I’m going to be running the Providence Geeks table at AS220′s Foo Fest (not to be confused with FOO), an all-day free block party in downtown Providence tomorrow (Saturday, July 15th 2006). It starts at 12am and goes late, so you have all day to check it out. I’ll probably have the table up until 5pm or so, and I’ll be giving away copies of Retro Gaming Hacks to people who can make high scores in whatever retro games I happen to have set up!
Does FOO still stand for Friends of O’Reilly, or does it mean something else for this event?
In this case, it’s mostly the classic meaning (one of the many metasyntactic variables). I noticed the other day that someone had hung a sign over the bar that said “Foo???”, and at the geek dinner, someone remarked that they would like quux to have some representation at the fest. But that shouldn’t suggest that this is an especially geeky event: it’s music, games, locally-grown food, and fun (and in fact, the Providence Geeks table was a last-minute idea I had).
But there’s also a subtle connection to the traditional AS220 yearly event, the Fools Ball. AS220 doesn’t do the Fools Ball any more, but it’s in some small way commemorated by the fact that at least three of its letters are still in use