1 Eye at a Time

Kudos, Anno games, for being awesome.

2012-01-27T18:55:00.000-05:00

So I played 1602 A.D. when I was in junior high, and it was awesome. Its sequel--1503 A.D.--was released the year I started college and was busy LANing away with my buddies playing Quake, Unreal, etc. As far as I knew, the series ended there.

Fast forward nine years. In the lull between classes, I find myself bored one evening. I've played EVE to my heart's content and I've seen everything on the first six pages of reddit. So idly swirling around a glass of wine, I decided to browse the Steam library with my monocled eye. "Ahah," I exclaimed upon finding a demo for a neat-looking game by the name of Anno 2070. I downloaded said demo and my jaw immediately hit the floor.

"Remember that game," I said to myself, "where you had so much fun building cities and supplying your denizens with wine, beer, and cocoa?" Piquing my own interest, I replied: "Why yes! With islands and the boats. Excellent fun, that. Great concept--just needed a little more polish." "Well look at this!"

With the minor difference of being set half a millennia following, Anno 2070 seemed just like a more mature and awesome 1502 A.D. Wondering if I'd missed something, I did some retrospective reading and found out about Anno 1701 and Anno 1404. That one game that I once loved so much once upon a time has an ongoing franchise with a weird and inconsistent naming convention! Holy crap!

Rather than shell out massive monies for the still brand new Anno 2070, I decided to get Anno 1404--the penultimate version--and go to town (consequentially, Amazon's game download service is pretty cool). The campaign smells slightly of cheese and hyperbole, but the gameplay is...well...I feel like it was designed just for me.

In a world where Civ is so macro and zoomed-outity that you find yourself about as invested in it as you are doctor's office art, and in a world where Starcraft is just button-mashingly stupid, Anno 1404, 1404 A.D., Dawn of Discovery, or whatever the hell you want to call it hits the sweet spot.

I suppose all this is simply to say that I found out there is a whole lot more of something I love than I thought, and I am happy. Feels like Christmas. Here's a gameplay video (by someone else):

Unshelving Things.

2012-01-18T15:04:00.000-05:00

After lettings things sit for a while and using the holidays as an aggravation-sink, I revived the computer (or pieces of it) into a better machine than ever. Then I scored permanent ownership of the sound-recording equipment by trading my home brewing gear...because it turns out home brewing is just something I absolutely suck at. So here I am, hitting an authoharp with an egg-beater:

Shelving Things.

2011-12-21T16:35:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you just have to shelve things, and I'm not talking about library stuff. You just have to put things aside to let them be until later because the amount of time, resources, and aggravation you've pumped into them are not producing satisfying results. I think music recording is going to have to be one of those things. I spent the better part of two weeks trying to figure out how to get various pieces of hardware to work well together, and the moment I got it all right? POOF! My computer died. And I'm not sure whether it had anything to do with what I was plugging into it or not.

I've been experimenting with the two remaining computers (a laptop and a netbook), but neither seems to be able to play well with the mixing board. No amount of tweaking will make the recording input loud enough in comparison to the ambient electronic noise to be of value. Once you get to that point, any recording input of significant volume sounds like garbage. And post-processing noise removal tools are just bleh. The high-end sound card I plugged into my PC is what made all the difference in the world before the thing went and fried itself...and I don't think the cards integrated into these laptops are up to par.

My options at this point seem to be:
a) Record fuzzy, grainy audio on the laptops that is no better in quality than that I was doing with my gaming mic before.
b) Buy a new PC and start over.
c) Build a trebuchet.

Death of a PC

2011-12-13T17:58:00.000-05:00

Whelp...a power supply malfunction, a static spark, some vile feedback, or witchcraft has officially killed my PC after three years. The big fancy desktop computer which I've invested so much time and frustration in upgrading, troubleshooting, and keeping up-to-date has died in a fire. This brings a dramatic halt to my imaginary internet spaceship captaining, minecrafting, recording, and browsing as I know it.

And do you know how I feel? Not angry, sad, or frustrated. On the contrary, as soon as I knew the thing was a lost cause and verified that I can record decently enough on my netbook, I couldn't wait to dismantle the entire computer desk along with all of its peripheries and accoutrement and throw it all into a dark corner of the attic.

