Olympic Sculpture Park

After the Museum of Flight we headed over to the Olympic Sculpture Park, which is right on the water. The day had cleared up and the sun was shining. We didn't have much time, just enough to take a leisurely walk on the waterfront.

And take some artsy-fartsy photos of the city. This is an actual view, not photoshopped at all.

I even got some time to sit and sketch the waterfront, which isn't as easily transferred online. Oh, and as a sketch, it pretty much sucks, but I'm trying.

There's currently an exhibit of giant orange cones in the park. No, that isn't a weird angle, it's actually about two stories tall. These will only be there until October.


Then we went off for dinner and drinks with Alex and Beth. It was a long day on our feet, and even more walking around the city at night. We had another really great meal.

Tomorrow we set off for the Olympic Peninsula.

The Museum of Flight

Elizabeth is very sneaky.

I've officially got one day to plan as my own on this trip. That's Monday, and we're going to see a Mariners game that night. These first two days were doing mutual touristy stuff in and around the city. Today she suggested we go to the Museum of flight.

I was in hog heaven.

They have a space exhibit currently. It starts with Goddard (who went to WPI) and ends with the international space station.

They have a Gemini capsule.



They have simulators where you can practice landing the the LEM on the moon, or landing the Space Shuttle, or even using an EVA suit to get yourself over to the Hubble telescope for repairs and adjustments (I got the quickest time today on that one. Just sayin'.) They have stuff you can actually do.

They give a pretty good history of spaceflight too. I learned some stuff about the Soviet space program that I never knew. They really showed that much of both of our programs was due to the fact that we hustled those German rocket scientists out of Nazi Germany at the end of WWII.

And you have to love this:


No, that's not a Star Trek uniform. That is Carl Sagan's turtleneck!!!!!! Yes, the great man's moth-eaten turtleneck (you can see the holes) is in a glass case at the Museum of Flight. Now an old turtleneck isn't such a big deal, but the thought that some museum curator thought that Carl Sagan was such a boon to the space program (and he was) that his turtleneck should be enshrined just brought a smile to my face. They also have his dictaphone, and the card read that he had dictated millions and millions of words into it.

That's a museum with a sense of humor.

We lunched on a patio where we could watch planes and jets take off and land at the Boeing field. That really gave us a sense that the history of aviation was ongoing. Really a great place.

Then onto the World War II exhibit.

They have a Spitfire.


And a bunch of other planes that were not built by Boeing, which is again, really cool. I expected it to be a Boeing propaganda film, but just about every major fighter plane of the war was represented. I only put the Spitfire here because that is the damn coolest looking plane ever. I never realized the guns protruded as far as they do.

By the way, I'm only posting and commenting on a few pictures that I take every day. If you want to see all the pictures I take, though without any labels or context, you can head on over to my photo albums.

Outside the building they have a Concorde, the discontinued supersonic jet, and the original Air Force One (that saw service from Kennedy to Nixon). It's not the first presidential plane, just the first one that was called AFO.

Did you know that Jackie O. originally designed the color scheme on the outside? It was later changed by Jimmy Carter, and that's the design that's on this one.


We went through it and as we were coming down the exit stairs Elizabeth took my picture (I meant to do my Gerald Ford imitation and trip, but it was actually pretty steep and I could've hurt myself). The curator guy saw her, and came running down the steps to take our picture together.

I'd post that picture, but it's on Elizabeth's camera and she hasn't bothered to upload any pictures or contribute to this thing in any way.

This guy didn't just take the picture, he started fiddling with the settings on Elizabeth's camera. I thought he was dead for sure, because if Elizabeth tells me to take a picture, I point it at the thing I'm supposed to take a picture of and press the button. If I screw up her settings I'm a dead man.

He was not a dead man. He pointed out that she had the wrong settings for the lighting conditions and she agreed. Then he asked her about shooting RAW, and she answered. Then he ran up and got the Photoshop book he was reading while on duty, and together they started speaking a language of their own.


So she made a friend.

Why is she sneaky? Because she front-loaded my fun. She let me go nuts in a place I wanted to see, so during the next two days when we're trapped in icky nature, I'll keep my trap shut.

Very sneaky.

In Spaaaaace!!

In Spaaaaace!!

Pike Place Market

We arrived.

