I was flabbergasted; this guy just gave me a sketch of me, and an amazing one of that. I may have given him a dollar or two, then he got off the train.
I loved it so much that I took a picture of it; you may recognize it since it’s the avatar I use everywhere on the internet for the past 4 years:
It was one of the coolest “this is a very New York thing” moments I had.
I didn’t know who this person was, and although he signed the image, it’s hard to read and I didn’t think much of it, so that was that.
Three years later, I’m in New York again, at the XOXO meetup at the Lavender Lake bar, and somehow I was telling the story of how I got my avatar to my friend Joel. He looks at the picture, notices the signature, starts googling and lo and behold, he finds this article: Meeting This Artist Could Be the Best Thing to Happen to You on the Subway. I encourage you to read it, but here are the first two paragraphs:
For most New Yorkers, performers on the subway must be endured as part of our daily commutes. However, imagine my surprise this past weekend as I looked up from a conversation with my Tetris-engrossed boyfriend to see that there was a man with a sketchbook across from us, quietly drawing our portrait in broad strokes with a black marker.
That man is Orin, and maybe you’ve seen him, too. He told me he’s drawn over 500,000 portraits of people on the subway, as part of a daily project he’s been doing for the last 15 years.
Incidentally, the article was written just two weeks before Orin drew my picture. This is not the only one about him, though: here’s one in the Mirror in 2014 and one in the New York Times way back from 2004.
You can find more of his work on his website. It was recently updated, and according to a tweet from 2018, he’s still around, still drawing sketches of random New Yorkers. I hope he’s well.
]]>First, they take care of their speakers. This is nothing new; in the past, they’d pay for your trip and accommodation to NYC. On top of that, you receive a $256 honorarium.
This being a virtual conference, no trips were involved, but speakers did need good audio and video for their talks. The organizers covered everyone’s cost to get a good webcam and a microphone for up to around $250 (a soft limit). I was lucky and got a Logitech Brio immediately after my talk was accepted, just before the entire world ran out of webcams; others were less lucky. I also got a Blue Yeti microphone, which worked well.
The original plan was for everyone to stream via OBS to a custom RTMP server, but this was eventually scrapped for several reasons. They ended up using StreamYard instead. The service only requires a web browser; as a speaker, you open a link, share your mic, webcam and you’re good to go. This does not give you as much flexibility, but it does the job and works really well.
As a speaker, you also had the option to make a pre-recorded version of your talk and have them play it instead of doing it live, or just have it as a backup in case something goes wrong; I think every virtual conference should implement a system like this. You had to record yourself and your presentation in two separate videos, and Confreaks took care of the rest. The organizers also made sure to do an A/V check with every speaker before the conference, and you even had the option of sending them a separate video to upload to Youtube if you felt like your live talk could be improved in post.
!!Con was always livestreamed for free on Youtube. The perks you got if you had a ticket were access to a closed Discord server and a T-shirt.
This is not the first virtual conference that organized their hallway track around Discord, but they went the extra mile and then some.
For one, they set up a channel for each speaker’s talk, ordered by the schedule. As the day and the talks progressed, you would move from channel to channel, down on the list. This proved to be a brilliant idea: it was easy to keep track of the conversations, they were not in one big batch, and you could always go back to a given channel if you wanted to talk about a specific talk. More conferences should adopt this.
Communication with the speakers also went through Discord; one had to keep it open because it was where they’d tell you if something was not right with your A/V setup or whatever. This proved to be a challenge for a few people as some presentation software — I’m looking at you, Keynote — blanks out all your screens while in presentation mode. But in those cases, the organizers could fall back to just texting the person. I had Discord open on my iPad since I was presenting from my laptop.
They also had a bot that could match random people up to hang out. You would go to a channel and say “match me”, and if other people did the same in the next 60 (or later, 90) seconds, it’d create a Discord voice room and send everyone an invite. This worked okay, but I didn’t see it used that much, and many times, you would not get enough interested people to join you.
Besides Discord and the thoughtful organization of the channels, there were virtual Zoom rooms you could join throughout the conference. You were given a map with all the rooms, and it showed you who was in the given room; if your Zoom name and Discord name matched to a certain degree, it even showed your avatar.
Early on, someone started a Spreadsheet Party and it was a huge success; it was even turned into an editable Glitch page.
The broadcast itself overall went well; there were some early glitches, sound issues and such, but these are almost inevitable. Cindy from Confreaks did a great job with everything. After some people suggested it, the organizers started adding some padding between talks, because people needed time to mentally move on to the next talk and Discord channel. It’d be nice to have a dedicated emcee next year, though; I’ve seen that work very well on other virtual conferences.
All this culminated in the fact that throughout the weekend, I really felt like I was there at the conference and that was a first for me with a virtual event. I’d be on Discord, have the livestream open (or up on my TV), chat/talk/zoom with people in the breaks, clap at the end of each talk and so on. It was like magic.
One of the many, many strengths of !!Con is that the organizers are really good at curating interesting talks. Even the ones where you go “meh” are still objectively good ones.
This year was no different, and I wanted to highlight a few that I enjoyed the most.
But possibly the best talk of all was the unconference session with Mirabai Knight who talked about Steno (and Plover); it was so fascinating. Check out some of her talks on YouTube.
Oh, yeah, I also did a talk: Little Printing for Everyone!!1.
Overall, !!Con 2020 was a very positive experience, and I hope to be there (and possibly give a talk!) next year as well, one way or another.
]]>Time to catch up with things I’ve been watching/enjoying! I am shamelessly copying Kottke’s format, with some minor changes. It was a very strong month for TV shows, with Never Have I Ever, Normal People and The Great being its highlights.
Weathering with You (Tenki No Ko, 2019): I’ve long been waiting to watch this and had high hopes for it, as it was created by Makoto Shinkai who also made one of my favorite animes ever, Your Name (Kimi no Na wa). The animation is gorgeous, but the story left me sorely disappointed and I bailed halfway through.
Popstar: Never Stop Stopping (2016): This was loads of fun. Way more fun than I expected. I already liked Lonely Island so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Anyways, I loved it. It’s the This Is Spinal Tap of the 2010s. (A)
The Losers (2010): Very dumb, but also, mostly very fun. (B)
The Lovebirds (2020): This was fun. I mostly background watched it, but I did focus more when it was necessary and in the final 30 minutes or so. There is nothing special about this movie, but there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes. (B-)
New section! I started doing jigsaw puzzles, and I needed something to play in the background and/or during work. These are the ones I’ve seen so far. I’m probably not going to give these a proper rating.
Star Trek II (1982), III (1984) and IV (1986): These were okay, I guess. It’s been a long while since I watch them. It’s startling just how much the Klingons are a stand-in for the Soviets. The highlight of these is definitely the 4th movie.
Star Trek: Voyager (season 4, episode 25 “One”): I try not to watch too much pandemic-related content, but I felt the urge to rewatch this in the background, and it was pretty good.
The Death of Stalin (2017): Meh. I barely paid attention.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011): I couldn’t even get through it as a background watch.
Top Gun (1986): Ok so the thing is, in 2020, Top Gun reads like a parody of itself. The dialog is so incredibly cheesy and over-the-top that it is nigh impossible to take the movie seriously. I’m still excited about the coming sequel, though.
Billions (season 5, episodes 1-4): This show has long reached its natural endpoint and now it’s just a soap opera disguised as prestige television. But also? There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s very entertaining and I have nothing to complain about. (A-)
Defending Jacob (miniseries): This is not a bad show (it has some strong performances, including Sweater America as one of the protagonists) but at the end, it felt like a pointless one. Does it have a message? I guess. But it’s mostly a very depressing much with basically no rewards. Skip it. (C)
Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian (season 1, episodes 1-4): This is an excellent behind-the-scenes series about the show. Instead of going through episode-by-episode, they choose to focus on different aspects each time, and I think that format works well. (A-)
Halt and Catch Fire (season 2 episode 6-10): Still extremely good. I’m saving the last two seasons for harder times. I love this show to bits. (A)
Killing Eve (season 3, episode 4-7): The third season continues to be a massive improvement over the second one, and in episode 5 they deliver the best one they’ve ever made so far. This season does feel weirdly unfocused in specific ways. I think the show also suffers from the fact that they kinda got to a good natural endpoint at the end of season 1, they had to make more of it. In any case, a lot hinges on the last episode; we’ll see how it goes; I’m moderately optimistic. (A-)
O.J. - Made in America (miniseries, episodes 1-2): This is a well-produced documentary, and it gave me a lot of background on the, uh, pre-murder days of O.J. But once it gets to that, I had to stop because that bit is just too gut-wrenching.
Mythic Quest: Quarantine (special episode): This was fun! Not quite as Emmy-worthy as they want it to be, but still, very good. Especially impressive in how quickly they put it together. (A)
Never Have I Ever (season 1): This is the best new TV show I’ve seen in 2020 so far. A smart teen dramedy about grief and being South Asian in America, among other things, created by Mindy Kaling, who’s fantastic. (A)
Normal People (miniseries): Actually, no, THIS is the best new TV show I’ve seen in 2020 so far. It utterly destroyed emotionally. The writing, the acting, the cinematography, it’s all perfect. Go watch it immediately. (A+)
Run (miniseries, episode 4-7): So overall, this was good; the side-story with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character made it even better. But I can’t help but feel somewhat disappointed by its final, somewhat anticlimactic episode, and the fact that tonally it was all over the place, and not in a good way. (B+)
Snowpiercer (season 1, episodes 1-2): Yikes. The movie was great, but this has way too much torture porn and not much else, really. The pilot ends with the most predictable twist in the history of television. I bailed in the middle of episode 2, and I won’t be missing it. (F)
The Great (miniseries): This is, well, one of the best new TV shows of this year. A pitch-black satirical dramedy, a fictionalized tale of the early beginnings of Cathrene the Great that made me laugh more than anything else in 2020, probably. But they don’t quite stick the landing, which is a shame. Nevertheless, It’s heaps of fun, and I highly recommend it. (A-)
The Last Dance (miniseries, episode 1): Eh, this wasn’t my jam. I’m not that into basketball. I bailed after 30 minutes or so.
Trying (miniseries, episodes 1-3): I started watching this, and I don’t know, there is nothing wrong with it but it feels like the story is a bit too thin to hold everything together? I might finish it. Or not.
Westworld (season 3, episode 8): Yeah, this sucked. The whole season was terrible. (F)
Patriot Act is back, and it’s as good as ever! Still not watching Last Week Tonight, though and honestly? Not missing it that much.
]]>Time to catch up with things I’ve been watching/enjoying! I am shamelessly copying Kottke’s format, with some minor changes.
Wow. Jesus. It’s been, uh, a decade since my last post and a lot has changed. I was way too overwhelmed with gestures with hands to finish it so this will be a combined March/April post.
Bad Education (2019): This is a movie, though it’s an HBO movie. It’s filled with a ton of stars and it’s like the worst bits of oscar-bait movies meet with the worst bits of prestige television. It’s just… boring. (C)
Cittadini del Mondo (2019): Both me and my sister agreed that this movie is boring and left the movie theater halfway through.
Meet Joe Black (1998): Rewatch. I tried and I tried and I just couldn’t get into it, even though I really liked it a couple years ago when I first watched it.
Melting Souls (2018): This is a fascinating documentary about factory workers in the middle of nowhere, Norilsk, Siberia. It was a good watch. Not sure where you can watch it; it’s up on Vimeo but with French subtitles. There is a longread in the NYT that serves as a de-facto epilogue for it, though. (A-)
National Treasure (2004): This was surprisingly fun! Probably one of the better Nick Cage movies. (B)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019): What happens if you take the AO3 tags “slow burn” and “pining” and turn it up to like, 200%? This movie. It’s awesome. It’s my second favorite movie of the year after Little Women. Go watch it, it’s out everywhere. (A+)
TiMER (2009): This would have been a “meh” low-budget scifi but then they had to completely mess up the ending. Ugh.
The Gentleman (2019): Left the movie theater after 30 minutes or so. I was in a bad mood, but later on, I checked out the rest of the plot on Wikipedia and had no regrets. If you want to watch something from Guy Ritchie, just stick to Lock, Stock… and Snatch, his two great movies he keeps trying to recreate for the last 20 years.
The Revenant (2015): I had low expectations but I ended up kinda loving this? I’m not 100% onboard with the ending but I’ll allow it. This movie is a hell of a ride and done amazingly well. Iñárritu has a good reputation for a reason. (A)
The Way Back (2020): This new Sad Ben Affleck movie is solid. If you like watching Ben Affleck being Sad for two hours, this is definitely your movie. There is also basketball. (A-)
Transformers (2007): God this is boring even as a background watch.