I don't really like the kind of person the computer made me into. Kerry would probably say that it offers an entirely too easy positive reinforcement mechanism for little to no accomplishment. And I buy that. The way I would put it is that the machine--or at least my use of it--has adversely affected my character.

EVE is probably the most glaring example of computing gone bad. A continuous cycle through the same missions...blowing up other people's spaceships and getting blown up in return over and over...managing spreadsheets...making ISK...losing ISK...playing with ship fittings...surfing the forums. All of this in the service of an imaginary world where most of the players are asshats. The only part of it I reliably enjoy is the roleplaying community which--let's be honest--could have the same amount of fun without the game as a mediator for our interactions.

Next up, browsing. Reddit. Cracked. Reuters. What-have-you. Consuming funny material has become important to me. And when that is lacking, merely interesting material will do. And when that is lacking, I'll even look at American news networks. *shudders* But all of it is random. The vast majority of it is stuff I'll read with morning coffee and forget about by lunch time. It'll leave me with that nagging feeling that there was something I wanted to tell so-and-so if I could just remember what it was.

Social networking--and yes, I'm looking at you, facebook, is also something I'm not happy with. When I compare how much time I spend spouting clever one-liners for a nameless, faceless mob of acquaintances to how much time I spend actually talking to my family and friends, I do not like the implications.

Having a badass computer that can do anything I want has basically been turning me into a stationary, adventure-averse, disconnected, and increasingly apathetic person since I was fifteen. I've paid money for hardware and software that have made me a less son, brother, friend, and husband for long enough.

I am not going to get another PC. I am going to make this netbook work for all my computing needs. I am going to enjoy the pile of beanbags and pillows I've set up where the unsightly computer desk was this morning. There are other things to do, and I want to do them, so I am going to.

A Mixing Board!

2011-12-06T18:47:00.000-05:00

A fellow library student listened to the music I recently posted to Youtube and apparently it helped him get through a rough patch. He was trying to get some digital assets ingested into Greenstone on some particularly nasty servers, and some banjo hilarity helped him get through the night. He has kindly put his Eurorack soundboard at my disposal along with a trio of very fancy microphones.

I've spent a good deal of the past few days trying to get the setup to work. I tried it on Windows 7 and Vista computers. I even dragged my old computer out of the attic and tried to get it to work in Ubuntu and XP. After a trip to Best Buy, though, and the procurement of a new sound card and some assorted wirey bits, I finally cracked it this evening.

To experiment, I wanted to do something fun, short, and vocally (since getting multiple instruments to sync up right seems trickier). I'd like to think that I'm getting a little better at this. Behold!

Thanks.

2011-11-22T17:57:00.000-05:00

I'd like to thank Starbucks Coffee Co. for its greedy, anti-access, stone-age internet policies. Seriously, I had the most productive six hours ever.

The Remorse of Breaking Things

2011-11-20T14:13:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning, in a groggy rush to get ready for classes, I dropped a big brown mug given to me by a friend back in Little Rock. It was a heavy ceramic thing with little Africasian figures drawn all over it...I think that when she found it, it had a plant in it. It was a small gift, but it is always little things like that that make me freeze in utter horror the moment I realize they are about to be gone forever.

Back in high school, in one of the rare winter snows that stuck, I was playing man-hunt in the woods with a dozen or so friends when I realized that my mini-maglite was missing. I transformed the entire group into a mobile, flashlight search squad...and did the same thing the next day. For an eight dollar light.

During my semester at the Arkansas School of Math and Science, I knocked a light-up Lord of the Rings mug from McDonalds off the edge of my desk. Trying to catch it, I also knocked off my atomic clock. Both were gifts from my Mom before leaving, and although they were just small things, I cried over losing both of them in a matter of seconds.

I felt irrational amounts of remorse when I realized a chess set from childhood had broken pieces, when I lost my favorite pocket-knife, and when I came to terms with the fact that my foosball table was beyond saving, but not when I wrecked my truck, when lightning took out our TV and everything attached to it, or when I smashed my first guitar by running it into a television. I felt plenty of intellectual remorse over those objects, but loosing them didn't make me feel horrible. Apparently, only clocks, mugs, cheap flashlights do that. I get attached to some pretty odd things.

