09/03/08

Labor Day Weekend: Angler's Paradise (permalink)

cabin camping retreat fish fishing paradise anglers

Last weekend I traveled to south Missouri (near Liberal, MO) with some of the guys I work with to fish at a fishing camp called Angler's Paradise.  Rumor has it that the pit at this camp could hold a record breaking bass, and in fact many greater than ten pound to 13 pound bass have been found there. The owner, Don, is a great guy and takes fantastic care of the grounds and the modern, comfortable cabins.  He is very willing to swap fishing stories and provide advice for great spots to fish and the tecniques to catch em.

The lake is beautiful, especially in the morning when the still water reflects the surroundings like a polished mirror.  It is a pit, and old converted strip mine, so the walls surrounding the lake are mostly sheer cliffs or very steep wooded hills.  This means that most fishing needs to be done from boat, which we rented from the owner.

As for our luck fishing, we did not do nearly as well as any of us hoped.  The biggest fish anyone in our group landed was a 4.5 pounder, and I mostly cought 1-2 lb bass.  The owner attribute the less than stellar fishing to torrential rains this year that have already dropped twice the annual rainfall on the lake.  This has killed much of the shoreline vegetation and disrupted the habitat.  I hope to return there next spring when the ecosystem should start recovering.

05/09/08

Decultured Redesign (permalink)

decultured news site design theme

I just finished a new theme for decultured.com and have set it as the default.  I was getting tired of the old design, and wanted something cleaner and easier to read that focused more on the content and less on menus.  So far I am pretty happy with the new design, but will undoubtedly be making minor tweaks here and there over the coming weeks.

If you want to see the old design, use the themes menu at the top right of the page and select "Black and Orange."

04/15/08

villagemind developers blog (permalink)

news dev blog developer villagemind mind village

I am now posting on annother blog: the village mind developer blog It will be a source of news about the villagemind network, including tinycritic, as well as a general repository for interesting developer oriented stories. Check it out!

04/15/08

tinyCritic Launched to Beta! (permalink)

50_words_or_less short critic rating review game video book tv music anime movie tinycritic

My new site, tinyCritic, has just been launched to beta status! It is a review site with a twist: all reviews must be written in 50 words or less. I am excited about the launch and hope that it will be a huge success.

The site is lauched under the also newly created villagemind network, which will be a hub for a number of upcoming social content sites. Right now, there is nothing on the villagemind main page, but you can visit the developer blog.

tinyCritic is in open beta, so anyone can sign up and register, but there may be many major to minor feature changes in the coming weeks. Once it is finalized, I will open up the site as a full release. If you have any questions or comments, you can use the tinycritic contact page to get in contact with me.

03/06/08

5 New Papercrafts Models in the Gallery (permalink)

solid_snake four_swords link edward_elric fma anonymous_suit papercraft metal_gear illusion_cat

I just added 5 new completed Papercraft models to my papercraft gallery. I have been trying to select some more difficult models to improve my skills so that I can go on to some of the very detailed models out there. I have been having some problems with the glue I am using though, and will be making atrip to the store in the next coupe days to find some alternatives. Also, the markers I tried to use to color in the white seam lines bleed too much and show up too dark, so I am looking for other alternatives for that problem as well.

Overall however, I am very happy with how these are turning out and can see myself sticking with this hobby for a long time in the future.

07/08/07

The Heinlein Convention Was Disappointing (permalink)

kansas_city book scifi science_fiction centennial con convention heinlein

Last Saturday, I attended the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial held at the Westin Crown Center Hotel here in Kansas City, Mo -- Robert A Heinlein's hometown. I am sorry to say that the event was a disappointment. It felt as if it was planned to be a high profile convention with a few thousand attendees that would inspire some genuinely insightful looks into the author's life. Instead, the convention felt almost second rate, thrown together and lifeless.

To be fair, I only purchased the visitor's pass, which did not allow full access to the convention, and I only spent a couple hours wandering around taking it all in. However, the turnout was such that we were assured by the attendant at registration that we would not be turned away if we wanted to attend any panels we wished to, excepting the gala dinner. In fact, the panels we did see as we wandered the halls seemed to rarely have more than five or ten attendees, and looked to be very somber lifeless affairs.

The dealers room was filled with about 5-8 different merchants, and most of them were very loosely connected to Heinlein. The only memorable aspects of the dealers room were the Yard Dog Press booth, an offering by an indy publisher I am fond of, and my discovery of the Heinlein Prize scholarship program which was genuinely interesting. I also took the opportunity to sign up for KaCSFFS, The Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society in which Heinlein was a member when he was alive.

The most disappointing feature of the convention was the Heinlein "Life museum." This collection of scanned-in printouts of various documents provided less insight and history into Heinlein's life than a short trip to Wikipedia would. Most of the information on display was basic biographical fluff that anyone paying to go to a convention for the author likely already knew. I wondered as I wandered passed the sparse offering when I would come across the insight or revelations about Heinlein that I expected,

but it never came. The highlight and culmination of the "museum" was a bunch of scans from an old Starship Troopers board game and a few shots of storyboard art from the movie of that story.

In the end, I am glad I attended the parts of the con that I did, and I feel that it was at least minimally interesting. In fairness, organizing an event like this is a massive undertaking and takes hundreds if not thousands of man hours of work to complete. Adding to the problems, several guests canceled just before the convention and circumstances caused some of the more interesting events, like the bus tour, to be canceled as well. If the organizers had not tried for so much and instead concentrated on improving the quality of fewer offerings, I do feel the convention could have been a greater success.

07/05/07

This Weekend: Robert A. Heinlein Centennial (permalink)

scifi science_fiction book con convention robert heinlein centennial

This weekend I will be attending a convention celebrating what would have been Robert A. Heinlein's 100th Birthday. The event lasts three days: from this Friday through Sunday, and will be held here in Kansas City, Heinlein's hometown, at the Westin Hotel at Crown Center. There are a great deal of events and panels planned, but I will most likely be sticking with the visitors pass, which is significantly cheaper ($10 per day versus $60 a day or $120 for the weekend) but restricts access to just the dealer's room, Heinlein life museum and some panels.

Hopefully, it will be a fitting tribute to the life of one of my favorite authors, and a fun time as well.

Find out more at: http://www.heinleincentennial.com/

06/25/07

Star Wars Post Office Promotion (permalink)

star wars star_wars post office mailbox mail promotion advertising photo science_fiction scifi

The USPS has been promoting their new stamps commemorating the 30 year anniversary of the release of the original Star Wars movie. One of the more interesting and nerdy-cool gimmicks they are using is the transformation of many mailboxes around the country into models of R2D2 from the movies. One of those mailboxes is located in downtown Kansas City, my home town, and I got a few snapshots of it over the weekend.

06/14/07

Otaku Omaha — The Masquerade (permalink)

anime con competition convention cosplay masquerade omaha otaku

As anyone who has read much of this blog will know, one of my favorite features of anime and science fiction conventions is the masquerade. Something about watching a bunch of nerds get up on stage in costume, sometimes acting out a short skit, is very entertaining.

Otaku Omaha's masquerade, though small, was interesting. There were several original and creative costumes which I had not seen attempted before, and a couple very detailed costumes that were better than any version I had seen before. The few people who attempted skits did not do anything particularly memorable. However, I had a great time, the event was run well without any problems, and all of the contestants seemed to have a great time.

06/13/07

Back from Otaku Omaha (permalink)

otaku omaha anime convention con nebraska travel

Last weekend I attended my third Anime convention this year, Otaku Omaha. While it was the smallest of the conventions I have attended, and there were some serious problems with the hotel (see the previous post about the horrible, horrible Carlisle hotel), there were some definite highlights to the experience.

To begin with, the dealer's room was one of the best I have seen this year. Though not quite as extensive as the Naka-Kon dealers' room, the Otaku Omaha version made up for it's size by hosting a much wider variety of merchandise as other cons as well as offering some tremendous deals. I took advantage of the con discounts and purchased several manga, a DVD collector's box set of FLCL, a gunslinger girl hat and a couple boxes of Pretz (much better than pocky).

Besides the dealers' room, the con offered several interesting events and panels. Personally, I attended the Masquerade, a AMV best of showing, AMV-Hell (adult oriented AMVs), the dance, a video-game gameshow (I won Pocky), and a panel teaching how to sew a plushy keychain. I found the plushy keychain panel to be especially interesting, since I had not sewn anything at all in over 10 years and because the hands-on style of the panel allowed me to walk away with something to keep. I may post a bit more about that panel later.

I very much enjoyed my trip to Otaku Omaha and may return in the future, at least if the organizers can find a new hotel.

06/11/07

The Funk of Forty Thousand Years (permalink)

carlisle foul disgusting nasty hotel con convention anime omaha otaku travel

I just got back from my trip to Otaku Omaha last night, and while I will be posting photos and information about the con later, I thought I would make a quick post about the hotel the con was at.

Without a doubt the Carlisle Hotel (a Days Inn) is the worst hotel I have stayed at in a long time. The hotel is obviously old judging from the architecture and decor and the state of repair and neatness of the hotel suggests that there has been no maintenance or cleaning done to the premises since it first opened. The EPA should categorize the place as a Superfund site and seal it off for the betterment of all mankind.

