"I was otherwise very normal before I became 4 years old"

Man, I look around http://www.ulillillia.us/aboutme/home.shtml and I keep looking and then I think: "if this were a novel, it would be a complete fucking masterpiece, albeit an often boring one."

He's called Nick. Maybe he'd be my friend because I'm also called Nick. Even though I fucking hate computer games and what he does with sample rates and bitrates basically makes me feel ill.

I find the fact that he so rarely mentions his family more upsetting than the fact that they might have neglected him; he's not aware of them, seemingly, at all.

The stuff about the words 'people' and 'person' is almost unbearable.

All the stuff about lava and blue water I kind of did myself for about 5 minutes when I was 8, or whatever, but I was always 100% aware that it was a mental game (as distinct from Nick's "mind game") and not actually a problem. I really feel for this guy.

I know you're being sympathetic Nick but is there anything on his site to indicate he's especially unhappy with the person he is?

Not directly, but I think there are plenty of clues that suggest he's not happy; the "no transport" section for instance. He also mentions being bullied on several occasions in a definitely negative sense. I think largely he's not aware of the person he is... but at the same time, to make that site, he clearly is also VERY aware too.

I dunno. It's difficult, obviously; I don't think sympathy is condescension.

Yeah, I know, I was just doing my disability rights schtick. Guy certainly reads like he's got an Autism Spectrum Condition.

wow, after spending way too long today on his site i kind of want to go to north dakota and drive him to the goddamn Y so he can go for a swim.

I end up tuning into his way of thinking writing and it starts making too much sense.

Future plans:
I need to make banners to accompany my latest design. The banners, at the moment are from version 2.x or 3.x of my site and are from around 2002! They seriously need to be updated. Negative motive prevents me, but lately my motive has gotten fairly close to neutral.

^ this is me a work but without the "fairly close to neutral" :(

He seems quite happy (or at least acceptingly inquisitive) about the person he is, but very very far from satisfied with his home/life situation.

I find the fact that he so rarely mentions his family more upsetting than the fact that they might have neglected him; he's not aware of them, seemingly, at all.

I don't know, this starts off pretty normally, but then gets technical, as usual :-)

http://www.ulillillia.us/myblog/2009mar.shtml

"#19 My parents wanted and got a Wii - what the!?: Now this is something I find very strange. Neither of my parents play video games at all. Nope, they've never played Mario, Sonic, Final Fantasy, anything. But, suddenly, they were, during the Christmas time, looking desperately for a Wii but no one in town had one. I have no interest in the console at all solely because of the controller. I'd rather put up with the defective (weak buttons) controller for my Genesis to play Bubsy than use the Wii...."

Man Scik Mouthy I am with you 100%. This man and his site have stayed with me in a very tender way.

I read a lot of his site last night. His gifs are a riot:

http://www.ulillillia.us/images/theamazingrace.gif

Unlike most animated GIFs on the web where they rarely exceed 20 frames, these animations are far longer and far more complex than most anything you'll see on the web (You should see the spreadsheets I use for the planning.). Care for an animated GIF with, say, 3000 frames? 3000 frames is near my greatest potential and the longest one here has 3444 frames (3634 if not optimized)

His Major Issues section is really sad, especially the part about both parents encouraging him to seek employment as a janitor. Right beneath that, though, I love his note about the obstacles he faces in becoming a professional accountant: "I don't know what they are or what they do"

"I don't know what an accountant is. My parents have mentioned and suggested it a few times. The skill is unknown for this reason and compatibility is neutral (which is where things naturally start) for the same reason. This same reason applies to the limitations since I don't know much about it."

yeah abbott that's exactly how i feel about him.

the guy is obviously bright and despite his many limitations could probably be doing some good somewhere. i don't know if his parents are overwhelmed or disinterested or what but he has certainly not been put in a position to succeed. i'm def not one to bash areas of the country but north dakota has got to be pretty low on the list of places in the u.s. where he could function well.

that is as good enough a reason as any not to be an accountant. he should actually become a career counselor. (xpost)

I hope one day John D. will write a song named "Talkboy tape recorder triples the variety"

This man and his site have stayed with me in a very tender way.