Riding My Pig Down the Mine

2011-11-16T14:59:00.001-05:00

Behold! My newest important internet folk song about Minecraft. It's important. It's internet. It's folk. And once again, it's banjo.

Lyrics:

V1:
My Lord where have I woken. Have I been forsaken?
I'm alone...as far as my eye can see.
I've not the constitution. For such a world of desolation.
I've nothing left to do but punch a tree.

What's this? My fists' a hacksaw. I got a block of wood now.
That tree didn't even fall down.
There's earth up in the sky so I must be friggin' high.
Or God's makin' me out to be a clown.

If this is the way things are, my life has become so bizarre.
I might as well rise to the occasion.
I'll beat down a whole forest of trees and claim this land in the name of Steve.
My own milk and honey Canaan.

Chorus:
There ain't nothin' in this land that can conquer this soul.
The tools of creation are all mine.
And I'll keep on building forever cuz there is no solid goal.
I'm just ridin' my pig down the mine.

V2:
There's cows and pigs a'plenty. A raw but sustaining bounty.
I'll kill'em with my fist of steel.
And I'll tear up all this earth to build myself a berth
A hole in the ground in which myself to seal.

Night-time is a'comin. And I got a real bad feelin'.
Something evil's stirring far too near.
It's time to barricade before I am waylaid.
To pass the night in dark and cold and fear.

I must dedicate all my might to finding myself a source of light.
Before in this darkness I go blind.
I need to do more in this night than cower and wait for the sun to rise.
So I'll dig myself out and see what I can find.

V3:
Outside the dark is gloomy, but it's a might more roomy.
Than the confines of my little hole.
I know that I should stay indoors but I can't help but go explore.
And find a vein of illuminatin' coal.

Well I ain't made it all that far under the light of them blocky stars.
Before I hear this awful, chilling hiss.
It hits me like a lightin' stroke and everything goes up in smoke.
As the world turns red and I cease to exist.

But what in tarnation I'm right awake right back were I first saw this place.
It seems that life and death I do defy.
I let forth a great and might roar as fear is vanquished forevermore.
For I am Steve, and I will never die.

Wait...what?

2011-11-10T16:52:00.005-05:00

When I was in high school and college, I pirated some things--mostly music and anime. Since becoming the wisened, seasoned, good-looking veteran of life I am now, though, I've amended my ways and been a good consumer of digital information. In fact, I almost always fall on the side of copyright holders when arguments break out these issues. Let me tell you, that really sets me apart from most of my librarian kin. Since getting married, I have an author in the family--which has only driven home the point that people who produce content deserve to get paid.

In most cases, I do still fall on the side of digital rights holders. But when digital rights holders try to regulate the use of the U.S.S.R. national anthem, things are going too damn far. Information culture is changing, and the time for needlessly hoarding rights to digital materials is over.

The Great Goonswarm Federation National Anthem

2011-11-09T13:16:00.000-05:00

And now for something that actually sounds halfway decent! For the uninformed, EVE: Online is a game about spaceships, pain, and capitalism. The Goons--despite their reputation as immature, meta-gaming, hate-spewing griefer douche-bags--have consistently been an alliance that pushes the envelope and generally wins. The lyrics to this anthem were posted in one of the roleplay forums and I ran with it. Go goons:

Gotta Go Write Some Mo'

2011-11-08T17:11:00.002-05:00

Since I got my new banjo, I've been learnin' myself some chords and some pickin'.

Screw the Instructions...

2011-11-06T07:03:00.002-05:00

For the couple of years that I've had my moka pot (or maybe one--my memory is fuzzy), I've always been scared to death to heat it up on a burner turned up past medium.

"If you heat it up too fast, the coffee won't taste any good," they said.

"If you get it too hot, you'll scorch the grounds," they said.

"Unless you have the patience to wait the full ten minutes it takes for the thing to slowly heat up and sputter up its brew at a snail's pace, you are an unappreciative, tasteless, troglodyte," they said.

