Out of curiosity, I made a quick list of all the games being played by my family members (I was personally involved in a lot of these) in the last few days. I started the reckoning on Christmas Eve, and concluded it tonight. The extended family played the following:
Guitar Hero
Left 4 Dead
Portal
Bioshock
Webkinz
Sorry!
Monkeys on the Bed
Pinochle
Pictionary Man
Trivial Pursuit
Left Right Center
Advance Wars
Chrono Trigger DS
Add to that the games my brothers and I have been playing at my parents' house:
Fire Emblem (Wii)
Okami (Wii)
Wii Fit
Lego Batman (Xbox 360)
Sometimes people ask me why I chose games as my profession. I tend more to wonder why it took me so long to figure it out :-P
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
My friend Kristin wrote this, and I wanted to share it with you:
Look, if you're anti-gay marriage, I'm not going to be able to convince you otherwise.
I mean it. I'm not, and I'm not going to try.
It doesn't matter that there isn't a legal argument I couldn't shoot down in about three seconds. It doesn't matter that there has been tons of research done on the subject of homosexuality. So don't think I'm not invested just because I'm not arguing with you, it's just that people who are against gay marriage are not really interested in things like law and science, so it's a waste of my time to try to present them as valid argument.
It's not even worth it to bust out my biblical study skills, if I thought that would work. The invention of the printing press occurring some 400 years after the death of Christ aside, it is totally pointless to bring up the clusterfuck that is Leviticus. And when you get angry about my saying that, I don't even see the point in bringing up the irony in your wearing polyester and eating a hot dog at the same time. Or the fact that homosexuality amongst women isn't even mentioned.
And I'm definitely not going to bring up the larger pictures, the idea that religion should be enriching, not destructive, that society abandons bad traditions all the time, and that nuance in law in something we already practice with a little thing called gun control, and how that means we can tell the difference legally between a six shooter and an Uzi.
But I will tell you this.
You know that grandparent you had? The one who got you kicked out of your 5th grade graduation because they declared loudly that they were not sitting next to the colored people? Who never got taken to Denny's again because they wouldn't take beverages from the black hostess? Who died alone on Christmas because everyone thought it would be too annoying to have to deal with them and Aunt Sally's new black fiance?
In 50 years, that's going to be you. Happy unending loneliness!
She's right. This is a subject I feel strongly about, but I don't often argue for it for exactly the reasons she mentions here. Either you already believe gays deserve the same rights as everyone else, or you don't and you won't be convinced by any argument you hear. So I'm going to say this once, and then I'll leave you to believe whatever you want to believe.
I believe that gays are people, no different than anyone else. I do not believe that they are inherently sinful, or at least, no more so than any of the rest of us. I believe they deserve the same legal rights as any other citizen. If everyone else gets to be married under the law, then so do gay people. You wouldn't stand for someone deciding that gays don't have free speech...why is this so different? Either they are citizens or they aren't.
However, I think that this is sort of a moot point, because I don't believe the government should be involved in the institution of marriage. There should be something called a civil union, and it should cover the legal rights and responsibilities of becoming a domestic legal entity, and it should be applied to both gay and straight partnerships. Taxation, insurance benefits, power of attorney, inheritance, all of these things are things the government should define, whether you're a man and a woman who love each other, two men who love each other, or permanent roommates who just want to make sure someone they trust gets to sign the forms at the hospital. You want to get married? Find a clergy member who will marry you. Some churches will refuse to recognize gay marriages, and that is fine. Hell, most Christian churches (particularly the one I was raised in) would refuse to marry me because I am no longer a member of any congregation. I accept that; they have every right to believe as they do. But if that is how they feel, then they are probably not a community I need or want to be a part of.
I believe that the church has a right to get involved in politics, in the same way that charities, special interest groups, and commercial entities do. A church, if you want to think of it this way, is merely a non-profit special interest group, and as such it has the right to represent the interests of its members in the democratic process. We have a separation of church and state in this country, but I don't think we violate it by having our churches help us to get our message out. However, it's crossing the line when a church, any church, spends millions of dollars in a state where it holds very little sway, to interfere in what should be a local election. If this had been a federal election I would understand, but it defeats the purpose of having local entities if we're just going to wander into other people's jurisdictions and tell them what to do anyway. I'm looking at you, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
It's crossing the line when you consider how much good that money could do in what should be the church's primary mission: helping people in need. Gay people don't want your help, churches. I'm sorry, but they don't. You have the power to do a lot of good in this world, but it's not any more right to use your influence to deny gays the right to marry than it was to forcibly convert natives in the Americas, or establish an Inquisition. If Christianity truly is about love and acceptance, then how about a little more loving and accepting, and a little less fire and brimstone? I remember being taught as a child that even a murderer can be forgiven, although if you equate homosexuality and murder, chances are you and I have nothing to say to one another. In any event it's God's place to judge, not yours or mine. As someone who has strayed from her church, and is likely to stay that way, I am here to tell you that you are losing and may have permanently lost young people like me. Going out of your way to deny rights to people I love? Not helping your case any.
There is a Prop 8 protest happening in Los Angeles today, and in a lot of other cities across the country. You'll notice that I'm sitting here writing a blog post instead of out in the street with a sign. Please don't think that this is because I don't support the cause. It's just that I haven't made up my mind that protests are the right course of action. It's a complicated issue, and mistakes were made on both sides, and if you know me at all you know that I like to weigh all sides carefully before taking action. However, I do believe that an opportunity will come for us to enact legislation that protects equality and the rights of all citizens. I hope that when that time comes, I will be able to vote for it knowing that my loved ones will, or would if they could, do the same.
Look, if you're anti-gay marriage, I'm not going to be able to convince you otherwise.
I mean it. I'm not, and I'm not going to try.
It doesn't matter that there isn't a legal argument I couldn't shoot down in about three seconds. It doesn't matter that there has been tons of research done on the subject of homosexuality. So don't think I'm not invested just because I'm not arguing with you, it's just that people who are against gay marriage are not really interested in things like law and science, so it's a waste of my time to try to present them as valid argument.
It's not even worth it to bust out my biblical study skills, if I thought that would work. The invention of the printing press occurring some 400 years after the death of Christ aside, it is totally pointless to bring up the clusterfuck that is Leviticus. And when you get angry about my saying that, I don't even see the point in bringing up the irony in your wearing polyester and eating a hot dog at the same time. Or the fact that homosexuality amongst women isn't even mentioned.
And I'm definitely not going to bring up the larger pictures, the idea that religion should be enriching, not destructive, that society abandons bad traditions all the time, and that nuance in law in something we already practice with a little thing called gun control, and how that means we can tell the difference legally between a six shooter and an Uzi.
But I will tell you this.
You know that grandparent you had? The one who got you kicked out of your 5th grade graduation because they declared loudly that they were not sitting next to the colored people? Who never got taken to Denny's again because they wouldn't take beverages from the black hostess? Who died alone on Christmas because everyone thought it would be too annoying to have to deal with them and Aunt Sally's new black fiance?
In 50 years, that's going to be you. Happy unending loneliness!
She's right. This is a subject I feel strongly about, but I don't often argue for it for exactly the reasons she mentions here. Either you already believe gays deserve the same rights as everyone else, or you don't and you won't be convinced by any argument you hear. So I'm going to say this once, and then I'll leave you to believe whatever you want to believe.
I believe that gays are people, no different than anyone else. I do not believe that they are inherently sinful, or at least, no more so than any of the rest of us. I believe they deserve the same legal rights as any other citizen. If everyone else gets to be married under the law, then so do gay people. You wouldn't stand for someone deciding that gays don't have free speech...why is this so different? Either they are citizens or they aren't.
