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Nonsense and other miscellany
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| | Tags: | update | | Current Music: | gel-sol 1104 | | Subject: | update | | Time: | 09:25 am |
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| It's been forever since I posted an actual textual update saying what I've been doing. I guess since Burning Man!
Since then I have:
Helped organize the DASH puzzle hunt. It looks like there will be more of them, in more cities. That was really my biggest goal for it, so: yay, success!
Flew down to Anaheim to play in the Shinteki Field Trip: Disneyland puzzle hunt. One reason I didn't post about it is I was putting off writing more about it, but clearly that's not going to happen. So I'll just say it was super duper fun, and link to some other people writeups: Jan's, Scott's. (I remember there being more, but whatever, do your own googling.) Short version: The puzzles were mostly real easy, but clever, and did a fantastic job of making me experience Disneyland way more and better than I might have otherwise. I had never been there before.
Went to BGG.CON, the BoardGameGeek con. Aaron (whose house I used to play games at every monday, until he moved to Lincoln, MA), Boötes, atoz, me split a couple hotel rooms and mostly gamed together. Highlights: Aargh!Tect made me hoarse. We won a puzzle game there (I have more to write about that, but probably never will), came in fourth in a Family Feud style board game game show thing, didn't sleep much, and generally had a blast.
I drove up to Eugene, OR, for Turkey day with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) masui et al., which was great, but there's nothing else really to say about it.
I went to Boston for the solsticey holidays, which was fun. I didn't have time to see every non-family person I wanted to, nevermind spending as much time as I wanted with pretty much anyone. Every year there's more people there I want to see, which is actually a little annoying, schedule wise. I spent NYE at the afore-mentioned Aaron's house, with Boötes (who has family in southern New Hampshire), and we rang in the new year with Trötofant a truly ridiculous game where you use party noise-makers to pick up logs ('cause you're elephants). Oh, and for xmas I got a flash diffuser, so I'm trying to finally take more pictures of people (see previous post).
Meanwhile, work got awful and then, when I decided "fuck this!", tolerable, and now that the deadline that I knew in March was impossible is past and we readjusted to a reasonable schedule, actually reasonable and okay again, and I actually look forwards to it sometimes.
Also I've been going to Musee Mechanique to play pinball periodically. It's pretty fun! | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment   |
| As I mentioned, this was the first year since my first year that I didn't camp with a theme camp of some sort.
Of course there were a lot of differences, but one of the ones I liked best was neighbors. We had enjoyable and more than just superficial social interactions with three out of our four neighbors*.
This makes a lot of sense for a few reasons. If you have your own project that justifies your camp's existence, you'll focus a lot of time and attention on that, and less on your neighbors. You also probably came with a dozen people who you already have social connections to. But just having your camp be a named, documented, and officially sanctioned entity also helps foster insularity.
I'm definitely one for big projects so I love theme camps, but I really did enjoy camping out in nowheresville next to some other random friendly people.
*The other neighbors were two guys from Alaska who had no shade structure and would sit in their car with the AC on all day, or fall asleep leaning against the side of the car in the afternoon - it looked really pretty awful. They declined all our invitations to share our shade, etc. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| I went to burning man again. This was my 10th time there (but 11th burn). It was only my second time not being part of a theme camp.
2000: No theme camp. I camped with some friends I worked with in an RV. We arrived on Wednesday, and had no idea what we were doing. Pol and I anyway, were totally blown away by lots of stuff and wore out a few words like "outstanding!".
2001: Pol and I returned to camp with adania's camp, which I guess was the "Black Rock City Board of Tourism" or something but was really a bunch of leri people hanging out not doing much of anything. But it was a theme camp! Pol and I also had some RV-related adventures in Salt Lake City, getting back.
2002: Fleshlab, which was a lot of the same people from the previous year. Pol and I built a 2V dome and stayed in it.
2003: Fleshlab morphs into Foodlab, due to some Drama. Oops! Willow thinks of LuftWaffle, but doesn't feel like making the waffles. So I try. Success! A bunch of Leris now have changed designations from "campmate" to "friend".