Well, guess what? This morning, I threw caution to the wind and fired that thing up like the devil's own locomotive engine. To be honest, I just forgot about it. Since we have an electric stove, I always crank up the burner to high for ten seconds just to heat it up before adjusting it back down to my desired heat setting. Forgetting step two, I walked away...moments later to hear the sound of something boiling over a bit. I went back into the kitchen to find ye olde moka pot sitting on top of a cherry red coil with steam shooting out of it.

I thought to myself, "Oh Gods, dear boy. You've certainly gone and ruined it all now. For shame!"

But I went ahead and poured the coffee from Courtney's Moka Pot of Brewing into Lance's Little Clay Cup of Manliness and do you know what? It was amazing! It was hot, crisp, delicious, and less thick'n'chalky than the more slowly extracted brews. Maybe it was a little bit scorched, but when you are working with freshly ground breakfast blend beans, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I might even try to make Turkish coffee all hot-and-fast-like now!

Reasons I love Kerry, #6

2011-11-04T16:34:00.003-04:00

J: "Supper's ready!"

K: *reads Dengiki Daisy*

J: "Hey, come get some food!"

K: *continues to read Dengiki Daisy*

J: *distributes a bowl of clam chowder and a saucer of stuffed clams on the coffee table RIGHT IN FRONT OF K'S FACE before settling into his couch for Big Bang Theory.*

K, approximately five minutes later: "What channel Oh Hey! Food!"

Reasons I love Kerry, #5

2011-10-26T18:27:00.002-04:00

Saturday afternoon, somewhere in the neighborhood of 3:00, Kerry decided to start reading The Hunger Games. As soon as she finished, she went straight into Catching Fire. By nightfall, she was done. The next morning, she asked if I needed anything since I was sick. So she made an anomalous Sunday morning trip out, bringing home various soups, ice cream, and--wait for it--Mockingjay.

If she hadn't so much work to do on Sunday (on top of taking care of me and watching a disk of How I Met Your Mother episodes), she would have finished a lot sooner. As it stands, though, the ability to finish a trilogy within a 31 hour period is still one of which I am extremely jealous.

Chorizo Chowder for Sinusitis

2011-10-23T14:52:00.005-04:00

Last night, I had planned on making tequitos for supper. That, however, was before life decided to kick me in the ass with another bout of nasty sinusitis.Not having all the ingredients on hand to make Will Wheaton's soup, and definitely not feeling up to quaffing breakfast burritos, I turned them into a sinus-cleansing hellfire and brimstone soup!

Put the following in a pot and simmer it for 20 minutes:
-Ye olde skinned and diced potatoes.
-Yon onion chopped into tiny bits (this is also relieving to the sinuses)
-Ye bag of frozen corn.
-An aluminum cylinder of petite diced onions.
-A goodly portion of cut up chorizo sausage.
-Enough water to cover it all.
-A wee bit of chicken bouillon.
-As much pepper/cayenne pepper/slap-ya-mama you feel you can survive.

Meanwhile, whisk together two cups ye old cow lactate with 1/4 a stick of butter and 1/4 a cup of flour till all is well blended in its own heated pot, then dump it in the other pot.

Enjoy tequitos turned chowder and let tears of searing relief roll down your face with the liberated contents of your sinuses. Just be mindful that it doesn't dribble into the bowl.

Reasons I love Kerry, #4

2011-10-21T13:28:00.002-04:00

As she departed for work this morning, she left me a package of M&Ms with which to reward myself after completing an executive outline for a user assessment plan. I'm sure she had no covert motive to pass off the hand-size package containing 12% of our necessary daily calories at all!

Occupying the Middle Ground

2011-10-19T17:57:00.004-04:00

If America were a boxing ring, we would have the super-rich in one corner and the debt-riddled poor in the other. Wearing red, I present to you the master manipulators who control our economy and our government, and who are driving our country into the ground for their own profit. Wearing blue and challenging for the title, I present the masses of self-proclaimed "average" people who purportedly deserve so much more than they are willing to work for.