Me too. His new photo is hitting that tender place even harder, too. The old photo was a dark blurry pic of a startled-eyed hairy overgrown kid crouched over a computer. The new picture is of a skinny indie-looking geek dude who looks a lot like an old friend of mine. I hope it's just the resemblance which is kicking me in the gut, and not just some kneejerk expectation that a guy who writes like this must look obviously other somehow, but... not sure.

I was hoping the vacation picture + not many updates recently meant he'd turned his life around a little, but the blog suggests things are much the same.

Sorry to double-post, but another friend of mine was a super-bright programmer but became schizophrenic. He's now largely unemployable but works on 3d graphics programming unpaid all day and all night. A very different condition, though, and my friend is lucky enough to have supportive family and govt assistance funding his place in live-in communal youth healthcare schemes which have seemed a really positive influence for him.

But this friend has a dream of having a company to round up all the IT geeks who've burnt out in one way or another and finding some kind of work scheme for them to use their skills which are being wasted now, so they can be made to feel (and be!) productive but have their mental health issues understood/supported/worked around too. A pipe dream, of course, but I just wished a little harder something like that could happen.

"I was otherwise very normal before I became 4 years old"

^^^ should be ilm board description.

This site is pretty poignant. From a computer game geek perspective the fact that he's obsessed with a game as shit as Bubsy on the Genesis adds to the poignancy.

I too really wonder about the level of his parents' involvement. There was a recent post about finally fixing a square foot hole in sheet after dealing with it for months and months.

I know I come off like a dick on this thread but... this guy's life and story still seem pretty depressing. he sounds pretty bored and frustrated and cut off from the rest of humanity in a fairly bleak way. (ie, yeah why the fuck are they keeping him holed up in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota?! His family seem pretty disengaged/uninterested in his wellbeing)

1.4.3 Meat trick - This was removed as it is very unwise to do.

This did give me a chuckle.

http://www.ulillillia.us/images/2006ricelake02.jpg

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-legend-of-the-10-elemental-masters/7691432

The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters
by Nick Smith
* * * * * (37 Ratings)
Paperback, 258 pages

£8.12
Ships in 3–5 business days
Nick Smith (aka ulillillia) writes a captivating story with many unexpected turns. Based on the concept of RPGs (role playing games), follow Knuckles, a powerful, spell-casting wizard, as he investigates a mystery of supernatural proportion. A powerful evil presence seeks after the elemental masters. Knuckles tracks the force's every move as he works on fulfilling his greatest dream. It is unknown what evil act the force has planned. (Note: the cover is brightness-adjusted, enhancing print quality.)

By eric.r.pfeifer
This novel is sheer genius. Nick Smith boldly reinvents the literary form, creating a gestalt blend of fantasy, insanity, mathematics, and narrative. Without a doubt this is the most innovative book I have ever read. A must own for anyone interested in avant-garde outsider literature.

You can preview the first few pages online.

http://i47.tinypic.com/2r2yj6f.jpg

purchased.

I wonder if his parents are kind of surprised that so many people are buying his book? I realize it won't exactly be a best seller, but when he starts getting monthly checks for several hundred dollars they're going to be O_o

It's kinda hard to find on his site, but here's the page about The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters

http://www.ulillillia.us/stories/10elementalmasters/home.shtml

http://i47.tinypic.com/10za6bo.jpg

Holy shit, if you zoom in on the cover, Knuckles is reading a screen that gives the stats for the blue ball/elemental master he's looking at.

http://i45.tinypic.com/2vwgx3k.jpg

Apparently the blue ball is a Level 5624

tbh that first page does make it seem very readable

except when you have to stop and check color values

The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters really is a book that could only exist right now. It's the product of a mind completely overwhelmed by the statistical organization of RPGs. Pen and paper RPGs have been around for a long time, but they included a social component, because you needed to interact with friends in order to play. In contrast, the RPGs Nick was obsessed with when he was playing 10+ hours a day for a couple of decades catered to his instinct for isolation. The other big factor is that the internet has allowed him to gain any sort of audience in the first place, and to self-release his book. His audience wouldn't have been possible 20 years ago, and he probably wouldn't have been able to get his book published even 5 years ago.

it's a shame he had to be born in North Dakota - if he had gone to a better hs, he'd be a math phd by now

rad post Z S +1

rpgs are the art of organized randomness

ok i think i'm going to buy this.