2004: Foodlab again. This year Luftwaffle is on the Esplanade, so we delight a million people with waffles. My first year there with a DSLR, in which I learn to always shoot RAW. I made the dome into , and use it as a common space. Also now suddenly I am pretty close to a whole pile of Boston burners.
2005: Foodlab: Waffles. We drop the Luftwaffle game pretense, and just feed people delicious food. fennel gives someone grapes with balsamic vinegar, making them cry (because it is so good). Otherwise Foodlab has turned into the food plan for IGS, a village of about 100 people.
2006: Foodlab: More waffles. Everyone is increasing agreeing that Foodlab has turned into "big logistical nightmare just to feed ourselves" camp. In fact I think the waffles are the only thing we are doing for the greater community. So it's good in that sense. But it is getting a little old now! fennel makes up some spicy pineapple stuff out of waffle toppings and other kitchen contents, foreshadowing the next year. IGS and foodlab are dissolving, partially because the one big art-projecty person died, and partially because we all want to not do the same thing forever.
2007: Snack Food Glory Hole! First time in a few years I wasn't near the esplanade! Good times, all around. I attemtped waffles but they totally failed, on account of weather, and a number other logistical issues.
2008: SFGH: Better and weirder snacks, better placement, more sanitation, better organized camp in general. Yay! I'm the only one in the camp who actually knew everyone else before getting to burning man, which is pretty surprising.
2009: No theme camp. Just me and four Montanans, a dome, and a yurt. No real projects for this year - I did proof a solar rig which seems like it ought to be able to power next year's Stupidly Ambitious Art Project.
I'm really excited about 2010 now. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | puzzles | | Current Music: | We™ - As Is. | | Subject: | DASH | | Time: | 05:55 pm |
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| I'm involved in another puzzle hunt: DASH!
This one is taking place simultaneoulsy in Boston, Houston, LA, Palo Alto, Portland OR, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC, September 13 2009. It's designed with first-time players in mind, so if you are in any of those cities, and think running around solving puzzles with a few friends sounds like a fun afternoon, well, this will be that, so you should sign up and play! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | Acme - 303 | | Subject: | PreDevCamp | | Time: | 02:46 am |
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| Today was the first preDevCamp ever, so I went. It was basically a bunch of people getting together to hang out and write stuff for their Palm Pre phones. It was organized by some random guy, and there were events in a zillion different cities, but Palm offered to host the Bay Area's hacker group, so it was at Palm HQ.
polpo and I basically spent the whole time trying to make an accelerometer controlled chess clock. We got it working very shortly afterwards - it's absurdly easy to do stuff on this phone - 100% of my sticking points were that I haven't ever written anything more complex than a mouseover in Javascript before. I'll post about the actual app once it's done, since I think there's some neat ideas in it, but right now it's in real-ugly-prototype mode, so I don't want to show it off quite yet :D | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Last night, on a hot tip from bneely I went to the Mezzanine to see Mr. Projectile and some acid house. Except it wasn't actually happening last night, so I came back tonight, which worked out much better.
I never really found out who the openers were. The guy on the right wearing the Luke Vibert t-shirt was named Dave and is from Santa Cruz, is about as much as I learned.
Anyway, when I got there (11?) there were three guys playing some fantastic acid house. Lots of lovely squiggly noises. But then their set ended and Mr. Projectile came on. The first 10 minutes of his set were pleasant but it felt like there were 3/4 bass and too-complicated-to-tell-what's-going-on beats, and my feet kept getting confused. But then either things settled down or I figured it out and holy crap! There were squiggly noises, fiddly beats, and I did a whole bunch of real squiggly dancing.
The crowd was very small (seemed more like what I'd expect on a tuesday than a saturday) but really awesome - cute girls bringing water to the people dancing, people wearing some pretty weird costumes, loads of people dancing, and everyone was pretty friendly!
I think I did something different than I usually do dancing, since I feel less sore and also way more relaxed than usual. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| bneely tipped me off to the Move D & Jonah Sharp show, but he ended up skipping it. I went anyway, and man oh man, I could not be happier that I did so!
