishists and eyeball licking he's coming unhinged from the pressure of coming up with new stuff every few minutes it's time for the traditional boingboing coup well they won't be rid of me that easily i have plans big plans you hear me they'll see they'll be sorry theyll all be sorry when i'm dead (not me says the circling vulture not me)

shhhhhhh

posted by Marc Laidlaw at 10:08:22 PM | permalink


Gullible's Travels

I admit, I am staggered by the number of otherwise perfectly intelligent people who have been taken in by this so-called MTV page linked to this equally cooked up Metallica webpage. Authors of said cookery being these guys.

I've Been Had!

posted by Marc Laidlaw at 11:17:46 AM | permalink


Scamcon

This might explain the recent surge I've been noticing in the number of Nigerian emails. (Thanks, Wedge)

Do tell

posted by Marc Laidlaw at 11:24:17 AM | permalink


Two Wingless Birds with One Stone

I've been looking for an opportunity to make blogreference to two favorites: Ray Davis's baroque (I am always fated to pick the wrong word with reference to anything of Ray's) Bellona Times website, and Bernard K. Wolfe's classic and recently re-relevant s.f. novel, Limbo. Triggered by the recent spate of articles about amputee fetishists, I fed Wolfe/Limbo into Google and found, topping the list, a meditation on Limbo at Bellona Times. (Ray: Yo!)

Discuss

posted by Marc Laidlaw at 12:17:51 PM | permalink


Game Girl Advance

If I had a personal links section in the guestblog column, this would be in it. (Thanks, Justin. I have no problem with conflicts of interest here.)

Discuss, Suavely

posted by Marc Laidlaw at 11:26:03 AM | permalink


Late to the Lone Wolf Feast

I can't believe I have never seen these before. Life before LW&C just seems somehow incomplete to me now. And yet, as soon as I've discovered them, comes a vague ominous rumor, almost too wispy even to blog, that Darren Aronofsky has aspirations to remake them. Hm. I think I'll remake something of his: Anornfksy. Better?

Discuss

posted by Marc Laidlaw at 1:04:52 AM | permalink


Mantillis Concerns You!

More evidence, and sounds, of barrel-scraping. In the last few minutes of sleep I was making a list of "Mantillis Concerns" very earnestly, but as I worked on it, it metamorphosed into a crudely drawn poster along the lines of one of those World War II "Uncle Sam Wants You!" posters. The end result, as I finally opened my eyes, was a phrase that lingered well into wakefulness, although at this point, since I didn't write it down immediately, I'm positive about the Concerns You! but not 100% sure about the Mantillis. Won't be much longer now, folks. They are plotting my disappearance even as we speak.

Discuss

posted by Marc Laidlaw at 12:56:47 AM | permalink


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