However, I think that this is sort of a moot point, because I don't believe the government should be involved in the institution of marriage. There should be something called a civil union, and it should cover the legal rights and responsibilities of becoming a domestic legal entity, and it should be applied to both gay and straight partnerships. Taxation, insurance benefits, power of attorney, inheritance, all of these things are things the government should define, whether you're a man and a woman who love each other, two men who love each other, or permanent roommates who just want to make sure someone they trust gets to sign the forms at the hospital. You want to get married? Find a clergy member who will marry you. Some churches will refuse to recognize gay marriages, and that is fine. Hell, most Christian churches (particularly the one I was raised in) would refuse to marry me because I am no longer a member of any congregation. I accept that; they have every right to believe as they do. But if that is how they feel, then they are probably not a community I need or want to be a part of.
I believe that the church has a right to get involved in politics, in the same way that charities, special interest groups, and commercial entities do. A church, if you want to think of it this way, is merely a non-profit special interest group, and as such it has the right to represent the interests of its members in the democratic process. We have a separation of church and state in this country, but I don't think we violate it by having our churches help us to get our message out. However, it's crossing the line when a church, any church, spends millions of dollars in a state where it holds very little sway, to interfere in what should be a local election. If this had been a federal election I would understand, but it defeats the purpose of having local entities if we're just going to wander into other people's jurisdictions and tell them what to do anyway. I'm looking at you, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
It's crossing the line when you consider how much good that money could do in what should be the church's primary mission: helping people in need. Gay people don't want your help, churches. I'm sorry, but they don't. You have the power to do a lot of good in this world, but it's not any more right to use your influence to deny gays the right to marry than it was to forcibly convert natives in the Americas, or establish an Inquisition. If Christianity truly is about love and acceptance, then how about a little more loving and accepting, and a little less fire and brimstone? I remember being taught as a child that even a murderer can be forgiven, although if you equate homosexuality and murder, chances are you and I have nothing to say to one another. In any event it's God's place to judge, not yours or mine. As someone who has strayed from her church, and is likely to stay that way, I am here to tell you that you are losing and may have permanently lost young people like me. Going out of your way to deny rights to people I love? Not helping your case any.
There is a Prop 8 protest happening in Los Angeles today, and in a lot of other cities across the country. You'll notice that I'm sitting here writing a blog post instead of out in the street with a sign. Please don't think that this is because I don't support the cause. It's just that I haven't made up my mind that protests are the right course of action. It's a complicated issue, and mistakes were made on both sides, and if you know me at all you know that I like to weigh all sides carefully before taking action. However, I do believe that an opportunity will come for us to enact legislation that protects equality and the rights of all citizens. I hope that when that time comes, I will be able to vote for it knowing that my loved ones will, or would if they could, do the same.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Holy crap, it is incredibly hot in my polling place.
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Friday, October 31, 2008
Hi everyone!
Okay, I know. I haven't actually written a post in quite some time. That is my bad, for sure. BUT, I have added some new little thingies to the blog that will at least give you some idea of what I'm up to and thinking about. I've been using Utterli for awhile now to upload pics from my cell, and that is nice. I'm now also using Twitter, which I am trying to update a few times a day. Nothing big, just whatever happens to be bothering me/making me happy/keeping me occupied at the moment. And then finally I have a feed of my "recommended items" from the many websites I read every day. These tend to be things that amuse me, but they're also articles about things I find interesting, important, frightening, or just that I want to share.
And of course, my Flickr page is always a good place to go. I have an album there where I'm documenting the things I build for my thesis; if you're ever wondering just what nerdery I've gotten myself into now, that is the place to look.
So there you go. Hopefully I can still let you all know what I'm up to, share the things I want you to know about, etc. even when I'm busy/lazy/distracted by something shiny and don't get around to writing a full blog post.
Which is not to say that I don't love you. Because you know. I do. Muah!
Okay, I know. I haven't actually written a post in quite some time. That is my bad, for sure. BUT, I have added some new little thingies to the blog that will at least give you some idea of what I'm up to and thinking about. I've been using Utterli for awhile now to upload pics from my cell, and that is nice. I'm now also using Twitter, which I am trying to update a few times a day. Nothing big, just whatever happens to be bothering me/making me happy/keeping me occupied at the moment. And then finally I have a feed of my "recommended items" from the many websites I read every day. These tend to be things that amuse me, but they're also articles about things I find interesting, important, frightening, or just that I want to share.
And of course, my Flickr page is always a good place to go. I have an album there where I'm documenting the things I build for my thesis; if you're ever wondering just what nerdery I've gotten myself into now, that is the place to look.
So there you go. Hopefully I can still let you all know what I'm up to, share the things I want you to know about, etc. even when I'm busy/lazy/distracted by something shiny and don't get around to writing a full blog post.
Which is not to say that I don't love you. Because you know. I do. Muah!
Monday, October 27, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Lily and Gabe cheers. Gabe with glass, Lily with pitcher. Awesome.
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Thursday, October 16, 2008
I buy all my music from iTunes these days, except for bands I want and can't find there, in which case I go elsewhere. I have a LOT of DRM-locked music, not to mention 3.5 seasons of Battlestar Galactica and a couple other random things. Now, up until recently, I would have agreed wholeheartedly with the above comic.But see, here's the thing. I have some iTunes-locked music that has been corrupted during multiple hard drive transfers, and I've been kind of sore about it, because I assumed that I couldn't replace it, which is pretty much common wisdom. After the xkcd comic, I figured what the hell, and emailed iTunes telling them what had happened. I got an email this morning saying "Oh, hey, that sucks. Here, we checked your account; everything you've purchased that we still sell, you can go ahead and redownload free of charge."
Blink blink. WHAT?! You can DO that now? Granted, that caveat about "what we still sell" is key, because there are some songs I can't replace. Then again, I downloaded them three years ago, and they were kind of obscure then. I guess what it comes down to is, I found out today that Apple isn't entirely evil. I may not agree with DRM, and it's generally a pain, but as it turns out Apple is willing to be accomodating if you ask nicely. Who knew?
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Well, so my birthday was yesterday. I'm a quarter century old now! I would love to tell you all stories about my eventful birthday, but um...well, so we went to a local bar that on Tuesday nights hosts an event called "Porn Star Karaoke." Which is exactly what it sounds like. Porn stars, doing karaoke. Clearly, this is not the sort of thing one expounds upon in a blog that one's extended family, former classmates, and probably a ton of random people on the Internet read. I mean, think of the children.
Suffice to say, I had a great time. And thanks to everyone for the cards, phone calls, texts, presents, and general well wishes. Love you!!
Pssst...once I get the camera back from Kristin, I'll post photos to Flickr. Just don't tell anybody, okay?
Suffice to say, I had a great time. And thanks to everyone for the cards, phone calls, texts, presents, and general well wishes. Love you!!
Pssst...once I get the camera back from Kristin, I'll post photos to Flickr. Just don't tell anybody, okay?
Monday, September 22, 2008
Couple things.
One, play this, because it is adorable: http://www.gameroo.nl/games/light-bot
Two...okay, I lied. It's just the one. But seriously, go play it. It's not a huge time sink, and it introduces computer programming logic without, well, introducing computer programming at all.
One, play this, because it is adorable: http://www.gameroo.nl/games/light-bot
Two...okay, I lied. It's just the one. But seriously, go play it. It's not a huge time sink, and it introduces computer programming logic without, well, introducing computer programming at all.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Saturday, September 13, 2008
See, the story here is that Lily's garbage disposal clogged. So we attacked it with a plunger.
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Friday, September 05, 2008
I know, I'm a bad person and I never update. But I promise, it's because I'm working, not because I don't love you guys.
If you're bored and feeling particularly geeky, you can check out the stuff I've been tinkering with lately for my thesis: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dihughes/sets/72157605351547595/
If you're bored and feeling particularly geeky, you can check out the stuff I've been tinkering with lately for my thesis: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dihughes/sets/72157605351547595/
Sunday, August 31, 2008
The oddest things happen here...
What you're undoubtedly straining your eyes to see here is a picture of a stage, with a replica of the Eiffel Tower and some can-can dancers, complete with the dance numbers from Moulin Rouge blaring from speakers on either side of the stage. On the ground running past are a whole bunch of people in matching orange-red tshirts, running in what I guess must be some kind of marathon. All of this set up across the street from the thesis space...at 9 o'clock, on a Sunday night.
