tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54022951915037481592024-02-19T08:23:30.585-08:00The Domino EffectRandom thoughts related to MMOs, gaming, in-game tradeskills, and real life crafting.Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.comBlogger126125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-74027537457248367812017-03-11T18:32:00.000-08:002017-03-11T18:45:15.001-08:00Moving to CanadaHaven't blogged for quite a while, apart from random recipes people asked for; these last few years it seems blogs are out of fashion and livestreaming is in instead. (I've been livestreaming a bit; you can find highlights on <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/pentapod/videos/all">twitch.tv/pentapod</a> as well as some videos on my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/PentapodX/videos" target="_blank">youtube channel</a>).<br />
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Anyway, the big news is I've moved back home to Canada. Very sad to leave the EverQuest II team, but I'd already had significant problems with US immigration nitpicking my work visa and clearly under Trump it's only going to get much, much worse. Besides which, barely a day has gone by since Trump's inauguration that the news hasn't contained some disastrous, disappointing, or downright terrifying thing he's announced. As an immigrant in the US, I got to enjoy taxation with NO representation at all, and without a vote, the only vote I have against Trump is to leave and refuse to give him my tax dollars. So, here I am in Canada. Funny to think EQ2's tradeskill content was built mainly on immigrant labour; but that's what I was, so that's what it was, and whatever happens to EQ2 tradeskills in the future is a direct result of Trump's policies, like them or not.<br />
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A couple brief interviews with me came out last week which contain more detail about why I'm leaving and I enjoyed most about working on EQ2:<br />
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<a href="https://t.co/3ZINeaYlKu" target="_blank">Home of Nerds</a><br />
<a href="https://t.co/rymRtJOAOp" target="_blank">Massively Overpowered</a><br />
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And that's about it for the high level overview. I start the new job on Monday so I'll refrain from commenting on it until then, although of course I'm hoping I love it and they love me, but time will tell!<br />
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In terms of specific details though, my goodness, moving countries is exhausting and I don't remember why I've done it so many times already. Each time it seems to get harder. So many details to take care of, and it's particularly challenging in US because so many companies seem to be under the misguided apprehension that no country outside the US actually exists. Seriously, I haven't had this problem in ANY other country, ONLY US-based web sites persist on having address fields that actually don't allow you to enter an address outside the US, thus making it completely impossible to complete the forms if you dared to move outside the country. I encountered this problem THREE TIMES TODAY ALONE, yeesh! (Trying to update my address on my bank's website; trying to update my dress on the USCIS immigrant change of address form, and trying to arrange for USPS mail forwarding.) It's beyond my comprehension how so many websites (and presumably the companies that design and approve them - in today's example, banking, government, AND post office) can be so consistently short-sighted and navel gazing that it didn't occur to any of them that people might move to or from other countries ... although maybe it does explain how Trump got elected. The US is also the only country I've left that insisted I had to have an in-person interview with the the tax office before departing. They made me fill out a form and bring in a bunch of documents which nobody bothered looking at, and then the IRS staff member stamped it with an official stamp and said she had no idea why I needed to get it or who I was supposed to give it to either. The form said to keep it with my passport, which nobody at all looked at on the way out, so I have no idea what the point of that was other than to add yet another hoop to jump through...<br />
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In other fun news, it appears to be almost impossible to rent a place here in Vancouver; properties are gone before the rental managers even get around to answering the queries about them on the rental listings they posted that very day. Prices are astronomical and sizes are tiny. Today I looked at a 1 bedroom apartment under 600 square feet for $1800 per month, and there are plenty more expensive than that! Just as well I sold almost all my furniture and got rid of as much extra junk as I could in the time I had, I sure won't have a lot of space to store it in.<br />
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I could go on, about how the company that was supposed to transport my car up here flaked and I've had to rush to find another one in the midst of everything else going on this week, but that's probably enough complaining for one blog post. At least I am back home in Canada, which may not be perfect but at least it's generally trying to be well-intentioned; my money is no longer supporting Dear Leader Orange, and Vancouver seems like a pretty cool place (both literally - brr - and figuratively).<br />
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Pansy in her soft carry-case under the airplane seat in front of me</div>
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Pansy exploring the AirBnB place we're staying in while I hunt for a "real" place</div>
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Vancouver night time view (from Stamps Landing)</div>
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Vancouver day time view (from downtown, looking to north shore)</div>
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<br />Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-19198502948422566352016-07-12T22:27:00.000-07:002016-07-14T16:03:42.180-07:00Why I'm Playing Pokémon GOI've seen several friends and acquaintances on Facebook saying they "don't get it" and don't understand why everyone is playing the new smartphone game Pokémon GO lately. It released in the US last week and within days it seemed you cannot take two steps without bumping into someone with their phone out, busy catching Pokémon. Sit in any restaurant or bar and it's only a matter of time before you hear the word "Pokémon" from other tables. I had to explain the game to some bemused waiters on Sunday night.<br />
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<u><b>First of all, what is it?</b></u><br />