And then in the middle there is us. Me and Kerry. A library student married to a medical resident, renting an apartment we can afford and driving old, hand-me-down cars. We aren't dirt poor--we might even make a little more than the average household. We do have mountains of debt, but it is all educational--an investment we have every intention of paying back. We save a little, do our parts, and spend within our means. Even if that means we have to live in an apartment with noisy radiators, share an iphone, pass up the Subaru we want, satisfy ourselves with limited basic cable, and make our meals and coffee at home.

My point is this: I don't really have a side in this ideological conflict. I'm never going to be rich. But unless fate really as it in for me, I'm never going to be poor either. We of the middle ground plan and work for the future and just want to live happy, pleasant lives as reward for our effort.

I don't believe for a second that things are going to stay the same. Someone is going to win this fight and the right to shape our society's future. What I expect of you is to respect the middle ground. The middle ground doesn't bleed for vampires or sweat for beggars. Do not interfere with our ability to make good on our work and invest in our futures. The middle ground remains silent, but the middle ground is huge. Do not frak with us.

Reasons I love Kerry, #3

2011-10-10T12:03:00.004-04:00

At the Renaissance Fair, the Chrononaught vendor had Kerry model some new temporal police uniforms he's prototyping. After dressing her up like a time nazi and telling her how badass she looked in $500 leather steampunk clothes, her response was to snap her fingers and strike a cute anime-character pose (kicked up heel, winked eye, L-shape hand-gesture).

Reasons I love Kerry, #2

2011-10-07T13:21:00.002-04:00

When she was playing Little Big Planet and I asked her what it was about, she intently responded, "I'm a bean bag!"

Reasons I love Kerry, #1

2011-10-06T19:48:00.002-04:00

Unless she is extremely famished, she can only eat half of an egg burger, meaning I get 1.5 egg burgers.

Casualties of Progress

2011-03-25T17:18:00.005-04:00

Kerry and I celebrated when we found out that the Shrewsbury Borders was not on the list of doom. But alas, it was but a cruel jest. A week ago, the folks at our Borders found out that on second thought, the company was going to close their store after all. Kerry and I found out yesterday and visited today. The cafe was dark. The shelves were permeated with the standard array of closing signage. Vultures had flocked to pick at the corpse. Dark times are these.

My heart goes out the booksellers, and I hope they are able to fill the void that has been created in their lives. The company is offering them nothing in terms of severance--they have just been told that their jobs have an expiration date on them. I admire them for sticking around, because if it were me I would probably already be out the door and looking for a new job.

The electronic information age is changing things, and it is hard to deny that it is for the better. The amount of information, knowledge, and wisdom that is being generated and made available is orders of magnitude greater than ever before. And millions more people have access to it than ever before as well. Who can say that this is a bad thing?

As we come closer to the ideals of universal authorship and universal access, the information world as we know it is going to change...and there are going to be casualties. Borders is a big one, but this has happened before. Information and the technologies involved have been in flux ever since this thing we call reading caught on and killed the Homers of the world. Who knows where the current changes are going to lead us?

It will probably be a slow and painful process. There are so many aspects of Western society that haven't even caught up with changes wrought by mass literacy. The bones of our collegiate, religious, publication, and governmental systems are all still built on a model in which information is a precious resource held by an elite few--and that simply isn't the case any more.

As far as the future of the book, the writing is not on the wall yet, but it is on the e-readers, computers, and mobile devices. As a stable, reliable, sequential storage medium, the book still reigns supreme. But we are moving away from a sequential world--people expect fluid points of access. Reliability is equated with currency, and digital information can be updated much faster and with much less cost than print media. And we continue to develop more and more stable long-term digital storage processes...

As a means of storing and especially distributing information, the bound-leaf paper stack is losing ground to the myriad digital alternatives coming of age. As much as I can't stand it, I can't ignore the fact that the book as we know it is on the path to becoming a novelty item. And nothing short of a technological apocalypse can change that. I will mourn the slow and steady loss of these objects and the places associated with them, but I will also look forward to the new horizons of possibility in information authorship and literacy.

TOTAL WAR!