I wonder if he chose these numbers to such precision for a reason? like, did he specifically choose strength = 23,278,101 over, say, 23,278,000 because that extra 101 makes a discernible difference in the image he is trying to evoke, or did he just want the numbers to be statistically "random"-looking and not rounded because he thinks that's more realistic?

or maybe he just created functions for each stat based on some variable like experience points and plugged in a value

I spent a few minutes reading through his blog, and this kinda stuck out for me:

#10 Christmas 2008 the worst in at least a decade: Christmas is my second favorite holiday of the year, a close second; Independence Day is in first place. However, this year was one of the worst in a long time. We had company over, something extremely rare, and both parents wouldn't let me go out of my room due to a reason that's confidential. I had a solution, a blanket (which worked before), but my parents wouldn't allow it due to a supposed "rule". This ruined this year's Christmas. As a consequence, I'm now taking counter measures for what they did - not doing things they want when they tell me to. In addition, I'm not going to get them any where near as much in the way of gifts next year, and canceling any birthday gifts. I had one for my dad, but now I'm not going to get him it because he played a role with this. At least one was friendly and had sympathy, my sister. She won't be affected by the counter measures. As a consequence, I was not able to participate in the gift-opening (I was still lucky enough to get a photo), or even the family games. Instead of doing this, with nothing else for me to do otherwise, I worked on my web site update.

This is :( on so many levels.

Still, it's heartening to learn (in other blog entries) that his parents have made some effort to draw him out of his cubbyhole. he mentions stuff like helping his dad repair his roof, doing some web design at his dad's workplace, and being encouraged by his parents to major in video game design at DeVry (though he admits that this is a long shot). he could probably make some sort of living for himself if his family didn't live in some no-name Midwestern town that's 50 miles away from civilization as we know it.

oh, iatee otm

or maybe he just created functions for each stat based on some variable like experience points and plugged in a value

i wouldnt be surprised if he had the battle and stat mechanics designed these are probably some of the easiest things to code

yeah, and it would explain the scientific notation for some of the values

or maybe he just created functions for each stat based on some variable like experience points and plugged in a value

I think that's much more likely, yep.

His taste in videogames is really unique. Stuff like Super Metroid and Super Mario World that are kind of considered universal classics get an average-to-good rating from him. Bubsy, on the other hand, a game that I don't recall anyone else talking about since the mid-90s, is pants-shitting awesome to him. And I'm pretty sure I remember reading that he claims he's listened to the level 10 music in Bubsy over ONE MILLION TIMES, and sometimes for days or weeks straight on repeat. It's safe to say he is the biggest fan of Bubsy on Earth.

I would say there is a 90% chance of that

I would say there is a level 12 chance of that

http://www.ulillillia.us/images/mountainfun.gif

Fuck, I just found his Youtube channel

This combined with Bourbon Saturday should be interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25bjSoyXlw0

Watching that video, I now realize that his character of Knuckles, from The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters (L10EM), was probably more of a rip off of Bubsy than Sonic's Knuckles. I realize that he passionately denies the influence of Sonic at all (see the section "5: Disclaimer - the Name Knuckles" here for his argument in chart form), but he makes no mention of Bubsy, another furry character that also floats, and which he was/is completely obsessed with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdLbUHdKTJ4

most people dream of getting sexed
my mud dreams will leave you perplexed
sky color 66-99-CC
recollection percents that sting like a bee