Life - My Very First Convention

One of my dreams as a nerdy geek* was to go to some sort of a hobby convention/event, such as a video game or comic one. Comic-con over in California would have been too big for my tastes, but something smaller and/closer like a Retropalooza or Games Done Quick. I was especially hopeful when I heard that AGDQ 2017 was set to be in Virginia. Maybe, I reasoned, I could convince my family to go on vacation in Virginia, and I could get to see a tiny bit of it live.

However, two months ago, one of my pixel paintings was seen by one of the gentleman in charge of the Southeast Game Exchange. Long story short, I hear about this from the manager of 1Up Video Games, and sign up for a table at the event.

Southeast Game Exchange Pics (Before and During)

Since it was my first convention, and as a vendor no less, I had little idea of how many pieces to bring. Thankfully, I had a few Sharpie drawings on hand to use as display models. In the end, my assumption of selling out of art was a bit presumptuous. But that's getting a little too far ahead of myself.

The Hilton's event area is a nice, cozy size. With the amount of booths/tables there, seeing everything didn't take too long. My table was furthest right from the main entrance, so I had a good view of the entire event. To my left was a gentleman with a mass of SNES games (and other stuff), lovely perler art, and a couple of kids entering the cosplay contest. To my right was a rather large display from the Tokyo Toybox. (Oddly enough, I never got around to checking out that booth, despite it being right next to me.

There were several booths from various video game merchants, such as Video Game Cavern, the aforementioned 1Up Video Games, and various other independent sellers. If it weren't for the events like the cosplay contest and various gaming competitions, I would have taken it for a jockey lot in a really fancy location. (And I mean that in a good way. I love the jockey lot.) There's so many games, even if I had a bit more money, deciding what to get, and from whom to get it, would have been a very difficult choice.

But it wasn't, since there were at least 2 copies of Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest available for me to get. I managed to snap the second one up before it disappeared.

Now I won't go to jail for playing the worst best FF game!

One of my favorite things was seeing other people's art. As I said before, the guy next to me had some rad perler bead constructions. I passed a vendor selling water color paintings. Yet another person had knitted type dolls available. One interesting booth was full of various buttons and lanyards with characters and symbols on them. Clearly, I will have to step up my game for next year's event.

I didn't go to many of the other events, since I wanted to stay around my table, but I did get to see some of the cosplay people pass by. Next to me were Freddy Fazbear/Purple Man and Link. One person went all out with a full-on Pyramid Head costume. It looked quite heavy, so whoever was wearing it was really dedicated. Other notable appearances included a mom dressed as a member of the Survey Corps from the manga and anime Attack on Titan, Darth Vader, a Stormtrooper, and Star Fox. Again, if I try for the cosplay contest next time, I'll have my work set out for me.

To finish this piece, I'll mention that I only managed to sell two pieces that day, only one being to a person I didn't know. However, the same gentleman showed a shot of my pieces in a vlog he did about the event later on. (You can watch it here. He also gives a nice summary of the goings-on.)

Hopefully, I'll update this article whenever I can get links to photos of the event. Until then, be sure to look forward to Day 3 of my 5 Day Dictionary Challenge!

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Top photo from http://southeastgameexchange.com

* = In my experience, nerd = someone who likes stuff like comic books, video games, etc... geek = someone who gets hype about seemingly silly stuff. So I get hype about silly video game stuff. :D

Five Day Dictionary Challenge - "Save"

(Part two of a five part writing challenge!)

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"You can never save enough" -Jirard "The Completionist" Khalil

A very simple word, and very meaningful for gamers, bankers and theologians alike. (I'll admit, I kind of cheated when picking this word. It was the same page, though, so I'll let it slide.)

For decades, one of the most important features of a game is the ability one's progress, be it a platformer, text adventure or "visual novel." After all, games were longer and often had in-depth stories, unlike much of the quarter-guzzling arcade machines of yesteryear.

One of my earlier experiences with saving (or not, as the case was) involved my first major experience in console gaming: the Sega Dreamcast. We purchased it later in the lifespan of the system, and one of the first games I got was Sonic Adventure.

For a few weeks, we had not yet purchased a memory card for the system. That meant that every time I played the game, I'd be playing through the first few stages again and again. Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed the stages - but it was rather nice when we got the memory card and I was able to finally make forward progress. (What made it annoying was that cutscenes weren't skippable on the original...)

Still, one mustn't forget to save a lot, as the opening quote reminds us. RPGs in particular are a minefield for running into random encounters that could potentially wipe out your party; or crossing past "points of no return" in the story. Being able to save before major boss fights is a veritable godsend to many games, RPGs among them.