So the plan was to do touristy things today, since we got here around 11am. This left the afternoon open for whatever we wanted. What I wanted was a nap. In order to catch our 6:20am flight we had to get up at 3:30am. I catnapped for a total of about 30 minutes on the flight.

I could go on a rant about how the TSA isn't really keeping us safe by making us take our shoes off and denying us liquids when we go through security. All they're really doing is instilling fear and reminding everyone that the government is in charge of our lives. I could probably write three paragraphs about all that, but I'm too tired.

So it's the afternoon, and I'm pretty much wrecked. Elizabeth is bouncing off the walls with the excitement of being on vacation in Seattle. Hey, isn't Seattle famous for coffee? As we leave the hotel I fortify myself with a nice cuppa joe and at least I'm not falling asleep while waiting for the walk signal.

Off to Pike Place Market, a tourist destination and fish throwing extravaganza.



It's an odd place. Yes, you can sit and watch the water, but there's a highway in between the market and the waterfront. In fact, it seems to me that the entire waterfront is denied any real kind of existence because of this highway. I'm sure Dick will have something to say about why Seattle developed that way, and it's only from listening to him that I even noticed this.

But really, the sights of the market are not looking away from it. This place is full of sound, and smell, and incredible visuals.


Yes, those are crabs. I have a movie of the guys throwing the fish around. When you buy a fish, the guy in front picks it up and throws it to the guys behind the counter, who then clean and filet it however you want. There's a whole bunch of theater involved too.

And all this did for me was wish that I had a kitchen nearby so I could buy some of this fabulous food and go home and cook it. It's not just seafood in evidence, either.


Gorgeous produce was everywhere. There are people standing nearby cutting up a peach or a nectarine and just handing out exquisite slices of fruit. We finally broke down and bought a giant peach, a nectarine, and some cherries. That's breakfast tomorrow.

There was also pasta, all sorts of meat, and even fresh made doughnuts. Mmmm, doughnuts.

It was really an exercise in frustration. We could look, but didn't have the means to keep or cook any of it.

I started fading again, so we went downstairs to perhaps find a scenic lookout on the bay. Instead we found this:


Total geek out. This was like every other magic shop I've ever been in. You've got your joy buzzers, and your disappearing ink on racks and all sorts of tricks for sale at the counter. One guy manned the cash register while the other guy did tricks for anyone who walked in. And guess what? If you wanted to know how the trick was done, you could buy it.

I ended up with a Svengali deck and a DVD on the many tricks I can do with it. I've read about this kind of deck before, during my magician years. Every boy goes through the magic years starting at the age of 11, and usually ending by the age 14 or 15, otherwise he becomes a magician, juggler, or just carny trash. I have probably more detailed instructions on its use in my Amateur Magician's Handbook back home on my bookshelf.

I will amaze my friends with fabulous card tricks. Or, more likely, it will go in a drawer and be forgotten.

First pics in Seattle

First pics in Seattle

The New Phone

So I have a new phone. No iphone for me, I can't afford that monthly plan. I got one of these:
I rather like it. Elizabeth doesn't think it's as good as the old phone, but it certainly takes better pictures (2MP camera instead of VGA) and gets better reception. The speaker phone doesn't seem to pick up as much, so one of us can talk and both of us can hear the phone call, but if you're not facing directly at the phone, the caller can't hear you.

It also has a built in Walkman music player. You have to buy an M2 flash chip to store anything more than 6MB or so. So for $50 I have something like an 8GB iPod. Actually that's not true, it cost me $90 because first I bought a MicroSD card for $40. It didn't work in the phone, so I figured it was dead memory. I sent it back and got another MicroSD card. This one didn't work either so I did some research and found out that M2 flash isn't MicroSD. Except now I'm embarrassed that I didn't know that so I'm not willing to send back the MicroSD again, so I'm just calling that a learning expense.

Today the M2 memory arrived. I put it in the phone and it's working like a champ. I can now store my photos there and not worry about running out of room. I've started loading music on it, and it's taking a rather long time. NiN's Ghosts I-IV is taking about a half hour to transfer via USB cable. I don't think my ipod loads that slowly, but since itunes doesn't tell you how long the transfer will take, I'm not sure.