Amazing Stories (season 1, episode 1): Oof, yikes. This show is stuck in the 80s. I might check out more episodes, but I probably won’t? Mostly a waste of time. (C)
Devs (miniseries): Well, this sucked. It starts out strong and fairly quickly gets worse and worse. However, do give it a try; it’s very much a love/hate kind of show. You might just end up loving it, several of my friends did. (C)
Doctor Who (season 12, episode 10): This season has been a letdown overall but the last two episodes were not half bad, by Doctor Who standards anyway. Still, I’m starting to miss Moffat, as bad as that era could be at times. (B-)
Halt and Catch Fire (season 1, season 2 eps 1-5): Rewatch. This is one of my favorite shows, and it’s one of those that gets every season. It starts out strong; the first few episodes are great, but the second half of the first season is Not Great. It really starts finding itself in season 2, when they figure out which characters they should focus on. Season 2 is far from perfect, but I already know it gets even better. I know this may be a tough sell but if you haven’t: watch this show. You won’t regret it. (B-; B+)
High Maintenance (season 4, episodes 4-5): I watched two episodes of this, and then I had to stop because The Plague started and there was just something overwhelming about seeing NYC business as usual in the show. I might watch the rest of the episodes of the season later though. (A-)
Homeland (season 8, episodes 4-12): This season was probably better than the previous two; more tightly written, but still sticking to the — by now — standard Homeland tropes, playing them to their logical extremes. This was the final season of the show and the ending is very on-brand, for better or worse. (B-)
Killing Eve (season 3, episodes 1-3): Season 1 of this show is a masterpiece; Season 2 is a mess and ultimately a disappointment. However there are signs that things might be improving, so I’m cautiously optimistic. (B+)
Run (miniseries, episodes 1-3): This is a show created by Vicky Jones (Fleabag) and produced — among other people — by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, which was already enough to make me watch it, and boy does it deliver so far. (A)
Star Trek: Picard (season 1, episodes 7-10): An inconsistent ending to an inconsistent season, that’s noticeably better in its second half and yet stumbles landing it. There is another season coming, should we survive the Plague, and I’m kinda looking forward to that. (B-)
The Magicians (season 5, episodes 9-13): I love this show and the characters so fucking much. Another show that mostly got better every season; I have a spoiler-filled love letter written. I saved up the final 5 episodes for a particularly tough time and after I was done with them, I cried for like half an hour, mostly because it was over. The ending was great. The final episodes were great, I’ll miss this show so much. (A)
Unorthodox (miniseries): Ok so don’t let my grade deter you. This is a great show about a girl escaping the ultra-orthodox Satmar Jews in Williamsburg and starting a new life in Berlin. I just really feel like it needed one more episode for it to really bring it home, but even as it is… it’s good. There is a “Making Unorthodox” episode on Netflix as well; make sure to watch it after you’re done with the show. (B+)
Westworld (season 3, episode 1-7): God, this season is so bad. The first two episodes are great but then it goes downhill rapidly. Watching it feels like a goddamn chore. I don’t even know why I’m doing this to myself (I do know, I’m too invested.) One more episode to go and the 4th season is already ordered. (C-)
I had to stop watching Last Week Tonight for my sanity — I just can’t take anymore news these days, even if they are occasionally funny. See you John after the Plague is over.
]]>for the soup:
for the noodles:
thickening (roux):
Boil the peas in a large pot with water for 15-30 minutes, until a white foam on the top appears. Take it off the stove, replace the water with chicken broth (or just water). Cook until green peas are soft (it really depends on what kind of peas can you get, anywhere between 20 minutes and 4 hours). Make sure to cut the carrots and add them to the soup before the peas are done so they have time to get soft as well.
Prepare the noodles: beat 2 eggs then add 6 tablespoons of flour. Sift the flour, if possible. Mix it well until it is smooth.
When the carrots are soft, do the thickening:
Warm the oil/lard in a small saucepan. Add the flour, cook it until it’s golden brown, mixing it constantly. Take it off the stove and give it a minute or three to cool a bit. Add the paprika and parsley (chopped). Mix it well. Add a cold cup (!) of water. Mix it well until smooth. Pour it all in the soup, boil it.
Grate the noodles into the soup, or use a teaspoon. Cook it for a few minutes, then it’s done.
Can be eaten with or without crème fraîche/sour cream.
This serves about 6-8 people, and the recipe scales up or down really well.
]]>Sure, you could just spend less time on the hellsite, but we both know that’s not going to happen. Instead, let’s take a few steps to improve our experience and lessen the impact it has on our mental health.
You already know how to unfollow, mute and block people, and that’s definitely the first line of defense. But there are a lot of people whom you enjoy following and reading, but perhaps they are passionate about specific topics you’d rather not be bombarded with 24/7 on your timeline?
That’s where our weapon of choice comes in: Twitter’s “Muted words” feature. Whatever words you put there, any tweet with them will magically disappear from your timeline. You can find this option under Settings -> Content preferences -> Muted -> Muted words
. I highly recommend bookmarking it.
This feature is far from perfect as it comes with several limitations, but it does the job:
's
— which is yes, technically, is part of the word — so if you want to mute the word Trump
, you’ll also have to mute Trump's
; if you’re going to mute the word senator
you’ll also have to mute senators
and so on. It is also case insensitive, which is (mostly) a good thing for us.On the web, muted words are listed in reverse chronological order; on mobile, however, it’s sorted alphabetically, which can be useful at times.
(A note: You can also use Tweetbot, which can use regular expressions and other things; I, however, mostly use twitter.com on desktop and the official app on iOS.)
I use muted words for a couple of things:
To give an example, here are the words I filter right now to cut down on all things coronavirus: quarantine
, COVID19
, #COVID19
, expose
, virus
, pandemic
, coronavirus
, covid-19
.
Muted words is not a perfect solution: you’ll never be able to filter something out completely. But I find that to be, in a way, an advantage: my American Politics filter, for example, lets just enough stuff through that I still know what’s going on most of the time.
So, great, you’ve cleaned up your timeline and now it’s 50% less anxiety-inducing. But Tamas, you ask me, what if, from time to time, I do want to see what everyone’s tweeting, without any filters?
For that, we’ll employ another Twitter feature: Lists. More importantly, the fact that muted words do not affect lists. So all you need to do is put everyone you follow on a private list; you can even pin that to your timeline on iOS (and maybe Android too?).
Here’s the list I use, pinned on my timeline and I can just swipe right to read it. On Desktop, you’ll find it under Lists but of course you can bookmark that as well.
Now, you can, of course, go through each and every person you follow and manually add them to your “Unfiltered” list, but that’s going to be very time-consuming, so we’re going to use some command-line magic to do this in one big swoop.
What you need: Ruby 2.4+ installed on your computer and having a Developer account at Twitter. For the latter, if you haven’t done so yet, go to developer.twitter.com and apply for one; unfortunately, it can sometimes take days for them to approve you. Once that’s done, create a new, dummy app you’ll use for this.
Next, install the t
gem: gem install t
, and because it’s a bit old, downgrade the twitter
gem: gem install twitter -v 6.1.0 && gem uninstall twitter -v 6.2.0
.
Now you’re almost ready to go, but first, you’ll have to log in and authorize your command-line client. Run t authorize
and follow the instructions; it’ll ask for the API key and API secret key, then gives you a URL where you can log into the dummy app you just created.
Now you’re ready. Create a new list on the Twitter web UI, name it whatever you want; I’m using “Unfiltered”. Then get a list of the people you follow and pipe it into a text file: t followings > ~/my_followings.txt
, which you’ll use to add everyone to your list: cat ~/my_followings.txt|xargs t list add Unfiltered
. You can also do this with just one command, as you might have deducted.
And that’s it! You now have both a heavily filtered timeline that keeps you mostly sane, but also the ability to check it out without any of those filters, if you wish to.
The only thing you have to keep in mind now is whenever you follow or unfollow someone, you’ll have to add or remove them to/from your Unfiltered Twitter list as well. I find that to be a small price to pay, personally.
]]>Time to catch up with things I’ve been watching/enjoying! I am shamelessly copying Kottke’s format, with some minor changes.
I started reading Better Than IRL, which is about the Old Internet and how people find community there. I hope I can finish it, I’ve already read two essays from it.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019): I did not grow up with Mr. Rodgers, in fact I have not heard of him at all before the documentary came out last year. I was very cynical going it but by the end, it won me over to at least some degree. (B+)
American Factory (2019): What happens when a Chinese company opens a factory in Ohio and cultures clash? This movie, among other things. It’s an interesting watch, well worth it. (A)
Edge of Tomorrow (2014): Rewatch. It’s pretty good but it takes like half an hour for it to really get going and that kinda sucks. Still, once it gets going, it’s great. (B+)
Force Majure (2014): This was great, though I’m not really happy with the ending. It didn’t stress me out nearly as Marriage Story did, strangely. (A-)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows (2010, 2011): Rewatch. I just wanted some emotional catharsis in my life and also our heroes being desperate in a forest. It kind of delivers on both, though not enough. The romantic pairings are a complete nonsense and the epilogue never happened. (B-)
Interstellar (2014): Wow, I was on a 2014 streak I guess? Anyways, another rewatch, the third time I’ve seen this movie and I just, love it so much. Yes, the third act is not as great as the first two but I don’t care. It’s the epic space drama we very much needed, the sound is amazing, the visuals are amazing, the actors are amazing. (A)
Miss Americana (2020): This is a pretty great documentary about Taylor Swift and I enjoyed it a lot. (A-)
Speed (1994): Technically a rewatch, although I’ve only seen it as a kid and didn’t remember too much. I thought it’d be bad but actually this is a pretty good 90s action movie. (A-)
The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015): I’ve been sort of meaning to watch this for years but I was kind of meh about it until I saw Bel Powley in The Morning Show where she’s great and that gave me the final push. I didn’t regret it; it’s a decent coming-of-age movie. (B+)
To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You (2020): I liked the first movie but I bailed halfway through on this one. Meh.
Uncut Gems (2019): I tried watching it once and turned it off after 40 minutes because it was too stressful. I tried again about a month later and then I just dissociated enough to not feel anything. It’s just not my movie, even though Adam Sandler is objectively great in it.
Altered Carbon (season 2): I really enjoyed this, I might even write a separate spoiler-filled review. I decided against rewatching the first season and in retrospect I kind of regret that. In any case, it was great, developing existing and new characters and the show’s mythology. (A)
Cheer (season 1): I have mixed feelings about this show. I loved it, and now I’m emotionally invested in several kids featured, but also I’m wary of the whole authoritarian coach as a savior thing and worried what will happen to everyone once they stop doing cheerleading because it’s a thing you can’t do forever. In any case, I highly recommend it. (A+)
Doctor Who (season 12, episodes 6-9): This season has been a letdown overall but the last two episodes were not half bad, by Doctor Who standards anyway. Still, I’m starting to miss Moffat, as bad as that era could be at times. (B-)
High Fidelity (season 1): I’ll be honest, I haven’t seen the movie in ages, but I enjoyed the twists the made with this show. Zoë Kravitz is great and so are the supporting characters. I hope it gets another season. (A-)
High Maintenance (season 4, episodes 1-3): The best show about New York is back with an amazing first episode and two other ones that are, at parts, a bit meh, but even a “meh” High Maintenance episode is a great High Maintenance episode; they have such a high bar. (A)
Homeland (season 8, episodes 1-3): One more season of Carrie ugly-crying, which so far has not really happened but all in due time. It’s mostly the usual though episode 3 was quite good. (B)
I Am Not Okay With This (season 1): So this is based on a comic book by the same person who wrote The End of the Fucking World (which I love) but the show is kind of a letdown. It’s short and feels like the second half of the season is missing; it has a lot of style, but not enough substance. If they make another season, I’ll watch it but I’m still somewhat disappointed. (B-)
McMillions (miniseries): I wanted to like this, but I quit after 3 episodes. As much as I like Agent Doug, they drag out the story too much and that kind of ruins it for me.
Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet (season 1): A sitcom about a game studio. This takes 2-3 episodes to warm up but if you stick with it, it gets really good. Episode 5 is particularly great. (A-)
Occupied (season 1): I bailed on this around episode 8. I wanted to like this but I mostly watched it because it’s a Norwegian show. It’s just… not good.
Star Trek: Picard (season 1, episodes 3-6): I continue to be very disappointed about this show, though episode 6 was not half bad so maybe it gets better in the second half? Let’s hope so. (B-)
Stargate SG-1 (season 4, episode 6 “Window of Opportunity”): This is something I rewatch every Groundhog Day because, well, it’s the Groundhog Day episode of this show that I love very much and it’s fun every single time. (A+)
The Magicians (season 5, episodes 4-8): I love this show and the characters so fucking much. There was a fairly week episode this month but otherwise, it really delivers every week with all its unashamed craziness. (A)
UnREAL (season 2 episodes 9-10): This show is just, bad for me, not unlike You was not long ago. I will work very hard not to watch the final two seasons because again, bad for me. (B)
I’m still watching Last Week Tonight and it’s fine but the long segments are just increasingly meh.