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Pokémon GO is a smartphone game for Apple and Android. It's currently only available in a couple of countries and the servers are struggling under the current massive demand as it is, so hopefully they'll get those issues sorted out before inviting more countries to join. The game is based on the Pokémon franchise, which is basically a game about collecting cute critters called Pokémons. There are hundreds of them and they all have different appearances, names, and abilities. Once you collect some Pokémons of your own, you can fight against other people's Pokémons and see who's best. But basically, it's just a game about collecting cute things.<br />
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On the smartphone it's pretty simple. Your phone will show a little figure representing you, walking around on Google Maps in slightly prettier colours, and on the map you will also see some markers at certain locations - typically popular landmarks and works of art. So, a library or a post office or a popular bar might be examples of landmarks, and a sculpture, a mural, or even a painted utility box might be examples of works of art. There are two types of marker, PokéStops and Gyms. The former will give you items that you need to play the game (primarily, the PokéBalls that are used to collect the Pokémons) and the latter are fancier looking markers where you can go to fight against other people's Pokémons. These stops and gyms are all over the world, in every country, in every city. But here's the catch - to get the items or use the gym, you have to actually physically go to that map location. This is not a game you play sitting at home staring at a screen, this game gets you out of the house and walking around. If you want to get loot from the PokéStop, you're going to have to go there in person. Only when you're close enough can you click the marker on your map and collect your treasures.<br />
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In addition to the map markers, you'll occasionally hear an alert noise and see a little creature appear on your map. Unlike the stops and gyms, these don't have a fixed location. Instead, they appear partly randomly all over the place, and if you're close enough to one, you'll see it on your map. If you click the creature on your map, your view changes to a close up of the critter and then you use your finger to swipe upwards and throw a PokéBall at it - and if you hit successfully, you capture the creature and add it to your Pokémon collection. Different types of Pokémon can be found in different environments; the full details of these aren't entirely known yet, but for example, if you go to the beach you will find a lot more water-based Pokémon than if you're far inland. More incentive to travel around! And the more Pokémon you collect, the higher level you become, and you will start to find higher level and rarer Pokémons.<br />
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<b>So why is everyone playing it?</b><br />
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<u><b>Reason one. </b></u> The gameplay! Yep, it's a very simple game. But, a lot of people like cute things, and a lot of people like collecting games. As an example, look at the sudden craze for the smartphone game Neko Atsume last year. This is a Japanese game in which the sole object is to collect different cats by luring them to your garden with different cat toys and treats. If you think Pokémon GO sounds simple then Neko Atsume is practically comatose in comparison, yet for a month or so chasing those cats was very popular. Collecting things is fun, easy for everyone to understand, and something many people enjoy. Plus, because it shows you the Pokémons superimposed over what your phone is actually seeing, it makes for entertaining screenshots to share with friends!<br />
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<u><b>Reason two.</b></u> Gamification is a thing. Gamification is a fairly terrible word that refers to making something that isn't normally considered to be a game, into a game. For example, if a kid doesn't want to eat his food, his parents may try making a game out of it. "Look! The airplane is coming down to land, open up the runway...!" Rephrasing a disliked activity in a way that makes it seem fun can change our attitudes towards the activity. It doesn't necessarily make sense to our intellectual minds, but there's a lot of evidence showing it's actually quite an effective way of convincing ourselves to do something. Jane McGonigal is a game designer and researcher well known for her work in this area; she's written two books on the topic that I highly recommend if you want to understand the idea of gamification, but you can get a very brief summary by watching her TED talk: <br />
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In the case of Pokémon GO, it's a way to game-ify getting out and getting exercise. We all know there are huge health benefits to walking every day, but it's very hard to find the time to actually prioritize walking around when there are so many other more urgent demands on our time. Pokémon GO gives us a reason to get out, something to do while we're out, and a sense that we've been rewarded for doing it. Walking to the corner may seem pretty pointless, but walking to the local PokéStop and getting valuable game items and maybe encountering some Pokémons to capture? Totally worthwhile! And judging by all the jokes about an outbreak of sore legs this weekend, it's working for a lot of people.<br />
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I personally hate going to the gym. Even though I know it's good for me, it seems terribly pointless to stare at a wall for half an hour as I exercise. I've tried listening to audiobooks, but I can do that just as well when doing other things besides exercising so that doesn't really help. So I've been playing a number of games for a while that encourage me to get out and move. I started playing Ingress about two years ago; that's a game by the same company that made PokémonGO, which involves walking to marked spots on Google Maps and capturing them for your team. Two teams battle it out in Ingress to capture and link together as many points as possible. It's a pretty simple game, but when I lived in a different area that had lots of the capture points around me, it was a very good motivation to go for a walk each morning and recapture all the local points for my team. Unfortunately in the area I'm in now, there isn't much Ingress gameplay to be had so I started playing Walkr, a very simple planetary exploration game. The more steps you take each day, the more energy you get in game; and energy can be used as a type of currency to speed up your exploration and finding more planets. Again, a very simple collection game, but it was at least a small motivation to get some extra steps in each day. And now, Pokémon GO (which, even better, I can stack with Walkr and earn points in BOTH as I walk around, doubling the reward). It's more interesting than staring at a gym wall, and it gives me a psychological reward in the form of game progression if I get out of the house and move around.<br />