Yeah, I don't know either.
What you're undoubtedly straining your eyes to see here is a picture of a stage, with a replica of the Eiffel Tower and some can-can dancers, complete with the dance numbers from Moulin Rouge blaring from speakers on either side of the stage. On the ground running past are a whole bunch of people in matching orange-red tshirts, running in what I guess must be some kind of marathon. All of this set up across the street from the thesis space...at 9 o'clock, on a Sunday night.
Yeah, I don't know either.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/29/fast.food.ban.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
That's my neighborhood they're talking about. The Jack In the Box in the picture is about a block from the lab where I work :-P
That's my neighborhood they're talking about. The Jack In the Box in the picture is about a block from the lab where I work :-P
Thursday, July 24, 2008
This is Amanda. She works with me at Double Fine. I haven't figured out how to get pictures off my cell phone except to send them here, so...look! A picture of me and Amanda! Woooo!
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Saturday, July 05, 2008
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Lily and Drew came up to visit last weekend. We went on a scavenger hunt organized by one Collin, my former Moss House roommate and one rad dude. The scavenger hunt involved finding as many things on the list as possible and taking their picture. Most required that you do something silly, or go someplace fun. It was a great way to explore the city, and also look like idiots in public, which as everyone knows I love doing. Pictures here, with captions explaining what scavenger hunt item they represent: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dihughes/sets/72157605950452265/
Monday, June 02, 2008
Friday, May 30, 2008
http://kotaku.com/5011670/grants-awarded-for-inspiring-health-games-research
The games press is starting (finally) to talk about the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grants that were awarded a few weeks ago. If you scroll down in the article, the one I designed is listed (the one from USC, obviously). Very cool to see that, especially when press about games is almost always in the flavor of "OMG GAMEZ MAKE PPL KIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLL"
The games press is starting (finally) to talk about the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grants that were awarded a few weeks ago. If you scroll down in the article, the one I designed is listed (the one from USC, obviously). Very cool to see that, especially when press about games is almost always in the flavor of "OMG GAMEZ MAKE PPL KIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLL"
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Hey all.
So, if you're wondering where I've been lately, I was mostly doing this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sklathill/sets/72157605007035899/
"That looks like the thesis show!" you might say. And you would be right. An unlikely series of events led to the thesis show falling back into my lap about a week ago, which meant that I had a week to get the show up and ready to open last night. The bulk of the heavy construction was done, but we still had a ton of light construction, set design, set dressing, sewing, etc to do, not to mention publicity materials and getting those out. Yeeeeeah. It got done, and we even managed it without an all-crew mandatory all-nighter (a first for this event I might add), but oh MY am I tired. So, that's the update for today. Thesis show went up, it is going very well, nobody died, and now I'm going to catch up on my sleep. I move to San Francisco next Sunday, so I'll probably have updates for you then about the new city, new apartment, new job, etc. See you all then!
So, if you're wondering where I've been lately, I was mostly doing this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sklathill/sets/72157605007035899/
"That looks like the thesis show!" you might say. And you would be right. An unlikely series of events led to the thesis show falling back into my lap about a week ago, which meant that I had a week to get the show up and ready to open last night. The bulk of the heavy construction was done, but we still had a ton of light construction, set design, set dressing, sewing, etc to do, not to mention publicity materials and getting those out. Yeeeeeah. It got done, and we even managed it without an all-crew mandatory all-nighter (a first for this event I might add), but oh MY am I tired. So, that's the update for today. Thesis show went up, it is going very well, nobody died, and now I'm going to catch up on my sleep. I move to San Francisco next Sunday, so I'll probably have updates for you then about the new city, new apartment, new job, etc. See you all then!
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Google Docs is awesome, for those of you who weren't aware.
In other news, I thought you all might like to see what's in the works for my thesis. Below, if this works the way I think it will, is a little widget containing the slides for my presentation on Thursday, and below that are links to my thesis proposal paper and my directed research proposal. I don't think the docs will be editable, but if they are, please don't. That would make my life difficult :-)
Hopefully, if all goes well, I'll do my presentation on Thursday for the faculty and my classmates, and then there will be some minor edits to my two proposal papers, and then I'm good to start production in late May. So, let's see if this works:
Thesis Proposal Paper
Directed Research Proposal
In other news, I thought you all might like to see what's in the works for my thesis. Below, if this works the way I think it will, is a little widget containing the slides for my presentation on Thursday, and below that are links to my thesis proposal paper and my directed research proposal. I don't think the docs will be editable, but if they are, please don't. That would make my life difficult :-)
Hopefully, if all goes well, I'll do my presentation on Thursday for the faculty and my classmates, and then there will be some minor edits to my two proposal papers, and then I'm good to start production in late May. So, let's see if this works:
Thesis Proposal Paper
Directed Research Proposal
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Hi all,
So I'm getting vibes that I haven't updated recently and should probably do that. Here's a rundown of where things stand in DianaLand:
-Liberty Under the Law: This is the educational game where I'm working as a tech producer. Production is going well; I expect we'll have a working prototype sometime in May (working meaning you can play a round and everything does approximately what it should). We have some early implementations of the interface working in Flash, and I've been working with our server programmer to get the database side of the game up and running. Our deadline for having a full level complete is in June, at which point Corporation for Public Broadcasting will tell us if they intend to fund a full version of the game or not.
-One Week Project: This one was awhile ago, but I realized I never wrote about it. So in the second semester of the second year in my program, they have you do this project called the One Week Project. Basically, they give you an object as a prompt, and you have one week to build some kind of interactive experience utilizing that object. This year, the object was a handle, so we all had to build something that either had a handle in it or had otherwise clear affordances (if an object has very clear affordances, you know exactly what you're supposed to do with it, like how a handle is clearly meant to be grasped and pulled). For mine, I built a voodoo doll from canvas and foam and filled it with press switches, then wired that to a microcontroller (like a very dumb computer) that was hooked to my laptop. The way it worked was, when you pushed a pressure point on the voodoo doll, something ridiculously Looney Tunes esque would happen to a cartoon character onscreen. Rocks might fall on him, he could get hit with an anvil, he could catch randomly on fire, etc. It went over pretty well. I might get to show it at SIGGRAPH, which is a big deal graphics conference that they have every year; we'll see if that goes down or not. Here's a pic of the doll, and his onscreen counterpart:
-Thesis Prep: This semester, we've all been thinking, prototyping, crewing up, and writing proposals for what will be our master's thesis projects next year. I've done a lot of research and prototyping, and I've decided to do a game where the controller is a stuffed animal. I found this type of electronics that people call e-textiles, which basically means using threads and fabrics made of conductive materials to build electronics that are soft, bendable, wearable, etc. I think that this type of electronics would be a fantastic way to make something as soft and cuddly as a stuffed animal interactive, without adding a bunch of stiff hard stuff to it. I won't go into full detail about the project here, but if you're interested, I'm keeping photos of prototypes here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dihughes/collections/72157604523950739/ and there is a web-viewable copy of my in-progress thesis proposal here: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddgscz8c_112rfhkxqf2
I have to pitch my thesis next Thursday, and given that it's approved, I'll start development on that over the summer.
-BrinStar: BrinStar is a networked Flash game that we're doing in my advanced game development class. We've been working to make a game where two teams compete to conquer planets in a solar system by beating the high scores of arcade-style games hosted on each planet. It's been...an adventure. I wrote a lot of the code that handles the network connections and stores all the necessary info in a database for retrieval. I might also be building one of the planet arcade games, we'll see if it's needed or not. The art style is kind of Monty Python, with cutouts and weird non sequiters, and the music is just brilliant. My friend Jamie wrote us a theme song that's part Gene Roddenberry and part...well, Jamie singing in a silly falsetto voice. It's pretty awesome. This game is due to be exhibited next Wednesday, during IMD seminar (the class where the whole department gets together to look at what each other have been working on).
-Thesis Show: Yeah, remember when I said I wasn't going to work on thesis show this year? That was a big fat lie. Well, not a lie, but a declaration I made before considering my financial situation. Sigh. So for this year, I am NOT running the thesis show, but rather am just a member of the much-reduced construction crew. We hired an architecture student this year, so he designed all the stuff and is helping us build it; what a DIFFERENCE that has made! We get about twice the construction done with a third of the people in the same amount of time, because we aren't just making it up as we go along. Very nice. So I'll be doing construction for a few nights a week until the show goes up in May. Tomorrow is hanging drywall, woo!
-Summer Plans: I've been interviewing with a couple of different game studios to do a summer internship, and on Monday I accepted an offer from Double Fine Productions in San Francisco. This is the studio that did Psychonauts, for those who have played it, and they're currently working on Brutal Legend, a heavy metal and Norse mythology inspired game where you play rock music and swing a big axe to combat against demons and...sounds kinda familiar, don't it? Basically, when Brutal Legend was announced, I figured that it was the bigger, better version of Ragnarokk and so I wanted to work for Double Fine. I flew up there for an interview on Monday, and WOW are they awesome. I got to play an early version of the game, and the owner/lead designer of the company, Tim Schafer, sat down with me to chat about my work and his for awhile (this would be the equivalent of a film student getting to sit down with Steven Spielberg and watch Raiders of the Lost Ark or something). I'm pretty excited to start. Of course, this means that I will need a place to stay in SF for the summer, so I put down a deposit on a sublet in an apartment about four blocks from the beach, near the zoo, and right by a muni station so I can take the train to work. I'll have some friends in the city; my friend Mike from USC is doing an internship on the other side of the bay, one of my roommates from Bradley is in the area, and I've got a friend at Google, so she's within a train ride as well. Needless to say, I am chomping at the bit to get this semester over with and get started with summer!
Man, I feel like there is more stuff I'm forgetting, but these are at least the major high points since the last time I updated. Hopefully ya'll are well and getting more sleep than I am. I'm going to try to get home at some point this summer to see people, so if you are going to be around, drop me a line!
So I'm getting vibes that I haven't updated recently and should probably do that. Here's a rundown of where things stand in DianaLand:
-Liberty Under the Law: This is the educational game where I'm working as a tech producer. Production is going well; I expect we'll have a working prototype sometime in May (working meaning you can play a round and everything does approximately what it should). We have some early implementations of the interface working in Flash, and I've been working with our server programmer to get the database side of the game up and running. Our deadline for having a full level complete is in June, at which point Corporation for Public Broadcasting will tell us if they intend to fund a full version of the game or not.
-One Week Project: This one was awhile ago, but I realized I never wrote about it. So in the second semester of the second year in my program, they have you do this project called the One Week Project. Basically, they give you an object as a prompt, and you have one week to build some kind of interactive experience utilizing that object. This year, the object was a handle, so we all had to build something that either had a handle in it or had otherwise clear affordances (if an object has very clear affordances, you know exactly what you're supposed to do with it, like how a handle is clearly meant to be grasped and pulled). For mine, I built a voodoo doll from canvas and foam and filled it with press switches, then wired that to a microcontroller (like a very dumb computer) that was hooked to my laptop. The way it worked was, when you pushed a pressure point on the voodoo doll, something ridiculously Looney Tunes esque would happen to a cartoon character onscreen. Rocks might fall on him, he could get hit with an anvil, he could catch randomly on fire, etc. It went over pretty well. I might get to show it at SIGGRAPH, which is a big deal graphics conference that they have every year; we'll see if that goes down or not. Here's a pic of the doll, and his onscreen counterpart:
-Thesis Prep: This semester, we've all been thinking, prototyping, crewing up, and writing proposals for what will be our master's thesis projects next year. I've done a lot of research and prototyping, and I've decided to do a game where the controller is a stuffed animal. I found this type of electronics that people call e-textiles, which basically means using threads and fabrics made of conductive materials to build electronics that are soft, bendable, wearable, etc. I think that this type of electronics would be a fantastic way to make something as soft and cuddly as a stuffed animal interactive, without adding a bunch of stiff hard stuff to it. I won't go into full detail about the project here, but if you're interested, I'm keeping photos of prototypes here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dihughes/collections/72157604523950739/ and there is a web-viewable copy of my in-progress thesis proposal here: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddgscz8c_112rfhkxqf2
I have to pitch my thesis next Thursday, and given that it's approved, I'll start development on that over the summer.
-BrinStar: BrinStar is a networked Flash game that we're doing in my advanced game development class. We've been working to make a game where two teams compete to conquer planets in a solar system by beating the high scores of arcade-style games hosted on each planet. It's been...an adventure. I wrote a lot of the code that handles the network connections and stores all the necessary info in a database for retrieval. I might also be building one of the planet arcade games, we'll see if it's needed or not. The art style is kind of Monty Python, with cutouts and weird non sequiters, and the music is just brilliant. My friend Jamie wrote us a theme song that's part Gene Roddenberry and part...well, Jamie singing in a silly falsetto voice. It's pretty awesome. This game is due to be exhibited next Wednesday, during IMD seminar (the class where the whole department gets together to look at what each other have been working on).
-Thesis Show: Yeah, remember when I said I wasn't going to work on thesis show this year? That was a big fat lie. Well, not a lie, but a declaration I made before considering my financial situation. Sigh. So for this year, I am NOT running the thesis show, but rather am just a member of the much-reduced construction crew. We hired an architecture student this year, so he designed all the stuff and is helping us build it; what a DIFFERENCE that has made! We get about twice the construction done with a third of the people in the same amount of time, because we aren't just making it up as we go along. Very nice. So I'll be doing construction for a few nights a week until the show goes up in May. Tomorrow is hanging drywall, woo!
-Summer Plans: I've been interviewing with a couple of different game studios to do a summer internship, and on Monday I accepted an offer from Double Fine Productions in San Francisco. This is the studio that did Psychonauts, for those who have played it, and they're currently working on Brutal Legend, a heavy metal and Norse mythology inspired game where you play rock music and swing a big axe to combat against demons and...sounds kinda familiar, don't it? Basically, when Brutal Legend was announced, I figured that it was the bigger, better version of Ragnarokk and so I wanted to work for Double Fine. I flew up there for an interview on Monday, and WOW are they awesome. I got to play an early version of the game, and the owner/lead designer of the company, Tim Schafer, sat down with me to chat about my work and his for awhile (this would be the equivalent of a film student getting to sit down with Steven Spielberg and watch Raiders of the Lost Ark or something). I'm pretty excited to start. Of course, this means that I will need a place to stay in SF for the summer, so I put down a deposit on a sublet in an apartment about four blocks from the beach, near the zoo, and right by a muni station so I can take the train to work. I'll have some friends in the city; my friend Mike from USC is doing an internship on the other side of the bay, one of my roommates from Bradley is in the area, and I've got a friend at Google, so she's within a train ride as well. Needless to say, I am chomping at the bit to get this semester over with and get started with summer!
Man, I feel like there is more stuff I'm forgetting, but these are at least the major high points since the last time I updated. Hopefully ya'll are well and getting more sleep than I am. I'm going to try to get home at some point this summer to see people, so if you are going to be around, drop me a line!
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
If you ever wondered why I assiduously avoid the "making games for girls" thing, this is why:
http://www.missbimbo.com/
http://www.missbimbo.com/
Saturday, March 29, 2008
My friend Devin made me a balloon animal companion cube. Win.
Mobile post sent by ValkyrieCain using Utterz.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Bun tsu is unsure about slumbers mcworthington, so she chews on it. awwww.
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Wednesday, March 05, 2008
So I found this thing called Utterz that lets me send pictures and text from my cell phone directly to my blog. I'm giving it a shot; maybe I'll be better about blogging if I can do it whenever something fun happens. The picture you see is my desk in the ZML at school. It's, well, a desk. That I work at. Not terribly interesting, but there you go.
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Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Hey all. For the rest of the road trip story, check below. You'll notice that the look of the blog has changed; I built Lily a website over the weekend, and it made me itch to get in here and change up the colors and stuff. Anyway, since I haven't done a post all semester, I thought it was about time I did my usual rundown of all the stuff I'm working on right now. So, without further ado:
Ragnarokk: Yep, Ragnarokk is still in production. We're scheduled to be working on it all semester, and it will be displayed as part of this year's IMD Thesis Show exhibition in May. There are some screenshots, as well as music from the game, at PlayRagnarokk.com. Developments this semester include revising the art style, fixing everything that's still buggy or straight up broken from last semester, and the addition of an intro cinematic and hopefully an epic sea serpent boss battle.
Thesis Prep: As you might know, my MFA is a three year program. The first two years are spent in coursework, and the third year is devoted to the production of a thesis project. This semester we're taking a thesis prep course, where we figure out what we want our theses to be, do some preliminary research and prototyping to see if our idea is feasible, and do a proposal at the end of the semester to get faculty approval for the project we settle on. I'm still working out a lot of the details on mine, but I know it will be a game, it will be multiplayer, and if at all possible it will involve players facing each other instead of a screen. I have some thoughts on how I can make this happen, but I'll do a separate post about that later, when I have a better idea of what I can/want to build. I am pretty sure that there will be custom hardware involved, since I'd like to do away with being tethered to a PC/console and a screen. I will probably regret this by, oh, say September of next year. Ah well.
Interactive Design/Production: How ambiguous can a course title be?! This class is, as near as I can tell, devoted to giving us techniques and tools for designing and building...stuff. So far, we've designed our own memorial monuments (mine was a holiday), made objects that were designed to be put in a fire (I experimented with household chemicals to see if I could produce colored flame...I couldn't), had drawing lessons, and learned to build models using foamcore and glue. This class is always interesting, because I just have no idea what we'll be doing from week to week. One time, the professor came in and has us all play patty-cake for five minutes before we could start class. He wanted to establish a "good energy" in the room, he said. This is how I know that I'm in art school :-P
Experiments in Interactivity: This is another one of those "learning to build stuff" classes, although it focuses more directly on technology and interactivity. Our first assignment was to make an image or video for use in the Zemeckis Media Lab, a room where three of the walls are covered with a long continuous projection screen. I had a Play-Doh landscape with a little Lego guy in a Lego car that drove from one wall to the next all the way around the room. Our current project is being done in groups of four. My group is making a set of fun audio tools to be used in ZML, since that's the main lab for IMD grad students. One lets users who log into the classroom chat room (we run an AIM chat during large classes, where people can post relevant comments and Google links during lecture) generate sound effects by typing keywords in. "Crickets", "wompwomp", "laughtrack", things like that, just stuff that it would be funny to have access to during a discussion. Another tool is the one we're calling Grand Entrance, where you carry an RFID transmitter so that when you enter the room, a receiver knows that you walked in and starts playing theme music for you. We haven't built it yet, but my entrance music is totally going to be "Stayin' Alive" by the BeeGees. I love the idea of making an entrance to that song every time I have class or something in the lab :-)
Advanced Game Production: This is a class that's designed to just let us make a really cool game. We're making a game to be played in ZML, so we can take advantage of having the three projection walls. The game is designed for 6-8 people, and will use all three walls. Two walls will have a series of planets on them, with the last wall containing maps of the solar system. To play, users are divided into two teams who are competing to conquer all the planets in the solar system. You conquer a planet by going to that planet and getting the high score in an arcade-style game that occurs on that planet. You can also go to a solar system screen to see how your team is doing in terms of territory conquered, and you can play a "macro" game where you fly a little rocket to one of the planets in the solar system and harass the person who's trying to play the arcade game there by bombing the planet (making the arcade game harder). There's about 8 people in the class, and I am of course the only girl :-P We're making the game in Flash, which makes me extremely happy, because Flash is a tool I know something about (as opposed to the Torque and OGRE game engines that I didn't know at all). I'm actually not going to be very involved with the creative vision on this one, nor will I be producing. I'm going to be the network programmer, of all things, because I'm the only one who's used Flash in that way before. Should be veeerrrryyyy interesting for awhile but I think I've designed us a system that will work well to keep all the different screens and minigames and everything coordinated. Wish me luck!
Business of Games: This class is...interesting. The guy teaching it, Tom Frisina, is an exec at Electronic Arts, the largest publisher/developer in the video games industry. He's been teaching us a lot about corporate game culture, what it's like to work and do deals in that environment, etc. Of course, for any of us who aren't interested in working at a huge company like EA, or who aren't going into video games at all, a lot of this information isn't all that directly applicable. But Tom seems to know EVERYONE in the games business, and he's really great about helping students network and get internships/jobs at their chosen studios; he regularly gets people interviews with like, the owners and executive producers at studios, rather than the HR department or whoever. So we're all really nice to him :-) The way we see it, if we sit through the class and only half the content is relevant, well, at least we got an amazing business contact out of it. Plus some of the projects for the class are fun. Right now we're designing and pitching a game, as if for funding, based on a comic book series. My team has Preacher, a story about a Texan preacher who gets possessed by the forbidden child of an angel and a demon(granting him superpowers, of course) and then decides to seek out and confront God for not taking better care of the world. His vampire best friend and sharpshooter ex girlfriend come along for the ride, because what else would they do, I guess. It's a...challenging story to make a game of, to say the least. We have two weeks to design a game based on the comic, figure out how long it would take to make that game and how much it would cost, decide how it would fit into the current marketplace and who its target audience are, and develop a pitch presentation that we'll give to the professor and a couple of guest judges. We're pitching next Tuesday; here's hoping we win, or at least don't get last!
Liberty Under the Law game: I'm actually not sure what this game is about, haha. I know it's supposed to help teach high school students about American government and the Constitution, and that the initial prototype is being developed in Flash. I also know that Activision, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and KCET (the Los Angeles PBS station) are sponsoring it. The director of the project came to me and asked me to do Flash work for them, because the two developers they have are new to Flash. You see, I have developed a reputation in my department as a Flash expert; I should point out that I'm not actually a Flash expert in any sense of the word, I just know more than everyone else because nobody else has learned it yet. At any rate, I accepted a paid position as the team's technical producer, which basically means that I'll be figuring out how the game should be built and then providing technical assistance/tutoring/advice to the people who will actually have to build what I spec out. If you know me at all, you know that I am a pretty big fan of NOT coding, so I rather like the plan we have going here. I start next week, once the team leads get back from the GDC conference.
Thesis Show 2008: Just kidding. I'm not doing the thesis show this year, because it was such a major commitment (read: pain in the ass) last year. I liked the paychecks, but I could do without the 60+ hour weeks (in addition to classes) all through the last month of the semester. I may be called in to do some advising or light management near the end, but that's about it. Huzzah!
Man, I didn't think I was doing that much until I laid it all out. Sigh, isn't that always how it goes? Anyway, as per usual, I'll update on most of these projects as the semester progresses, so check back from time to time to see how things are going.
Ragnarokk: Yep, Ragnarokk is still in production. We're scheduled to be working on it all semester, and it will be displayed as part of this year's IMD Thesis Show exhibition in May. There are some screenshots, as well as music from the game, at PlayRagnarokk.com. Developments this semester include revising the art style, fixing everything that's still buggy or straight up broken from last semester, and the addition of an intro cinematic and hopefully an epic sea serpent boss battle.
Thesis Prep: As you might know, my MFA is a three year program. The first two years are spent in coursework, and the third year is devoted to the production of a thesis project. This semester we're taking a thesis prep course, where we figure out what we want our theses to be, do some preliminary research and prototyping to see if our idea is feasible, and do a proposal at the end of the semester to get faculty approval for the project we settle on. I'm still working out a lot of the details on mine, but I know it will be a game, it will be multiplayer, and if at all possible it will involve players facing each other instead of a screen. I have some thoughts on how I can make this happen, but I'll do a separate post about that later, when I have a better idea of what I can/want to build. I am pretty sure that there will be custom hardware involved, since I'd like to do away with being tethered to a PC/console and a screen. I will probably regret this by, oh, say September of next year. Ah well.
Interactive Design/Production: How ambiguous can a course title be?! This class is, as near as I can tell, devoted to giving us techniques and tools for designing and building...stuff. So far, we've designed our own memorial monuments (mine was a holiday), made objects that were designed to be put in a fire (I experimented with household chemicals to see if I could produce colored flame...I couldn't), had drawing lessons, and learned to build models using foamcore and glue. This class is always interesting, because I just have no idea what we'll be doing from week to week. One time, the professor came in and has us all play patty-cake for five minutes before we could start class. He wanted to establish a "good energy" in the room, he said. This is how I know that I'm in art school :-P
Experiments in Interactivity: This is another one of those "learning to build stuff" classes, although it focuses more directly on technology and interactivity. Our first assignment was to make an image or video for use in the Zemeckis Media Lab, a room where three of the walls are covered with a long continuous projection screen. I had a Play-Doh landscape with a little Lego guy in a Lego car that drove from one wall to the next all the way around the room. Our current project is being done in groups of four. My group is making a set of fun audio tools to be used in ZML, since that's the main lab for IMD grad students. One lets users who log into the classroom chat room (we run an AIM chat during large classes, where people can post relevant comments and Google links during lecture) generate sound effects by typing keywords in. "Crickets", "wompwomp", "laughtrack", things like that, just stuff that it would be funny to have access to during a discussion. Another tool is the one we're calling Grand Entrance, where you carry an RFID transmitter so that when you enter the room, a receiver knows that you walked in and starts playing theme music for you. We haven't built it yet, but my entrance music is totally going to be "Stayin' Alive" by the BeeGees. I love the idea of making an entrance to that song every time I have class or something in the lab :-)
Advanced Game Production: This is a class that's designed to just let us make a really cool game. We're making a game to be played in ZML, so we can take advantage of having the three projection walls. The game is designed for 6-8 people, and will use all three walls. Two walls will have a series of planets on them, with the last wall containing maps of the solar system. To play, users are divided into two teams who are competing to conquer all the planets in the solar system. You conquer a planet by going to that planet and getting the high score in an arcade-style game that occurs on that planet. You can also go to a solar system screen to see how your team is doing in terms of territory conquered, and you can play a "macro" game where you fly a little rocket to one of the planets in the solar system and harass the person who's trying to play the arcade game there by bombing the planet (making the arcade game harder). There's about 8 people in the class, and I am of course the only girl :-P We're making the game in Flash, which makes me extremely happy, because Flash is a tool I know something about (as opposed to the Torque and OGRE game engines that I didn't know at all). I'm actually not going to be very involved with the creative vision on this one, nor will I be producing. I'm going to be the network programmer, of all things, because I'm the only one who's used Flash in that way before. Should be veeerrrryyyy interesting for awhile but I think I've designed us a system that will work well to keep all the different screens and minigames and everything coordinated. Wish me luck!
Business of Games: This class is...interesting. The guy teaching it, Tom Frisina, is an exec at Electronic Arts, the largest publisher/developer in the video games industry. He's been teaching us a lot about corporate game culture, what it's like to work and do deals in that environment, etc. Of course, for any of us who aren't interested in working at a huge company like EA, or who aren't going into video games at all, a lot of this information isn't all that directly applicable. But Tom seems to know EVERYONE in the games business, and he's really great about helping students network and get internships/jobs at their chosen studios; he regularly gets people interviews with like, the owners and executive producers at studios, rather than the HR department or whoever. So we're all really nice to him :-) The way we see it, if we sit through the class and only half the content is relevant, well, at least we got an amazing business contact out of it. Plus some of the projects for the class are fun. Right now we're designing and pitching a game, as if for funding, based on a comic book series. My team has Preacher, a story about a Texan preacher who gets possessed by the forbidden child of an angel and a demon(granting him superpowers, of course) and then decides to seek out and confront God for not taking better care of the world. His vampire best friend and sharpshooter ex girlfriend come along for the ride, because what else would they do, I guess. It's a...challenging story to make a game of, to say the least. We have two weeks to design a game based on the comic, figure out how long it would take to make that game and how much it would cost, decide how it would fit into the current marketplace and who its target audience are, and develop a pitch presentation that we'll give to the professor and a couple of guest judges. We're pitching next Tuesday; here's hoping we win, or at least don't get last!
Liberty Under the Law game: I'm actually not sure what this game is about, haha. I know it's supposed to help teach high school students about American government and the Constitution, and that the initial prototype is being developed in Flash. I also know that Activision, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and KCET (the Los Angeles PBS station) are sponsoring it. The director of the project came to me and asked me to do Flash work for them, because the two developers they have are new to Flash. You see, I have developed a reputation in my department as a Flash expert; I should point out that I'm not actually a Flash expert in any sense of the word, I just know more than everyone else because nobody else has learned it yet. At any rate, I accepted a paid position as the team's technical producer, which basically means that I'll be figuring out how the game should be built and then providing technical assistance/tutoring/advice to the people who will actually have to build what I spec out. If you know me at all, you know that I am a pretty big fan of NOT coding, so I rather like the plan we have going here. I start next week, once the team leads get back from the GDC conference.
Thesis Show 2008: Just kidding. I'm not doing the thesis show this year, because it was such a major commitment (read: pain in the ass) last year. I liked the paychecks, but I could do without the 60+ hour weeks (in addition to classes) all through the last month of the semester. I may be called in to do some advising or light management near the end, but that's about it. Huzzah!
Man, I didn't think I was doing that much until I laid it all out. Sigh, isn't that always how it goes? Anyway, as per usual, I'll update on most of these projects as the semester progresses, so check back from time to time to see how things are going.
Yeah, I know. I'm a bad, bad blogger. I totally started the semester and stopped updating in the middle of the road trip story. Sorry about that :-/ Below is the rest of the road trip stuff, and then I'll go ahead and do another post later about what I'm working on this semester. Then we'll be all nice and caught up. Won't that be fun? Of course it will.
EPIC ROAD TRIP 2008: DAYS 3 and 4
So here's the Monterey Non-Smoker's Motel, where we stayed in Albuquerque. This was by far our favorite hotel of the trip. It was cute, and really clean, and the people who ran it were a sweet eastern european (we think) couple who'd clearly been running this place for ages. The room had a mini fridge and free wireless, and the bedroom was furnished like something you'd find in your grandma's house (I'm pretty sure the sheets were a pattern Grandma Sharon used to have, actually). If anyone is ever in Albuquerque, I'd definitely recommend this place.
For Day 3, we didn't have as much driving to do, so we decided to hang out in Albuquerque for awhile before heading out. We went down to the old part of town for lunch and shopping. You can see me here being very excited about lunch, which we ate at this great place on the main square. It was built in what looked to me like an old spanish mission and the food was SO GOOD. I had a "Navajo taco", which basically just meant taco stuff piled on top of grilled flat bread. I don't think it had anything to do with actual Navajos, but it was awfully tasty. There was a pitcher of excellent sangria, as well as fresh sopapillas with honey for dessert. I'm pretty sure that if I lived in Albuquerque, the staff of this restaurant would all know me by name. We also popped into a leather shop, a few souvenir shops and a really cool candy store. A lot of the candy was homemade, and it was all awesome, so we bought quite a bit. They had prickly pear gummies and stuff like that, plus a back room with, um...adult themed chocolates. We didn't exactly take pictures of that part, but it WAS extremely funny.
After lunch we got back in the car and headed for Phoenix. Here's a shot of the kind of countryside we were driving through. Mostly scrubland and lots of hills and rocks, although it was strange to see snow on the ground in the middle of what otherwise looked like fairly standard desert. We stopped along the way in a small town to get provisions, and found this place that boasted Native American silversmiths on site. That sounded neat, so we went in. It was so cool...two floors of cases full of handmade silver jewelry, a lot of it set with gems or shells. Sure enough, there were two or three artisans just hanging out and making stuff. The quality was good, and a lot of the pieces were beautiful. I have no idea why, but everything was half off the marked price, so we ended up with a silver ring for Lily and an opal-and-silver bracelet for me for under $100. Yay for souvenir jewelry!
So, these two pictures require a bit of explanation. See, along the highway right before the Arizona border, we drove by the most amazing billboard ever. It had dinosaurs on it, and it said "We sell knives and swords." Um, dinosaurs and swords? Of COURSE we were gonna stop. What we found was the Knife City Outlet, pictured above. No dinosaurs (still not sure what the deal was with the T-Rex and whatnot on the sign) but they sure did have knives. And swords. And batons, and machetes, and nunchuks, and brass knuckles, and basically all that stuff you can't buy in states that are concerned about their citizens having formidable arsenals. Drew got a set of practice nunchucks (how he plans to learn to use them I just don't know) and I picked up a butterfly knife because I think they're neat. The lady running that shop really knew what she was talking about, too. I am pretty sure that she could conquer half of New Mexico just using the contents of her shop. Oh, and the picture of the dinosaur up above there? Yeah, there's a series of dinosaur statues just out in fields along the freeway. They look really cool when you see them at sunset like that, when it's harder to tell that they're fake. I have no idea what they're there for.
So eventually we got to Phoenix, where we checked into the hotel and then met up with my friend Janelle (Janelle Tassart, from high school, for anyone who would know her). We had a late dinner at the worst sushi place ever, and then headed out to a bar she recommended. OH MY was this place magical. It was called Graham Central Station, and I am pretty sure it was built in what used to be a supermarket or something. It was in a big shopping center with a Rite Aid and I think a Verizon store. The place consisted of four rooms, each roughly the size of a small high school gymnasium, and each with a different theme. There was a "dance club" room that played hip hop (with go go cages, an absolute must), a country music room (complete with line dancing floor), a karaoke room (with staff who would act as your backup singers/dancers if you wanted), and a "retro" room that mostly played 80's music and had a light up dance floor. Each room had its own bar, and probably themed drinks on special although I wasn't really paying attention. The clientèle was...eclectic, as you can imagine. There were hip hop and country line dancing fans of course, plus people ranging in age from 21 to I'd guess around 55 or 60 in every single room, as well as all variations of single, dating, married, etc. Some people did like we did and drifted from room to room, although most tended to choose one room and stick with it. The exception of course was the karaoke room, where people from the other three rooms went when they were too drunk to know they'd look silly doing karaoke. We spent the evening wandering from room to room and just marveling at all the excellent people watching to be had. Then we toddled back to the hotel and crashed for the night.
In the morning, we packed up and left Phoenix for our last day of driving. We decided that since we were getting back to the west coast, the appropriate lunch choice was In-N-Out. If you have never been to In-N-Out, well first of all you should probably come out here so I can take you. For those in Illinois, think Steak N Shake steakburgers, but the fries are way better and the burgers come in varieties like "double double animal style," all ordered according to a code that isn't on the menu, you just have to know it ahead of time. It's pretty much the tastiest fast food ever. So we did that, and then got back on the road.
Right before the California border, we stopped at a gas station. We did that a lot, since the Aspire only has a ten gallon gas tank. At any rate, across the street was a guy selling flags. We went over hoping to find a pirate flag (there were several...I got one that says "GIVE ME THE BOOTY"). We found the little number pictured above; it's the best flag ever. For serious. I mean, it has a wolf, and an American Indian (is that the PC term now? I'm not real sure), and a groovy blue-to-purple fade in the background...you just can't go wrong. It's since been hung across the fireplace in Lily and Drew's living room, and it looks exactly as ridiculous as you think it does.
And that's about it. The drive through California to LA was boring and uneventful, and seemed to take forever. We got home around sunset, dropped all our luggage where it needed to be, distributed souvenirs to Lily and Drew's roommates, then went out for REAL sushi (in a different car...we were real tired of being in my car) and went home to bed.
And thus ends the story of our epic cross-country odyssey. It took four days, about 2000 miles, roughly 120 gallons of gas, a new chunk of exhaust pipe, and heaven only knows how many beverage and junk food purchases at at least a dozen gas stations across the country. Am I glad I did it? Hell yes. Would I do it again? Um...maybe in a much bigger car :-)
EPIC ROAD TRIP 2008: DAYS 3 and 4
So here's the Monterey Non-Smoker's Motel, where we stayed in Albuquerque. This was by far our favorite hotel of the trip. It was cute, and really clean, and the people who ran it were a sweet eastern european (we think) couple who'd clearly been running this place for ages. The room had a mini fridge and free wireless, and the bedroom was furnished like something you'd find in your grandma's house (I'm pretty sure the sheets were a pattern Grandma Sharon used to have, actually). If anyone is ever in Albuquerque, I'd definitely recommend this place.
For Day 3, we didn't have as much driving to do, so we decided to hang out in Albuquerque for awhile before heading out. We went down to the old part of town for lunch and shopping. You can see me here being very excited about lunch, which we ate at this great place on the main square. It was built in what looked to me like an old spanish mission and the food was SO GOOD. I had a "Navajo taco", which basically just meant taco stuff piled on top of grilled flat bread. I don't think it had anything to do with actual Navajos, but it was awfully tasty. There was a pitcher of excellent sangria, as well as fresh sopapillas with honey for dessert. I'm pretty sure that if I lived in Albuquerque, the staff of this restaurant would all know me by name. We also popped into a leather shop, a few souvenir shops and a really cool candy store. A lot of the candy was homemade, and it was all awesome, so we bought quite a bit. They had prickly pear gummies and stuff like that, plus a back room with, um...adult themed chocolates. We didn't exactly take pictures of that part, but it WAS extremely funny.
After lunch we got back in the car and headed for Phoenix. Here's a shot of the kind of countryside we were driving through. Mostly scrubland and lots of hills and rocks, although it was strange to see snow on the ground in the middle of what otherwise looked like fairly standard desert. We stopped along the way in a small town to get provisions, and found this place that boasted Native American silversmiths on site. That sounded neat, so we went in. It was so cool...two floors of cases full of handmade silver jewelry, a lot of it set with gems or shells. Sure enough, there were two or three artisans just hanging out and making stuff. The quality was good, and a lot of the pieces were beautiful. I have no idea why, but everything was half off the marked price, so we ended up with a silver ring for Lily and an opal-and-silver bracelet for me for under $100. Yay for souvenir jewelry!
So, these two pictures require a bit of explanation. See, along the highway right before the Arizona border, we drove by the most amazing billboard ever. It had dinosaurs on it, and it said "We sell knives and swords." Um, dinosaurs and swords? Of COURSE we were gonna stop. What we found was the Knife City Outlet, pictured above. No dinosaurs (still not sure what the deal was with the T-Rex and whatnot on the sign) but they sure did have knives. And swords. And batons, and machetes, and nunchuks, and brass knuckles, and basically all that stuff you can't buy in states that are concerned about their citizens having formidable arsenals. Drew got a set of practice nunchucks (how he plans to learn to use them I just don't know) and I picked up a butterfly knife because I think they're neat. The lady running that shop really knew what she was talking about, too. I am pretty sure that she could conquer half of New Mexico just using the contents of her shop. Oh, and the picture of the dinosaur up above there? Yeah, there's a series of dinosaur statues just out in fields along the freeway. They look really cool when you see them at sunset like that, when it's harder to tell that they're fake. I have no idea what they're there for.So eventually we got to Phoenix, where we checked into the hotel and then met up with my friend Janelle (Janelle Tassart, from high school, for anyone who would know her). We had a late dinner at the worst sushi place ever, and then headed out to a bar she recommended. OH MY was this place magical. It was called Graham Central Station, and I am pretty sure it was built in what used to be a supermarket or something. It was in a big shopping center with a Rite Aid and I think a Verizon store. The place consisted of four rooms, each roughly the size of a small high school gymnasium, and each with a different theme. There was a "dance club" room that played hip hop (with go go cages, an absolute must), a country music room (complete with line dancing floor), a karaoke room (with staff who would act as your backup singers/dancers if you wanted), and a "retro" room that mostly played 80's music and had a light up dance floor. Each room had its own bar, and probably themed drinks on special although I wasn't really paying attention. The clientèle was...eclectic, as you can imagine. There were hip hop and country line dancing fans of course, plus people ranging in age from 21 to I'd guess around 55 or 60 in every single room, as well as all variations of single, dating, married, etc. Some people did like we did and drifted from room to room, although most tended to choose one room and stick with it. The exception of course was the karaoke room, where people from the other three rooms went when they were too drunk to know they'd look silly doing karaoke. We spent the evening wandering from room to room and just marveling at all the excellent people watching to be had. Then we toddled back to the hotel and crashed for the night.