]]>Time to catch up with things I’ve been watching/enjoying! I am shamelessly copying Kottke’s format, with some minor changes.
For the Love of Men by Liz Plank: Hey, I read a book! Someone give me an award. *ahem* Anyway! I’ve written about it a bit in this post and I have a lot more to share soon. This is the book I evangelize right now to everyone I meet, especially men.
Adam (2019): Adam was very controversial before it came out (it has an IMDB rating of 2.8), and yet people would benefit a lot from watching something before forming an opinion about it because it’s a great movie about a complicated subject, that does not give you easy answers but also manages to surprise you more than once. I loved it. (A)
Fargo (1996): This is the movie I watch when I crave some snow porn; I’ve seen it three times now I think. I was just in the mood to see a lot of snow. That and the amazing Frances McDormand. And everything else. I love all of it, it’s a masterpiece. (A+)
Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019): Yeah, no. Turned it off after 20 minutes or so. I think Kevin Smith did great movies (mostly) in the 90s — Clerks, Clerks 2, Mallrats, Dogma — but this is literally just overt fanservice with no story. I’m too old for this.
JoJo Rabbit (2019): This was great! It takes real skill to make a satire about nazis in 2019 but Taika Waititi pulls it off. It’s funny and it’s heartfelt and it’s smart. You should watch it. (A)
Knives Out (2019): This was fine? Daniel Craig is great and a sequel is in the works with his character which I’m happy about. I sort of get the hype around it but I don’t think it’s as great as it was hyped. Still, I was somewhat entertained. (B-)
Little Women (2019): This is the best thing I’ve seen in this year so far (well, this and Sex Education, see below). I’ve never read the book, though I was somewhat familiar with bits of the story. I loved almost every minute of it; it has a ton of heart, great actors, amazing visuals and clothes and directing and everything, really. It’s also clever how it subverts some of the stuff in the book; I’ve read the plot summary of it after watching the movie. Give it all the Oscars, especially the ones it was not nominated for (I’m looking at you, Best Director). (A+)
Doctor Who (season 12, episodes 1-5): This must be the worst quality drop from one season to the next in the history of Doctor Who. The previous one with the new Doctor was pretty great, or so I remember; this is a clusterfuck with the notable exception of the fifth episode, which was pretty good, and gives me some hope that the quality may recover. (C)
Don’t Fuck with Cats: Hunting and Internet Killer (miniseries): I watched the first episode and a bit of the second but these true crime shows are not for me.
Little America (season 1): I loved this so much; this show was almost engineered to make me cry in its final minutes. Yes, the stories are a bit too sweet and a bit too idealized sometimes but I don’t care. I’m glad that season 2 was already ordered. (A)
Messiah (season 1): This was not nearly as bad as the critics (mostly) panned it and overall I mostly enjoyed it. It’s a decent exploration of faith. If it gets a second season, I’ll watch that. (B+)
Sex Education (season 2): This will definitely go on my “Best of Media, 2020” list, and ranked much higher than its previous season. I wrote more about it in detail here with spoilers. Without spoilers: this season is better than the already good first one and it’s filled with wonderful characters I love and care for and manages to give justice to the existing ones while introducing a few more into the mix. Season 3 is almost a sure thing, thankfully. (A)
Star Trek: Short Treks (episode “Children of Mars”): This was fine. (B)
Star Trek: Picard (season 1, episodes 1-2): I was really looking forward to this but so far this is a letdown. Clumsy exposition, worse than usual pseudoscience, questionably decisions in the pilot and so on. I’ll keep watching it and hope it improves, but I might lower my expectations a bit. (C)
The Good Place (season 4, episodes 10-13): Let’s face it, this final season was probably the weakest. And yet it gave us one of the strongest episodes ever (episode 9, the one about Chidi) and ended on an almost perfect note; I was close to crying more than once. Overall I’m satisfied. (A-)
The Magicians (season 5, episodes 1-3): Look this show is a mess, it was always a mess and I know I keep using this phrase but it’s a loveable mess. I love these characters so much and I will be watching it until it gets canceled. In these first three episodes, they took a complex topic and explored it well and I can’t wait for the rest. (A-)
The Witcher (season 1): I mean, this is also a loveable mess in a way I just wish the first few episodes weren’t so information-dense with next to no exposition; I had to read recaps to make sense of the whole thing. Someone described it as “Xena/Hercules meets Game of Thrones cover band” and honestly that’s pretty accurate. It has a lot of potential, though, so we’ll see what the next season brings. (B)
UnREAL (season 1; season 2 episodes 2-8): You think you’ve seen TV shows about despicable people? Go watch the first season of UnREAL because it takes this genre to a whole new level. A trashy show about a producing a trashy reality show; deeply broken and traumatized people doing everything they can and then some to exploit and manipulate other, even more broken and traumatized people. The second season is starting to get a bit tired, though and I don’t know if I’ll stay for its final two ones. (A-; B)
You (season 1 and 2): I really enjoyed the first season but the second one is more of the same and eventually I could not handle being in the protagonist’s head anymore, it was just too much toxic masculinity for me, even if that’s the whole point of the show. I read the recaps for the rest of the season and, I mean, wow. Not gonna say anything else. And I’m definitely not watching the third season if that happens. (A-; B-)
]]>Last but not least, not strictly a newsletter but Spoonbill is useful to know what the people you follow on twitter are up to.
]]>In most of the dreams I remember
from childhood, I am a boy. Saving a maiden
or not saving anyone in particular, but definitely a boy.
For years, when the only language I had were the scraps
tossed to me from the popular kids’ table, lesbian
seemed as likely an explanation as anything.
What does it mean to dream myself a gender?
What does it mean to hold that secret beneath my tongue?
The first time I kissed a boy, he was so tall, his mouth so soft,
I dreamt of the ocean for weeks. Never in control of my limbs.
Next to him, I seemed like a convincing enough girl. At least
when I was awake. At night, I was Batman. At night, a fireman.
At night, a boy, with muscles in boy places. And a firm hand.
And a direction to run. The first time I kissed a girl, I didn’t
like how much our faces melted into each other.
Where was the stubble? The hard jaw and cinnamon? I could not breathe
through all her lilac. I dreamt of being lost in the woods.
Of a terrible tidal wave. If I was not a lesbian,
what possible explanation did I have? What words
could I tie around this treacherous heart?
This impossible hunger, this miserable mind?
The first time I met you, someone said, Oh, he’s definitely gay,
And maybe that was a confusion I recognized.
The first time I kissed you, you told me to take it slow.
I placed my hand against your rib cage, and you moved it away.
I felt like a fourteen-year-old trying to get a bra strap off.
You spent the night anyway, and we lay next to each other breathing,
my hands inches from your boxer shorts, twitching against the covers.
The next morning, you made the bed and folded my clothes while I was at class.
You learned to play the harp and sang me songs while you played.
For my birthday, you baked me a triple layer cake, woke up early to ice it.
I watched your shirtless torso push icing through a tube,
I have never loved a body the way I loved yours in that moment.
You pick flowers on your way to class, leave bouquets in every room.
When you dance, the walls lean to get closer to you.
When I finally asked you if you might want to date boys,
I held my breath while you thought about it for a long, quiet minute.
I haven’t met one I’d like to date yet, you said. And for right now,
I’m pretty in love with you, if that’s OK. And just like that,
I did not crave language I had always thought I needed.
And just like that, somewhere a hand reached backwards into a
faraway dream and said, come on, then. We have a maiden to save.
I guess what I am saying is: you make me feel like a boy.
Like the boy I have always been. At night, I climb trees
and wear cargo shorts. I scale buildings and build fires.
When I wake, I am curled around your back, the happiest big spoon in
the drawer. You are naked and heavy-breathing, the man I love. I hold
your body like the gift it is, safely sinking back into dreams.
I can’t really rank these because they are so diverse, so these are in just alphabetical order. They’re all great in their own ways and you should watch them.
Booksmart: The funny and smart teen movie of the year. I have some extremely minor gripes with it, but overall, I loved it.
Cruel Intentions: You couldn’t make this movie in 2019 for many reasons that become immediately obvious once you’ve seen it, so thank god they made it 20 years earlier. Pitch black teen comedy / drama, with great leads and a killer soundtrack. I loved almost everything about it.
Fast Color: An amazing superhero movie unlike any other, that is criminally unknown. Gives me hope that that this genre can contain multitudes.
Free Solo: One of the best documentaries I’ve seen in 2019, hands down.
General Magic: The other great documentary this year about the company you probably didn’t know about and yet influenced all the computing devices and gadgets you have today.
Good Boys: This was my laughing-out-loud-during-the-whole-time movie this year. It’s fucking hilarious with some really smart writing.
Long Shot: I guess this is more of an honorable mention, but really, who would have thought that Seth Rogen could make a smart and raunchy comedy in 2019? That’s good? Not me. And yet. It’s good.
Spotlight: A great movie about journalists doing their jobs and being great at it. Pure competence porn. Proves that you can make Oscar-bait but also make it actually good.
Toy Story 4: I really didn’t expect this to be one of my favorite movies this year but here we are. Possible the best one in the series. But like, Disney, don’t tempt fate by trying to make a fifth one.
Yesterday: I almost passed on this, and then watched it one day anyway and was so pleasantly surprised. It’s a great Richard Curtis movie (the guy who made Love Actually and About Time, for example.) How you feel about this will largely depend on how you feel about his other movies, and that’s all I’m going to say. I loved it.
Wag the Dog: A great black comedy in itself, but it becomes legendary once you watch it and learn that it was released a month before the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which makes it downright prophetic.
What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Deep Space Nine: I love Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and despite its faults, this documentary is a must-watch for anyone who’s a fan.
When Harry Met Sally…: Arguable the OG romcom of the modern era, that still holds up 30 years later. Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Nora Ephron, Rob Reiner — they are all great individually, but all of them together made something special.
I didn’t watch much anime at all this year. I tried out a couple of shows but never got into them. That being said I did a rewatch of Kimi No Na Wa and it’s still a great movie.
Okay, so I’ll break this down into a couple of lists, because boy did I watch a LOT of television this year. First is a top 20 of things I’ve seen in 2019 and was released this year and/or it had a season released this year:
A few more honorable mentions from this year:
Broad City (season 5): I feel like Broad City also overstayed its welcome but its final season was still pretty good.
Sex Education (season 1): This was pretty good, I just couldn’t find a place for it among all the other good shows. Season 2 is coming really soon.
Counterpart (season 2): The second season was uneven, even though the actors and the characters were great; but the writing didn’t quite live up to it. It got canceled, but it does have an ending.
Killing Eve (seasons 1 and 2): Look, the first season is almost a masterpiece; Phoebe Waller-Bridge was the showrunner and was involved heavily otherwise, and both Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh are great leads. But the quality drops sharply in season 2 and it ends in a way that undermines a lot of things it was building up towards which just pissed me off. I’ll still watch the next season; maybe it improves again.
The show that I never rank but I love: Patriot Act which is always great, the best news entertainment show on TV right now. Check out the Deep Cuts on Youtube as well.
Still with me? I’ve got a few more shows that I watched this year but were released earlier.
The Leftovers (seasons 1-3): I could write several pages about this show. The first season is extremely solid already, but the second one is one of the best seasons ever created in the history of television. The show is very overwhelming emotionally; I ugly-cried after the season 2 finale. But it was totally worth it. Season three is a mixed bag, and part of things the whole thing would have been better off being canceled after the second one. But it wraps things up in a way that’s very on-brand for The Leftovers and is ultimately worth watching.
Crashing (miniseries): A quick, funny show from Phobe Waller-Bridge from 2016. It should be binged in one sitting and you’ll be very satisfied.
Schtisel (seasons 1 and 2): This Israeli show was created a few years ago but it really blew up this year when Netflix picked it up. It’s complex with a great ensemble of characters. The writing is very uneven but I can’t help but love the show. It’s very different from what one’s used to with Western television. Thanks to its newfound popularity, a third season is now in the works.
Goliath (seasons 1-3): Billy Bob Thornton plays a mostly-high-functioning alcoholic down-on-his-luck lawyer, and he plays him brilliantly. Each season has a different feel to it; my favorite is probably the first one, but the second one was pretty great too. It gets uneven oftentimes, and some characters are criminally underused (particularly her daughter). I stopped watching the third season after a few episodes because it was too horror-ey for me. It’s coming back for its final season sometime in the future; I’ll check it out.