I'm not sure I'm going to like having my music on my phone. I suspect I will have problems listening to it on the flight, but with the advent of the iphone, perhaps flight attendants will understand people can just listen to stuff on their phones and not ask me to turn it off. I also worry that after a long flight of listening to stuff on my phone, I won't have any battery left to call anyone once on the ground. This also might not be true, as having the phone parts of the unit turned off might significantly save on battery life.

My other big problem is that I've now bought a fair amount of stuff from itunes, and to convert all that music to mp3's will be a long process. This is how Apple locks you into their platform. Luckily I've started buying stuff from Amazon's MP3 service, and, most recently, I've grabbed NiN's last couple of albums directly from the artists. I have things to listen to, but I'm still taking my old ipod mini with me to listen to my audiobooks from audible (which I'm also not sure will work on the phone), and I've invested in the itunes+ non-DRM'd files for a couple of albums. They turn out to be .m4a files, which, again, I'm not sure will work (waiting for Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon to download now to try it).

The phone has also made it possible to send pictures directly here, and to twitter some stuff. I now have a USB connection with the computer to actually get in there and play with the files, and I really feel more in charge of the device.

Which makes me want to start hacking my old phone. It's also a Sony Ericsson, so it should work with the same USB cable. Hmmm... I think there's some fun to be had there.

Penn Says

The other day I went over to Crackle.com to watch Jack Thompson on the Jason Hall Show, thanks to Tom Chick's blog when I found Penn Says, which is just Penn Jillette talking on camera about whatever comes into his mind. He started doing it in January, and seems to be pretty regular with it. I've been listening to it for hours now, and I'm about halfway through them.

As a fan of Penn &Teller and a listener to Penn's radio show during its all-too-short run, this is great. Hell, I even entertained the guys at Ben Aldrich's bachelor party with information gleaned from Penn over why monkeys (actually chimps) don't get along with dwarves.

Candy

Just another test of the mobile picture sending equipment. Nothing to see here, move along.

ARGFest-O-Con '08

Last weekend ARGFest-O-Con '08 took place at the Radisson Hotel in Boston. I heard about it through the IGDA ARG Sig mailing list, and, after checking out their site, figured it was just a bunch of ARG enthusiasts from Boston.

Except there were people there from all over the country, some of the biggest names in both commercial and independent ARGs, and the whole thing was sponsored by 42 Entertainment. This was the seventh annual ARGFest-O-Con, which began when Sean Stacey, the guy who runs unfiction.com decided to go visit Steve Peters in Vegas and posted on unfiction that people should join them for a beer. More people showed up than they bargained on.

Seven years later I blunder in, and was welcomed with open arms. These people are some of the coolest, nicest, most talkative people I've ever met. I didn't preregister, I don't have an account at unfiction, and I basically had no clue. Within 30 minutes of arriving I was talking to people I had never seen before about all sorts of things, including which games I've played and which I haven't. By the end of the cocktail party on Friday night, I had made a number of contacts, and, I think, a number of friends.

Also during the cocktail party an unkempt, drunk man stumbled in, warned us all about the invisible people, tried to punch an invisible person but only managed to spill his drink, then stumbled out again. The hotel staff looked nervous. The crowd applauded. One woman yelled, "He dropped some papers!" Everyone crowded around a picture of the New England School of Law which, coincidentally, is right across the street from the Radisson. A smaller group rushed off to investigate, but I returned to my newly bought beer.

Perhaps forty-five minutes later the same man, now showered and sheveled (is that a word?) sat down next to me and struck up a conversation. I bought him a drink, observed that I had recently seen him as a drunk paranoid schizophrenic, and he told me that some ARG puppetmasters had asked him to play the part. I found out that it was part of a larger, ongoing ARG (phew! at least I wouldn't have to go running off after every clue here at the con), and that the information gathered as part of his clues wouldn't pay off for another two or three weeks online.

When the investigators returned they had the same information I did, but they ran around some hot Boston streets to get it, whereas I had just bought a guy a drink. I guess there's more than one way to play an ARG.

Saturday was a full day of talks and panels, some great, some okay. In the middle of Steve Peters' talk (where he pointed out that all ARG heroines are studious looking, attractive brunettes), this guy walked in:


And only at an ARG conference would the audience begin taking pictures of his tatoos, looking for a possible clue. After all, we were going to have to solve a series of puzzles in order to find out where dinner was that night. I don't know if anything printed on him ever paid off, but I found dinner without referencing him. I think Steve was just trying to go against stereotype and used a visual aid to prove his point, but that's the problem of ARG's. What's a clue? What's a troll? Which are the red herrings and which will pay off?

