Category Archives for Other nerdy stuff

Random miscellaneous nerdy stuff that I feel like talking about.

Gen Con 2014: The Cosplayers!

As with any awesome convention, there are tons of awesome cosplayers – and here’s a post showcasing all the ones I found!  (Please excuse my facial expressions in some of them, haha – I’ve got a couple of derpy faces going on in pictures I’m in.)

And as a bonus – here’s a link to one of the many recordings of the Costume Parade from yesterday!  I like this one especially, since at about 9 and a half minutes in, you get a good minute and a half of Cupcakes Pinkie and Rainbow Factory Dash action, haha.

GenCon 2014: Day One

Sporting my shiny press badge!

Sporting my shiny press badge!

Today was the first day of the biggest convention of the season – Gen Con!  This is my third Gen Con – and my first one as press.  I was super excited to pick up my press pass, and Ross and I cheerily wandered through the convention after I got my badge, looking for fun costumes and things to do.

The one thing about Gen Con is that there’s almost… too much to do, to be honest.  So many games, so many panels, so many exhibitors to visit.   I never know where to go first!  And every year, it seems I take a different approach to the first (or, in the case of 2012, the only) day of Gen Con.  In 2012, Bryan and I pretty much wandered through the exhibition hall for five hours, stopping frequently for pictures, spending oodles of money, and walking until we were exhausted.  2013 was a whole different ball game – it was my first year spending all four days at the convention, and not only that, but a friend had a hotel room that needed filling, so the three of us literally lived at Gen Con for those four days.  The first day was pretty much entirely spent flailing around the exhibition hall, making new brony friends (like Ross!), attending panels, playing games, and spending absolutely stupid amounts of money.

This year was a bit different.   Bryan decided to sit this year’s Gen Con out, so Ross and I decided to go together, and commute all the way from Bloomington (as getting a hotel this year wasn’t an option, thanks to housing selling out within TWO HOURS of housing registration opening!) to Indianapolis each day.  And today was pretty low key.  We wandered around the exhibition hall, and found some very awesome goodies to take home – Ross picked up a very epic looking skull mug and an awesome Nightmare Before Christmas/Alice in Wonderland crossover print, and I picked up a few more minis from Impact! Miniatures‘ Chibi Adventurers line.  Ross dressed up in the most ruffly clothes I own and confused a number of people who thought he was a girl, haha.  And I got to meet up with a friend of mine from college, who I haven’t seen in forever and is enjoying his first Gen Con as we speak.  But other than that?  We did a lot of walking, a lot of looking, and I learned that even the most comfortable looking heels will not be good for your feet at a convention.  At all.

I noticed there weren’t too many people dressed up in costumes today.  Typically, the big thing I take photos of are people in costumes, but I think I only saw a handful of people dressed in out-of-the-ordinary clothes.  Here’s hoping tomorrow will bring more costumed con-goers!

But yes, all in all, today was a laid back day.  I’m not anticipating the same for tomorrow – Ross and I are dusting off our Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash costumes, and are going to parade around as My Little Ponies for the day!  And hopefully find some games to explore and panels to enjoy, too.  Keep an eye out here tomorrow for day two of the Gen Con Report!

61 Levels Later… (or, eight months with HabitRPG)

Started out as a lowly warrior, back in December...

Started out as a lowly warrior, back in December…

How many of you remember me posting about HabitRPG, the to-do and habit building site/app that turns your life into an epic adventure where you can earn experience for taking the dog for a walk?   Well, if you can’t quite remember it, here’s the post I wrote.

I’ll admit – when I first started using HabitRPG, I was thinking “oh, I know me, I won’t stick around for long.  I’ll use it diligently for a few weeks, and then stop.”  That’s usually how it goes with me – but not this time.  Oh, definitely not this time.

Logging in day after day, checking off my to-do list and daily habits and getting experience for them, well, the novelty did wear off after a little while.  But then I went on some quests.  I fought Vice and got some pretty impressive goodies such as a staff that makes my awesome Mage just that much awesomer.  I conquered The Spirit of Spring, The Hedgebeast, and Octothulu and earned quite an impressive menagerie of pets. And most recently, I banded together with all the citizens of Habitica to fight off the Dread Drag’on of Dilatory.  The quests are definitely one of the things that keep me coming back.

