There's no "Ask Slashdot" topic available for user journals, but I am intrigued by this reader's question, and I thought it was worth a try to tap into the collective wisdom of Slashdot.

Hi Wil,

you mentioned some time ago in your blog that you did a presentation on writing your book(s) using open source tools. Have you posted these slides (or whatever the medium was) anywhere?

You made the top ten list!

No PointsName Hp [max]
1 20342 Morc-Mon-Hum-Mal-Law died in Sokoban on level 6 [max 9].
Killed by an owlbear. - [79]
2 15917 Morc-Mon-Hum-Mal-Law died in The Dungeons of Doom on level 12.
Killed by a xan. - [68]
3 4171 Morc-Wiz-Orc-Mal-Cha died in The Dungeons of Doom on level 6.
Killed by a water elemental. - [59]

RetroCRUSH is a pop culture website run my my friend Robert Berry.

From bOINGbOING:

Someone left this in my blog. It must be seen to be believed.

The hilarious (and scary) thing is, the dialogue it generates is right on par with the stuff they used to give us to say.

I made it into the Hollywood Reporter!!

It's a very positive article, and it's nice to read something about me in the entertainment press that isn't framed in a negative light:

O'Reilly put out a press release to announce my deal with them!

This is pretty damn cool:

I posted this announcement at my lame website, but I'm so excited about it, I'm gonna repost it here:

I have totally signed a three book deal with a major publisher. O'Reilly and Associates, to be precise.

Okay, I'm totally trying to play it all cool, but . . .

HOLY MOTHER OF CRAP!! WOOOO!!!!!! ROCK!

YEAH!!! KICK ASS BABY!!! UNGH!!! UNGH!!!

Over at bOINGbOING, Cory Doctorow writes:

I guess this has made the e-mail rounds before, but it's new to me. I think it's hilarious.

(thanks to Shaun for the e-mail!)
Windows and The Borg

Picard: "Mr. LaForge, have you had any success with your attempts at finding a weakness in the Borg? And Mr. Data, have you been able to access their command pathways?"

Geordi: "Yes, Captain. In fact, we found the answer by searching through our archives on late Twentieth-century computing technology."

I think that, of all the writers named "Paul" who I have ever read, Paul Ford is my favorite.

This doesn't need any introduction. It moved me, and I'd like to share it here.

From: "William R. Granberry"
Date: Thu Nov 13, 2003 9:21:28 PM America/Los_Angeles
To: wil@wilwheaton.net

Wil-

I'm a daily reader of your site as well as a fellow blogger, filmmaker, and writer. Something happened recently that changed my perspective on, well, life. At the very least, it solidified a notion that had already taken root in my psyche.

At long last, R2D2 has taken his rightful place next to HAL 9000 and Mars Pathfinder in the Robot Hall of Fame.

Kevin Sites is a journalist. He's currently in Iraq for MSNBC (he was there for CNN earlier this year, but they made him pull the plug on his blog.)

He's been photo and audio blogging, and filing all sorts of amazing reports on his website.

This awesome story that I read at bOINGbOING today is all about how he does it.

I just read this Register UK article at bOINGbOING:

Belkin's new router firmware "upgrade" automatically redirects http sessions to a Belkin sell-page for some bullshit censorware filtering crap. That's some upgrade: from a router that routes packets to a router that pushes the antithesis of free expression.