And finally, the greatest disappointments of the year in no particular order (but I’ll definitely start with GoT first):
Game of Thrones (season 8): I mean. Looking back, things really started going off rails after they ran out of the books after season 5, but I think everyone kept making excuses for the show — including me — and hoped that the final season will be a worthy payoff. So much for that. We did get like two goodish episodes (the first two) but the rest is just, ugh. So bad. Not to mention you couldn’t see shit during the dark scenes and then they kept doubling down on that.
See (season 1): This show was never good to begin with, even though it had a really strong and unique concept. Any sort of hope I had after the first three episodes that things would get better got quickly disproved and it just kept going downhill. A shame.
The Expanse (season 4): Much of this was table setting for Season 5 — which is happening — with frustrating storylines, characters acting out of character and a very one-dimensional villain. I hope they do better next year.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (season 3): Yet another show with a season that was all over the place. It had its good parts but a fair amount was less than stellar. And then they shit the bed in the final 15 minutes. I don’t have high hopes for the next season, but I’ll check it out.
The Magicians (season 4): It was an uneven season but I will never get past the season finale and what they did there. It feels off and it feels wrong and it still makes me angry.
Veronica Mars (season 4): Ugh, yikes. This season was already weak and then they made things a whole lot worse in the final episode. Shouldn’t have been surprised given that the movie was not great either.
If you’re still reading, thank you and I salute you; please leave a comment so I know there are people who appreciate 2380 words about stuff I watch. This was a good year for movies but an especially great one for television. We’ll see how 2020 will go.
]]>Some of these are also radio shows (like the ones by NPR, among others) but I’ll just refer to most of them as podcasts for simplicity’s sake. Quotes mean I took the description from directly the source.
Whew! That’s a lot. I hope you’ll find something you like.
]]>*takes a deep breath*
GODDAMMIT JJ I AM A 100% FINE WITH YOU MAKING TWO HOURS OF FANSERVICE BUT THEN FUCKING COMMIT TO IT
*rubs temples*
Now that the new trilogy is complete, it makes me reevaluate the previous movies. The Force Awakens was pure fanservice; didn’t innovate much, stuck to well-known tropes, and yet it was heaps of fun. I remember leaving the movie theater, grinning.
Rian with The Last Jedi decided to do something completely different and, hell, innovative, with mixed results. I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as TFA, but it wasn’t bad either. I do have a number of gripes with it; the pacing and the tone felt off sometimes as well as bits of the story (noone will ever convince me that the half-hour+ detour to that casino planet wasn’t an unnecessary dead-end in the story, for starters.)
And then they gave the final movie back to JJ, who did something different again. It’s a cliche but in an attempt to please everyone he managed to please noone. That being said it takes skills to be able to piss off both the Reylo crowd and the “Your Reylo ship is problematic” crowd at the same time. Congrats JJ, you pulled that one off.
Look, I’m a normie amount of invested in Star Wars. Despite alluding to the fandom above, I don’t think I’ve read any Star Wars fanfiction — though now I might because I need someone to fix this goddamn mess of a movie and ending.
I didn’t care about the whole Reylo thing at all until I sat down in the movie theater for The Rise of Skywalker, but it was made clear within the first few minutes: that’s where we’re headed. And I was like, sure, why not, I can see that. I got emotionally invested; I was happy with Kylo slowly turning back to Ben. Rey rightly defeats Palpatine, Ben saves him, they kiss, hooray!
And then JJ FUCKING KILLS HIM OFF.
It was completely unnecessary, though even that was foreshadowed about 15 minutes before that with the “Leia saw his son die” line. They could have just, like, not do that! You made us invest in Reylo for the whole goddamn movie just to break our hearts. Fuck you, JJ.
As for the rest, Jesus, where do I even start?
Everything happens so fast and everything is so easy. Obstacles come, our heroes overcome it after a few minutes in a very convenient way, and keep trodding forward. Chewie fake-dies, which was just stupid, and out of character for Rey to blow up a ship with him in it, even though I know what point they were making with it. Character development is nowhere to be seen, except for Ben and Rey. But even that’s half-assed. Rey faces her dark side in a Return of the Jedi way for, uh, half a minute and then moves on? What was that about? Ben has a change of heart because Leia reaches out to him, but, like, couldn’t she have done it, I don’t know, sooner? Also Jedis have magical healing powers now, and that’s fine, and it comes with little to no repercussions now except when JJ wants to kill Ben.
Finn gets to meet a fellow Stormtrooper escapee, and that’s great, she’s great, and I even saw some bonding there that could have lead to romance but no we don’t have time for that. Palpatine’s fleet has a single point of failure, of course, a staple in Star Wars, except they don’t, except they do! All Is Lost, the classic trope goes up to 11 in the final act but of course our heroes get saved by the galaxy.
Speaking of. Palpatine being back? That felt like the most cliche thing ever and an utter lack of creativity. Rey being his granddaughter was, like, not the worst choice, in the grand scheme of things, though.
Lando Calrissian is back but because this movie is cramming a million things into two hours and change we don’t get to see much of him. I was never a big Rose fan but they did her dirty in TROS; a grand total of what, two minutes of screen time?
The new droid was cute, but they should have used it more.
And look, an actual good thing, the first same-sex kiss in the Star Wars universe! For a second, in the background, between Unnamed Lesbian 1 and Unnamed Lesbian 2. Cool. Diversity quota fulfilled, JJ crosses it off his list, moves on.
Rey becoming a Skywalker in the last scene, making a new lightsaber with a new(?) color was pretty cool, for what it’s worth.
I could go on but I already wrote 700 words and change.
In retrospect, Disney should have given the whole trilogy to either JJ or Rian — pick you fave — and that could have possibly given us something better and more consistent. Zigzagging between the two directors were clearly a mistake. TLJ changes the tone, takes the story to one direction, then JJ comes back and dismisses most of what TLJ did and goes yet another direction.
Fuck Disney. Abolish Disney. Not just for this, but for a million other things as well, of course. But I digress.
I’m kind of angry, but that will pass and I’ll move on. But I am also very, very disappointed.
One thing is for sure, my headcanon is that Ben doesn’t die in the end and they live happily ever after with Rey.
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*** END OF SPOILERS ***
As I mentioned in the very first post, XOXO caught me at a particularly vulnerable and bad time, mental health-wise. Despite that, I had an overall amazing time at XOXO and for most of it, I managed to forget at least some of my worries and focus on spending time with all the amazing people in this community.
I got to spend time with a lot of amazing people, have great conversations, heard a bunch of good conference talks, watched great performances at Story and so much more.
I got to work on a couple of projects which I thoroughly enjoyed and others did too — my portraits and the prints of them, the XOXO bingo and the XOXO calendar.
This was the third XOXO I’ve been to and it was decidedly the best one. The festival gets refined every year, and it shows. There really isn’t anything I can complain about except to suggest having more Karaoke next year.
I hope to be back — the lottery willing — in 2020 as well. The XOXO community means so much to me: it’s an important part of my online, and for a small time of a year, offline social life, full of people I love spending time with (and they seem to like me too?)
XOXO gives me a special feeling: the feeling of “finding my people”. It just sucks that most of the people I want to hang out and spend time with live so far away.
To close things up, here is a non-exhaustive list of people and things I’m grateful for.
Sarah, thank you for telling me that “XOXO doesn’t start for me until I see you”. I love you and you are the best XOXO mom and person I know. Thank you for the karaoke as well.
Josh and Angela, thank you for being my friends, I always enjoy hanging with you, and I wish we could do it more often.
Julia and Riley, it was fun working with you on the bingo, let’s do it again next year.
Emory, it was fun traveling with you; I hope we get to do that again.
Jonah, it was great to finally meet, hang out and talk shop about infrastructure/sysadmin things, which I don’t get to do very often.
Everyone who came to that #ptsd meetup; it meant a lot to me.
Becky, Josh May, Eliza, Juan, Crystal, Dan, Lyndsey, Joel, Joshua Blunt, Danielle, Liene, Earl, Skyler, Jonathan, Dunja, Robert, Dylan, Tina, Vale, Doug, Jim and all the other people I got to hang out with, thank you for your company and often your kind words. They mean a lot to me.
And finally, Andy, Andy, Rachel, everyone else on the production team and all the volunteers, thank you for making XOXO an amazing experience for us.
]]>I woke up way too early, around 7:30 and checked the Slack as the previous night there were talks of having breakfast together with the people who were still in town. After returning the coats I got from Pendelton, I made my way to La Luna Cafe where we basically took over the whole place. I had some really great conversations with Tina and Liene about America, exceptionalism and different perspectives. I got a great compliment from Dylan, as he turned to someone: “You don’t know Tamas? Tamas is like a hub [for people].” Liene also gave me a compliment: “You’re an includer and I appreciate that.” All of this means a lot to me.
Afterward I got an invite to a lunch with a bunch of other people, which meant a lot to me (you know who you are.) I had a great time there as well, though anxiety started setting in again and the fact that XOXO is, in fact, over. I said goodbye to a few more people then went back to our Airbnb with Emory to check out. He was headed home, while my flight was the next day. I was staying at a kind XOXOer’s place who offered to host me for a night back when my travel plans changed.
I dropped off my things, Josh brought me a T-shirt that I ordered and arrived; we also said our goodbyes.
I took a bus to downtown, then scooted around to get a bunch of shopping done as well as return something to Amazon. I got a year’s worth of Omega 3 capsules that cost me peanuts compared to what I pay in Hungary; a couple of tiny bottles of Tylenol and Advil because I love those tiny bottles (and they are useful). At one point I ran into Dunja downtown and made plans to get dinner later.
I went by Powell’s to look for the kind of stickers Skyler gave me but unfortunately didn’t find any; then I scooted to REI to get a bunch of water bottles and socks I needed.
I met up with Dunja, Robert and Djordje at Sizzle Pie for dinner — they had decent slices but nothing special. We played with the Panic sign then said goodbye; I’ll see Robert back home next week and Dunja is just a short flight away in Berlin.
I went back to the place I was staying at and then, XOXO was really over. I had a flight the next morning home, a trip almost 2 days long for a variety of reasons.
To wrap things up, I have one more post, with a few closing thoughts and a bunch of #gratitude.
]]>After getting to bed so late, I decided to sleep in, so I set an alarm for 10:45 am. The last few days have been eventful, and I was started getting sad about it being the last day of XOXO.
I got to Rev Hall short after 11. I got Pip’s for breakfast; I joined Dunja and some of her friends who offered me a scone with a jam made from a local berry; I think it might have been marionberry. In any case, it was really tasty.
I caught Lindsay Ellis’ talk, then went back to the park to hang out with Danielle who makes the app Dialup. It has groups (“lines”) you can join which have usually one call scheduled a week and it connects you with a random person in that group. I’m a huge fan of the app and I was already part of the XOXO line; I had a good call with Liene a few weeks before the festival. I also ran into Dieter (who writes for The Verge) and his wife Lisa at the same time. We had a great conversation; Danielle also gave us one of her cool custom floppy business cards and talked about how she found random old data on them when buying them from eBay, stuff like someone’s old thesis.
I ran into Emory again who was sitting next to Jessica; she organized a really cool pre-xoxo party in 2018. We talked quite a bit about mental health and different medications.
And then it started pouring rain and we all ran back to Rev Hall. I gave Lyndsey back a couple of her things I was safekeeping from the day before; I also ran into Dylan, Max and Sarah in the bar.
I went to Martha’s to get my daily writing done, then had a really good chat with Jonah about all things infrastructure, trading all kinds of war stories and geeking out over the stuff I don’t usually get to with people.
I went back to watch the last two talks; Jenny Odell’s was okay I guess — it didn’t say anything new if you’ve been following her — and also listened to Rhea Butcher doing standup which fell really flat for me.
The closing address was great as usual.
I went for dinner to a nearby pub with Sarah, Dylan, Tim and someone else, but the place had literally nothing I could eat so I took a Lyft back to Rev Hall. I started saying goodbye to a few people, since I didn’t know if we’d meet again at the closing party or the next day.
I had dinner in the Show Bar, went by the Karaoke place but they were still setting things up. I made the mistake of not getting my name on the list right then.
Back at the bar, I watched a bit of the interactive album debut of Neil Cicierega in which you could post things in a Slack channel and it would show up on the projector. It was pretty cool though I could barely hear any of the music.
The highlight of the day was, of course, the Karaoke by Baby Ketten: there were so many good performances, by Open Mike Eagle, Lindsay Ellis, Demi Adejuyigbe and a lot more people I forget right now. Joel closed up the evening with Ghostbusters. I was on the list, but like a lot of other people, didn’t get to sing, which kind of sucked; I was really set on doing karaoke at XOXO.
Not wanting the evening to end also wanting to do karaoke, a bunch of us went to Baby Ketten’s newly opened bar with Sarah, Jim and someone else; the place slowly filled up with more XOXOers. I got to see Kevin sing Common People; both Jim and Sarah sang Pet Shop Boys songs, while I ended up opting for — after changing my mind several times — Sweet Child of Mine, which was… a bit too ambitious in retrospect, but I did my best.
