She had six strong legs and it frightened me, She had insect eyes, but I could still see, That the looks she gave him, you give to me
3 comments Posted by Amy at 1:22 p.m.It was hot over the weekend. Miserably hot. So hot that I couldn't tell if I had a fever or not*. The official temperature was 103F (40C) but I'm pretty sure it was hotter in our house.
But we went to a Canada Day celebration, the regular Digital Moose Lounge one at Huddart Park and because it was up in the hills and in the big trees, the heat wasn't so bad. The bottomless beer took the edge off quite nicely too, though it was still hot enough that buying the specially imported Canadian chocolate bars ended up being an adventure in creative eating.**
And on Sunday, it being too hot to create anything big or requiring counting, I made a new friend. Literally:
It's hard to get an idea of scale from that picture, isn't it? The abdomen fits nicely in my hand, anyway. I didn't make up the pattern; it's from Amigurumi Knits which is my current favourite book.***
This weekend is a long one, I think, and I am happy. Work has been fairly high pressure. We start the "friends and family" test of our game in a couple of weeks so there's a lot of work to do. If you're interested in participating, by the way, drop me a line.**** It'll be a pre-alpha test... as the executive producer says, we're just opening it to people on whom we can count to go "Oh, it's a very nice game, dear!" and forgive us much.
* I think I did, because I also had a sore throat and that feeling like your sinuses have been packed with Tabasco-flavoured PlayDoh™. But along with the heat there was an air quality warning, so everything might have actually been external.
** Best option; bite just the corner off the package and squeeze the contents into your mouth. Pretending you're an astronaut is optional.
*** Come on, a knitted anglerfish with optional parasitic male? This is the best knitting pattern book ever.
**** Knowing a) how to do that and b) what game I'm working on is part of the "friends and family" validation. Otherwise, sorry, beta will be soon!
OK, so it's May already...
Aw, crap.
Um, so we had some birthdays in there, and stuff happened, and the weather was lovely. And we worked a lot. There. I now have the perfect generic blog post.
Oh, all right, more details. Carl and MacChick got married in a lovely ceremony, and there were many out of town guests that it was lovely to see again (and some in-town guests too; we don't socialize as often as we ought).
We didn't go to KublaCon or BayCon, which was poor form on our parts but long weekends are damn few and far between here.
We went on a Vampire Walking Tour of San Francisco with Wode which was very entertaining, and we also (finally!) went to the Ferry Building and got lots of good stuff to eat.
I crocheted a darkmantle for R:tAG for a birthday present. Unfortunately it tried to eat his head, 'cause that's what darkmantles do best:
And Carl and MacChick and I went to Maker Faire which was even bigger than last year and included a new food and agricultural section and now I really want to do vermicomposting. And the steampunk mobile home was there again, and the motorized cupcakes and the Diet-Coke-And-Mentos guys and big robotic statue things on fire, wheee! R:tAG had to work, booooo!
And then my car battery died all dead, and nearly stranded R:tAG, and when I took it to the mechanic to make sure that's all that was wrong of course they found all the other maintenance items that I haven't really been keeping up with, and the timing belt needs replacing, and the tires are almost bald, and so that's going to be spendy. Still, cheaper than buying a new car plus I can remain debt-free.
And that's all I can think of and my RCS checkout's almost done, and I've got a ton of work to do on the Star Trek space controls (my job is letting people fly spaceships... whee!) so I'll try and update in a more timely fashion in the future.
I think the best commentary on swine flu is here (or maybe here), though I found this article about the Canadian National Microbiology Lab interesting too. It's nice to hear about emergency procedures that work.
I mainly just wanted to have a post for April on the blog; missing a whole month just seems unacceptable. Work is fine; making games is very interesting not least because of the work environment. This is typical:
He's been moving around the building, and you never know where he'll turn up.
Oh, and we went to Disneyland last weekend, to celebrate Macchick's impending nuptials.* I hadn't been since 1991, and things have definitely expanded. There's a whole 'nother park beside Disney now, which contains among other things careful reconstructions of bits of Northern California.** What has not expanded is my capacity for roller coasters, unfortunately (the opposite, in fact) so I was feeling rather wobbly by the end of the day. But there were lots of non-nausea-inducing activities also.***
I rather liked this street; the end of it is a clever facade.
And we had a fantastic brunch at a sort of secret restaurant because Macchick's sister's friend's parents (I think?) were members and gave us access. And we went on all the old favourites like the Haunted House and Pirates of the Caribbean and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, and a bunch of new stuff too. The fireworks that night were cancelled due to high winds (boo!) but that was the only blot on the day.
Good Movies We've Seen
- Monsters Vs. Aliens
- Let The Right One In (you have to surrender yourself to the pacing. It's a dream-y movie.)
- Pineapple Express (Don't bother. Just don't)
* Saying "nuptials" in a creepy old man voice was a running joke of the weekend.
** Which was odd. They have mini-replica of Cannery Row, except it's the restored version of Cannery Row minus the tourist tat. So it's a reproduction of something that never actually existed, which made my head hurt.
*** Like the Muppet Show! You could sit in a theater and be part of the Muppet Show! Squee!
No excuse of malfunctioning phone lines this time, just the odd antisocial malaise that seemed to come with being unemployed, for me at least. I got a lot done, though not as much as I could have/should have.*
I am employed now, though, yay, in a fairly recession-proof industry. Yep, R:tAG and I are now, efficiently enough, laboring side by side in the same salt mine. The interview was amusing; I have never before had my interviewer say, seriously, “We’re just a bit worried that you don’t play enough games.” The UI design challenges of a game, especially an MMO, are intriguingly different from those of a control system application. I’m having to think again. Ow.
The other problem with such a long pause is all the little gems that I thought at the time “I really ought to remember to blog about this” are of course lost in the mists. Here are the few that survived:
The movie Bon Cop Bad Cop is worth watching, I think, in a black-comedy kind of way.
Watchmen was a really reasonable adaptation of the graphic novel. About the only things I didn’t much like were Bubastis (why bother?) and ::clears throat nervously:: the soundtrack. Not that I didn’t like each song (I don’t really need to get the movie soundtrack because I own the majority of the songs already). I just didn’t think the soundtrack did what a soundtrack should; I thought it competed with the movie instead of supporting it.**
There was an exhibit at the De Young Museum where local florists used a work of art as an inspiration for a floral display. It was really fantastic. Some floral arrangements were amazing copies, some were more “inspired by”, but it was very interesting. More photos are here.
Coraline was a pleasure.
Repo: A Genetic Opera was extraordinarily disturbing and fascinating. Brazil meets Sweeny Todd with a dash of Sin City?
* All costumes are not complete, all minis are not painted. On the other hand, a lot of knitting is knat.
** For me, on a lot of levels. First level was the simple distraction of “Ooh, I like this song,” followed by “So this is supposed to be an alternate timeline but events were still similar enough for this band to write this song?” followed by “I wonder if they subtly changed the song to reflect the alternate timeline?” followed by “If they didn’t, why did they pick this song?” followed by “Oh, what just happened?”
Well, sorry for the hiatus. For once it’s not exactly my fault; our landline and internet were down for four days five days almost a week and while we still had our iPhones, they are not so good for composing long stretches of text.* But today the nice technician dug up a flowerbed and fixed the problem, so we are connected again.
The endless rain may have been a factor in the line failure, but I still cannot be unhappy about it because it has been so dry for so long here. Apparently, though, all this rain still isn’t helping reservoir levels because it’s all soaking into the parched ground. Oh well, it’s better than not having the rain.
Being incommunicado like that was especially inconvenient for me because I am once again jobless. The startup I was working for is now an enddown. But to be honest, I’m enjoying being able to catch up on some completely non-computer related commissions** and since we have no debts, no dependants and no expensive addictions*** I can take some time off. I’m just irritated that this didn’t happen when we had visitors; I could have spent a lovely time with them. Ah well.
And I am still managing to amuse myself, of course. Stitches West was last Friday and I bought a bit of yarn. A little bit. Hardly anything, really. And the next day R:tAG had to go to WonderCon so I went up and joined him and wandered around the dealer floor a bit and met a Surprise Guest:
Hee! Adam Baldwin actually looks younger and thinner in person than he did as Jayne, which isn’t usually how these things work but he seems like a really nice guy, and was very kind to fans.
And then we went to see Video Games Live because we’d missed it at GenCon last year, and it was excellent. The Fox Theater is a beautiful old building, too, and they stock Hendrick’s Gin at the bar, so I heartily endorse it.
* Plus some websites don’t work so well with the mobile flavour of Safari.
** Costuming and mini-painting.
*** I keep telling myself that yarn is relatively cheap. You know, compared to heroin.