2011-03-14T12:15:00.002-04:00

More specifically, Shogun 2: Total War. The game comes out tomorrow, and I spent most of yesterday afternoon playing the demo. I'm pumped. I probably won't buy it right away as I am terrified of its productivity decimating potential, but soon...precious...yes, I'll have it.

The Total War series has gone through numerous eras in its multiple iterations--Medieval (twice!), Rome, Colonial Era, Napoleonic Age--but none have appealed to me as much as the original. Most of that sentiment is probably owed to the absolute mountain of European-centric strategy games out there which which I have become absolutely bored. They all basically boil down to Civ, Age of Empires, or a fusion thereof. One needs new material to keep it interesting. How about some Chinese warring states? African kingdoms? Native American empires? Any good game in which anything not European or American is the driving force rather than an afterthought?

Total War is still a strategy/tactical fusion game, but:

A) It does the civilizations aspect better than Civ...or at least differently. No, you can't plop down cities and roads wherever you damn well choose. But the cities/provinces actually have variance. Every culture isn't limited to the same more-or-less linear right way of doing things. There is real differentiation between clans, provinces, and armies. Yay woot diversity.

B) The real-time battles have preserved the slow, unit-formation RTS style that was pioneered brilliantly in Caesar II in 1995 and promptly forgotten despite its brilliance. Total War battles make you feel like Alexander the Great commanding the lines rather than a disembodied demigod micromanaging units through a telescope. To me, that is a plus.

So yeah...I am very happy that this game exists. Even if the Sengoku period has already been done (in this exact franchise, no less!), it is still a breath of fresh air. It is also a vindication for anyone who doesn't give a toss about European feudal or imperial history. And finally, the summer map is riddled with cherry blossoms. I like cherry blossoms.

PAX East

2011-03-13T11:01:00.003-04:00

Yesterday was a flurry of adventure that has left my introverted soul absolutely drained, my knees in shambles, and my mind delightfully tickled with new what-ifs, possibilities, and general fodder. Kerry and I drove to a train station from which we could depart for Boston at 8:15 in the morning and rode the commuter rail to South Station. That was an adventure in and of itself to someone who has never ridden on a commuter train and has never been any closer to the heart of Boston than Cambridge.

The Penny Arcade Expo itself was an extremely huge event that engulfed the Boston Convention Center. The number I heard floating around most of the day was ~60,000: gamers, geeks, nerds, techies, and furries every one vying for position in the exposition hall, tabletop gaming hall, various talks and panels, the half a dozen play areas (PC, console, classic console, handheld, dance/rockband stages, etc.), food venues, and seating areas. And once you take gamers away from their behind-screen anonymity, they seem to be the one of the nicest, warmest, most accepting subcultures I've ever seen. No hidden agendas, very little judgment, a zeal for sharing--a very nice crowd.

I have to admit that I did not get into PAX at first. There are statistical tools and models out there that can project how many venues and events you need to accommodate a population of X quantity at a massive con...these guys are apparently either a) not aware of them or b) don't care. The expo hall was packed to the point that getting from one end of it to another was a level 2 mission in and of itself. And if you actually wanted to do any of the neat stuff, you had to wait in line. We missed two out of the three panel discussions we were interested in because the only way to guarantee access to the theaters was to camp the queues an hour in advance. The saddest thing for me was that the two panels I was absolutely pumped about were back to back in the same theater, thirty minutes apart...and they wouldn't let you stay in the theater for the next panel. So I had to sacrifice How the Game Industry has Changed since Diablo to guarantee a spot in The Future of MMORPGs.

My biggest point of contention with the convention, though, even superseding the difficulty of getting into the talks, was the booth babes. A gaming convention is for gamers who want to be around other gamers. These gamers want to see booths, demos, etc. run by gamers, but too many of the big name booths were exhibited by booth babes in skimpy outfits--most of them blond and looking more or less identical. This honestly hacked me off. Paid models don't belong in the midst of a celebration of gamers. The industry has enough to overcome in terms of gender issues already, and the booth babes were an insult to the people who actually dressed up (or down) to celebrate their favorite characters. I'm not the only one who felt this way, either. It was obvious that exhibits staffed by booth babes were getting snubbed. They stuck out and made us feel uncomfortable, so we ignored them. Maybe next year they won't be there.