Let this blurry image be enough. I have a video of my full performance but I can’t bring myself to watch it.
By then it was 1 am or so, and I was getting tired. I said goodbye to Sarah who told me a few more kind words and went back to my Airbnb. I was profoundly sad that XOXO was over; but as learned the next day, it really wasn’t just yet.
(A postscript: a few days after a festival, someone posted on the slack about PSB’s new album, and one thing led to another and now I’m going to a PSB arena concert in London next May with a bunch of XOXO people.)
]]>I woke up around 8:30 to a horrible nightmare, in which I was banned from XOXO because I tried to sneak someone I know in who’s an asshole. On the way to Rev Hall, I took a duckface selfie for Jan, who couldn’t come this year.
I got to the venue around 9:30 and got breakfast once again at Fried Egg I’m in Love. It felt like the first day of fall: instead of shorts and sandals, I wore jeans and my new shoe, that needed some breaking in.
I took quite a few portraits that morning, including this one of Max, that’s one of my favorites:
I also ran into Avi, Dunja, Djordje and Robert as well.
Avi
Dunja
I was about to get Pip’s for dessert when I ran into a group of people giving away free Blue Star donuts; they were quite good.
I went to Martha’s to get my usual morning coffee (a decaf iced latte) and to watch the simulcast of the conference; turns out it was only streamed to the other bar. I went over there but as it turns out, watching a talk and trying to write just doesn’t work, so back to Martha’s to finish the day’s post.
I do want to make note of the emcees’ “Who’s the Andy” joke, which was really funny.
Once I was done, I went back to watch Harry Brewis’ talk, which was not bad, though I somehow expected more than just the recap of his famous livestream last year. I also caught the tail end of Emma Kinema’s talk about game industry unions before that.
After the morning talks, we took a group photo of all the bald people we could gather, organized by Elly:
In the lunch break, I took more portraits. I also met F6x and got to thank him for the help he gives us.
Around 2 pm, we did an encore of Tim Tam Slam Jam, showing more people this now-tradition. Afterwards I got to chat a bit with Michael Hobbs and Sarah Marshall, hosts of one of my favorite podcast, You’re wrong about… Michael also tried slamming and liked it a lot. I also took their picture.
In the afternoon, I watched most of the talks: a couple of them were okay, the one that really stood out for me was by Hundred Rabbits; they talked about sailing around the world and all the challenges that come with that.
After the conference ended, I headed to Martha’s for a break where I ran into Doug Hanke. We talked like an hour about various life stuff and it was just a really great and meaningful conversation.
Before Story, I had a good chat with Elina Levkovskaya about fashion, and got to tell Matthew Bogart that I love Incredible Doom (I should finish reading it, now that the entire first volume is up online.)
I got a front seat for Story that started with You’re Wrong About. They talked about the Janet Jackson Superbowl Halftime Controversy and it was really great to see them live. This was followed by Everything is Alive that interviewed a chainsaw; it was surprisingly entertaining. I took a small break to find my favorite tote bag that I managed to lose twice one day, then went back and caught most of Yo, is this racist?, where Demi and Miel were guests. They had some really touching questions from the audience in the end.
Next, Helen Zaltzman talked about pronouns in a live production of The Allusionist. The final show that night was arguably the best one: the last episode of Punch up the Jam with Demi in it; they had Neil Cicierega and Open Mike Eagle for guests. The whole thing is up on Youtube and you should watch it; it’s laugh-out-loud hilarious. I don’t remember the last time I laughed that much listening to — well, watching — a podcast. They talked about the Ghostbusters theme song which turned into an in-joke for the rest of the conference. I even made a tribute page for it that lives at ghostbuste.rs.
The day was not yet over; earlier that night I got invited to a house party by Juan, so that was my next stop. The party was great but loud and that’s not my kind of thing so I ended up resting in a quieter room. Jonah ordered a bunch of pizza us; he also gave me another 90s temporary tattoo and I got two more for the future: one “Under Construction” and another that says “Sign My Guestbook.”
It was at that party I got to talk with Vale — who’s now a regular here at WriteTogether — about life, freelancing, 3D printing a fuck machine and she also showed her 3D-printed glow-in-the-dark Luigis on the cross with the Evangelion spear in their chest. I managed to get one of them in the form of a fridge magnet the next day.
I got home around 2:15 am and went to sleep around 3. It was also the first day that I wore my new sneakers, and they were not really comfortable; ultimately it turned out they are just not a good fit at all.
]]>Friday was Social, which is probably my favorite day and the highlight of XOXO, with all the community-organized events.
I got to Rev Hall early so I got my daily writing done, then went to a cafe nearby for the off-the-books #ptsd channel meetup. I was on the fence about going but I’m really glad I did; it was one of the best ones I’ve attended. It was great to connect with other people there, learn about several interesting resources and share experiences. The place also had really good vegan chocolate chip cookies.
After the meetup, I went back to Rev Hall for the second half of my breakfast; I got a Yolko Ono from Fried Egg I’m in Love. They were one of the highlights of XOXO 2016 and their breakfast sandwiches were almost as good as I remembered, which is to say, still pretty damn good.
By then it was time for the opening remarks, so I got a front-row seat in the Auditorium. The Andys were funny as usual, insert joke here about Andy Baio’s bathroom.
The Tim Tam Slam Jam kicked off the Social meetups for me, for which a sizable crowd had formed, one that was much bigger than 2018. I sort of assumed that quite a few people would bring Tim Tams and felt like the 12 boxes I got a few weeks before were overkill. That wasn’t the case; we only had a few more boxes on top of it. Someone said they were hard to come by in Portland.
And so we slammed and it was heaps of fun as usual; people keep saying that the caramel one is not that good for slamming but I disagree, they are my favorites.
Having gotten my sugar fix, I hung out with Skyler, Jonathan, Inness and Megan. We had a good conversation, Megan gave us her zine about not freaking out, and Jonathan showed off his interactive two-person story thing that uses Airpods. I got to try it last year at XOXO 2018 and was excited about the progress he made; the demo he showed was pretty fun.
Jonathan
Inness
Skyler
I walked to the #visual-art meetup with Jonathan and Inness. On the way there, Jonathan talked about living in Venice Beach and all the scooters there.
The meetup was nice, in a small art gallery, with a lot of people drawing. There was also a lot of cool art on exhibition. I took a few portraits there, including one of Eler that turned out particularly well. I ran into Kevin there and bought an XOXO mug from Julia.
Eler
Kevin
julia’s mug Julia’s mug
Next, I went to Glitch’s Appy Hour. I ran into Lyndsey there again as well as a few other friends. I watched Nicole He’s cool demo for her upcoming interactive project and a Powerpoint Karaoke that was fun. I got to talk with one of my Internet Heroes, Jason Kottke; we had a good chat. He told me to email him the link to my portraits after the festival, if I somehow end up on kottke.org I can die happy (so far it hasn’t happened.)
I took a scooter back to Rev Hall to check out Playdate, Panic’s upcoming quirky game console. They only had one game you could play it, and it’s a cool device but a lot will depend on the games people will develop for it. I finally got to meet Mike and got to know Vlad; I obviously took their portraits as well.
Mike
Vlad
I ran into Skyler again and she told me about Earl’s concert at 4 at #music-making so after hanging out a bit in the park, that was my next stop. We watched him do some chill electro music (he has a soundcloud), it was pretty great and a good way to take a break from this marathon of a day. By then it was around 4:30 pm, so I decided to get a late lunch and got a grilled cheese (again.)
Afterwards I took a scooter to the #adhd meetup, where I got a 3D printed empathy emoji that I jury-rigged to my badge; earlier that day Lyndsey showed me the trick to sticking the pronoun pin to my badge so now my badge looked a lot better. I also took the chance to print out and stick my avatar there and wrote all the projects I did under my name as well.
My XOXO badge, now complete
Several people told me over the past few days that they liked my pictures and thanked me for the calendar I made, which felt great.
I didn’t stay too long at the #adhd meetup as I was getting a bit tired and peopled out. I stopped by the ADX open house for a bit before going back to Rev Hall for all the evening activities.
I talked on twitter with Jillian who had Snax, her zine with her. I bought one and it’s great; you should read it if you have the chance. It has an essay from Summer Farah that’s literally one of the best things I’ve read this month.
The food trucks were opening a bit late, so I hung out more with people and finally ran into Josh, who I’ve been meaning to meet for quite a while. We had a good conversation and he told me that “you have a whole vibe” which I took as a high compliment.
After getting dinner once again from the Filippino cart, I walked around Arcade and checked out the games. I caught Nerdwriter at Video, then went to check out Tabletop. There were some cool games, however the place was very noisy and cramped and it was around that time my brain started shutting down.
I went back to Video to see Earworm (and ran into Sarah again); they showed a video that I’ve seen before but it was still fun to watch it with others on the big screen. I went back to Arcade again and took pictures of the games I wanted to check out later, then back to Video for the final act, Unraveled. He showed a video about calculating your pet’s HP and it was hilarious, well worth staying up late.
Then I took a Lyft home, showered and went to sleep.
]]>The excitement from the previous night lasted till the next morning as I woke up way too early, around 6 am. I had a Skype session with my therapist, then went to the La Luna Cafe for breakfast. The past week or so, I kept inviting XOXO friends, both old and new for a pre-registration breakfast. A lot of them came: Dan, Emory, Eliza, Georgie, her husband Nick, her friend Kylie, Andrew, Jim, Ben, Joel, Tiffany and I might be forgetting people. The food was the delicious and the company was great; by the end, though, I was a bit peopled out, and earlier that day something triggered my anxiety again, and I was starting to feel that.
The breakfast crew
The previous night I somehow managed to knock down my entire nightstand and my glasses got slightly bent, so I went to Myopic Optometry to fix them (you guessed it, someone recommended them on Slack.) Jim gave me a ride back to Revolution Hall for registration; we arrived almost at noon sharp. After picking up my badge and the swag, I started taking and printing portraits. I also met old and new friends as people started trickling in.
It’s on!
Jim
Crystal
I was planning on staying there for a couple of hours, but the sun was literally burning my skin, so after a lunch at Meat Cheese Bread where I got way too many grilled cheese sandwiches, I went to Push X Pull a couple blocks away to take a break. I hung out with Lyndsey a bit there, then got some writing done. Georgie and Nick arrived shortly after, but we mostly just enjoyed each other’s company in silence, if that’s a thing (it’s a thing.)
Georgie and Nick
The printed photos
I went to the Metafilter meetup afterwards, though I didn’t stay too long. I did take this portrait of Josh and Phil, though:
Josh and Phil
The lack of sleep and the high anxiety was really getting to me, so I went back to my Airbnb. I took a long bath and a nap; they helped a bit.
I arrived back at Revolution Hall around 6. While waiting I ran into Annika and her friends, got a Fronds pin and I admired her Raspberry Pi Zero/e-ink display project that she was wearing: it was showing stats from the XOXO Mastodon server that she’s running. I took a few more portraits, including a really good one of Joel.
Annika’s project
Aaron had a similar thing going
Annika
Joel
More people trickled in. I ran into Dylan and had a random chat with someone who was also waiting for the park to open.
Once the clock hit 7 pm and the park opened for the opening party, I went straight for the food carts. I got dinner from the Filippino place and it was extremely good food. Rice, noodles, skewers of chicken and two pork egg rolls, all of them excellent. I topped them with a copious amount of sweet and sour/soy sauce.
For dessert I went to the Churros truck which did not disappoint either; it pains me that we only had them for the first two days.
I got to hang out with a lot of people at the opening party. I met Skyler and her friends: got a cute turtle sticker from her for my badge. I got to know Earl who was having a small concert the next day. I chatted with with Liene, who I knew from the Slack but we didn’t talk much in real life before. I met Max, with whom we helped to save/migrate one of Andy McMillan’s old sites a few weeks before; later I would take one of my favorite portraits of him. And I finally got to hang out with Sarah; we kind of knew each other from Twitter but never met before.
The turtle is really cute.
By 9 pm I was getting tired — the glass of wine I had didn’t help — so I sat down at a table, where I met with Dunja again. She wasn’t feeling that great either and it was great to commiserate with someone together over shared anxieties and such.
In the big tent, people were playing Johann Sebastian Joust; it looked fun, but there were a lot of people waiting for it, so I called it an evening just before 10 pm, went back to my Airbnb, took a shower, went to sleep.
]]>I’ve had an idea for a T-shirt for years, and the week before XOXO I finally acted on it. I wanted to have a T-shirt with “Helvetica” in big, bold letters. Here, this is how it looks like:
It’s cool, right? At first, it’s nothing special. It’s just “Helvetica” in Helvetica. Right?
