Category: Nerdiness

CampyCon I Report!

I spent all week stressing (to the extent I’m able) about what to pack for camping, not having been for ohhhhhhhhh 12 years or so? Everything turned out pretty damn good though – I didn’t freeze during the night, I didn’t have to lug my gear pretty much at all. We had figured to go to Alice Lake for 2 nights, but Mr Geisel couldn’t come if we went that far and long, so we changed our plans to a campsite on Mt Seymour that was perfect for gaming, and not exactly what I’d call ‘roughing it.’ Observe:

This is the site. You see that little building? It had SIX picnic tables inside. We could have run seven games at once including the table outside! Just down the path in the middle of the photo is the trail that leads to where we pitched our tents.

You can see the wood stove in the back of the building. This is where we heated delicious pies.

All the amenities of home. Almost all.

Off to a Jerky Start.

We left late on Friday, around 7pm. It took us some time to get to the site. We made two stops, one for food and one for firewood, before we were stopped on the mountain road by the crew that was filming “Masters of Horror.” So we waited and waited and were worried that we were going to be turned back. Finally they let us through. Then we waited at another checkpoint. We finally got past the filming and we realized the parking lot where were were supposed to go was the exact place where we were stopped the first time. We spent 20 minutes sitting right next to our campsite complaining about how we weren’t at the campsite yet.

Cooking Food and Rolling Dice.

We had lots of great food. Jason brought up salmon steaks!

After filling our bellies with those and yummy squash salad we prepared for some gaming. I, of course, was the Dungeon Master! Here are a few of our stalwart heroes:

Geisel
Level 5 Husband
Hit Points: 27

Geoff
Charisma: 18
12 ranks in Survival

Jamie
Will Save: +7
Feats: Brew Potion; Magical Aptitude

Knowing that this was going to be a simple, one-shot, first level game Geisel suggested everyone come with two characters in case one died. Indeed, I took out Jason and Geisel’s characters quite handily. Here we are, six white nerds:

Dig those headlamps – good for gaming in the dark.

We played until about 2am. Before we hit our respective sacks, Simon gave us a fire show:

and I discovered that my camera has a fireworks setting!

I pitched my tent for the very first time in the dark. Here’s what it looked like in the morning! Boring for you to look at, I know, but I was excited. SO DAMN EXCITED! CAMPYCON! WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Thanks, Kate & Theo! This tent was one of my birthday auction BONANZAS!

The next morning, we had a fine, fine breakfast, played some Magic: The Gathering, and then proceeded up the mountain to Dinky Peak. I didn’t bring a t-shirt so I wore my old, ratty, long underwear-ish long sleeve. It got hot enough that I literally bit the sleeves off.

Yes, that’s the shirt.

The end. See you next year, if you’ve got the dice for it!

Last night they played the first four Trek films on Space. I must have seen Star Trek IV twenty times but here are a few new observations:

At the beginning of the movie, the Klingon ambassador is in the council chambers, exasperated by the Federation’s lack of diligence in dealing with Kirk’s “rogue” ways. The ambassador leaves in a huff, declaring that “there can be no peace while Kirk lives” and there is a brouhaha from the crowd. I never noticed it until last night, but it sounds like somebody in the background yells out “YOU POMPOUS ASS!” I thought it was just one of those things that you can’t really tell what it is so you just associate it with some random phrase, but it turns out I’m not the only one. From that point on in the film every chance we got we’d yell out “you pompous ass!” Thanks for the reference on that, Stewie.

They should have made a spinoff sitcom about the people at PlexiCorp. “Not now, Madeline!” is my favourite line from the film. We could see all the office hijinx that Dr Nichols and his employees get up to while designing and manufacturing transparent aluminum. Furthermore, Stewie pointed out that that would be an amazingly subtle Trek geekery to make a PlexiCorp t-shirt and go to Star Trek cons wearing that and an “I quit smoking” button. I think I smell my Hallowe’en costume.