There's also "save states," as seen on most emulators, allowing one to save at any particular instant in a given game. These ones are dangerous, as saving at the wrong spot could ruin an entire run. (Plus, some people would consider it "cheating," of a sort!)

I haven't had any particularly gruesome horror stories about not saving, but what about you dear reader? Anyway, I'll sign off before this becomes a mere list of different types of saving and how great it can be.

And remember, you can never save enough!

Five Day Dictionary Challenge - "Jibe"

In a bid to write some new articles for this blog, I decided to make an attempt at a writing prompt. A personal writing "challenge," if you will. So I grabbed a random dictionary from my shelf, found five random words, and came up with it. (Not a very exciting story, hopefully the results will be a bit more interesting.)

The "Five Day Dictionary Challenge" as I'm tentatively calling it, consists of five days of creative content, inspired by five random words found in a given dictionary. To allow for a bit of freedom, I won't require that the word be used in the work, only that I should indicate the inspiration for the piece.

Prologue aside, let's get to it!

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So the first word I've drawn is "jibe." For looking it up, I learned of a nautical meaning, having to do with maneuvers at sea. However, I'm sure most people use the definition having to do with "two or more things that agree or accord with one another."

So how to write about "jibe?"

"Say apple" -Wheatley

Food.

Specifically, fun combinations of it! I won't pretend to be a particularly good chef, but I've discovered a few combinations that my family has enjoyed. For instance, the usage of various fruit preserves in slow-cooked soups. A particular favorite is using a bit of apricot preserves in chicken stew.

Tastes better than it looks?

Another is the combination of apple and teriyaki sauce, particularly when cooked over stovetop. Adding the fruit to a beef skillet is particular tasty, and I imagine that it would be tasty to cook just the fruit and sauce together. The sweet of the fruit and the savory of the sauce combine to draw out the flavor of the other.

For when you don't want to pay a fortune for your fix

This last one's a bit of a "gimme," but the combination of chocolate and various types of nut butters. (I use a picture of non-Nutella nutella because the "real" stuff is so expensive! :P ) However, an additional combination on top of that is faux-Nutella and grape jelly.

So there you have it. Three combinations of foods that jibe with one another. Thanks for reading, and be sure to look forward to the next entry in the "Five Day Dictionary Challenge!"

YouTube - OST and Cookies: Sonic & Knuckles Collection

Language - On the Tale of a Word

The Weekend:
Recently, I had the privilege of purchasing the popular indie RPG, Undertale. I was suitably heart-warmed and amused, so I decided that I eventually needed to make a video on it. A review would be too obvious and overdone, so I opted to look at some of the music instead. After all, the soundtrack has 100+ tracks, it shouldn't be too hard, right?

Note: spoilers for all routes follow below, maybe. If you haven't played it, then "Escape" or you'll have a bad tEM, etc... etc...

I figured that it would be good to get in another episode of 16ths before I tried making a video with a different focus. Undertale had several short musical cues I could have looked at, but I chose one pretty late in the game. The track is called "Bergentrückung," a short, non-looping track that plays at the beginning of the fight with the Monster King Asgore. Simple procedure: read about the game, the composer, look at the piece in context and in terms of itself. Easy!

Or maybe not.

Almost none of my usual resources helped. The internet search turned up a single Wikipedia page and a few random Reddit posts. The library I was hanging out in had no German books, and none of the books even used the word, or the supposed English translation. Even after emailing an English and music professor, I was still fairly uncertain.

The wikis indicated that it means "king in the mountain," but the online translators showed "mountain rapture." None of the literature or mythology books mentioned it, but the collection was small to begin with.

Monday:
In a fortunate turn of events, a friend of mine (who works at BMW) had some German speaking friends visiting on Sunday. One of them confirmed for me that Bergentrückung does in fact mean "Mountain rapture." I am still at a loss as to how it could be translated as "king in the mountain," or "king under the mountain." Interestingly, her initial word for the second part (entrückung) was something akin to "escape." Both "escape" and "rapture" came up in my initial online search.

TV - My "Big Three" People Categories

Just last month, the three CW superhero shows concluded their respective seasonal runs. (And Supergirl concluded the month before that - but it wasn't CW at the time.) All four shows full of fun characters, stupid characters, evil characters, etc... got me thinking about my favorite character.

