OMG. SELF SUMMARY IZ SERIUS BIZNESS.

I am English. I've been living in America for over a decade though, so the accent has faded and I say things like "Quite. That is indeed totally awesome. One should gag me with a spoon."

I love reading and learning. I love that we live in an explainable world, where stuff generally makes sense. I have a Kindle and generally go through a book a week normally -- these days I'm reading about Wall Street (for obvious reasons, but OMG these guys were nuts) and cognitive dissonance and statistics (how the brain looks for patterns where they don't exist, and holds onto perceived patterns where they aren't there). When there are cool, geeky events, I'm there: I go to askascientist, or the Maker Faire, and I follow a number of technical and scientific blogs. This means I am prone to saying things like "You know there's a study where they studied the effects of stock trading and discovered that repeated trading success raises testosterone levels to 'unsafe' levels? These guys were literally mad on testosterone when they were trading."

Despite my profile saying I'm competitive, it's more about seeing what I'm capable and comparing me to myself than to other people -- when I realize that I'm doing something I never thought I could do and I'm loving it, it's an amazing rush. When I'm not working towards a goal, people tell me I'm very laid back and easygoing.

I like having toys and furniture, but I've found I don't miss them all that much; they're nice, but I'm perfectly happy with a room, a futon and a laptop. I'm not into stuff for stuff's sake.

I identify as a geek, but I have absolutely no interest in roleplaying games, LARPs, Magic the Gathering, MMORPGS (i.e. World of Warcraft) or LAN parties. I don't know why, but it's not my bag.

Editors

• Antagonist_
• Steeljack

What I do with my life is enjoy every moment of it. Is there anything else you can do with it?

Procrastination. I don't actually get work done, I just round-robin my procrastination so I slack off on everything equally.

I'm pretty good at deconstructing complex situations, although it may not happen in real time.

I have a bad habit of quoting lines from books and movies long past the point where they were popular. I also have a bad habit of researching utterly useless things, i.e. why you will never be eaten by a velociraptor.

Editors

• Steeljack

People who have met my brother before me will blink, shake their heads, then stare or walk around me slowly. We are each other's evil twin.

Antagonist_: NO I AM YOUR EVIL TWIN DAMN IT.

Editors

• Antagonist_

a) My all time faves: Peace (Gene Wolfe), Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson), Godel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hofstadter), Life During Wartime (Lucius Shepard), Distraction (Bruce Sterling), Diasporia (Greg Egan). Guns, Germs and Steel, The Age of Spiritual Machines, Reasons and Persons and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius are all books I really love as well. Other authors: Richard Feynman, Barry Hughart, Jonathan Carroll, R. A. Lafferty, Diana Wynne Jones, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Vernor Vinge, John C. Wright, and Karl Schroeder. Stanislaw Lem, but not so much lately. I've been getting a huge kick out of Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate by Brad Warner, and Blindsight by Peter Watts.

I'm also a huge comic book geek. I like things like Amelia Rules and True Story, Swear To God, Queen and Country, DMZ, Thieves and Kings, Optic Nerve -- yer standard indie fare. Warren Ellis and Mark Millar figure heavily in the 'men in tights' genre.

b) I'm not so much into movies in general, but good ones are: Fight Club. Spirited Away. The Princess Bride. Ghost In the Shell. Before Sunset.

c) Depending on my mood:

Whatever's playing at the office: Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, Girl Talk, Santogold, Torche, Woodhands, etc.

Quiet Folky Music: Jose Gonzalez, Jim White, Iron and Wine, Innocence Mission, Mountain Goats, Hem, Bon Iver. Sean Smith

Intelligent Pop: Versus, Broken Social Scene, Stars, Feist, I am Kloot, Aimee Mann, Arcade Fire, The Delgados, The Books, Mountain Goats, Pinback.

Electronica/IDM: RJD2, Underworld, Lamb, Zero 7, Amon Tobin, Chemical Brothers, Crystal Method, Aphex Twin, U.N.K.L.E., Bonobo. Now Blue Six, Deadmau5. Lemon Jelly, Trentemoller

Obnoxious Industrial: Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, Meat Beat Manifesto, Lords of Acid, Sister Machine Gun.

d) Max Avocado Wrap from Blue Front Cafe, Chicken Tikka Masala from Naan and Curry, Chicken Param from just about anywhere, Freshly made hummus. Blue Bottle Coffee. Sun dried tomatoes. Peppermint. Extremely fresh orange juice. Sushi. Simple is better than complicated, and big fancy meals actually turn me off.

Otherwise known as "what's convenient for you in your daily life."

This is my daily patdown before I leave the house: wallet, keys, iPhone, backpack, laptop, book. The last three can be omitted if I'm travelling light.

How long I would survive in the event of zombie apocalypse.

If being granted the power of flight would be worth the hassle of media attention, scientific prodding and crazy people.

If "efficient markets" really are maximally efficient, or just survive by darwinian processes.

Why it is that you can be supercilious but not subcilious.

The fine balance between long-term goals and short-term accomplishments.

At what point a system that is examined according to a metric starts optimizing for the metric at the expense of the health of the system.

Why, despite its awesome UberMatcher, OkCupid has never really picked up on automating satisficing heuristics for mate search.

Why I find the Whole Foods Vegan Zucchini Walnut Raisin Muffin both hilarious and unsettling.

All the words that rhyme with poop and then wonder why words that end in 'oop' are funny and then if there's a series of rules that govern funny word endings.

How to make a perpetual motion machine using zombies, a small easily dangled child, and an oversized hamster wheel.

If, since being a true hipster requires you to deny being a hipster, the entire population could thereby be declared hipster, ironic hipster, or meta ironic self-reflexive hipster. There is, of course, one group not included in this designation of "true hipster": self-declared hipsters. This brings up the secondary question: if declaring yourself to be a hipster could be accurate if it were somehow ironic enough to overcome being true.

Me.

Only on a typical Friday night though.

Editors

• Antagonist_

I still make faces at myself in the mirror when I wake up. I tell myself I'm doing facial calisthenics. I'm limbering up for the day.

Any of the things I think about sound like the sorts of things that you think about.

Editors

• Antagonist_