Jeff Berry

My portmanteau site, Aspiring Luddite, is up and running as of 17 November 2010.

UNIX Systems Consultant

 In August of 2000, I returned to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies as the Systems Manager. In 2013, I relocated to England. As of this writing (2019), I am working at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit of the Medical Research Council as a part of Cambridge University. My resume

Actor

A current resume.

Fight Director

 Pretty quiet here, although I was fairly consistently doing the violent bits for The Deptford Players,
now on hiatus.

Cook

My area of especial interest is in Medieval/Renaissance Cooking, primarily by way of the Society for Creative Anachronism. I've written, and intermittently continue to write a column on Medieval Cookery, The Hitchhiker's Guide to Ancient Cookery which was reprinted in the late, lamented Serve It Forth. A wealth of further information is available on The Medieval/Renaissance Food Homepage.

Gamer

 I've been a gamer, both Role and War, for more years than I care to remember. My only real claim to fame in this arena is as a playtester for AH's Republic of Rome, and White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade, for which I wrote a jump start adventure called Alien Hunger. (Which was edited to remove my favorite sub-plot, by the way. Sigh.)

Currently, most of my face to face gaming time is spent on Advanced Squad Leader. I am also running or playing in a number of PBM rpgs, like these.

Author

Right now, I'm shopping some mystery short stories, some sci-fi short stories and a couple of full length verse plays. One play is a history loosely based on the life of Christopher Marlowe. The second, Forest for the Trees, was produced in 2003 by the The Deptford Players. A tragedy is in the works.

I've sold a few stories to Thema magazine and hope to sell them some more.

Oh yes, I've also written some adventures for role-playing games.

Computer Hack

In my copious spare time, I used to run a "garage" ISP, avigne.org. I switched that over to a virtual co-location and trimmed some of what it did.

Fencer

My fencing is through the Society for Creative Anachronism primarily, although I've dabbled in strip.

In the SCA, I am the Premier of the Outlands Order of the White Scarf and a companion of the Order of the Golden Rapier of the East. I wrote most of the section on Fencing in the New Fighters' Handboke (at least, the old edition, there may be a new one), and what I didn't write, I edited. (For those who care, I didn't write the section on armoring, warm-ups or drills.)

Grad Student

I'm currently working on a Masters in Medieval Studies at Columbia University. My focus is, rather unsurprisingly, medieval culinary history. I recently presented a paper called, "Medieval Food Porn: The Forme of Cury and Du fait de cuisine," which in a roundabout way spawned a Social Media Firestorm.
Jeff Berry / nexus@panix.com / Last Update 4 November 2010