Back to logistics, though, if I am taking away that I am supposed to, PAX is less of a convention and more of a flat-out celebration. The talks and booths are afterthoughts to hosting a massive three-day party where people can gather to rejoice together in the glory of gaming. And rejoice I did, upon buying a full set of Settlers of Catan resource plushies, resolving to buy Swarm upon release after the most hilariously disturbed short video I've just about ever seen, getting to sit nearly face-to-face with some of the most powerful forces driving the MMORPG industry, watching Kerry geek out over cute anime things, geeking out over cute anime things myself, casting glares of righteous indignation in the direction of the Star Wars: The Old Republic chapel/cave/thing, and getting a cute anime-gamey tote bag that is about as big as I am with a nice collection of freebies inside.

If we do PAX again next year, Kerry and I have resolved to do it very differently and turn it into a vacation of sorts. By going only one of the three days, we missed a lot of stuff. By having to catch the train home at 8:30 pm, we missed a lot more stuff. The dances, parties, the Video Game Orchestra--all night events.

1) Get three-day passes. We bought passes before the schedule was announced, and it turns out that the keynote address was on Friday and most of the talks we were most interested in fell either on Friday or Sunday. Plus, Saturday is apparently the most crowded day. Three day passes are only $20 more...worth it.
2) Get a nearby hotel, stay for the duration. Part of the stress was trying to see and experience all we could in one day. That is tiring. Staying on-site or relatively close gives us access to more stuff, more time to do that stuff, and a place to recharge between stuff. Less pressure + more options = better. Plus, the value of a nice, clean, uncrowded place in which one can read a magazine is not to be overestimated.
3) Take our own food. $3 bottles of water and $10 really bad burgers are fail. A fridge in the hotel and a backpack crammed with eateries that won't give you indigestion like a Zerg roach is win.
4) Represent. Since taking the electric shaver to my head, pulling off Sansha Kuvakei wouldn't be very difficult. I'll probably just get a Minmatar t-shirt, though. Games are as diverse as the humans who play them, and offering some kind of indicator of what you are interested in is the first step in ice-breaking.
5) Be Watchful. If there is a shadow EVE: Online gathering next year sporting hours of free booze and ipods, I do not want to miss it.

CCP makes me cry.

2011-03-04T20:47:00.006-05:00

As everyone who knows me well should know, I epic <3 EVE: Online. I realize that this makes me special. There aren't any elves, magics, fairies, or respawns in EVE. No, it is a game about spreadsheets, calculators, loss, grief, and hate. CCP also realizes that EVE players are special, and they like to slap us around they're evil little kittens since we've already demonstrated that we'll pay money for pain.

Next weekend is the Penny Arcade Expo in Boston. I will be there. I have been wondering for months why CCP is not representing EVE there, and figured they are just too busy planning the upcoming fanfest in Iceland. Today, though, I found out that there has been an invitation to a private CCP developer party somewhere in downtown Boston flaunting free drinks, entertainment, and general imaginary internet spaceship geeking out...and I missed it.

Why did I miss it? Because I didn't think to look for encrypted messages in a QR code that they leaked to the public a while back that has been floating around in the Internet ether with absolutely no indication that it is effing important. Now I am sad. This is my sad face: :(. What makes me more sad is that I can't decide whether this is awful or brilliant.

All that I can take from this for certain is that I play this game and that makes me hardcore.

Cat-Book Bowling.

2011-03-03T12:21:00.002-05:00

My preservation management professor would freak if she found out what I am up to nowadays, but I have discovered a new favorite sport:

A) Stack a bunch of books precariously at one end of the house. Currently, this takes the form of the massive pile of material I have for a young adult literature course.

B) Go to the other end of the house and chunk the kitty's favorite toy in the direction of said pile of book with as much force as possible.

C) See how many books Watanuki leaves standing while skidding on the hardwood floor and engaging in areal acrobatics trying to catch his precious moo-moo. If he is able to catch it without knocking over any books, epic win! If he knocks over everything in a whirlwind of destruction, still epic win!