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This morning I got up early, left the house at 7:30 and went for a jog/walk in the nearby area. For the first time ever I jogged down to the local gym -- but instead of going into the gym for exercise like a "normal" person, I sat on a bench in front and did some Pokémon fighting at the PokéGym which is at the same location. (I assume the game developers intentionally put PokéGyms at the locations of real world gyms where possible.) Then I jogged home. I may not have used the real world gym in quite the typical way, but I still got exercise this morning, and 4000+ steps in before even heading to work! <br />
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<u><b>Reason three. </b></u> It's a social thing! Games like Ingress and Pokémon GO are actually quite social experiences. You join teams, you meet people who are also playing, and quite possibly you attend events where people get together to play the game together. The social aspect was one reason I started playing Ingress; I figured it might be a way to meet people who, like me, also enjoyed game playing, but who were also interested in staying active and healthy. I've made a few acquaintances and gone to various pub nights and picnics, as well as an all-day Ingress tournament (called an Anomaly) which had me walking 10 miles (over 20,000 steps) in one day, running around with teams trying to win for our team.<br />
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Last weekend I was walking around Fashion Valley (one of the larger and fancier shopping centers in San Diego) checking my phone for Pokémons, and a complete stranger asked if I was having any connectivity issues (he was) and whether I'd seen the rare Pokémon that he'd heard was to be found down that end of the mall. We had a little chat about the game and went our separate ways, but it gave us a point of common interest to open a conversation with. I'd never have spoken to him or him to me if we hadn't both been playing the same game. And this is happening everywhere. I'm seeing my friends reporting they've talked to more strangers and made more new acquaintances in the past week than ever before in their lives. Just by giving people who already have common interests a topic of conversation to break the ice, Pokémon GO is helping people connect. This screenshot of a discussion on Reddit is a great example:<br />
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Today on my way home from work I noticed two PokéStops close together with lures active (an effect you can add to any PokéStop to attract more Pokémons there). So I pulled over and walked over to check it out, and found a crowd of about 15 people sitting outside the local library taking advantage of the PokéStops. They were all discussing the game, and as new people approached they'd be asked what level they were or what team they were on and invited to join. The ages ranged from kids who looked barely teens to what looked like mid 40s. Everyone was being very polite and exchanging information and tips. One of the kids mentioned that last Sunday there had been about 30 people at this library location, enjoying the sunshine and the PokéStops. <br />
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Obviously, it should go without saying that normal caution applies when meeting total strangers or wandering around strange locations. If you wouldn't go some place alone normally, then you probably shouldn't go there while playing Pokémon Go (or Ingress). A report that was going around about robbers luring in victims using the game appears to be false (<a href="http://www.snopes.com/2016/07/10/armed-robbers-used-pokemon-go/" target="_blank">so says Snopes</a>) but normal levels of caution obviously apply whatever you're doing. Unlike the gentleman in the screenshot above, as a small woman I won't be wandering around parks at 3am regardless of what Pokémons might be found there. But I'm quite comfortable striking up a conversation with a stranger in a crowded shopping center or on a sunny afternoon at the public library.<br />
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<a href="http://www.inc.com/walter-chen/pok-mon-go-is-driving-insane-amounts-of-sales-at-small-local-businesses-here-s-h.html?cid=sf01002&sr_share=facebook" target="_blank">Businesses lucky enough to have a PokéStop nearby are also taking advantage of the fact to attract customers</a>. <br />
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<u><b>Reason four.</b></u> Curiosity! And this reason mostly just applies to me, but as a game developer long-time player of Ingress, I was very interested to see what the same company did with Pokémon GO. The latter is based very heavily on the data they gathered and the lessons learned from Ingress. As an Ingress player, I immediately spotted much of the data and gameplay they've taken from Ingress, and I'm using my knowledge of Ingress to make some deductions about how I think some game mechanics are working. (For example, I'm pretty sure they are using the mind unit and XM concentration calculations from Ingress to influence the frequency of Pokémon spawns, and other Ingress players I've talked to suspect the same.) As a game developer, I was always slightly frustrated at how poorly Ingress was monetized, so the monetization of Pokémon GO was one of the first things I checked out. And, game design aside, it's just interesting to watch how the game has captured so many different people's interests (and to speculate on the no doubt many imitators that will attempt to follow, probably unsuccessfully).<br />
<br />
Well, this turned into a longer essay than I'd intended, but hopefully that answers the question of what it is and why I'm playing it clearly enough! How long will the craze last? Who knows? My guess is that it'll carry on for a couple of months (as new countries get added, it'll likely keep Pokémon in the news) and then slowly taper off. But then again, I played Ingress for 2 years and that's an even more basic game than this one; so unless something more interesting comes along to help get me out of the house and make exercise a little more fun, I and many others may well continue to play for a while.<br />
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Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-15185545490273857792016-06-05T21:47:00.001-07:002016-06-05T22:03:28.596-07:00Low carb courgette and mushroom quicheThis is a low carb quiche using a cauliflower crust instead of the normal pastry.<br />
<br />
For cauliflower crust, I based it on <a href="http://www.theluckypennyblog.com/2013/02/the-best-cauliflower-crust-pizza.html" target="_blank">this cauliflower pizza crust recipe</a>.<br />
<br />
Crust <br />
<ul>
<li>1 bag of riced cauliflower (Trader Joe's sells this).</li>
<li>1/2 cup grated mozzarella cheese</li>
<li>1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese</li>
<li>1 tsp salt, pinch of pepper</li>
<li>1 egg</li>
</ul>
Pour the cauliflower into a bowl and cover with a plate. Microwave for 3 minutes stirring once. Leave 5 minutes till cool enough to touch.<br />
Turn out onto a smooth tea towe, wrap up, and squeeze out as much liquid as possible. You should be left with a dry paste - scrape from tea towel into a bowl.<br />
Add the cheese, egg, salt, and pepper and mix well.<br />
Press the cauliflower mix making a smooth base in a quiche pan 8-9" diameter.<br />
Bake at 350F for about 15 minutes, or until starting to turn brown, then remove and allow to cool.<br />
<br />
Filling (modified from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Delias-Complete-Cookery-Course-Vol/dp/0563362499/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465188661&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=delia+smith+complete+illustrated+cookbook" target="_blank">Delia Smith</a>)<br />
<ul>
<li> 2 eggs plus 1 yolk</li>
<li>10 oz creme fraiche (Trader Joe's has this, or fancier supermarkets usually in the deli section with the cheese)</li>
<li>1 large courgette (zucchini) - about 8oz)</li>
<li>1 cup button mushrooms</li>
<li>1 small sweet onion, or half a medium one </li>
<li>1 tablespoon parmesan cheese</li>
<li>2oz grated gruyere cheese </li>
<li>Salt and pepper</li>
</ul>
<br />
While the crust is cooking, dice the onion into small pieces. Melt about 1oz butter in a large frying pan and cook the onion on low heat about 5 minutes until translucent. Slice the courgette and mushroom into thin slices and add to the pan once the onion is cooked. Cook another 10 minutes or so until the mushroom and courgette are starting to colour, and most of the juice from the courgette and mushroom has evaporated.<br />
Transfer the vegetables onto the cauliflower crust leaving any extra liquid behind, and spread evenly.<br />
Sprinkle the gruyere evenly over the vegetables. <br />
In a small bowl, thoroughly mix 2 eggs and one additional egg yolk with the creme fraiche, salt, and pepper.<br />
Pour the mixture over the vegetables and sprinkle the parmesan on top.<br />
Bake for about 40 minutes, until the center is set and golden.<br />
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<br />Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-25153113308253852362016-05-17T09:43:00.000-07:002017-07-24T17:47:04.650-07:00Whole Grain BreadI've been experimenting with home made bread recipes lately and so far this is the winner. A few people asked for the recipe, so here it is.<br />
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<b><u>Ingredients<o:p></o:p></u></b></div>
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</div>
<ul>
<li>2 cups whole wheat flour ** (or leave this out and just use 6 cups all-purpose flour)</li>
<li>4 cups all-purpose flour </li>
<li>½ cup raw flax seeds</li>
<li>¼ cup raw pumpkin seeds</li>
<li>¼ cup raw sunflower seeds</li>
<li>1 tablespoon baker’s yeast</li>
<li>1 tablespoon salt</li>
<li>butter</li>
</ul>
<br />
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<b><u>Instructions<o:p></o:p></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<ul>
<li>Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.</li>
<li>Add 3 cups of warm to hot tap water (not boiling).</li>
<li>Mix with a spoon or with the hook attachment of a kitchenaid
until fully blended – it will be goopy and sticky.</li>
<li>Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave at room
temperature to rise overnight (at least 6 hours, can be up to about 20). The
dough will approximately double in size, so make sure there’s room in the bowl.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Cut the dough in half (or thirds if you want smaller loaves)
and cover the unused portion with plastic wrap. It can be kept in the fridge
for up to two weeks.</li>
<li>Place the dough you’re going to use onto a floured surface
and knead and stretch it for a minute or two, folding in half a few times. If you're short on counter space, you can also just add a little flour and knead and fold the dough in the bowl it was rising in.
The dough will be quite sticky, you may want to dust your hands with flour before kneading.</li>
<li>Shape the dough into a rough loaf shape and put it in a
buttered loaf pan so it's half full. Cover with plastic wrap again and allow to rise for
about an hour - it will again almost double in size. The temperature of the room will affect how quickly it rises so it may rise faster than an hour, or you may need to leave longer in a cooler house. Once it's noticeably bigger in size and if you poke a finger gently
into the dough and the indent remains, this is ready.</li>
<li>Preheat the oven to 400 F and make space on the middle rack.
(Optional: place a bowl of water in the oven to add humidity if you prefer a less crunchy
crust.)</li>
<li>Brush the top of the loaf with melted butter, then bake for
about half an hour, until the loaf starts to brown slightly. You can also lay a sheet of foil over the top of the loaf if you prefer a less crunchy crust.</li>
<li>Remove from oven and turn out of the pan onto a cooling
rack. Cool for at least half an hour before slicing, if you can wait.</li>
</ul>
If you make this entire recipe you'll need 3 of the small (about 8.5" x 4") disposable loaf tins supermarkets sell. If you divide it in two, a 9x5” or larger should work. If you make the entire amount at once, you'll need an extra long pan such as the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Wilton-Aluminum-4-Inch-Long-Loaf/dp/B00024WNOU">Wilton 16"x4 long pan</a>. Cover the cut end with cling film and it can be left out on the counter for 3-4 days without going stale, which is a bonus - it will go stale much faster in the fridge (never store bread in the fridge). You can also pre-slice and freeze in an airtight bag to use as needed.<br />
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This loaf was made in a standard supermarket tin foil loaf pan, and this batch made three this size.<br />
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Originally adapted from this recipe: http://www.thekitchenwhisperer.net/2013/11/20/awesomest-knead-sandwich-bread/</div>
