Lucian Smith's Home Page

Well, after about four years, I finally decided to change my home page a bit. After reading Eric Raymond's excellent article Homesteading the Noosphere, I realized something (mostly unrelated to the bulk of the essay, but there you go): A home page is a staked claim in the world of ideas. It's a way of saying "Here are my ideas, and here are some of my neighbors in idea-space."

I knew I had to change my home page when I realized I was starting to never use it to give to people--I'd use my Interactive Fiction page instead. Why? Because I was proud of the ideas there, and my home page proper didn't really have any ideas on it.

So, here are some of my Noospheric claims:

Interactive Fiction.

Aka 'text adventures'. What began as a passing re-kindling of interest in 1995 when I found out these games were still being written has since blossomed into a full-fledged hobby. Of all my pages, this is the one that actually gets updated now and again.

Pictures!

Some of these have been floating around for a while, but here's (finally) a link to them. Included are pictures of my son! Woo-hoo!

Science.

That's not even a link. I do science all day, but don't have anything on the web about it. Isn't that lame? It's probably because there are so many scientists out there, I feel that anything I'd try to stake a claim to would be crowded out in the noise. However, lest you be link-free, here's a link to a paper which talks about the research done on a project I'm working on a spin-off from. Oh, and I might as well put a link to my advisor, who's really a great guy and who has promised to help me actually get out of here in a reasonable amount of time. Yay!

ComedySportz Houston

A Competitive Improvisational troupe here in Houston which I've been a member of since late '94. It's a blast. Come see us. It's funny. (I designed the web page too, which is why I'm sure it's completely unprofessional, but there you go. It has the relevant information in an easily-accessible form, and that's all that *really* matters, right? Right?) CSz Houston is affiliated with the Comedy League of America, which has teams around the nation, so if you're not in Houston, check this out to see if there's one in your area.

Christianity

Another no-link title, but really, if you can't find anything about Christianity on the web, it's your own dang fault. Of course, this attitude probably hasn't helped slow the promulgation of all the really dumb Christianity sites out there, but there you go. I like to think that this aspect of my life colors all the other aspects, and sometimes I can even see it happening, which is pretty cool. I used to have a link to the Christian Imagination Association, which is a neat organization founded by a college friend of mine, but it no longer works. If it gets put up again, I'll link to it here.

Family

None of my immediate family have home pages on the web with the exception of my sister Taleigh. Her page looks a whole heckuva lot better than mine. She's also staked some pretty interesting territory.

A Tribute

Over Christmas break, 1998, Sara and I lost our child due to a miscarriage. This is a little essay I wrote about it.

Old Stuff

Here's a link to my old home page. There's some stuff there that isn't here, so I kept it. Also, I have a hard time throwing stuff away ;-)

Note: Yes, I know there's no 'index.html' in this directory, so you can poke around in my files. I like to do that, and there's no particular reason you shouldn't be able to, either. It's not like there's anything secret there.

Below is a random number, which either has something to do with how many people have accessed this page, or has to do with how many times I've stopped working to goof off in Netscape: