PAX – The Penny-Arcade Expo

PAX – The Penny-Arcade Expo

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Well, I had the weekend off, so I decided to go visit something I hadn’t been to in a long time – a gamer’s convention. How I do miss the sights and … smells of the oft under-hygiene-oriented gaming world.

PAX is run by the Penny-arcade guys (www.penny-arcade.com) and they have the convention each year in Seattle (www.penny-arcade.com/pax). So I loaded up the car, plunked in the latest Harry Potter audio book (17 cds!) and headed to Seattle. They had 3 big focus points: console games, pc games, and the old traditional board/tabletop/model/card/DnD games rooms. For $20 it was a very worthwhile, affordable, and well-run event.

There were a lot of free-play console and pc stations to just jump down and start playing a lot of the latest games – all networked and ready for fun. I found this to be really cool feature because there were lots of games there that I’d heard about, but never played (Katamari Damacy was one I had been dying to try). In the PC world, there were lots of high-end boxes and laptops donated by local companies trying to drum up exposure -for you to free-play games on (Half-life 2, CS source, BF2, etc).  I have to say I stayed true to my addiction and kept playing Counter-Strike Source most of the time; but I got to do it on some truly outrageous hardware.  Playing CS source on a 17″ ATI x800 laptop (which I had considered buying) was a great experience. CS Source with a sub-10 ping time at 1600×1200, full detail, 4x anti-aliasing at a 80+ frame rate is something you don’t get to do very often.

They had tournaments on all the different games all day long – both console and PC. Mario Kart derivatives, CS source, etc, but what is most amazing is it was not just the newest stuff. I wandered into a Quake 1 tournament at one point. I didn’t even know people still played that. For each tournament you played/won you got points to redeem at their redemption spot. They also had arcade games there – various DDR’s as well as other ‘interactive’ games of this sort.

Fun as that was, it wasn’t all just games. I arrived just in time for the two guys who do Penny-arcade to draw Monday’s strip with the crowd. They answered questions and did the strip from concept, sketches, to final mock-up in front of us. That was cool because they only use Photoshop. They had a merchandise room and folks giving out all kinds of stuff – T-shirts, stickers, etc. I did manage to get an event-shirt which was pretty sharp.

I got a few autographs as well – including one of the penny-arcade guys. I met the guys that did Red-vs-Blue (www.redvsblue.com) series and got the signatures of Griff and Gus who did the famous Mac gamer video. They had a really funny t-shirt (with a famous quote from the series “I would just like to let everyone know that I’m a girl, and I like ribbons in my hair, and I want to kiss all the boys.”) but they were out of my size. The guy from TechTV (Kevin Pereira) was there doing a lot of interviews, and he was everywhere. Every time I looking up I found myself in the line of camera fire – you might check out and see if you see me in the background somewhere. Finally, they had a Karaoke contest at night (which was hilarious), a classical pianist come in and did an arrangement of FF7 music, and then some rap band. I passed on the rap band because I thought they sucked; but that was me.

I didn’t leave till 11pm which meant I didn’t get back into Portland/bed until 3am – but it was worth it. Oh wait, and I didn’t even tell you about the board-gaming folks. Oh my, that was an experience in humanity in all its smelling glory. I guess I’ll have to add that later…

Last Thursday

Last Thursday

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Alberta street (NE Portland) has a art festival on the last Thursday of each month – which was last night. It was the first time I was able to attend, and I must say it was quite a spectacle. One guy turned his whole lawn into a mini-circus noir in which performers did fire dances, rode around on bikes, hoola-hoops, a free Joust arcade game which you could play, and just gobs of people in goofy costumes, goofy art displays, etc. Think of a mini-burning man.

There were no less than 10 blocks of people on the streets selling all manner of art stuff (paintings, photos, gobs of jewelry, etc) The galleries were open as well. The most cool part was the people. Wow, this is not your first-Thursday downtown crowd. Lots of hippie people, young folks in funky clothes, street musicians/artists/etc. For the most part, the art was pretty disappointing.  Lots of people seem to just slap things together to make a quick buck; but there was some really good stuff. One photographer did some great photos and then had them done with giclee prints. A potter had the most interesting molded glass sculptures. The highlight for me, however, was the people watching.

If you get a chance, I’d highly recommend it as a fun alternative to the first-Thursday art stuffiness. It was really interesting to watch all the dynamics going on with the people. I’m still processing all the stuff I saw. It really spoke to me of that real human longing that we all have to find meaning and value to what we do. I saw a lot of people looking for that meaning in the faces I saw. But I’ll reflect more on that in another entry…

5 new cels added

5 new cels added

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One of my hobbies is collecting Anime cels – specifically from my favorite series: Tenchi Muyo. I had a couple of cels for a long time that I hadn’t put up yet. I don’t have flatbed scanner to use, so I used my digital camera and a little fixup in Photoshop. Check them out in my projects page, or on my Rubberslug account here.

Updated Blogger tool

Updated Blogger tool

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I had a very old copy of the blogger tool in my projects section. I’ve made a number of bug fixes in this latest version, please feel free to try it out. I know there are a number of areas I want to improve it and ways to break it still; but it is a free beta tool for you to enjoy!

CPE ends – neglecting my updates (sorry)

CPE ends – neglecting my updates (sorry)

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Sorry about the delay in updates and the sorry state I left my RSS feed. Found a bug with the updater code, but it’s fixed now and you should be seeing this just fine.

I just finished my CPE assignment at the hospital and am continuing to decompress and process the whole experience and was given accreditation for 1 unit of CPE (A whole year would have given me 4 units).

I’m still left wondering just what to say about the whole thing. I’ve learned so much about myself, about how we process trauma, counseling techniques, emotional roller-coasters, being with people in joyful occasions like the birth of a child to the whole process of being with someone when a they are about to die. You just can’t fit that into a sound bite.

All I can say is that it has completely changed me as a person – and for the better. One of the most amazing things about the experience is that you learn and grow far more than it seems that you give to other people in those moments.

While I was at a BBQ about 2 weeks ago, someone asked me what it was like. In the course of describing what we did in the program to process events we experienced, I described how much of you gets laid bare. One tool we use is a verbatim. A verbatim is a review of an encounter you had with someone. Everything is anonymous and there is no way to track the original person down. One presents a dialogue (as best they can remember) of exactly what was said by everyone involved – including yourself. You present it to a peer group who then re-enacts the event with you. They then go through and examine what was going on, what you said, and why. It’s amazing what starts coming out – “I see that when they said they were afraid of death, you asked them about how they were getting along with their parents. Why did you ask that? What is/has gone on in your own family to make you ask that question? What do you experience when thinking about your own death?”

Well, you can guess that by the end of these sessions, most people end up in tears at some point. It’s amazing; but it’s amazingly healing too. I guess that’s why so many people see it as the real gateway to growth in relating to others. I for one have seen my relationships open in a whole new way – everything from dear friends to even the casual relationships. The change is so dramatic that I’m still trying to make sense of it all – but it is so much more mature and healthy that I find it very exciting with each new person and encounter I have. It’s like living got ‘re-charged’ somehow and all things seem to have been made new. Looks like I’ll be enjoying this newness for some time; and I’m excited for it.

Portland Free Internet Review

Portland Free Internet Review

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After moving up to Portland, and into a house with no internet access, I’ve found myself visiting lots of cafes, bookstores, pubs, etc for my emailing and surfing pleasure. But the quality of experience (food, throughput, cost, etc) vary greatly. I started making a list of places I’ve been and the general experiences. You can find it under the projects section, or linked here.

Riding your emotions

Riding your emotions

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I went to a BBQ out on a farm this weekend and had a great time. They had a couple of horses and I took one for a ride. I’m not much of a rider yet, and can count the number of times I’ve ridden on two hands, but I do love it.

Horses are beautiful, beautiful animals. The coolest part is that of all the horses I’ve ridden, each one has a unique personality, style, likes/dislikes, and temperament.

Recently I was talking with a good friend about what has so captured and enamored me about horseback riding since I started about a year or so ago. One of the difficult things for me in CPE and life in general is to just live through and let my emotions really speak to me. To live my emotions and not just ‘work through’ them. There is always a fear that one’s emotions can get the best of you – anger, tears, or attractions might overpower you and make you do things you shouldn’t.

Now there are plenty of people in the world that this is true of – and they need to learn how to use their heads when encountering the power of their emotions. But for others, it’s the other problem – we live shallowly because we do not let our emotions really speak to us. I’ve learned this at CPE as the power of others emotions can wash over and into you – and you share in that place with them. This experience is what I think about each time I ride a horse.  When I saddle up and get on, I marvel at the wonder of it. Here I am on an animal that is a 1000 times stronger than I.  It could throw me, run off with me, or just do whatever it wants in general. Yet, it chooses to follow my lead – within its own temperaments of course.  As you travel through the terrain, horses subtly pick out their own footings and paths. You can direct him, give encouragement and reprimands as needed – yet he is really the power that takes you where you’re going. There is a gentle surrendering of the details to the power of the riding that will get you there. I have begun to see my own emotions that way. If I learn to let them be the power that I ride – to let them just be – I live life so much more fully. It brings so much more richness to my relationships, friendships, and living of each moment.

While there is some fear that my emotions might get the best of me, one of the other supervisors told a couple of us: “Don’t worry. You’re so in control in your head, you’ve got a long way to go before you’d go overboard. So just let it go for a while. You’ll learn the edges in time.”

Time to go riding

Think with your heart

Think with your heart

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I was having a talk with my CPE supervisor about the very real difficulty people have talking about their affective (emotional) selves – especially in the traumatic events people go through at the hospital. We often do not have a proper language with which to talk about what is going on inside us. This becomes very apparent when we experience the death of a loved one, a traumatic accident, or a debilitating illness. Things happen within us that we are often unable to describe. We start getting at them by using words like sadness, frustration, anger, fear, hopelessness, etc.

I have noticed this is a problem that is particularly acute in men (including myself). There is little forum for men to really learn how to build or use a language of communicating their affective states. This is particularly acute in people that are very intellectual or try to ‘think’ their way through their emotions and not ‘live’ through them. He saw this pattern and said something that I’ve been spending some time pondering: “The real challenge for you is going to be learning how to think with your heart and feel with your head.”

Trapping life

Trapping life

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This selection was from the book entitled “The Ragamuffin Gospel” by Michael Smith, Brennan Manning, and Rich Mullins. I think it says everything by itself:

“…all the best gifts come from the loving hearts of men and women who aren’t trying to impress anyone, even themselves, and who have won freedom precisely because they have stopped trying to trap life into paying them back for the good they do.”

First Thursday

First Thursday

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Every first Thursday of the month, Portland opens its art galleries for visitors to look and have wine/cheese. It becomes a big walking fest between galleries, shops, and usually ends with people eating at the nicer restaurants in the Perl district.

I went last night and it was a beautiful weather – lots of people walking around and talking. I especially like the little independent booth shops on a section of blocks they close off for artists who just plop down and start playing music or selling stuff they have made. I find the street displays the most interesting and they are run by students, local folks, or just dabblers who make all kinds of creations. One of the interesting things to observe is the pretentious some of these art shows (and those that attend them) can become.

It’s amazing to me how almost laughably dressed and self-important some of the visitors and artists become. While I’m no pro, my hobby has been in photography and I have sold some of my work before so I went in to see a photo show but it left me extremely unimpressed. If I had given a child a camera for 5 minutes and let them run around underexposing/blurring/overexposing stuff I would have gotten the same outcome. While I have seen good modern photography that is really cool, when I think of masterful work I think of someone who has so mastered the techniques and principles of their medium (techniques and properties of their paint, photo process, musical technique, etc) that they have transcend just getting images down on a merely functional level (simply being able to portray something).

Masterful artisans have so integrated the techniques of their medium that they are beyond the functional and can manipulate the emotional responses that those functional elements can create. The artist can create a deep feeling or truth about reality/the human condition/truth of life/love/etc. But when you have something that looks on all levels like it failed at even the functional level (ie. looks like they didn’t even know how to use a camera) it is really hard for me to get over that to the transcendent level of communication. I need to see in the work that the person has a mastery of the functional process before I can believe their violation of those principles was intentional or just putting on the facade of great talent (i.e. can they even take really beautiful photos of ‘normal’ stuff?).

I have seen work and artists that can pull me into that transcendent experience; but it happens so much less often with works that are focused on form alone as the communicative element. I hate sounding like an old fogie, but man, some classical works can, and still do, bring tears to my eyes. It’s been a long time since I’ve had form-based art do that for me.

Yet, there is a lot of joy in walking around with those that try and are learning to hone those skills – I for one greatly enjoy the creative and imaginative hearts they have. I’ll certainly keep going and learning from these creative souls; it’s just that it is so silly when one thinks they are much better at what the do than they really are. A healthy humility goes a long way in keeping us striving and yearning for bettering ourselves and our work whether it be art or our lives of loving others.