But it's not so easy to narrow it down to just one favorite. For an example, on Prinson Break, the character called "T-Bag" is the worst person ever, but I admire the ability of the actor Robert Knepper to deftly portray such a scumbag. On the opposite side (some might say the reverse) of the spectrum is Kara Danvers, aka Supergirl. Her actor, Melissa Benoist, is just as good at being super sweet and adorable.

So, favorite person (in-universe, I don't follow celebrities' personal lives), favorite character and favorite actor. Heaver spoilers to follow, probably. So be careful.

As mentioned previously, Kara is the best person out of the four shows. She carries on despite setbacks and an awful boss, all while being what the internet calls a "cinnamon roll too good for this world." Plus, there is a good bit of character development, what with being the hero of National City and one of a handful of survivors of Krypton and all.

However, in terms of character development, I'm going with Mick Rory, aka Heatwave (and earlier/later, Chronos.) Starting off, Heatwave was just a pyromaniac that the Flash had to fight. Over the course of Legends of Tomorrow, however, his character shows more emotions than just fiery rage. Motivations are revealed and relationships established. (I don't know how comics fans feel, but I found the Chronos-is-Mick plot point quite interesting.) Considering the ending of LoT's first season, it'll be interesting to see how they work with his character.

For favorite actor, it was a toss-up between Stephen Amell as various "versions" of Oliver Queen during Arrow, and Tom Cavanagh, as several iterations of Dr. Harrison Wells. Stephen manages to draw distinct characters in pre-island and post-island Oliver. Nonetheless, I admire Cavanagh's abilities a little more. (Probably because Reverse-Flash is kinda cool.) He plays Eobard-as-Wells, the original Earth-1 Wells, prickly Earth-2 Wells, and E2 Wells pretending to be Eobard-as-Wells. (And a shapeshifting meta, but that's not as important.) That's a lot of similar, but very different, guys to be in one show!

Just a bit of rambling as I look forward to the next season of shows, particularly Flash and Supergirl.

Cubing - 3x3x3 AKA The "Gateway" Cube

I'm not quite sure how it started. It probably started with one of the various videos that Numberphile did on combinations possible on a Rubik's Cube. Somehow I got diverted to a random review or unboxing (a genre of video I never thought I'd come to appreciate). And then I finally got my election check.

All events conspiring to start me down the road to twisty puzzle inundation. (See, I say twisty puzzle because Rubik's is only one of many brands now.) I tried searching out the Rubik's Cube lost somewhere around the house, but it's probably for the best that I hadn't found it, and not just because the original design is super hard to use. After having seen several cool-looking, fast-moving cubes, I just had to have one.

The pink is milder in person

From what I can tell, cubing is much bigger in China. As such, all of my cubes are from prominent speed-cube brands. My first cube is the MoYu WeiLong - specifically, the stickerless pink variant. Since I don't have to worry about it being competition legal and whatnot, I wanted a non-standard color scheme.

Learning how to solve it was pretty rough. Despite being (what I now know to be) the second easiest NxNxN cube to solve, it took me a week or two to learn and memorize the sets of moves known as "Beginner's Method." The 3x3 became super easy to solve.

These colors, however, are worse in person

I also got a cheaper 3x3 to carry around out and about. Unlike the WeiLong, which I splurged on, the Shengshou Legend was cheap and the quality matched. It wasn't as smooth and the stickers were awful, both in terms of thickness and color scheme. Still, it turned well enough.

After several weeks of playing with the 3x3x3, I finally decided to graduate up. The 4x4x4, I heard, had a point at which it could be solved as a 3x3. It'd be no problem to learn the additional stuff and master that too, right?

I replaced the white stickers with black

Almost.

Thankfully, owing to my experience with the 3x3, learning to solve the 4x4 only took a day, more or less. I SAY more or less because going up to the 4x4 brings a new problem: the dreaded parity error/problem. Long story short, these are situations in which cause certain cubies (the individual cubes on a puzzle) to be in the wrong place. The usual algorithms won't work, so you have to use super long and complex ones to fix the problem.

It's no fun.

One of the fun things of 3x3x3s is being able to amaze and astound random people by solving it multiple times while they watch. With the 4x4x4, I'm just not confident enough that I can fix any random parity error it gives me.

Anyway, I just wanted to share. Cubing is a new hobby for me, but a potentially risky one: I'm at 3 cubes but I'm already looking into getting a 2x2x2, 5x5x5 or even a Megaminx (a dodecahedron).

The challenging and difficult 1x1x1 is also a possibility.

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Photos from thecubicle.us and speedcubeshop.com