There is also a real dichotomy between the commercial ARGs which are all for marketing something else (like Why So Serious, Vanishing Point, and Year Zero) and the independent ARGs (like Perplex City, World Without Oil, or Deus City). As evidenced by this blog, most people have only seen the big marketing pushes and don't even know about the independents making ARGs for ARGs sake.

And that's because no one has found a way to make people pay for the ARG experience besides using it as a marketing tool. Majestic failed. I suppose Perplex City at least broke even, but I hear Adrian Hon isn't going anywhere near Season 2 because Season 1 seriously exhausted him. Of course, Adrian is over at We Tell Stories, which seems a much less taxing take on mixed media (and it's sponsored by Penguin Books so it probably pays better).

Saturday evening kicked off with FestQuest, a chance to run around the streets of Boston (93 degrees at 6pm) solving puzzles. Our first puzzle:

which the group solved in the lobby while I was in the bathroom. We had to find the sculpture of the Tortoise and the Hare, which is apparently in Copley Sq. (my wife told me afterwards). Now I've been around Boston, I can find an address, but ask me to find a particular sculpture? Nope.

In the end it didn't matter. We spent an hour and a half wandering around the common looking for the statue, then decided to try to solve the other puzzles. We skipped to location #5, which was 45 School St. (Old City Hall), and from the clues there, put it together that we were supposed to meet the group at Fanueil Hall.

We were the last to arrive. (sigh)

I ended up having dinner with a PR rep for the LA school district and two German viral marketers in the North End. I went crazy at the silent auction, and ended up getting the 42 Productions package, which included two NiN CD's, the I Love Bees ending DVD, a Vanishing Point t-shirt, and a bunch of stickers and buttons. I went in for the I Love Bees DVD, but really enjoyed the Year Zero NiN CD (I had already downloaded the Ghosts CD).

Great stuff, all in all. Next year, if the timing works out, I'll fly out to Portland, Oregon for ARGFest-O-Con '09.

Frontiers '08

Today was the last day of Frontiers, a summer program where high school juniors and seniors come for two weeks to see (kind of) what college is like. I've been doing this for 14 years now in some capacity. The last three years I've been teaching the Art component of the IMGD "major."


That means we have a week and a half of two hours per day classes. I speak for the first hour and then turn them loose on the computers for the second. They design and build Unreal Tournament 2004 levels. I have a TA (hi Eric!) who actually remembers much more about UT2004 editing than I do.

The gang did much better this year than last year. Basically everyone had a playable level. They could all probably use a bit more polish, all the level properties set correctly, a screenshot from the level displayed in the menu, more stuff on the walls, and some set dressing, BUT they were all fun to play. At the end of the day, that's all you can ask.

And really most of them did it in about three days. You see, first they have to work through a video tutorial making their first level. That's most of the first week. The UnrealEd software is really user friendly and easy to pick up. So what did I do differently this year? I stressed a process for level design. It's pretty simple.

Dean's Guide for UT2004 Level Design (applicable to other games too):

1. Have a theme. What is this place? What is it used for when guys with big guns aren't running around gunning each other down there?
2. Draw it out on paper first. It's much easier to erase and redraw a line than it is to replace a hallway or resize a room.
3. Lay out all your gross architecture first with a default texture. It doesn't have to look good at this point, but it should be almost playable.
4. Position all your gameplay elements. Those are spawn points, weapons, health, armor, adrenaline, liquids, and movers (elevators, conveyor belts, pits).
5. Light it. Quick and dirty. Don't fuss over shadows.
   
6. Playtest, playtest, playtest.
7. Repeat #4.
8. Apply textures to everything.
9. Place static meshes to make the level look like a real place.
10. Relight, adding colors and effects.
    
11. Polish: add music, original sounds, level info, etc.

And that's pretty much it. Most of them ran out of time around step 8 or 9, and probably still need more playtesting.

Now I wanted to post a screenshot from each level with a brief description, and maybe a link to all of them. Eric made a pile of CD's so the kids could all take home the work they did, and included one for me. I got it home to load it up and start taking screenshots and found my CD was blank. I'm hoping that it's an anomaly and that the rest of them actually have something on their CDs.