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Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-20910109750790869782015-09-20T09:22:00.001-07:002016-05-17T09:57:17.343-07:00Apple Pan BreadThis isn't the prettiest cake but it's a moist, delicious apple cinnamon treat.<br />
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<br />
Apple mixture:<br />
<ul>
<li>10 oz. (about 4 large apples) pared, chopped apples (slightly sour apples are better)</li>
<li>1 oz. (1/4 cup) dark brown sugar </li>
<li>1 tablespoon cinnamon </li>
<li>3 tablespoons butter or margarine </li>
</ul>
Mix in a saucepan over medium heat and cook, stirring, until bubbling. Then cover and leave over low heat for just 2 minutes. Leave to cool. Apples should still be firm.<br />
<br />
<br />
Cake batter:<br />
<ul>
<li>3 oz. (1/2 cup) butter or margarine </li>
<li>4 oz. (1/2 cup) dark brown sugar </li>
<li>1 egg </li>
<li>3/4 cup milk </li>
<li>8 oz. plain white flour </li>
<li>1/2 tsp. salt </li>
<li>3 tsp. baking powder</li>
</ul>
Cream butter with sugar until light, add the egg and beat until light and creamy. Sift the flour with the salt and baking powder and add without mixing; add cooled apple mixture and milk, and then mix only enough to blend. Grease an 8" square pan. Pour into prepared pan, smoothing the top. <br />
<br />
<br />
Topping: <br />
<ul>
<li>2 oz. dark brown sugar </li>
<li>2 tsp. cinnamon </li>
<li>1/2 tsp. ground cloves </li>
</ul>
Mix well together and sprinkle over the top of batter in the pan before putting in oven.<br />
<br />
<br />
Bake at medium heat (350 F) for about 30 minutes, until a knife or toothpick stuck into the middle comes out clean. Serve hot or cold.<br />
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Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-78512943886558893112015-03-29T10:20:00.004-07:002015-05-26T10:28:21.182-07:00Moussaka<b>Ingredients</b><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>1 medium to large onion, chopped</li>
<li>1 large eggplant, sliced into strips (enough to make 3 layers in a baking dish) - alternative: zucchini.</li>
<li>8oz grated cheese (your choice which - I use cheddar)</li>
<li>1 small (6oz) tin tomato paste</li>
<li>1lb ground beef </li>
<li>3 tbsp chicken or vegetable broth</li>
<li>2 eggs</li>
<li>1 cup cream (or milk) </li>
<li>olive oil</li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>Instructions</b><br />
<br />
Slice the eggplant (or zucchini) about 1/8"-1/4" thick and lay flat on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or foil. Bake in 400F oven for 30-45 minutes (depending how thin the slices are), until soft but not turning crisp. (Alternately, you can fry in oil which is faster but less healthy.) Remove and set aside when done. You can do this step a day in advance and keep the eggplant in the fridge.<br />
<br />
While or after the eggplant is cooking, in a saucepan, heat a little olive oil on medium heat and add the onions until they're translucent. Then add the ground beef and mix regularly until the meat is also cooked.<br />
<br />
Add the tomato paste and broth to the saucepan and mix together, then turn the heat low and cover, allow to simmer very gently for 10-15 minutes. If the eggplant isn't quite ready, you can take off the head and set aside, covered, to wait. <br />
<br />
Turn the oven to 350F. In an oven-safe baking pan, place a layer of the eggplant. Sprinkle with 1/3 of the cheese. Then spread half the meat mixture flat on top. Add another layer of eggplant, and another 1/3 of the cheese, and the remainder of the meat mixture. Press this down fairly firmly so it makes a flat top. Finally, add a third layer of eggplant, sprinkle with the remaining cheese.<br />
<br />
In a separate bowl, mix the egg and cream together with a fork; add a little salt and pepper if you like. Pour over the top of the baking pan, and bake in the oven at 350F for about 30 minutes, until the top is set. It can keep warm in the oven longer if needed, but since everything but the egg is cooked already, it just needs long enough to set the egg.<br />
<br />
Serve warm. Leftovers freeze & reheat well.Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-20517728425569637252015-03-29T09:52:00.003-07:002015-03-29T09:59:31.759-07:00Low(er) carb cheesecake<b>McCall's Best Cheesecake</b> (modified)<br />
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<b>Crust</b><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>3/4 walnuts, finely chopped</li>
<li>2 tbs melted butter</li>
<li>Combine, mix well, and press onto the bottom of a spring form pan. Leave to set in fridge.</li>
</ul>
<b>Main body</b><br />
<ul>
<li>24oz (680g) plain cream cheese at room temperature</li>
<li>4 eggs</li>
<li>1 tsp vanilla extract</li>
<li>1 tbsp lemon juice</li>
<li>3/4 cup (6oz) sugar</li>
</ul>
<br />
Preheat oven to 375F. Beat the cream cheese until light and smooth, then
add eggs one at a time and mix until blended. Add vanilla, lemon juice,
and sugar, mixing till light and smooth. Pour over crust in tin, and
bake about 45 minutes until beginning to set.<br />
<br />
<b>Topping</b><br />
<ul>
<li>2 cups (500g tub) sour cream</li>
<li>1 tbs sugar</li>
<li>1 tsp vanilla</li>
</ul>
Mix together in the sour cream tub. When the cheesecake is ready,
remove from oven and spread this topping over it. Return to oven for
another 10 minutes, then remove and allow to cool in tin. <br />
<br />
Refrigerate overnight before serving. Good with strawberries or strawberry sauce.<br />
<br />
Without the strawberries, this should work out to about 380g of carbohydrates in the entire cake, which would be just under 50g for 1/8 or 25g for 1/16 slice. Using sugar substitute would obviously reduce the carbs even more.<br />
<br />
<br />Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-57704910575634626602015-03-21T12:21:00.002-07:002015-03-21T13:11:15.866-07:00High fiber breakfast muffinsI've been experimenting with recipes for a high fiber, low calorie breakfast muffin that I can make on the weekend then freeze to take to work each morning. I'm still tweaking it, but so far this isn't bad:<br />
<br />
<u><b>High Fiber Breakfast Muffins</b></u><br />
<br />
1.5 cups whole wheat flour<br />
1.5 cups Fiber One bran<br />
2 tsp baking soda<br />
3/4 cup (about 2 snack pouches) organic apple sauce<br />
1/2 cup 2% milk<br />
4 tbsp ground flax seeds <br />
1 tsp vanilla<br />
1/8 cup maple syrup<br />
1/2 cup chopped walnuts<br />
1/2 cup shelled pumpkin seeds<br />
1 cup frozen raspberries<br />
2/3 cups chopped dried figs<br />
optional: 1 tsp each ground ginger or cinnamon <br />
<br />
Mix everything together. Line cupcake tins with cupcake liners. Fill each to the top; the muffins won't rise much. Should make about 20 portions. Bake at 350F for about 30 minutes.<br />
<br />