And I can play with friends, too.  There’s two ways to do this – you can have a party of people you go questing with, or you can create a guild and participate in challenges.  Either way is a great way to keep yourself coming back.  There were some days where I was feeling lazy, and didn’t really feel like logging in and marking my stuff off as done… but then I’d remember I was part of a quest with my party members, and if I didn’t log in, they’d take damage, and I didn’t want that to happen – which motivated me to get off my butt, get stuff done, and help fight off whatever boss we were tangling with at the moment.

From lowly warrior to epic Mage, with a Mantis Shrimp as my pet!

From lowly warrior to epic Mage, with a Mantis Shrimp as my pet!

Now it’s been around eight months since I got an account and started leveling up my little character.  And in those eight months, I’ve developed some good habits.  No snacking late at night.  Walking every day, and taking short walk breaks when I’m in the office all day.  Making sure I actually eat breakfast AND lunch each day.  Keeping hydrated by making sure I drink enough water.  My habits and daily tasks are constantly evolving, too.  When the end of August comes and classes start up again, I’ll likely be adding tasks to make sure I get my homework done.  And with the new house, there’ll be new chores too (I expect to be vacuuming a lot more often, given I’ll not only have carpeting pretty much everywhere, I’ll also have a cat!), and of course I’ll need to get into the habit of doing them regularly.  And I know HabitRPG will help me with that!

So, if you’re already on Habit, look up the guild The Crafty Nerds.  It’s the official guild of The Crafty Nerd (you’ll know you’re in the right place if you see Scooterlou as the guild leader, I mean, come on, who else would name their character after their old scooter but me), and I’d be happy to have you there!  And if you’re not, why not join up?  It’s free, it’s easy to get the hang of, and will definitely help you build some good habits.  Plus, the retro art style keeps things fun, and the wide variety of quests to do, pets to collect, and people to meet in the Tavern will keep you coming back.

A Week With the Surface Pro 2

I don’t generally write hardware reviews here – mostly because I tend to just pick up technology as I go, get all excited about it for a few days, and then once it incorporates itself into my daily life it simply becomes mundane.  But recently, I got a new piece of technology that really, REALLY stands out.  I find myself using it pretty much all day – in fact, right now, outside of work it’s my sole computer.

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… if you look really closely you can see my ghostly reflection in the HP monitor. Creepy. XD

I ended up picking up a Surface Pro 2, after the untimely death of my laptop’s battery.  I’d done a fair amount of research, and got to see the Surface Pro 3 in action a couple of times at work (a co-worker of mine teaches workshops from his), and I figured, if I got one with decent enough specs, I’d be fine with a Surface Pro 2 instead of a pricier Pro 3.  I mean, if my co-worker could teach entire workshops off of it, it had to be at least a halfway decent laptop replacement, right?  So I stumbled across an open-box Surface Pro 2 on Amazon with a 256 gig SSD and 8 gigs of RAM (pretty much an exact replacement for my laptop, aside from the SSD, which is a major upgrade) for a relatively good price, around $900, and I jumped on it.  So what if it was older hardware?  It should suit my needs without breaking the bank.

And I have not been disappointed, not one bit. 😀

First things first – I love the fact that I can hook up various peripherals through USB.  This is the only tablet I’ve owned so far that’s had a USB port on it!  I’ve even gone so far as to hook up a USB hub and run a wireless keyboard and mouse through it, before I picked up the Type Cover.  With that awesome little USB port, I can hook up an external hard drive, use my USB headset to deliver a workshop, use a mouse for when I need something more than a tiny trackpad… I think that’s quite possibly my most favorite feature about this tablet.