In the morning, we packed up and left Phoenix for our last day of driving. We decided that since we were getting back to the west coast, the appropriate lunch choice was In-N-Out. If you have never been to In-N-Out, well first of all you should probably come out here so I can take you. For those in Illinois, think Steak N Shake steakburgers, but the fries are way better and the burgers come in varieties like "double double animal style," all ordered according to a code that isn't on the menu, you just have to know it ahead of time. It's pretty much the tastiest fast food ever. So we did that, and then got back on the road.
Right before the California border, we stopped at a gas station. We did that a lot, since the Aspire only has a ten gallon gas tank. At any rate, across the street was a guy selling flags. We went over hoping to find a pirate flag (there were several...I got one that says "GIVE ME THE BOOTY"). We found the little number pictured above; it's the best flag ever. For serious. I mean, it has a wolf, and an American Indian (is that the PC term now? I'm not real sure), and a groovy blue-to-purple fade in the background...you just can't go wrong. It's since been hung across the fireplace in Lily and Drew's living room, and it looks exactly as ridiculous as you think it does.And that's about it. The drive through California to LA was boring and uneventful, and seemed to take forever. We got home around sunset, dropped all our luggage where it needed to be, distributed souvenirs to Lily and Drew's roommates, then went out for REAL sushi (in a different car...we were real tired of being in my car) and went home to bed.
And thus ends the story of our epic cross-country odyssey. It took four days, about 2000 miles, roughly 120 gallons of gas, a new chunk of exhaust pipe, and heaven only knows how many beverage and junk food purchases at at least a dozen gas stations across the country. Am I glad I did it? Hell yes. Would I do it again? Um...maybe in a much bigger car :-)
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
EPIC ROAD TRIP: DAY 2
Whew, what a day! We left our hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma at around 10am, and arrived at our hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico around midnight (including time difference). Loooots of time on the road. Some highlights include:
Muffler trouble: Somewhere in Middleofnowhere, Oklahoma, the car suddenly started running VERY loud with lots of vibration. We pulled over to the side of the road and discovered that a big hole had formed in one of the pipes in the exhaust system. Drew knew exactly what it was...I mostly just know that it has to do with the muffler. Luckily, we were half a mile away from an area with like, three mechanics, two auto supply shops and a Wal Mart. Woo hoo! The repair turned out to be relatively easy (and cheap!) so we only were there for about an hour and a half. Whew!
Steeeeeaaaaak: So, there's this place in Texas where one can acquire a 72oz (that's 4 1/2 pounds) steak, and if one consumes that steak in an hour, one gets it for free. The Big Texan, pictured above, is pretty much the best road house ever. The servers all dress like cowboys and prairie women, they have free limo rides to the hotel (big white cadillacs with steer horns on the front), and yes, the 72oz Steak Challenge. Naturally, Lily wanted to try this, because she loves to eat and also loves steak. Drew, not to be outdone, also decided to try it. I decided that I like my digestive system functional, so I elected to eat a normal sized steak and document their event instead.
The Rules: You have to finish your entire meal (that's the 72oz steak, a baked potato, a salad, a side of fried okra, and a dinner roll) in 60 minutes. Nobody can help you eat or cut your food. You have to sit up on a stage so that everyone in the restaurant can see, and so that everyone can make sure you're not cheating. If you don't finish, you lose. If you throw up, you lose. If you have a mouthful of food at the 60 minute mark, but it's not swallowed, you still lose.
This is the full spread, at the start of the challenge. It is approximately a metric ass-ton of food.
During the challenge, everyone in the restaurant stopped by at some point to check in, see the food, and wish the competitors luck. Some guys were gearing up to do their own challenges later in the night or week, so they stopped by several times to see how it was going. Note the stage, the timer in the back, and the garbage cans by each seat (for any necessary sick-ing).
Unfortunately, the challenge was too great for our competitors. They both made a valiant effort, but in the end, the human stomach isn't designed to hold 4 1/2 pounds of steak AND a whole mess of sides.
The results: Drew ate all but 15oz of his steak, which comes out to him eating approximately 3.5 lbs of steak. He also got about halfway done with all those sides. Lily had 37.2 oz of steak left, so she got about halfway through the steak. She also managed to finish all her sides. Good job guys!
After picking up some Pepto Bismol for the road, we got back in the car and headed for Albuquerque. We stayed in a really cute little motel, the Monterey Non Smokers Motel. I'll have pictures and stuff about this adorable place in the next post. See you all then!
Whew, what a day! We left our hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma at around 10am, and arrived at our hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico around midnight (including time difference). Loooots of time on the road. Some highlights include:
Muffler trouble: Somewhere in Middleofnowhere, Oklahoma, the car suddenly started running VERY loud with lots of vibration. We pulled over to the side of the road and discovered that a big hole had formed in one of the pipes in the exhaust system. Drew knew exactly what it was...I mostly just know that it has to do with the muffler. Luckily, we were half a mile away from an area with like, three mechanics, two auto supply shops and a Wal Mart. Woo hoo! The repair turned out to be relatively easy (and cheap!) so we only were there for about an hour and a half. Whew!
Steeeeeaaaaak: So, there's this place in Texas where one can acquire a 72oz (that's 4 1/2 pounds) steak, and if one consumes that steak in an hour, one gets it for free. The Big Texan, pictured above, is pretty much the best road house ever. The servers all dress like cowboys and prairie women, they have free limo rides to the hotel (big white cadillacs with steer horns on the front), and yes, the 72oz Steak Challenge. Naturally, Lily wanted to try this, because she loves to eat and also loves steak. Drew, not to be outdone, also decided to try it. I decided that I like my digestive system functional, so I elected to eat a normal sized steak and document their event instead.
The Rules: You have to finish your entire meal (that's the 72oz steak, a baked potato, a salad, a side of fried okra, and a dinner roll) in 60 minutes. Nobody can help you eat or cut your food. You have to sit up on a stage so that everyone in the restaurant can see, and so that everyone can make sure you're not cheating. If you don't finish, you lose. If you throw up, you lose. If you have a mouthful of food at the 60 minute mark, but it's not swallowed, you still lose.
This is the full spread, at the start of the challenge. It is approximately a metric ass-ton of food.
During the challenge, everyone in the restaurant stopped by at some point to check in, see the food, and wish the competitors luck. Some guys were gearing up to do their own challenges later in the night or week, so they stopped by several times to see how it was going. Note the stage, the timer in the back, and the garbage cans by each seat (for any necessary sick-ing).
Unfortunately, the challenge was too great for our competitors. They both made a valiant effort, but in the end, the human stomach isn't designed to hold 4 1/2 pounds of steak AND a whole mess of sides.
The results: Drew ate all but 15oz of his steak, which comes out to him eating approximately 3.5 lbs of steak. He also got about halfway done with all those sides. Lily had 37.2 oz of steak left, so she got about halfway through the steak. She also managed to finish all her sides. Good job guys!After picking up some Pepto Bismol for the road, we got back in the car and headed for Albuquerque. We stayed in a really cute little motel, the Monterey Non Smokers Motel. I'll have pictures and stuff about this adorable place in the next post. See you all then!
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