Because I am tired and lists are easy, here are some fun facts about the hotel:

• The whole place smelled like a mix of the chlorine leaking into the building from their chemically hazardous pool, disease, mildew, and the fumes of noxious cleaning chemicals (not that I ever saw any evidence of cleaners being used).
• One of the big selling features of the rooms on their site is the inclusion of a clock radio. It didn't work.
• The carpets had so many stains it was impossible to discern the original pattern.
• The rooms featured hung ceiling tiles, many of which were broken, sagging, heavily stained or un-matching.
• The wallpaper was peeling at almost every seam, missing in several places and was covered with an array of stains that I did not care to investigate.
• The beds were horribly old and would sag almost to the floor under normal weight making the springs creak.
• The view from our room was facing someone's driveway and an old beaten down car.
• The entire place was kept at about 85 degrees, causing the smell of a few hundred sweaty nerds to add to the general funk and greatly increasing the discomfort.
• There was no weather or sound sealing on the room doors, and there was about a once inch gap between the door and the floor where you could see out (or in).
• None of the staff seemed to give a shit about their customers, and were extremely unhelpful.

Click here for some shitty reviews of the carlisle hotel in Omaha, NE.

(as an aside, one of the only good reviews on that site contained this sage wisdom in response to the negative reviews: "donot aspect more crispy without oil.")

In short, DO NOT STAY AT THE CARLISLE HOTEL. If you must attend a convention or event at the Carlisle hotel, I recommend staying at one of the several hotels right next door, including:

• The Best Western Kelly Inn, Omaha
• The Hawthorn Suites Omaha
• Super 8 Motel Omaha West

Photos (these would be much more illustrative with smell):

The shitty smelly floor of the carlisle:

The crappy view from our room:

The door to go outside passed through a service room filled with trash and an even stronger odor:

Don't let this photo fool you, this cleaning cart never moved the two days we were here. I think it is a prop to fool future customers into thinking that they actually clean the place once in a while. Oh, and the lighting in this photo is very representative of the gloomy lighting in the hotel and not a camera defect.

A sign outside the carlisle hotel bar. I took the first half of the hotel sign's advice, and it did make the stay more bearable, but not by much.

06/08/07

This Weekend: Otaku Omaha (permalink)

otaku omaha nebraska anime convention con travel

This coming weekend I will be attending my fourth nerd convention of the year, Otaku Omaha, an Anime convention held in South-Eastern Nebraska. From what I can tell, it is a fairly small Anime con, but nonetheless looks to have some very interesting events in the lineup. Because Omaha is only a 2 and a half hour drive from Kansas City, and it is a smaller con, we will only be attending for Saturday and Sunday. Expect a report sometime after I return about the events.

05/31/07

Conquest: Story in a Bag (permalink)

conquest kansas_city convention con writing book scifi science_fiction fantasy competition

While attending the Conquest KC science fiction and fantasy convention this year, I participated in the Story in a Bag contest. For the contest, the conquest staff prepared a series of bags containing short sentences or words that had to be incorporated into a new, custom written story which the contestants had one hour to complete. The best stories in each of three categories (science fiction, fantasy and horror) were judged within three skill levels (youth, adult amateur, and adult professional/published).

For my entry, I chose to write within the Science Fiction category and qualified for the Adult Amateur level. My topics were as follows:

• Theme: A Trip Home.
• Character: A Crying Baby.
• Item: A Box of Chocolates
• Setting: A Run Down Apartment Building
• Starting Sentence: "Seven years ago today my life changed completely when..."

I ended up writing a story about a researcher who was indentured into service only to return to his home planet seven years later and try to pick up his old life. It turned out ok, considering it took me 20 minutes to decide on a plot which left me only 40 minutes to write and edit the 6 page story.

All of the stories were judged by convention attendees, and in the end out of the four stories that were submitted in my category and level, I won a close second place. I hope to compete again next year and try for first.

05/29/07

Conquest Idol (permalink)

music science_ficiton scifi convention con kansas_city

One of the main events at the 2007 Conquest Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention was the Conquest Idol Competition. This was the first year for this event at Conquest, but its popularity will ensure that it will continue next year.

The effect of listening to a bunch of dedicated nerds get up on stage and try to sing was both painful and hilarious. The best acts, unsurprisingly, were those that embraced their bad singing and used it along with intentionally horrible song choices for maximum comedic effect.

Though the singing was almost universally bad, the event was a blast and I hope to see what next year's entrants can do.

05/25/07

This Weekend: Conquest KC (permalink)

conquest books scifi science_fiction fantasy convention con kansas_city anime

This weekend, I will be spending some time at the Conquest science fiction convention here in Kansas City, MO at the airport Hilton hotel. This is the 38th year for the con, but will be the first time I attend. I met one of the con organizers at Naka-Kon a few months ago, and saw him again at Anime St. Louis/ShoMeCon last month. It seems to be a very well organized convention and they have a lot of interesting events, so it should be a good experience. I will be posting several updates and photos after the con, so check back for more next week.