There, I zoomed in a bit. Can you see it yet?
If you’re just confused right now, seriously, good for you. If you’re a person who knows a thing or two about typography, however, your eyes might start twitching. That’s because the font here is Arial, and this T-shirt is designed to piss off a certain kind of font nerd.
Anyways, it arrived the day before, so I decided it’s a good day to wear it.
The day started with breakfast at Zell’s Cafe with Emory. The place was highly rated, but the food was somewhat disappointing: way too much cheese on my eggs, disappointing fries, bread that tasted weird. For dessert, we took scooters to Voodoo Donuts, which I still prefer over Blue Star, don’t @ me (we can all agree that Pip’s is excellent, though, right?)
We wanted to check out the Panic sign since Emory has never seen it before. I managed to lead us six blocks the wrong way, so Emory took over GPS duties for the rest of the trip. I kept getting/feeling slightly lost in Portland throughout my whole stay and couldn’t quite get a handle of the city — even though I’ve been there twice before. My stress and anxiety might have had something to do with that.
We did get to the Panic sign eventually, but as it turns out, it’s not much fun during daytime; you can barely see the colors.
Our next stop was the nearby Pendelton store, where I got not one but two coats for a redacted amount of money. They were beautiful coats, but I ended up returning both of them after the festival, as neither of them was quite the right cut for my weird body shape. If I’m spending that much money on a cloth item, they better be a good fit.
I took a break at Powell’s cafe, carefully not taking a look at the books because I have a giant backlog of them already. I did finally pick up Amy Baio’s You Think You Know Me, though. It is, in a way, an investment in my future as I don’t have too many people I can play it with right now.
It was around that time I connected with Dunja, Robert and Djordje, who arrived the day before; we met up in front of Revolution Hall just before 2 pm. I met Dunja at XOXO 2016; she was one of the few people from Eastern Europe. She introduced me to Robert in 2018, who’s also from Hungary; we hung out a bunch the past year. I haven’t met Djordje before; it was his first XOXO. He was Dunja’s friend from Serbia.
I saw on Twitter that Andrew just got in town and was looking for something to do so I invited him along.
We walked around the city, north on SE 13th St. then turned right on E Burnside St, wandering around and exploring the city for at least an hour. We ended up in Laurelhurst Park, which was pretty beautiful. After a short break, we each went our separate ways: Andrew to a museum, Dunja & co to get SIM cards and I walked to Belmont to get a late lunch.
I found a place called Straight From New York Pizza, and they had decent slices, though the New York part felt like a bit of a stretch.
Anticipating a high anxiety day as something triggered that the day before, I booked a massage at the Common Ground Wellness Co-op that someone recommended on the Slack. They were my next stop; I took a Lyft there. After checking in, I got undressed — the place is clothing optional — and had a great massage I really needed. Afterwards, I relaxed in their hot tub. It was a great place, and I would probably be a regular if I’d be living in Portland.
Once done, I took another Lyft back to APEX, for the now-traditional pre-XOXO Wednesday night beers. I got to have a great conversation with Andy McMillan, Jonah, Crystal, Dan and a few other people whose name escape me right now. Andy told us about his zero-proof cocktail bar, and we also learned quite a bit about Northern Ireland. For dinner, I got a rice bowl from a Vietnamese place across the street; it was pretty okay. It was a fantastic evening; it was there where I started feeling the energy XOXO gives you, and that carried me through the rest of the week. That, and all the fantastic people.
Andy and Henry. So cute. Henry, that is (Andy if you’re reading this you look great as well.)
I got back to my Airbnb around 11, and it took me a while to fall asleep: I was pretty excited about the next few days. XOXO would be (officially) starting the next day.
]]>Look, I know that Scooters Are Bad, but the thing is, they are also really fun. So I put up with the minuscule amount of guilt I had about that and decided to use scooters as much as possible during my stay in Portland. And on Tuesday, I devised myself a challenge.
I was going to hang out with Josh and Angela at their place (and then visit a few other spots.) Besides wanting to see them — they are my friends and I love them very much — I also wanted to check out all the art Josh produced the last year, and see his amazing stained glass pieces in person.
They live way up in St. Johns, at the northwestern part of Portland; my Airbnb was at SE. Would it be possible for me to get to their place by scooters only? I had to try.
I ended up taking two scooters, and I got pretty far: my second scooter died about 1.5 miles from their place. Unfortunately, there weren’t any around, so I walked a bit and took a bus the rest of the way.
(This was probably the first time I tried the Spin scooters, which turned out to be much better than the Lime ones; they were lighter and much quicker to accelerate. I stuck to mostly using them for the rest of the trip.)
Josh’s stained glass pieces are truly amazing to see; pictures don’t do them justice. If I ever get rich enough that I can drop several hundred dollars on art — and then some on shipping extremely fragile glass across the Atlantic — Josh’s work will be the first thing I’ll buy.
Again, the pictures really don’t do justice, but I tried.
Next, we went to Cathedral Coffee to get cinnamon rolls; they have by far the best ones I’ve had outside of Sweden, topped with a cream cheese frosting. We went there last year, but I was eager to have them again. I also tried their raspberry roll, which was not quite as good as the cinnamon version, but still pretty damn tasty.
So. Good.
With breakfast done, we went to visit Josh and Angela’s friends, who have a fascinating not-quite-tiny house in the neighborhood. The place is impressive, both inside and outside. The house is painted in the colors of the rainbow, with each piece of wood being a part of a gradient.
(I was a dumdum and only took a picture of the place with them on it. However, they told me that they don’t want their pictures on the internet, hence the censorship.)
It was there I first did my XOXO Thing, which is taking pictures of people and printing it out for them. For the photos, I use my iPhone, and I have two instant printers. One is Fuji’s Instax Share SP-2 that uses the polaroid-like Instax Mini film; the other is a Paperang P1 thermal printer — I use that with sticker paper. Both have a unique look and feel, and people loved them at the previous XOXOs, so I decided to do it again. I continued taking pictures throughout the festival and collected the photos at https://facesofxoxo2019.ktamas.com.
I had a few other projects this year as well. I helped to put together the XOXO bingo; I collected and put together the new clues, Julia Skott did the fantastic artwork and Riley Shaw handled the coding. I think we did an excellent job and a lot of people enjoyed it.
Finally, like last year, I put together a Google Calendar people could subscribe to with the complete schedule of the festival as well as all the Social meetups. A lot of people used it and thanked me for it over the long weekend.
Last but not least I was the de-facto co-organizer the Tim Tam Slam Jam, for which I brought like 12 packs of biscuits, which I thought would be too much but turned out to be just what we needed. It was a huge success, drawing by far the largest crowd so far. For next year I suggest that the Andys approach the manufacturer to sponsor the festival and give a complimentary package of Tim Tams as swag to each attendee.
Ready to slam.
After meeting Josh and Angela’s friends, we got lunch at the Mississippi Pizza Pub; they had a perfectly decent slice of pizza, though it wasn’t anything special (I was told the place is quite popular.) After that, we parted ways, and I went by the Pendelton store, which is always a weak spot for me, but I didn’t buy anything… that day.
Unfortunately, I felt pretty crummy the rest of the day. I went back to the Airbnb and tried to rest for a few hours, without much success, then took a Lyft to the Drink and Draw at Bye Bye. They didn’t have any food I liked, so I got a few grilled cheese sandwiches around the corner. I had a good chat with Juan, who I ran into just as I was sitting down. Afterwards I went back to Bye Bye, and hung out there for about two hours; I got to chat with Becky a bit as well as a few other folks I didn’t know. Around 9 pm, I took a Lyft back to my Airbnb and went to sleep.
]]>I arrived at Portland on Labor Day. I intended to spend as much time in Portland as possible (and financially viable.) I knew from experience that even before the opening party on Thursday, there could be plenty of opportunities to hang out with people. Folks who live in Portland and others who also get in town a few days before.
One of the advantages of flying in from Canada is you get past CBP early, on the Canadian side: once you land in the US, you go directly to picking up your suitcases.
The US border is always a stressful place because of gestures at all the horror stories you can read on the internet but once again I cleared customs without significant issues. I got a big “X” on my returning ESTA slip because I said yes to the question “are you bringing any food, livestock, etc.” which was technically correct: I had twelve packs of Tim Tams in my suitcase. The fingerprint reader really didn’t like my right hand at the first border agent, so he redirected me to another one, where I finally got the OK I needed. In the process, I got to tell the border agent about XOXO, which meant I could check off the “tell someone about XOXO who hasn’t heard of it” box in the XOXO bingo, something I worked on this year; more on that later.
Hello, PDX.
After an uneventful flight, I took a Lyft to our AirBnB; we arrived almost at the same time with Emory. The place we found had a great location: just four blocks from Revolution Hall, on the corner of SE Taylor and 13th. It had mostly great reviews, and it served its purpose, but neither of us was terribly happy with it. It had an odd layout, one of the beds were way too soft — at least for me —, the washing machine was small and slow and the wifi was absolutely terrible the whole time we were there.
We got a late lunch with Emory at the Rogue Eastside Pub & Pilot Brewery; then I took a scooter (well, two) to NE at the Dillingers Barber Shop, where I had an appointment with Emily. Someone recommended her on Slack, and she delivered; it was one of the best beard trims I’ve ever had. It pains me that after moving back to Hungary almost three years ago, I still can’t find a reliable barbershop. The best trims I’ve had in the past couple years were in San Francisco, New York and now Portland, respectively.
She really did a great job.
I got a couple of essentials in the Whole Foods across the street — you should not travel with an open bottle of Dr. Bronner’s, ask me how I know — then I took a scooter downtown to Oven and Shaker, where I met up with Sarah, Emory and Juan. I was particularly excited to see Sarah again; I’ll never forget the kindness she showed on my first XOXO, and she remains one of my favorite people, the best XOXO mom. She welcomed me saying how good to see me and how “XOXO starts for me when I first see you.”
We had a good dinner, talked a lot, caught up with each other, then Sarah took us home to our respective Airbnbs. I was anxious throughout the whole thing, but it was still great to hang out with everyone.
Us.
And that was the end of day 1: XOXO has begun.
]]>When the Andys made clear that in 2019 they’d go back to the old size, I was somewhat conflicted. On the one hand, I understood the toll it took on them and everyone else organizing the festival, having it twice as big. There was also a fair amount of feedback from the community that the larger size didn’t work for them. I personally had a good time and got to meet a lot of people I wanted to, but that’s my experience. The venue and the location were, in many ways, indeed worse. I was also worried, in a selfish but understandable way that with the smaller size I’m going to need more luck to get picked in the lottery for a ticket. In the last year or so the XOXO Slack became an even more significant part of my online life and the thought of not going felt, frankly, unbearable.
Since I’m writing about this, I obviously got lucky and got a ticket to XOXO this year as well; and I feel pretty confident saying that this year has been the best one I’ve attended so far. The smaller size indeed works better, and Revolution Hall is possibly the best location it can have, even with its (very minor) downsides.
I’ve written this as a travelogue because that’s the only way I know how to. Let’s get started, shall we?
XOXO 2019 caught me at a particularly bad and vulnerable time. The previous few months were rough, mental health-wise — I became pretty isolated. I had a daily routine that kept me together and sane, though: I was moving between safe spaces. Wake up, get breakfast, go to my regular cafe, get work done, get home, order in something for dinner, binge on TV shows, go to sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat.
In the first half of 2019, I was on a 6-month therapy break. It was a necessary thing and in many ways, helpful; but by the end, I knew I needed to start again. After a false start, I got a new therapist late June and we clicked almost instantly. However, what was understandable but bad for my mental health is the fact that he took the entire month of August off for vacation.
I ended up going on a month-long trip, starting mid-August: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and finally Portland for XOXO. I thought all the travel, and going to new and exciting places — I’ve never been to Canada before — would make me feel better. Instead, the opposite happened.
All that structure I mentioned earlier suddenly disappeared and my mental health took a nosedive. I had a panic attack on the third day of the trip, which I mostly weathered thanks to an XOXOer who reached out — thank you, Stewart. For the rest of the trip, I was in a constant state of varying levels of anxiety, which is really not what I was going for.
After Toronto and Montreal (and back to Toronto for a few days), my next stop was Vancouver for a couple days with Emory, who I met at last year’s XOXO. I admit I was anxious about it: traveling with someone who you barely know can go both ways. In this case, it worked out pretty well for us, and it also improved my mental health quite a bit. Being around people, in general, helps; being around people I like and am comfortable with makes a much more significant difference, and I had a good time with him.
By the time I arrived in Portland, I felt, well, not great, but better. The kind of anxiety where your emotions get numbed down and much of what you feel is the anxiety itself followed me through my time in Portland and XOXO, unfortunately. That being said, I still had an absolute blast, and again: this was by far the best XOXO I’ve been to so far.
