My second Appendix Z, “The Perk L33t” was actually one of the first things I wrote after my debut article “It’s Pure Chemistry!” I’d just read W.A. Frick’s “Console Cowboys and Cyberspace Kung Fu” and I thought “Wow, this is amazing – how the heck did he come up with such a perfect application of BAD and such a spot on ‘cyberdecking’ rules. I wonder if I can improve on them some?” Thus began around a week of poking at the system and trying to add onto it. I eventually just settled on some perks to spice things up. (If I ever get time, I’m going to revisit some of my other ideas for expanding Frick’s system a bit more.)
Overall it took me maybe 2 hours to write, 1 to edit, and 0.5 hours to revise (I couldn’t settle on the model I wanted to use to absorb damage from damage programs). I didn’t have any outtakes (the article was just too small for things like that). As a side note, my other half was the one that came up the title after we had binge watched a bunch of movies that included “Hackers” (which is awesome even if unrealistic).