1. What is your name? 

I am N. Vivek - The N is my fathers initial - we use patronymic last names in South India 

2. Tell us something about you, your background, and what you've been up to lately? 

I am a 6th grade drop out, I lived in the interior Himalayas, a pretty wild and remote place, from the age of 11 to 22 as a spiritual seeker. I'm a self-taught "Jack of all arts", a programmer, woodworker, electronics engineer, motorbike rider and greasemonkey, amateur traceur, a little bit of a writer and poet, and a rudimentary player of the harmonica and flute, I speak four languages fluently and have a basic grasp of three more. 

The past six months of my life have been mostly about rebuilding my british Royal Enfield motorbike into a more powerful beast, by installing the ACE Fireball performance kit. This has been my dream for three years, and it has finally come to fruit last week after much blood, sweat and tears.

In other news, I am working on two simple ideas which might just be really valuable to the world if I can get them to work. One is related to social networking and the other is about fuel injection. Wish me success as I try to implement them over the course of this year!

3. How did you discover Everything, and how did you become a noder? 

I first saw the tagline "everything - Blow your mind" on slashdot. I came, I saw and my mind was blown.

I started noding almost immediately after joining. My initial nodes were of really poor quality, until I realized that my forte was to generate factual content that was not easy to find anywhere else online. Knowhow based writeups based on personal experience have been my most successful nodes. Under the mentorship of TheDebutante (on whom I had (have?) a big crush) I attempted a poem, and although it hasn't gotten any decent rep, I was proud of it, and since then I have written poetry regularly (elsewhere) and learned to express myself in a more emotional way than I was ever capable of. E2 also prompted me to attempt fiction for the first time, and it worked out quite well - I have since written a number of short stories.

4. What are your favorite writeups -- both your own and from other noders? 

The best writeups of my own are :

The Disappearance of James Phillimore - This hasn't really had many views or votes, but the same thing on my blog, gets hits almost everyday, and people who read it said I had quite captured some of the essence of Doyle.
The ultimate sacrifice - This story had been in my head since 1998, but it took very long time before I could write it out in a concrete form. I wanted to be as scientifically accurate as possible, and actually did the math to get some of the numbers that appear in that story. I tend to try to imitate the style of the writers whom I admire, and I tried my best to write like Asimov for this story.
Hand plane - I wrote this based on personal experience with woodworking, and vague memory of an article I had read in a 1970s Popular Science issue, almost a decade before I wrote that node. I discovered I could do good ascii art and it was probably the reason that is still my highest rep node. I have since created a number of ascii art drawings. 

The best writeups of others :

Diary of a cereal killer - I return to this node time and again, simply because it is one of the most hilarious things I ever read in my life
Ed stories - I wish I could write like that!
moloch36 - Absolutely stunning imagination 
The New York Magician
Mum, Dad, I've packed my bags and I'm moving out. I'm staying at Everything2
Chong ching!s Chang 'cause Chang chung! Chong
Crunchy peanut butter
E2 is unfriendly to New Order
For the love of /dev/god
I may not be unbreakable
Is jessicapierce attempting to destroy everything with the help of Satan?
No cow is innocent
One approach to E2
Stray cat rules
The demon was just under three feet tall
Xenohomonecropedapyrobestiality

5. What are your favorite and least favorite memories from E2's history? 

Even though he was before my time here, the legacy of sensei is something that still makes me feel all fuzzy and lumpy-throated at the same time. I hardly knew him from Adam, but through his nodes, I came to know and respect this gentle and wise person, thousands of miles away.

Knowing that he was not going to be on e2 again (even though it was from years before I joined) was really sad for me, and his last message here is something I often read wistfully.

Personally speaking, my least favorite memory was being serially downvoted because of some catbox nonsense. 
My favorite memory is of the time TheDebutante helped me express my emotional turmoil in the form of a poem. It was cathartic.

6. What keeps you coming back (or not coming back, as the case may be)? 

I've never been a prolific noder, and I'm doing too many things these days that I tend to forget that this paradisical corner of the internet exists. Sometimes I have been frustrated that a node that I wrote has been essentially ignored... Negative feedback would be better than no feedback at all. But then again I've rarely given out all the 50 votes from my daily quota, so I guess fair is fair.

I come back because there's always another awesome node to read! I know that if immortality happens during my lifetime, perusing e2 can keep me occupied for centuries. There's that warm and fuzzy feeling that there is such a huge amount of great stuff - akin to having a lot of money left in the bank at the end of the month, even after paying off all the bills.

7. What do you hope for E2's future? 

I hope it lasts forever and ever... I hope commercial concerns never affect the life of the site. I hope the pillars of e2 never tire.

8. What does E2 mean to you? 

e2 for me is the assurance that human life is worthwhile - there is entertainment, there is knowledge, there is emotion, of a refined nature.

9. Who are your favorite noders? Which ones do you miss the most? 

Professor PI, wertperch, The Debutante, sam512, moloch36, The Custodian, and many many more whom I absolutely worshipped mentally after I read their stuff, but I don't remember their handles. 

I miss most of all moloch36

10. Who would play you in the Everything2 movie? 

Naveen Andrews

11. Please fill in the blank: "E2 is to the Internet as ___ is to the world." 

Ancient Greece

12. Any questions that I didn't ask that I should've?

None that I can think of.

 

Everything2 Decaversary Interviews

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