I have a pseudonym, of sorts. My game writing is as "Sandy Antunes", which is also my colloquial name. My work as a scientist is under the slightly more formal "Alex Antunes"-- in part because that's what my paperwork and assigned-by-university emails had, so that's what new hires, colleagues in Japan, and passport officials called me by default.

This has tremendous utility when searching me on the web. One name has all my science work, the other my creative non-fiction stuff like RPGs. It also helps in screening calls--in high school, I quickly sussed out that the guy calling for 'his friend Alex' didn't know me, despite his buddy-buddy nature (turns out he was a Marine recruiter).

And it helps in separating my academic/science work from my creative non-fiction and RPG work. Separating-- or concealing? Well, both.

Ask Rob Gutro-- a scientist by day and a ghosthunter in his spare time. When the Washington Post wrote about his ghosthunting, the flack began at climate blogs, and not all of it is merely good-natured ribbing. He has top cover-- his press chief notes he "does a very good job of separating his NASA activities from his personal activities"-- but who needs the grief?

For every Vin Diesel declaring D&D as "a training ground for the imagination" (2 minute vid clip), there's an article like "Yes, There Is A Hobby Nerdier Than Dungeons And Dragons". Trust me, D&D still has some borderline cachet in freaking people out.

But, long and short of it, I was outed last week. A short writeup in 'Make' connected the dots between Alex the Astrophysicist and Sandy the Gamer. Fortunately, in a friendly fashion. In its entirety:

We've written about the Interorbital Systems TubeSat Personal Satellite Kit before, an $8K DIY satellite kit. The ever-vigilant Brian Jepson spotted a story about astronomer Alex "Sandy" Antunes' Project Calliope. Sandy is using the TubeSat kit to create an "ionospheric detector for transmitting sonifiable data back to Earth for web streaming and remixing." Wha? Basically, his sat will be recording various datastreams (e.g. magnetic field, temperature, light) within the ionosphere (upper part of the atmosphere) and sending it back to Earth as MIDI data that musicians and hobbyists can monkey around with.The NPR story linked below does a nice job of introducing Sandy and his project. [Thanks, Brian!]

BTW: Sandy Antunes is a fascinating guy. In addition to being a professional astronomer and science writer, he's also written for the RPG industry. He wrote Miskatonic University (hey, I think I have that in my attic!), a supplement for Call of Cthulhu, Rules to Live By (a LARPing book), and other titles. He was also the editor-in-chief of Metagame Magazine (I definitely have those in my attic!).

We clearly live in an era of transparency, where all your avocations and hobbies can be connected-- if someone bothers. The lesson isn't that 'all rumors are true'. Instead, it's Tim O'Reilly's aphorism that "the problem with writers isn't piracy, it's obscurity." And isn't outing is the opposite of obscurity?

Reading that, I like being outed.

Until next month,
Alex... err, Sandy
sandy at rpgnet