I'll post them as soon as I get them.

Gadgets

The other night I was talking to my mother, and she asked if we had started packing for the trip. A week before leaving? Are you kidding? She said she would be mostly packed by now.

What would you wear for that week?

But I am getting my gadgets in order.

Here's what I need to travel:



That's a laptop (which is really too big, but I went crazy picking it out), ipod, cellphone (old one standing in for current one, which is taking the picture), DS, and a good, old fashioned book.

I always make sure I have a decent game on the laptop, which I never play during the trip. The laptop sits in the hotel and we're out running around. At night I might have enough energy to transfer pictures, upload them, and check email.

I have to make sure the ipod is updated, that I have all the current podcasts and at least 15 hours of audiobooks, as well as current music. This could take a couple of hours right there. I will have to do some shopping both on iTunes and Audible, and making playlists that are energetic but not too hard rock, or soothing for sleeping on the plane, or stuff that Elizabeth won't mind listening to... well, it's a fair amount of organization.

The DS needs a game that will last the trip, and I do a fair amount of DS gaming while traveling, either on the plane or while waiting for Elizabeth to shop. Last year's vacation had me working through Elite Beat Agents, which is a crappy game to just whip out on a moment's notice. It depends on sound (it's a rhythm game) so I had to have headphones, then Elizabeth would have to grab me to tell me she was done, as I couldn't hear her. So I ditched that for Puzzle Quest and got most of the way through that. This year I get to play Shiren the Wanderer. W00T!

Then there is the book. I don't understand the Kindle or the Sony e-book readers. I bring the book for the period on the plane when they tell me to shut off all electronic devices. That's usually about a half an hour to 45 minutes where any active electronic devices will cause us all to go up in a fiery plane crash. Well, not really, but who wants to prove it? So if you've got an e-book reader you're SOL. Elizabeth goes through so many books that a good portion of her luggage weight is books. I usually bring two and some magazines.

The new phone actually has a "Flight mode" so you can disable all wireless aspects of it, but still use it as a Walkman, camera, and to play games. I know I've had a flight attendant tell me to shut something off, and even though I can say it doesn't emit anything, they don't care and don't have time to argue with you. Shut if off or they're taking it. I don't think the obvious cell phone being fiddle with is even going to get that much courtesy.

Actually, the new phone is another story that I will leave for another day. Maybe tomorrow.

Then I have to make sure that everything is charged and I have packed the chargers. The cellphone isn't any good if the battery is dead.

I have to clean out the laptop bag to get it as light as possible. Obviously I don't need school papers in there, but pens, business cards (you never know), and some paper are always good.

The cables, memory, headphones, and accessories then all go into the laptop bag. It's a lot of stuff.

So yes, Mom, I have started packing.

New plan

Two posts in one day? Yeah, crazy.

So the plan is to use this for the next couple of weeks to blog our trip to Seattle. I have made the crazy move of allowing Elizabeth to post to this too. We'll see if she does. I can now send email directly to this blog as text, and pictures directly from the camera phone.

I am mobile. I am prepared. It's exciting.

We're even going to invite my in-laws to follow along, since we're out visiting their Alex and Beth and perhaps they might be interested. I'd invite my parents, but they don't have a computer or use the series of tubes we call the internet. Instead, I will invite my niece Janet, though I doubt she will visit more than once (see what I did there? I laid down that gauntlet.) Who knows, people might even leave comments and then everything will be way out of control.

When I started this, I said I wasn't going to tell anyone until I was posting regularly and had a body of work. Obviously I started strong, like so many blogs, and then petered out when life intruded.

Relaunch. I'm no longer just talking about games. It's whatever comes to mind.

I wanted to change the name too, but it seems like every reasonable name is taken. They're taken by blogs that have exactly two posts in them from three or four years ago. I wonder what the inactivity period for a blog here is...

The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight has been lurking nearby my desk since I was a child. This is actually a bank made by the defunct TransOgram toy company during the sixties. My Aunt Mary used to work there and brought this home for me when I went gaga over the Batman TV show (I was 4).

Actually, this is also a first experiment with mobile blogging. Between a new cell phone and an urge to upload photos during our impending trip to Seattle, I thought I'd give it a trial run.