The punk on the bus who gets some hot Vulcan nerve pinchery is played by Kirk Thatcher. Not only was he an actor in the film, but he composed and performed the “I Hate You” song that he was listening to on the bus. If you look at his imdb page you’ll see he’s a bit of an 80’s renaissance man. He was a creature technician on Return of the Jedi, has screenplay credit on Muppet Treasure Island, and other stuff. Here’s an interview with him at IGN where he takes credit for the “hello, computer” joke, and writing and speaking all the questions the Vulcan computer asks Spock at the beginning of the film.

NOW THAT’S INTERESTING!

CBS Paramount Domestic Television has officially announced that they are releasing digitally remastered episodes of Star Trek, with all new special effects and music….

Does this mean the Klingons punched Scotty first?

I’ve probably posted something like this before, but it bears repeating. Pursuant to my recent post on who reads my blog and why, I often think about what makes a blog worth bookmarking. Let’s go through the points together, shall we?

1. Updated regularly. And by regularly, I mean once or twice a week. Even I don’t update daily, but I try to get something out once every few days. A lot of leeway is given depending on the type of posts. See below.

2. Content! Some blogs I visit because they are written by people who have a very specific area of interest. John Kricfalusi’s blog is redolent with dark secrets of animation, but if it started to become a journal of what he had for dinner last night, I wouldn’t be interested. Then again, some people can write about dinner and make it entertaining. Most people can’t, and even the blogs I subscribe to have entries I skip over if it’s just about food, or similar things that may be personal to them but no one else. Blogging about meals is like reading about liver conditions—if it’s not mine, why is it trying to monopolize my precious attention span? The same thing goes with photos, especially of vacations, pets, and children. Of course, one person’s dinner report is another person’s cartoon news, so to each his own.

2.b Links. There are websites like boingboing.net and somethingawful.com that collect links to other interesting stuff going on throughout the wide world of web. You can try to one-up them, but you will fail, so why try? Unless it’s some twisted zen thing. Blogs that just post link after link – especially without any setup—are a pet peeve of mine.* If you absolutely must post a link to something, tell me where you’re taking me and why. If there’s popups and ads or a subscription necessary, warn me. Personalize it for me, or at least include it as a footnote to a real post with some actual meat to it.

3. Degrees of Separation. Some blogs have such fantastic content that it doesn’t matter who is writing them, really. I visit Cartoon Brew but I don’t know a damn thing about the author, apart from the fact that he publishes a magazine of the same name. On the other hand, I know that some blogs are frequented in part due to vanity, i.e. “I wonder if my name comes up this week?” My mom obviously doesn’t care about Spaceship Zero or the World Wildlife Federation of Justice. She just comes here to see what my hair looks like this month and if I’m ever going to have a relationship that lasts more than 2 years.

4. Presentation. You don’t have to be a graphic designer or a professional editor to make a presentable blog. Blogger and WordPress and other sites have perfectly decent pre-made layouts, and they work. And they’re simple. I am not interested in graphics, I read blogs for information, not to admire the bells, whistles and flash. Take note, myspace users. That said, sometimes photos and artwork really spice up an otherwise mundane blog (see 3), and in truth I do visit some blogs that are essentially just updated art galleries (see 2), but generally if your occupation is not artist, don’t get carried away. If you must design your own site, here’s some free advice: don’t make your header so fat that I have to scroll down just to read the second sentence of your brand new entry. And by Cthulhu’s greasy beard, no frames please. PS – spellcheck.

* That said, here’s a good one: As seen on Pharyngula,

Wal-Mart has a policy in place to protect its customers from the obscenity and wickedness that writers put into books, yet they still have a few books on the shelves that are terribly indecent—one must assume that their censors are simply too busy to have read them to determine the unpleasantness of their content. In order to help them become more consistent, I urge everyone to sign the petition asking that one of these unsavory texts be removed immediately

Why, I was just talking about The Tick last night. And on Tuesday! And now, an announcement that the cartoon is finally coming to DVD (no date announced, and no extras on the discs)

http://news.toonzone.net/article.php?ID=12216