The fact that I can also hook it up to a monitor with the help of a dongle is awesome, too.  With the external monitor and mouse, it almost feels like I’m using my full desktop.  It’s not quite the same experience as using my desktop, as my desktop has twice the RAM, but it’s an incredibly smooth experience, especially for a tablet.  I’ve worked in Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and InDesign on here so far, and the only thing that reminds me that I’m on a tablet is the keyboard for the Type Cover.  In fact, this thing runs better than my work desktop – far better.

And the keyboard?  Pretty impressive for something so small.  I’ve had varied experiences with tablet keyboards, and more often than not they’re too small for me to type comfortably on.  I remember trying to type with the keyboard for my old iPad Mini – I had to squish my two hands together and take a few minutes to adjust to typing on a keyboard crammed into such a small space.  And there was no trackpad, either.  The Type Cover feels like I’m using an actual keyboard.  And it’s backlit.  Having laptops with backlit keyboards have spoiled me in the past, what with my old Macbook Pro and my recently out-of-commission Asus laptop, and in low light conditions I rely on the backlighting to make sure my fingers are on the right keys.  And this little keyboard does not disappoint, either.

Might be a little difficult to see, but those keys are all lit up.

Might be a little difficult to see, but those keys are all lit up.

Last of all – but certainly not least – is the battery life.  Oh lord, there’s nothing that makes me giggle with glee quite like hovering over the battery icon and seeing I have ten hours of battery life left.  I’ve been able to use the laptop tablet casually all day long, and have only needed to plug it in at the end of the day.  When doing more intense work like using Creative Suite, I have plugged it in just to be on the safe side, but that’s just me being the paranoid designer that I am.  (Save early, save often, or you will be very sad if your machine dies)  But for simply browsing the internet and listening to music (and oh gods the sound is amazing for such a little tablet!), I’ve been able to go most of the day without plugging it in.

And there you have it – my impressions of the Surface Pro 2 after spending a week of quality time with it.  If you’re considering getting one for yourself, keep an eye out on Amazon for good deals, and shoot for a Pro 2, as they’re cheaper considering the Pro 3 has just come out with some new models.  The Pro 2 will do you just as well, but without entirely breaking the bank!

 

Things I Want to Make (when I finally get my craft room back)

Four more days until I move!  Oh, you have no idea how happy this makes me.  Not only will I not be limited to wearing whatever clothes I didn’t shove into vacuum sealed bags and toss into the treacherous cave that is the storage unit, I will also have access to ALL my crafting stuff.  Not just one crochet hook and a blanket that’s too warm to sit under while I crochet it.  And there are a number of things I want to be making…

Crocheted Toothless

Amigurumi Toothless – yes, I want to make another one of these little guys.  The one in the picture here, I ended up giving away to a friend – and they’re so quick to make, too, so why not make another one?  (or six, or eleven, why not a whole tiny Toothless army?)

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The Modern Poncho – It’s no surprise that I have a fondness addiction to making shawls and ponchos.  And I think this one would look very lovely in a nice warm shade of brown or combo of browns and reds.  It’s a good thing I’m moving closer to my favorite yarn shop…

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I’d really like to finish the third Fourth Doctor scarf I’m working on – I’ve got less than a third of the scarf to go, and I was hoping it’d be done in time for GenCon this year, but no luck.  Plus, the only part of my Fourth Doctor costume I can locate at the moment is the coat… so unless I can magically find all the other parts in the week before GenCon as I unpack, no Fourth Doctor for me this year… :/

scooter

Crocheted Scooter – In seafoam, naturally.  Or I could make four of them – red, blue, seafoam, and red/cream, one for me and each of my housemates…  And having at least one of these would be pretty cool, considering the theme for the living room in the new place is going to be scooters…


(nsfw, language!)
And finally, last but definitely not least, the first project I’m probably going to work on as soon as the dust settles and I can find my various costume pieces is the Cupcakes Pinkie Pie costume (the video above is the least violent reference I could find to it, hahah).  I’m not going to lie – I’m afraid it won’t be done in time for GenCon, but Ross says he’ll help me out, and this is the only costume I’m really working on, so here’s hoping I can pull it off…

I’m going to be busy after I unpack, haha.

