Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 159

From the Vault: surrounded by the joy of the season

In December of 2001, Anne I were really struggling financially. It had already been a pretty lousy year, as far as work went, and after September 11th, things only got worse. As Christmas got closer, it was clear that we simply couldn't afford to put many things under the tree for our kids, let alone each other. 

One night around the second weekend of December that year, Anne and I had a long talk about the impending holidays. We never wanted the holidays to be about stuff, anyway, so we used ...

From the Vault: surrounded by the joy of the season

In December of 2001, Anne I were really struggling financially. It had already been a pretty lousy year, as far as work went, and after September 11th, things only got worse. As Christmas got closer, it was clear that we simply couldn't afford to put many things under the tree for our kids, let alone each other. 

One night around the second weekend of December that year, Anne and I had a long talk about the impending holidays. We never wanted the holidays to be about stuff, anyway, so we used...

From The Vault: Cross the Blazing Bridge of Fire!

Did you know that I used to write a weekly column called The Games of Our Lives for The AV Club? It was about classic arcade (and occasionally console) video games that were just far enough off the mainstream radar for Gen Xers to realize that they remembered playing or seeing them, even if they hadn't thought about them since the 80s.

I worked very hard to keep it funny, nostalgic, and even a little informative. Though I didn't always come up with heartbreaking works of staggering genius...

From the Vault: The Fires of Mordor

Yesterday, I decided that I'd reach into The Vault a few times this week, and reprint some holiday-related posts. 

While I combed through the WWdN archives, I came across this post, which I haven't thought about pretty much since I wrote it. It has nothing to do with the holidays, but I still like it. I'm reprinting it today so I can remember a time when I didn't feel so self conscious about my writing, could totally lose myself in a moment, and do my very best to fearlessly capture it in...

for all you last-minute shoppers out there...

While you're out doing your last minute holiday shopping, you may happen upon a little device known as The Slap Chop. You may have seen it on TV, and you may have heard that it purports to: "Chop up vegetables, nuts, & fruits, quickly and easily" with just a few simple slaps. And who doesn't like slapping their food around into ever-smaller pieces?

Now, some of you may wonder if this gizmo actually fulfills all of the nearly-unbelievable claims it makes, thereby making it a worthwhile gift...

In which my friend @Muskrat_John is congratulated by me, @wilw.

The gaming industry, like the voiceover industry or the genre fiction industry is not very big, when you really get down to it. In fact, among creators, the overlap between "industry" and "community" makes almost a perfect circle. Everyone pretty much knows everyone else, and good news travels as quickly as bad.

Yesterday, one of the truly great people in the gaming industry, who I think we all believed had reached maximum character level, surprised us all and leveled up a little bit more:

A few geeky games that are worth setting aside some Geek Time to play

I've discovered that, unless I specifically set aside Geek Time for me, Wil Wheaton, I end up doing nothing but work. This isn't entirely bad, because most of the work I do is geek-related, but I eventually run out of HP, and I have to recharge. by doing some private geeky thing, like reading comics, playing a little Xbox, or getting together with my friends 

Think of it this way: reading a comic book gives me a little HP, like 1d4. Reading a graphic novel gives me 1d6+2. Settling in with a...

knock me your lobes

Did I mention that Radio Free Burrito finally grew up and moved into its own URL at Radio Free Burrito dot Com?

You can get all 13 of the old Radio Free Burritos (which I've christened "the archives"), as well as two new shows (cleverly numbered 14 and 15) which were recently recorded by me, Wil Wheaton*.

My plan is to do a RFB every week in place of the Futurecast, until the Futurecast gets going again in a few months, but I'm not promising anything. Unless you want to bribe me with...

a brilliant, genius, incredible idea: "...if only the bookstore could come to us"

Catching up on my RSS subscriptions earlier today, I saw this at

JC Hutchins -- he of the boundless energy! -- has assembled a free "holiday sampler" of excerpts from great new books, handily bundled together in a handsome PDF, well suited to loading onto your device or printing out for your Xmas

Some of my favorite authors are in this compliation, including my friend Cherie Priest, Scott Sigler, Cory Doctorow, and of course JC himself. Seth Godin (whose Purple Cow

Something something something awesome weekend

I had a rather ... interesting ... weekend. According to Paul and Storm on Sunday, I won the game of "What I did last night" that I didn't even know we were playing. It was so surreal, I'm mostly writing this down today so I never forget what an incredible time we had.

Saturday, Anne and I were invited to a party at Seth Macfarlane's house for the release of Family Guy Something Something Something Dark Side (their parody of Empire Strikes Back).

I almost didn't go, because I never know anyone...