]]>Not everyone reading this knows what XOXO is or how it works, so I’m going to start this series with an overview. If you do, skip to the next section.
The tagline of XOXO is “An experimental festival for independent artists who live and work online,” and that’s pretty accurate? It’s usually held the weekend after Labor Day, early September and runs for four days, between Thursday evening and Sunday night. It’s held at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon. It was created by two Andys, Andy Baio and Andy McMillan, who still run it (with the help others of course, as well as dozens of volunteers). It was held every year since 2012 except for 2017. It’s extremely well-organized; once you’ve been to XOXO, no other conference or festival measures up in terms of organization, attention to detail and listening to the input of attendants.
Schedule-wise, Thursday evening is the opening party; Friday is Social during the day, during which attendees self-organize different meetups around interests and Slack channels (more on that soon). Friday and Saturday evening hosts several topical events: Arcade (videogames), Tabletop (boardgames), Video (in 2016 it was called Film & Animation) and Story (podcasts and storytelling). Here’s the 2016 schedule for more information.
The conference itself is during Saturday and Sunday with talks from a variety of speakers. It’s wrapped up with a closing party that usually features a surprise musical guest on Sunday night.
To get tickets for the festival, you have to fill out a brief questionnaire — that’s only there to weed out marketers — and after that, you enter a lottery. If you get picked, you have 48 hours to buy your ticket (pass).
The questions are the following:
There are two kinds of passes: conference for $500 and festival only for $250. A festival pass gives you access to everything except the conference talks; however, you will see them anyway live, streamed to a bar downstairs. They are also recorded and later uploaded to Youtube. The conference pass is self-explanatory.
If you get a ticket, you get an invite to the private Slack, which is a massive part of the whole thing, and where a lot of people hang out before, during and after the festival. It has hundreds of channels for all kinds of topics and interests (#tv, #fitness, #star-trek, #knitting and so on) as well as local channels (#vancouver, #europe, #nyc and so on) and other miscellaneous channels, such as one for venting about random life stuff. It also hosts a sizeable amount of private channels for womxn, people of color, LGBTQIA+, non-binary people, people with disabilities (“spoonies”) and mental-health-related things.
The XOXO Slack is a pretty great place; not everyone who comes to the festival joins, though. During the festival, it gets especially busy; a lot of communication and organization happens there as well as on Twitter.
At least 85-90% of the people who go to XOXO are American; within that, the majority of people probably come from the west coast (and within that, a sizeable amount of people come from the Pacific Northwest). It’s also, by far and large, a pretty radically left-leaning place. There’s a code of conduct which is very much enforced both offline and online.
All of this feels a bit dry, but I think it is an important context for the rest of the series. XOXO is unlike any event I’ve ever attended, in a good way; a unique experience that everyone should try at least once if they can (and the above sounds appealing). I’ve met a lot of great people there and made friends I still have to this day.
Impostor syndrome runs deep within the community of XOXO, and so is the acknowledgment of it, so let’s start with that.
I applied for XOXO at least once before, in 2014, because a friend of mine also did. And I remember that even back then, I was staring at the survey questions (see yesterday’s post), and feeling something like this:
“No, I don’t belong here. XOXO is a place for makers, artists, creators — I am not one of them. Or, maybe I am, but I don’t do anything visible. I’m just a guy who finds all these people interesting and would love to meet them, but I am not interesting. I don’t do anything that would qualify as me being worthwhile of XOXO.”
But I filled it out anyway, sent it in — and the random generator did not pick me. It did pick my friend who went and had a blast, though; he said it was full of people who “you want to hang out with all the time” so I took note that this is a cool thing and I should try it sometime.
About two years later, the application form popped up again, in Andy Baio’s linkblog. Okay, whatever, let’s apply, maybe I slip through the cracks and get lucky with the lottery this time?
My feelings from years before haven’t changed much. I didn’t have a sexy side-project up on Github to show. I had a very unsexy job: a freelance consultant, a jack-of-all-trades generalist working in IT. That’s still my job.
I wrote something about being a community organizer. Which is true — I like making and organizing communities. I am not half bad at it, although I am am very aware of my severe shortcomings as well. I sent in the form and went back to whatever I was doing.
I was traveling a lot at the time, and it must have been about a month after I applied when I woke up in my Airbnb in Riga, Latvia and saw an email: I got one of the late-last-minute festival passes. I had 48 hours to buy it and a couple of weeks to refund it if I change my mind.
I was surprised. I knew that the ‘regular’ tickets were sent out already, and I did not get any email, so I resigned myself to my fate — oh well, no XOXO for me.
And now this email.
Huh.
The ticket was refundable for like three weeks after buying it, so I figured I’ll buy it in any case. I still had time to change my mind.
I started checking the flights to Portland, feeling a not-so-vague itch for visiting NYC before that, but eventually convincing myself that no, I’ll just go for Portland, visit XOXO, then go back home. I just committed myself to a bunch of other things anyway; so I got a return flight from Gothenburg to Portland.
But I was going to XOXO.
After getting my ticket, I joined the Slack for the festival, wrote a long intro into #intro channel, and started getting to know people. I wrote about it in the first part of this series; over the last three years, it’s become a massive part of my social life on the internet.
After finishing up my trip to Eastern Europe, I went to Germany for a week for a work project. Once that was wrapped up, I was back home in Sweden, telling my therapist how miserable I was. My friend Jane wanted me to fix her computer; Joe wanted me to decide if I will sell my phone to him or not and so on. I also took on a bunch of other responsibilities to keep myself busy, because I suddenly found myself with a lot of time on my hands. I told him all that and the fact that I was tired of it all, and I just wanted to leave everything and go to New York. He pointed it out that this can be simple: if I don’t want to fix Jane’s computer, or sell Joe my phone, I can say no; if I want to go to New York, I can go. I had time, and I had the money.
That was Friday morning. By Friday evening, I rented out my apartment, had my ticket for my flight on Sunday, booked two Airbnbs and was ready to go. I was going to the USA for a month.
Those three weeks in NYC were amazing, exhausting and draining. I love that city, and it overwhelms me, and I am tempted to write a few more paragraphs about it, but that’s not this story. (You can check out that story on WriteTogether, I have about 19 posts about it)
My digital XOXO experience started on the Slack, but the real-life one started earlier than the festival.
When I was in New York, someone organized a pre-conference meetup at the Lavender Lake bar. I didn’t know anyone there in person (I did join the Slack just weeks before after I got my ticket), and frankly it was a bit intimidating at first: all these cool people, many of them working at interesting tech companies. Someone just left Spotify; someone else just started working at Meetup. Another person was working for Tumblr! I was starstruck, in many ways.
But I quickly became comfortable and had great conversations. I got to know Skyler, Allison, PBJ, Darrell, Kate, Jason, Scott, Leigh and others I don’t remember right now. I remember Darrell showing off his goStrap on his phone, a thing I’ve never seen before; later in the evening I enthusiastically told the story of Turulcsirip to Scott and Leigh. We’ve made plans to hang at XOXO again, and many of us did.
Everyone was extremely welcoming, and there was a strong sense of community that I came to appreciate at XOXO. In many ways, the meetup was already XOXO and everything that’s good about it. Three years later I’d be the one to organize an XOXO meetup in Lavender Lake.
A few days before that the XOXO movie was released by Netflix, which had nothing to do with the festival (this was quite a bit of a headache for the Andys). I watched it alone, but then I watched it again a few days later with everyone on Slack, and it was a lot of fun.
After my NYC trip and a quick detour to Minnesota, I arrived in Portland on a Tuesday morning, not realizing that the festival starts that day, at least unofficially.
Arriving in Portland, I was filled with the excitement that comes from visiting a new place, a novelty that always wears off, but I try to enjoy it as much as I can.
My Airbnb was pretty great, even though it had two cats. I’m not good with pets, but the owner said the cats are not allowed in the guest spaces and it worked out. The cats left me alone, and the first time in my life I was pretty much not bothered them being around.
(“I’m not good with pets” is kind of an understatement: by far and large, I don’t like pets. I have my reasons. I feel like a terrible person just writing this, but there, I said it. Hi, I am Tamas, and even though everyone I meet seems to like a) cats b) dogs c) both, I don’t.)
The Airbnb was at a great location (around SE 35th Pl and Hawthorne), so I just started walking around in the neighborhood.
After an hour or two, I came to understand that yes, Portlandia is in many ways a documentary, but that’s not at all a problem. Hawthorne, the neighboorhood is really cool, full of cafes, vintage stores and great food places.
I had a very forgettable lunch at Rice Junkies then got dessert at Blue Star Donuts next door. I didn’t really like their stuff; I prefer the yeasty kind of donuts, which is why my favorite in Portland is Voodoo Doughnuts.
In the early afternoon, I headed Downtown to Powell’s, the legendary bookstore. It’s a great place though somewhat overwhelming; there is a reason that around that time I banned myself from bookstores.
By the afternoon, I was kind of bored and aimless, sitting at a Starbucks, so I asked on Slack if anyone wants to do a pre-pre-XOXO hangout. I only got a few replies. Andy McMillan said he might be up for something in the evening, though he said he’d be working; and Sarah, someone I didn’t know also mentioned that she might be available.
In the evening, I asked again, and not much response came — until a few minutes later when I got a private message from Sarah, who invited me for dinner to her house, which turned out to be about 5 minutes from my Airbnb.
This caught me completely off-guard. A stranger inviting me to dinner? To her house? The day I arrived?
Let’s stop here for a second to talk about extremely stereotypical cultural differences. Let me stress that: these are unscientific, personal experiences and observances, fused with bad stereotypes, and I know the reality is far more nuanced, but this is the only way I can tell this story.
I am Hungarian: we often don’t like each other very much, especially when we live abroad: we avoid each other, or form cliques. I personally try to avoid Hungarians outside of Hungary as much as possible.
Hungary has never felt like home for me, and I was extremely glad when I was able to move to Sweden. At the time, I was living there for more than 3 years, and it was the first place I felt home.
But.
After moving to Sweden, I quickly became aware that I do not fit in society well, nor I have a desire to do so. I didn’t have the same aspirations of someone Swedish. I didn’t like the language (though that changed later) and had almost no motivation to learn it since almost everyone spoke good English and my work did not require me to speak Swedish. I found myself an international church pretty quickly, which helped me to have a social life for the first few years, and in the last year or so there I started having more friends outside of the church. Expats living here, students on Erasmus or doing their masters, etc. I had friends, and I was grateful for them, but the fact remained: I lived in a society where I felt like I could not connect with the majority of the people and that’s kind of isolating and lonely.
On the other hand, I am at least half-American in my heart: I’ve always been able to get along well with Americans, and I fit into the society a lot better; I can connect to people. And after more than 3 years of Sweden, being in a country where I could connect with people was amazing.
Still, I have not expected a dinner invitation from a stranger. Nevertheless, I have gladly accepted and was welcomed. As Sarah was cooking dinner — veggies, pasta, shrimps — we had a great conversation. She told me about the Thorns, the local women’s soccer team and the huge fanbase behind it, and even though I don’t care much about soccer (except every two years when there is a World Cup or a Eurocup), she made it sound really interesting, even inviting me to a game the next day.
I think one of the mental breakthroughs I had came shortly after that. I was still nervous and told Sarah that this might be the time to be extremely rude. Without missing a beat, she said “Oh, good. I like rude.” I told her I’m an extremely picky eater and besides the pasta she just put into that big pot, I do not like any of the veggies nor the shrimp there.
I was not judged, nor mocked, but instead offered to join her daughter having pasta with tomato sauce and cheese and I am forever grateful for that.
Later that night, Sarah and I went to APEX, a pub, to hang out Andy McMillan, who was still very busy working on XOXO, but nevertheless had some time to chat with us. I felt like being in the presence of a celebrity. Just how amazing is a festival when the very first time you’re in town, you get a dinner invitation and later hang out with one of the organizers?
Wednesday morning, we watched the Apple keynote together on the Slack in #apple — so weird being in the “right” timezone for once — and commented through it, which was heaps of fun. After that, I picked up my rental camera for XOXO, a Fuji X-Pro 2 with a 56mm f/1.2 lens.
In the evening we had beers at APEX again, this time, with a lot more people. It was fun, and I had some great conversations, including one with someone called Mary, though that’s all I can remember (if you’re Mary and are reading this somehow: hi!). I was somewhat underdressed and freezing, though, and a bit under myself (likely slightly exhausted from the overwhelming Tuesday) so I ended up leaving early.
Thursday morning, about a dozen of us met up at Good Coffee. I got to know a couple of people — Patrick! John! Others! — as well as meeting up with someone I’ve met at the XOXO meetup in New York (hi, Darrell, Ryan and Ben). Around 12, we walked to Revolution Hall to pick up our badges and the obligatory swag.