Book Review: The Hunger Games

Hunger_gamesYes, I admit, I hadn’t read The Hunger Games trilogy until, well, this past week.  I finished The Stand sometime on Thursday night, and needed something to read that wasn’t Stephen King… so I poked around on Amazon until I saw The Hunger Games, and realized that while I’d seen the movie, I hadn’t read the books yet.  And usually I’m the type to read the book WAY before the movie comes out!  (With the exception of Twilight.  I only read the books after the first movie came out because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.  I’ll hold back on my opinions on the Twilight series, haha.)  I was in the mood for something new to read, and I really did enjoy the movie version of The Hunger Games, so I sat down and read it.  And blew through it in a day and a half, and ended up signing up for Amazon Kindle Unlimited when I realized it would cost less than buying Catching Fire and Mockingjay combined!  (And once I’ve got some more experience with that, I’ll likely be reviewing that too!)  And then blew through most of Catching Fire.  And then I realized – hey, I should write about these books.  They’re good.  So, here’s part one of my review of the Hunger Games trilogy!  There will be spoilers.  You have been warned.

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How To Train Your Dragon 2: The Review

Well, the movie’s been out for a couple of weeks now, so I feel it’s only right to finally get around to posting this: a review of How To Train Your Dragon 2.

The plot of the movie, without really giving too much of the story away, focuses on Hiccup becoming an adult and discovering more about himself as he discovers more about the world he lives in.  This movie’s set five years after the first one, and Hiccup is 20 years old at this point – an adult, but still the same Hiccup we grew to knew and love in the first movie.  There’s a lot about HTTYD 2 I want to talk about, so I’ll get the non-spoilery stuff out of the way first.

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First off, I’d like to gush about the graphics.  I’ve watched both movies pretty much back-to-back lately, and it’s very obvious how much technology has advanced since the first movie came out in 2010.  The textures look so much more real, the characters look more lifelike – at times it felt like I could just step through the screen and into this lush fantasy world.  And, strangely enough, the first thing that stood out to me when it came to just how much technology had advanced was Stoick’s beard.  It looks far better in HTTYD 2, much more realistic…

stoic_vastly_different

It’s not just the beard. Stoick in his entirety looks much better this time around.

Another thing that I absolutely loved about the movie was Toothless’ antics.  When he wasn’t a central character in a scene, he was still stealing the show in the background, with his silly antics and ridiculous cuteness.  I loved him in the first movie, and I love him even more now.  And I’m incredibly glad I’ve seen the movie twice – because I won’t lie, there may have been times where I was paying more attention to Toothless goofing off in the background than I was to the main plot.

How can you not love that face?

How can you not love that face?

After the jump, there will be spoilers.  If you haven’t seen the movie yet, and don’t want to spoil the story for yourself, don’t read any further!

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Indy Pop Con: Cosplay Photos!

I meant to post this sooner – however, back spasms and blogging sadly do not go together well.  (I may have spent the past three days in bed, becoming best friends with Netflix…)  But!  Here are the cosplay photos from Indy Pop Con last weekend!  There were many, many amazing cosplayers there, and I didn’t get nearly enough pictures of everyone, but here’s what I do have!

Prepping for PopCon

Technically, PopCon starts today!  Woo!  Due to transportation issues and work constraints, though, I won’t be able to go until tomorrow.  BUT.  That gives me all of today to prepare!  And there’s a lot of work that goes into preparing for a convention.  Costumes need to be dug out of closets…

Yes, cute fluffy Pinkie Pie and evil genius Rainbow Factory Dash share a closet sometimes.

Yes, cute fluffy Pinkie Pie and evil genius Rainbow Factory Dash share a closet sometimes.

…wigs need to be detangled and styled…

I admit it. I suck at taking good care of my wigs, as you can tell from the deflated lump of pink hair.

I admit it. I suck at taking good care of my wigs, as you can tell from the deflated lump of pink hair.

and sometimes a brand new costume idea hits you and there’s only a day or so to finish it.

I'm not kidding. The idea to make a Rainbow Dash cutie mark shirt hit me yesterday afternoon.