<b>Nutrition info:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>~140 calories per muffin (assuming 20 muffins; or ~180 calories each if you make 16 muffins)</li>
<li>5.8g fat</li>
<li>21.2g carbohydrates</li>
<li>4.2g protein</li>
<li>0.5mg cholesterol</li>
<li>4.2g protein</li>
</ul>
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<br />Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-63043645550196968832015-03-09T09:38:00.000-07:002015-03-21T12:31:00.391-07:00Candied bacon<u><b>Ingredients:</b></u><br />
<br />
Bacon (I used thick cut hickory smoked)<br />
Brown sugar<br />
Chipotle chile (or your spicy seasonig of choice, preferably in dry form)<br />
<br />
<u><b>Instructions:</b></u><br />
<br />
Mix sugar and spice in a shallow bowl. Amounts really depend on how much bacon you're making and how spicy you want it; here's what I used for about 3 dozen bacon strips:<br />
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<br />
<br />
Line a baking tray with foil, ensuring the sides of the foil are raised so grease won't drip out. Preheat oven to about 400F.<br />
<br />
Firmly press one side of the bacon into the sugar mixture, then lay on foil with sugar side up. When the tray is full, bake for about 15 minutes or until bacon is cooked crispy. Note that the brown sugar will caramelise and make the bacon look darker than it actually is, so double check it's cooked enough. The goal is to cook it enough that the fat is nicely crispy even once it cools.<br />
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Blot the bacon's bottom side on a paper towel to remove excess fat, then set on parchment paper or a cooling rack to cool.<br />
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Avoid humidity. Serve cold or room temperature.</div>
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Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-40874239560314059192015-01-17T11:17:00.002-08:002015-06-17T22:43:06.115-07:00German Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter (or Coffee) Frosting<u><b>German Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter (or Coffee) Frosting </b></u><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwmpGnXM10zHtJifavQL03lxm5SDVWBb7KO3AATo2cQjcj7WOe_6o9qYzzNcuXs_cy3yhefG047syyQP6nShyphenhyphen8Hp_KXevMGEAIDVH_WCpj-8wNW4oMMBmrFRvXowbih51eySSSIG5fzs0/s1600/pbcupcakes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwmpGnXM10zHtJifavQL03lxm5SDVWBb7KO3AATo2cQjcj7WOe_6o9qYzzNcuXs_cy3yhefG047syyQP6nShyphenhyphen8Hp_KXevMGEAIDVH_WCpj-8wNW4oMMBmrFRvXowbih51eySSSIG5fzs0/s1600/pbcupcakes.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>Cupcakes </b><br />
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(modified from <a href="http://bakehouse.squarespace.com/home/2011/7/10/german-chocolate-cupcakes.html" target="_blank">Bakehouse</a>) <br />
These are much lighter and airier than my <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5402295191503748159#editor/target=post;postID=7651027001386677030;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=23;src=postname" target="_blank">other cupcake recipe</a>, which is more dense and moist and cake-like.<br />
<ul>
<li>8 oz (1.5 cups) all-purpose flour
</li>
<li>5 oz (2/3 cups) unsweetened cocoa powder
</li>
<li>1.5 teaspoon baking powder
</li>
<li>1/2 teaspoon baking soda
</li>
<li>1 teaspoon kosher salt
</li>
<li>12 oz (1.5 cups) sugar
</li>
<li>4 oz (1/2 cup) melted butter
</li>
<li>2 large egg, at room temperature
</li>
<li>1 teaspoon vanilla extract
</li>
<li>1 1/3 cup warm coffee or warm water (I use water as I don't drink coffee)</li>
</ul>
Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
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In large bowl, beat together sugar, butter and egg until thick and pale, about two minutes with a handmixer. Beat in vanilla.
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Slowly mix in the flour mixture and warm water (or coffee) alternately, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.
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Using a spoon, fill cupcake liners about 3/4 full. Bake for about 15 minutes, or when a toothpick inserted into center comes out with only a few crumbs attached.
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Makes about 16-20 cupcakes depending how full you fill the cups.<br />
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Top with your choice of frosting, two great ones below:<br />
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<b>Peanut Butter Frosting </b><br />
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(from <a href="http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/84429/fluffy-peanut-butter-frosting/" target="_blank">AllRecipes</a>) <br />
<ul>
<li>1/2 cup butter, softened
</li>
<li>1 cup creamy peanut butter (use a commercial brand, not a pure organic brand as you actually need the added oil.)</li>
<li>3 tablespoons milk, or as needed
</li>
<li>2 cups confectioners' sugar
</li>
</ul>
Make sure butter and peanut butter are at room temperature (and butter not melted) - this is important or the texture will be coarse! You may think you can cheat with a microwave, but trust me, I tried it and it did not end well. Just leave them on the counter a few hours or overnight.<br />
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Place the butter and peanut butter into a medium bowl, and beat with an electric mixer. Gradually mix in the sugar, and when it starts to get thick, incorporate milk one tablespoon at a time until all of the sugar is mixed in and the frosting is thick and spreadable. Beat for at least 3 minutes for it to get good and fluffy.
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Consensus from work was very positive: <br />
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<b>Coffee Frosting</b><br />
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<ul>
<li>1/2 cup of butter</li>
<li>4 cups confectioners' sugar</li>
<li>about 6 tablespoons strong black coffee at room temperature or as needed to soften (e.g. use way too much instant coffee in a small amount of hot water, or brew very strong coffee far too long). Do let the coffee cool before using, or it'll melt the butter.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>(Optional: you could also add about 2 tbsp cocoa powder for mocha icing)</li>
</ul>
Again, butter must be at room temperature - leave out overnight.<br />
<br />
Beat the butter well, slowly adding the sugar alternating with coffee until smoothly mixed. Beat at least a couple minutes to ensure it's light and fluffy.<br />
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I don't even like coffee and I thought this frosting tasted amazing.Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-92225646351940658982013-11-29T22:16:00.002-08:002013-11-30T11:05:39.916-08:00Weeping Angel Costume<div>
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Last year I found <a href="http://www.therpf.com/f24/doctor-who-blink-weeping-angel-costume-49264/" target="_blank">a guide to making a Weeping Angel costume</a>, and decided to use it (with some changes) as a basis for creating my Halloween costume this year. </div>
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These are my notes on the changes I made and what did and didn't work.<br />
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The mask was one of the easiest things. A basic store-bought plastic mask, with the details built up using PlasticWeld epoxy putty (plumber's putty, from Home Depot).<br />
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Because the angel's mouth is open, it actually extends down over the mask's chin and I had to add extra chin with the putty. </div>
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I cut the plastic out of the mouth area and added in the fangs. </div>
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A couple of layers of paint turned it to "stone" (matte for the top layer, angels aren't shiny).</div>
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For comfort, I lined and padded the mask with toweling material. I also enlarged the nostril holes (hidden by the mask's nose) and glued a strip of black stocking material behind the teeth to hide my chin from showing through the mouth.<br />
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The mask was reasonably comfortable but the epoxy putty made it heavy. I might try to recreate it with a lighter modelling clay like Crayola Model Magic.<br />
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Next, the wig. This was very last-minute as I was running out of time. <br />
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I agree with the author of the blog I was referencing: it might be
better to model out of clay instead; the yarn is difficult to work with.</div>
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Next, the wings. I wanted to do these differently from the blog I was referencing, because I wanted to be able to detach the wings for portability, and I wanted to try and design the wings and dress so I wouldn't need a second person to help me change into it.<br />
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First step was to take apart a backpack with comfortable padded straps to make a harness. I found some PVC pipes at the hardware store that were a perfect fit to be a socket and support for the wings. I attached these to the backpack padding, and added an extra strap with velcro closing to ensure they were supported firmly upright.<br />
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The wings are made of hard foam sheets from the craft store, glued firmly together in layers. Initially I tried using duct tape to secure the foam to the PVC pipes, but duct tape doesn't stick well to styrofoam, so I ended up using glue.<br />
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Here are the wings, partially made, slotted into the harness:<br />
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Wing showing the pipe that slots into the harness:<br />
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Detail on a wing showing the layers, and the carving of the feathers. I was hoping the paint would cover up the joins between sections of foam better, but it's really only visible at this one place:<br />
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Next, the dress. I wanted a comfortable top, so I picked up a cheap sweatshirt at a second hand shop and chopped off all but the shoulders. </div>
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Apart from the shoulders, the dress was made from a dark grey cotton fabric, essentially a tube sewn so it hung in folds. </div>
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwE4Y71jmgLT1QXLsHC8OEQvXI7-1KQfEBMyce5jBgR6XCvs7Vg-UmCiP6peinwzGQFmjqdp8RpXmrw45UPUDz0a-GNpFXmCfWMUmeh3HH0Dk-rGhBKDaaaWCacF7Ubpp7O-pUO_gMNGc/s640/blogger-image--1362680526.jpg" /></div>
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The front was sewn to the sweatshirt top, but I didn't sew the back so it could be closed with velcro. This is how the back looked after painting, when the velcro is closed up:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLqSxWmsSh6V-n8Z0NeE2TOpT-_0QjQeTIoqyTRqePZfLwpUElbSadqQxeIkK_gYuWT2vEutZVGhw6s0LbMqHaQQscmnDokkVxoIxpLEdataPjrT-Re-QDsAotGWamAjSavZYekaJuYVw/s640/blogger-image-213602705.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLqSxWmsSh6V-n8Z0NeE2TOpT-_0QjQeTIoqyTRqePZfLwpUElbSadqQxeIkK_gYuWT2vEutZVGhw6s0LbMqHaQQscmnDokkVxoIxpLEdataPjrT-Re-QDsAotGWamAjSavZYekaJuYVw/s640/blogger-image-213602705.jpg" /></a></div>
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And with the velcro opened, two vertical slits (hidden in the folds) allow the wings to be slotted through to the harness underneath:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCOVJOrhL0K4Bpn94Hgg46yPetP6S6n_5mvJdW-iyLbh0naX3lU9q3xCINCUYV1q3sxG_qNN-BdG0aHhX6fdHNLqcYl1Vx1Ph4_BzC4vjQvhZgqHGgo_lLDwdxZowGlYSis-7tNXteXqA/s640/blogger-image-1315585020.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCOVJOrhL0K4Bpn94Hgg46yPetP6S6n_5mvJdW-iyLbh0naX3lU9q3xCINCUYV1q3sxG_qNN-BdG0aHhX6fdHNLqcYl1Vx1Ph4_BzC4vjQvhZgqHGgo_lLDwdxZowGlYSis-7tNXteXqA/s400/blogger-image-1315585020.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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For the arms, I tried the instructions in the original blog. I used grey stockings, cut and sewed into gloves, and painted them. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-tNeam32TTRNaPa-UEo-YjL98M-StLp_U8bEXoQq10jMuMpCUWr8RZHzYLD-TwzQzcEycjBDWjtx_tt3ocxxVjPjT8Nn-fqqRqlChNRi3cPbuxxrmk1rE_PDn9ko_foj9IILRbhlccdA/s640/blogger-image-1477325537.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-tNeam32TTRNaPa-UEo-YjL98M-StLp_U8bEXoQq10jMuMpCUWr8RZHzYLD-TwzQzcEycjBDWjtx_tt3ocxxVjPjT8Nn-fqqRqlChNRi3cPbuxxrmk1rE_PDn9ko_foj9IILRbhlccdA/s640/blogger-image-1477325537.jpg" /></a><br />
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Not only was sewing the gloves a lengthy pain, it was also uncomfortable and
the arms were still more transparent than the rest of the costume. It didn't look awful, but it didn't look perfect either. I used a stocking hat as well to cover my ears and neck, however, I
also had trouble with the neck creeping up and it had to be pinned to
stay in place. <br />
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I've already bought a lycra bodysuit to paint and see if it makes a better substitute.<br />