Patrick
Darrell
The badges were amazing. In some ways, I was happy that I only had a festival-only pass, as it was pink and looked a lot cooler than the yellow conference one. We got pins — I think we could pick two — which were retro-themed, but all had “XOXO” on them. I also managed to score the secret pin from Andy McMillan, which was the NeXT logo.
We walked a couple blocks to a restaurant, only to find it closed, so we went back to Revolution Hall and had sandwiches at Meat Cheese Bread, right next to the venue. That’s when I met with Dunja and a couple of other people as well. She was the only person I got to know there who was also from Eastern Europe.
Dunja
Early afternoon I got to know Owen, Sarah and Christine; we took Biketown rides to Downtown to a cafe called Barista, where we hung out for a while.
Afterwards, I went back to the other side of the river for the Metafilter meetup at Rogue Eastside Pub.
I’ve been a member of the site for years, but this was my first meetup, and I loved it. I had a bunch of great conversations and got to know Josh (aka Cortex) and Angela (aka Secretariat), his wife, among other people. I also took a few good portraits along the way and handed them out; people enjoyed them a lot, Josh tweeted about it and even made a painting out of it.
Josh
See, I had a magic trick. It’s a pricy one, and it’s only magic once, but it’s pretty damn good: I take portraits of people and after a minute hand it to them. It’s printed on a polaroid, or to be more precise, a Fuji Instax Mini film. The camera I rented combined with the Fuji Instax SP-2 mobile printer I had is what makes all this happen.
The meetup wrapped up in time for the opening party, which marked the official start of XOXO. It was probably a few minutes into the party where it really hit me: There are over a thousand interesting people here, and most of the time, I can just walk up and talk with them! With anyone! It’s amazing!
I had a lot of conversations with a lot of great people that night. A few highlights:
It was an amazing day, and I had no idea how much more fun I’d have in the next few.
Friday started for me with morning yoga on top of Revolution Hall, which I really needed. For breakfast, I got donuts at Pip’s then got in line for Fried Eggs I’m in Love, who sold the best breakfast sandwiches I’ve ever had. While waiting, I met up with Skyler again, who I got to know at the XOXO meetup and got to chat with Tiffany, who had a really cool “Keeping it Corny” pin that I immediately bought from her (you can buy it here).
Skyler
Tiffany
My face looks terrible but look at that pin.
After listening to the Andys’ opening remarks, the Social part of the festival started. The first one I went to was the #photography meetup, a photowalk organized by Sasha. We walked around Portland and took loads of pictures, including photos of people taking photos, which is pretty much a photowalk tradition.
I chatted with Katie and Sarita from Mailchimp; one of them were/are the one responsible for all the podcasts sponsorships, which sounded like the coolest job ever (still does). I took their portraits, and it ended up on the company’s Snapchat.
Sarita
Katie
The pictures on Snapchat
Towards the end, I ended up chatting with Clint and went to Voodoo Donuts, which was almost a religious experience: I love their donuts so much.
Clint
Donuts
Done with my snack, I made my way to the Panic offices where they had an open house. They have a pretty cool space, and there were loads of people hanging out. Highlights include seeing a working NeXT computer and getting my picture taking with the walkie-talkie from Firewatch, one of my favorite videogames.
I kind of crashed around 3 pm, so I went back to my Airbnb to rest.
My evening was split between Story and Arcade. At Arcade, I played with Headmaster, a game for the Playstation VR (which, back then was still in beta). It was the first VR kit I’ve found comfortable (especially with glasses on), and the game is loads of fun: you have to head balls to various targets while trying to escape from the Football Improvement Center run by a GLaDOS-like evil AI.
At Story, I listened to — and participated in — Rose Eveleth’s interactive Flash Forward, a podcast about the future. It was a collective choose-your-own-adventure, where we could vote on things at various points of the story. It was a fun experience.
Gaby Dunn’s and Allison Raskin’s Just Between Us was also fun, a dating advice show this time live on stage. It was really funny.
The evening closed with Derek Powazek’s Fray, a storytelling event, which was pretty much my favorite thing at XOXO 2016. It started at 11, and there must have been at best two dozen people in the auditorium in the front rows. At the time, I listened to a lot of The Moth, a storytelling podcast, and always dreamed of attending one live, and this was pretty damn close to that. I was tired to my bones, but somehow the stories kept me awake and alert — pretty much all of them were great, though I only remember one by now.
Derek
I kind of wish I had signed up in retrospect — though if my memory serves me right when they announced the signups I didn’t really get the whole thing. After I got back to my Airbnb, I recited myself an impromptu story, as I would have told it on stage.
Then I passed out.
Saturday morning marked the first day of the conference. I got breakfast once again from Fried Eggs I’m In Love, then went to the Shark Pizza Donut meetup. That was a codename we came up within the #singles Slack channel, so people would not assume we’re there to hit on.
After the meetup, I went to Martha’s, a bar within Revolution Hall where talks were livestreamed to for people with festival passes.
I ran into Jenn Schiffer, not knowing she is presenting the next day, and really admired her laptop sticker game.
The overarching theme of this XOXO that year was indie makers, money and vulnerability. Highlights from the morning: Gaby Dunn talked about the perils of signing contracts without reading, predatory contracts, trying to make it as a freelancer and being Bad with Money, a podcast she started just before the festival and since then turned into a book as well. Talia Jane talked about going viral with her letter to Yelp’s CEO, a story that surprisingly has a happy ending.
I had lunch with Dylan from Slack, who also had adult ADHD. We ended up at a gay bar called Crush near the venue, where I got the coolest sticker for my laptop. I still kick myself for not getting more than one.
Highlights from the afternoon: Neil Cicierega talked about growing up with computers from an early age, going viral and making a ton of things, including mind-bending Smash Mouth-centric mashups (my favorite one is Mouth Moods and The Ultimate Showdown which some of you might know. Starlee Kine is the creator of the Mystery Show, one of the best podcasts ever made, that got unjustly canceled, but she started working on a new episode which you can support on Patreon. She talked about the creative process and how her show got made.
John Roderick talked about the myth of no effort, being a musician, a podcaster, running for office, mental health issues and important differences between Seattle and Portland. Lucy Bellwood who’s really into boats got really honest about publishing books, and being successful online while not necessarily making a lot of money. She is the creator of 100 demon dialogues, which you should definitely check out; I even got a demon plushie.
At one point, I managed to spot another person who in my head was a bona fide internet celebrity, one of my internet heroes: Dan Hon. I read his twitter and took his portrait while being starstruck and extremely awkward. Spoilers: two years later we had a great chat at XOXO 2018. If you go to enough XOXOs, you slowly get over the whole celebrity thing.
The evening program was Tabletop and Film; I went by Tabletop at one point but didn’t really find anything interesting, so I spent most of my time at Film. I really enjoyed Every Frame A Painting premiering a new episode, Auralnuts being funny and Homestar Runner’s reunion/live show (anyone remembers Strong Bad?)
That was Saturday. I was getting exhausted, but there was still the final day to come.
In the morning, I went for a run with limited success, then had pancakes for breakfast. After that, I went to Revolution Hall for the final day of the conference.
By the last day of the festival, I was exhausted, mostly emotionally. In the previous days, I took a lot of pictures and printed them for people, but I just didn’t have it in me on closing day.
I uploaded pictures at Martha’s while watching the Conference talks. Some highlights: Simone Giertz, Queen of Shitty robots talked about the importance of building useless things. Jenn Schiffer talked about writing satire on the internet, being on Twitter as a self-described Lady Code Troll and reminded us to never stop talking about Peter Thiel wanting to replace his blood with younger people’s blood. Sarah Jeong talked about pivoting from lawyer to being a writer, argued for adblockers as someone who works in media, and how she got into reporting on important tech lawsuits.
The closing talk by the Andys was really emotional and raw; very much on-brand for the conference, but I mean it sincerely. I had (and have) a lot of empathy towards these guys who spend an immense amount of time putting this festival together.
The closing party for the evening was at the XOXO Outpost, a coworking space for indie makers that unfortunately closed down since. I had a vegetarian burrito bowl from a food truck and ice cream from Salt and Straw.
This was a cool car close to the Outpost.
The surprise musical guest was Dan Deacon, and people seemed to be really into him, but it just wasn’t my cup of tea. I ended up hanging out with a bunch of people outside the venue. It was around then I ran into one of my other internet heroes, Samuel Clay, who created the RSS reader NewsBlur; I’ve been using that ever since Google Reader got shut down. He was in a sudden need of a place to sleep at, and I managed to convince my Airbnb host to let him crash there.
As a thank you gift, he gave me one of the early prototypes of Turn Touch, a wooden smart remote he was working on at the time (and since released).
I left the party somewhat early, feeling completely wiped out. But there would be one more XOXO thing the next day.
On Monday, I went by a Coinstar machine to convert all the loose change I accumulated over almost a month in the US; I think I got something around $13 in total. I returned my rental camera and then went to Slappy Cakes for an informal post-XOXO pancake lunch with about two dozen people, including the Andys. It was fun, and I got a hug from Andy McMillan, which meant a lot to me.
And then, XOXO, the festival was over. Until who knows when; the Andys later announced they were taking at least the following year off, and then, who knows. Even before that, they would never commit to another year immediately, but this time we knew there wouldn’t be one in 2017.
(Of course, now we know that XOXO returned in 2018, after which they explicitly promised it would come back in 2019. But back then, there was a sense of uncertainty.)
I feel fortunate that I got to go to XOXO in 2016. It definitely altered the course of my life, and the community became a huge part of my online — and sometimes offline — social life. I know I’m not alone in that.
I truly enjoyed my time there, even though I felt this strong emotional numbness/exhaustion, but that’s (mostly) not XOXO’s fault. It was a byproduct of all the travel weeks before, how I traveled, and how I feel like I failed to set limits when I should have. I’ve learned a lot about myself on this trip.
XOXO 2016 marked an end of an era for me. About a week after the festival, the thought that I want to leave Sweden and move to Hungary finally made its way from my subconscious into my conscious thoughts. I made the move at the end of the year; it was hard but ultimately worth it.
The festival took place at an interesting time in American politics; just months before the 2016 elections, back when Donald Trump was definitely A Thing but no-one expected him to win.
I credit the festival, the friends I made there and my subsequent presence on the Slack (and all the new people I followed on Twitter) for making me move politically further left and opening my eyes to certain privileges I have. There are a lot of things I still wrestle with; the biggest thing would be the fact that it’s an extremely US-centric place. I’m not American, and I don’t live there (as much as I want to be), so I see and experience a lot of things through a different lens.
I got an idea or two for pet projects after the festival that I never followed through. Still, attending gives you this unique boost in creativity that I value. Someone at XOXO said that when inspiration hits, you have to grab it and run with it. That is something I should do more often, but come to think of it — it’s something I already do more often.
I’ve made a quite a few friends there, and then more on the Slack afterwards. In 2018, I came back with a mental list of people I wanted to meet, having only talked online.
I’ve said it in the beginning, but it needs to be said again: XOXO sets an incredibly high bar to conferences and festivals with their attention to every single detail and their willingness to listen to community feedback. Once you’ve been to an XOXO, you’re spoiled forever, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find something else that measures up.
Thank you again, Andy, Andy, Rachel and all the volunteers. You’ve created something extraordinary.
]]>The 9th Boring Conference’s date was just announced (May 4th), and I’m definitely going, even though it’s about a month after Brexit and who knows what’s up by then. I was there last year with a few friends, and we had a blast. It’s a day of extremely interesting and fun presentations about seemingly boring topics, and the whole thing costs about 25 GBP or so to attend. I highly recommend it.
A week later there’s !!Con in NYC as well. I really want to go, because they have really fun talks, but it’s harder to get a ticket, and they release them pretty late, so by the time I would get a ticket it’s possible that getting a flight there would be pretty expensive. Plus XOXO is returning for 2019, but it’s always a toss if you get in or not with their lottery system for the tickets. Two trips to the US in one year gets expensive pretty quick, so I have to consider my options and do some budgeting.
Then there’s also ITP Camp going on in NYC in June, and while timewise I could do it, it’s $1400 plus all the costs that come with staying for a month in one of the most expensive cities in the US.
In an ideal world, I’d leave early May for Boring, then go to NYC for !!Con, stay for ITP Camp, then meet up in Estonia with my sister before arriving back to Budapest, about two months later. Spend July and August back in Budapest, then come early September I would take another trip to Portland for XOXO for about ten days.
It’s fun to dream, but doing all of the above would be really expensive, so I’ll have to come up with a more realistic plan. I will definitely go to Boring, and XOXO if I get in as well as do the trip with my sister. !!Con is a big question mark, and ITP Camp is, unfortunately, a very likely no.
It’s gonna be a good summer, in any case.
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