I’m not kidding. The idea to make a Rainbow Dash cutie mark shirt hit me yesterday afternoon.

And doing all this stuff is part of the fun of getting ready for a convention!  And, admittedly, part of the stress, too.  Inevitably I end up forgetting something, or there’s a costume malfunction, or something else out of the blue that makes things a little crazy.  But stress aside, I’m super excited about PopCon tomorrow.  It looks like it’s shaping up to be much better organized than Indiana ComicCon was earlier this year, and there are SO MANY big names.  I won’t list everyone – but you can take a look at the guest list and see all the stars that’ll be there.  John DiMaggio (voice of Bender, Jake, and Wakka, among other characters), Nicholas Brendon (Xander from Buffy! *flail*), Ron Glass (Shepherd Book from Firefly and Serenity), and Kristian Nairn (HODOR OMG) are just a handful of the awesome people who’re gonna be there.  You have no idea how excited I am!  Not only will so many stars be there, but there’ll also be a comic book museum featuring Action Comics #1!  And, of course, a ton of exhibitors to spend money at, and a costume contest… so much fun packed into three days.  I wish I’d been able to get a press pass for PopCon – but maybe next year.  I plan on cramming as much fun as I can into the next two days, and taking as many pictures as humanly possible.

So!  Keep an eye out here for my PopCon report in the next couple of days!  I can’t wait to see what the convention’s got in store for me.

Toothless comes to Build-a-Bear!

Edit 6/24/14: For those of you out there looking for a Toothless of your very own: Build a Bear is sold out! However, you can sign up to be notified when he’s available again via the link, so for those of you still waiting for a Nightfury of your very own, be patient – I’m sure Build a Bear will do a re-release!  (And to show you just how quickly they sold out: I bought mine the first day they were available, and then a friend of mine went to buy one three days later and they were gone!)

Yes, you heard that right – you can get your very own Toothless, right from Build-a-Bear!  And considering the great job they did with the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic crew, I had pretty high expectations for BaB’s Toothless plush – after all, you can’t get much worse than this, right?

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Ouch. Toothless, what did they do to you?

No wonder so many of us went and made our own Toothlesses (Toothli?) so we could have a Night Fury of our own to cuddle.  Well, I went to Build a Bear today, and I definitely was not disappointed!

Here he is, with my handmade Toothless for scale.

Here he is, with my handmade Toothless for scale.

He’s about 17 inches tall, not including the tail, and my gosh is he adorable!  Look at those big eyes, that adorable mischievous smile… Yup, Build-a-Bear did a great job with this little guy.  He’s super soft, and very huggable.  I had to resist the urge to carry him around the mall for the rest of my shopping.  There is one weird thing they did with him – his wings are actually detachable.

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As you can see in the image above, he wears his wings like a tiny little backpack.  Considering most Build-a-Bear plush are stuffed from the middle of the back, the detachable wings make sense – otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to stuff Toothless from the usual BaB spot.  I do worry about losing the wings at some point, but right now they’re held on with a plastic tag-holder thing (I never know what to call them, and I even worked at a consignment shop where I stuck a bunch of those things into clothes when tagging items!), and I plan on leaving it in there for the time being.

Along with Toothless himself, they’re also selling a little tiny Toothless hoodie for your bear to wear!  I say bear, because I found out the hard way that it’s not quite suited for a pony.

Toothless and... Toothless?

Toothless and… Toothless?

I had to practically maul Pinkie to get the shirt over her head, and when I wedged her front legs into the armhole, it was pretty clear that this shirt wasn’t exactly meant for ponies or other similar four-legged friends.  Ah well.  If you don’t put the front legs in the arm holes, and kind of use it as a Toothless cowl, it does work, somewhat.  Pinkie looks freakin’ adorable in the Toothless shirt, I will say.  You should be able to find Toothless at your local Build-a-Bear – not sure how long he’ll be there for, though – probably at least through the end of June.  I’d say get him while you can – he’s clearly the best Toothless plush out there!