- Move D! Jonah Sharp!
- They make extremely tasty drinks there
- The crowd was awesome.
- Walking late at night is something I love a lot. The 2½ mile walk was perfect.
For those of you who don't know, Move D is a really prolific German musician - counting both collaborations and solo releases, he's put out around 40 albums since 1992*. He mostly does ambient psy-chill house stuff.
Jonah Sharp used to put our music as Space Time Continuum, which ranged from ambient to IDM to jazzy IDM.
Anyway it was a joint set and was pretty good and pretty dancefloor oriented.
What surprised me the most was that the crowd was not a bunch of pale faced nerdy guys standing around scratching their chins, but a variety of people, more girls than guys, who were all smiling and dancing and being friendly. And the place was packed! I had no idea anyone but me listened to this stuff!
Plus it had been like a million years since I had gone out in San Francisco.
In conclusion: Yay!
* His most frequent collaborator, Pete Namlook, has put out literally hundreds of albums in that same time. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I meant to make a remote shutter release button for my camera, but instead I just made a remote auto-focus button.
This is much less useful. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| Yesterday polpo and I got up stupid early to line up in front of the Sprint store and wait for it to open so we could get Palm Pre phones. Sprint opened early on Saturday for the launch of this new phone, which was convenient for me. Arriving at the store at about 6:30 or so we were the first people there. But by the time the store opened at 8:00 there were about 30 people lined up there. I was excited about the new phone - it looked like a good phone from pre-release reviews & rumours, my old phone was on its last legs (keyboard was failing), and I have a perpetual discount as long as I stay on Sprint. This last one is a big reason I don't have an iPhone - I'd have to pay ~$30/mo more a comparable AT&T plan. That said, the reason I was first in line was not that I was the most excited about the new phone, it's because I wanted to get the phone and get home by 9:00. I was the first one to get the phone, but they had some computer problems, my phone didn't activate properly until they took it into the back for 10 minutes, (which meant that I looked through my bag of goodies and noticed that the charger box had a sticker that said "EMPTY" on it - they accidentally sold me the box from one of the display units!). Eventually everything got resolved, but it took long enough that I was a few minutes late meeting my teammates for:
Shinteki Decathlon 5
Decathlon 5 is the seventh Shinteki game - they did 2 before decathlonizing them (which didn't really change anything other than they shoehorned their puzzles into the same 10 categories each time). I have played in all of them. Sometimes on Desert Taxi, other times on Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow. This was the first time that Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow played wihtout me, though (I was on Desert Taxi)! I really like that Shinteki has capacity for so many teams - it's very nice to be able to encourage friends to play even though there's not room on my team!
Desert Taxi played with its most repeated permutation of members - Greg, Andrew Hertz, Jen Moore, and me. The last couple Shinteki games were excellent in most every way, but for a few reasons this one was more of a mixed bag for me/us. Even though we did quite well on it, we got pretty frustrated with the Exploratorium puzzle - it was basically an hour of trying to find specific mini-exhibits out of the zillions they have there, with no actual puzzle backing that up. The category was Teamwork so I guess the intention was that the challenge would be how to split the search up efficiently between the four teammates when all the clues were on one palm zire. We also spent an hour trying to tune in to and then understand some morse code on a radio (we couldn't find the station for the longest time, and then it was fast enough that it was just very hard for us to decode). We usually have a pretty good team dynamic going on, but this time there was a lot of sort of ambient crankiness. I think Manipulation (a bunch of colored hex magnets) was my favorite, but I also liked Wildcard (rainbow flags), and Enigma (crossword clues for anagrams of sets of color names) pretty good. And the weather was pretty much as good as is possible. The view from Hawk Hill (location of that stupid morse code) was incredible! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Okay, I just finished another 100 days. Again I will post a few extras that didn't fit in the previous 100 days. And hopefully I'll keep taking more pictures, but I do look forward to allowing myself to go to sleep even if I haven't. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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Nonsense and other miscellany
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