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Here's how the costume (minus arms and wig) looked on a mannequin,, not yet fully painted:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV57E5Re6nCLtlT-nb7NDvciHjhMvIulwXsX5jSWpGxAh1DEQiGiX8as-TmxwPyh91wCMCTkJKxnPa-VuXif6Ip3w0f1NDXzyhmELFqm7VWN1BHsgZq-0Tf5FJtmssVguBtv8kt8F5ogs/s640/blogger-image--904938196.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV57E5Re6nCLtlT-nb7NDvciHjhMvIulwXsX5jSWpGxAh1DEQiGiX8as-TmxwPyh91wCMCTkJKxnPa-VuXif6Ip3w0f1NDXzyhmELFqm7VWN1BHsgZq-0Tf5FJtmssVguBtv8kt8F5ogs/s640/blogger-image--904938196.jpg" /></a></div>
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After taking this photo, I went to work leaving it here just inside the front door, and forgot all about it when I came home in the evening. Almost gave myself a heart attack bumping into it in the dark!<br />
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Here's me at the SOE Halloween party. You can see the difference in the transparency of the arms: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYsRvvPPmpxFNOj2SsQI2dbfsjoAh-AmcuRPvq6V0_pl7vj13nNhyao53FRgkPa71qmnFOeh5Th8X335FdsGxafmfQwgXgVPbX2Rzq2Yr_6RK2UKWIboVfMeUE967Tzy9mJ8vzcfBtF_Q/s1600/1391590_10152325184309622_1175357607_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYsRvvPPmpxFNOj2SsQI2dbfsjoAh-AmcuRPvq6V0_pl7vj13nNhyao53FRgkPa71qmnFOeh5Th8X335FdsGxafmfQwgXgVPbX2Rzq2Yr_6RK2UKWIboVfMeUE967Tzy9mJ8vzcfBtF_Q/s320/1391590_10152325184309622_1175357607_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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The other problem was that I didn't realize how much the wings would swing around when I was moving. On a stationary dress mannequin it wasn't a problem, but when walking I had to constantly adjust them or hold them. I need to revise the wings to prevent them from swinging sideways.<br />
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Before wearing this again, I will try using a bodysuit instead of the
stocking arms, and redesign the wings to stop the swinging. Possibly
also redo the mask with a lighter clay.<br />
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Overall, it was fun and challenging to make, but not at all comfortable to wear. OK for a short costume contest, but I couldn't have worn it comfortably for any length of time. Still, it looked good enough that I tied for first prize and freaked out a few people by following them around!<br />
Here are some of the final greenscreen photos from the SOE party.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-tNeam32TTRNaPa-UEo-YjL98M-StLp_U8bEXoQq10jMuMpCUWr8RZHzYLD-TwzQzcEycjBDWjtx_tt3ocxxVjPjT8Nn-fqqRqlChNRi3cPbuxxrmk1rE_PDn9ko_foj9IILRbhlccdA/s640/blogger-image-1477325537.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-81033807209321117182013-09-16T12:55:00.003-07:002013-09-16T12:55:35.304-07:00Cassy's Peanut Butter Cookies<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span class="il"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>Cassy's Peanut</u></b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u> <span class="il">Butter</span> <span class="il">Cookies</span><br />
</u></b><br />
1/2 cup <span class="il">butter</span><br />
1 1/4 cup packed brown sugar<br />
3/4 cup <span class="il">peanut</span> <span class="il">butter</span> (I prefer crunchy)<br />
1 egg<br />
1 tbsp vanilla extract<br />
1 3/4 cups flour<br />
3/4 tsp baking soda<br />
3/4 tsp salt<br />Optional: 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet mini chocolate chips</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Preheat the oven to 350 F. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cream together the <span class="il">butter</span>, brown sugar
and <span class="il">peanut</span> <span class="il">butter</span>. Add the
egg and vanilla extract, mix well. Add in the flour, baking soda and
salt. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Optional: Add chocolate chips for a peanut butter chocolate chip version!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Roll dough into 1-inch balls (or drop by tablespoon scoop) and
place onto ungreased <span class="il">cookie</span> sheet. Made a
criss-cross design with a fork, slightly pushing <span class="il">cookie</span>
down. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees.<br />
Let cool for 1-2 minutes on <span class="il">cookie</span> sheet before moving to
cooling rack.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This recipe was from Cassy Arretche - thanks! :) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk2ju5k3cZOpR6-1vi8P-NnJqEYD1bAkm8HN_Ska5vUYVF3QxIEnMf2zPQ5QdQASG2EXUlTNC2HSmZ2LDyUx7o-6il2Us6XXvWCF2xYNEJAOrQMY7w2Fggc9SCc7bWh8Kp3Zd2_CI2R3A/s1600/1240536_10152204490769622_363636273_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk2ju5k3cZOpR6-1vi8P-NnJqEYD1bAkm8HN_Ska5vUYVF3QxIEnMf2zPQ5QdQASG2EXUlTNC2HSmZ2LDyUx7o-6il2Us6XXvWCF2xYNEJAOrQMY7w2Fggc9SCc7bWh8Kp3Zd2_CI2R3A/s320/1240536_10152204490769622_363636273_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-59402405592666446952013-08-05T12:26:00.000-07:002013-08-06T19:42:48.934-07:00What does a producer do at SOE Live?SOE Live (the SOE gamer gathering formerly known as Fan Faire) has come and gone for 2013 and I'm at home recovering today. Wonderful time as always and the big "reveal" of EverQuest Next seems to have gone over hugely well with both players and media. I still haven't caught up with all the articles but I'll post links another time.<br />
<br />
I've been well known by players since I joined SOE in 2007 (even before, in some circles) so there were lots of hugs and welcome backs throughout the weekend. The number one question that I got asked, right after "what are you doing on EverQuest Next?" (answer: producer), was "what does a producer do?"<br />
<br />
Despite the fact this is the second game I've been a producer on, I still don't have an easy answer. It seems to depend on the game, the team, and the circumstances. The best answers I've heard so far include:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>anything that needs doing</li>
<li>keep the team running smoothly and deal with external demands; if I'm doing my job well, everybody on the team should wonder what the heck I do all day anyway because it's going so smoothly.</li>
<li>deliver a product on time and see not only what is there, but what is NOT there and needs to be. If a game company were a car manufacturer, the producer not only needs to check all the wheels and doors are being made and on time, but also notice that nobody's remembered to make the brakes.</li>
</ul>
<div>
That doesn't even begin to cover the details though. So for anyone who is interested, this blog is about what this particular producer did at SOE Live (and keep in mind, Terry is our Senior Producer so he was taking care of a whole other set of things including all the press interviews, as were as many other competent people too).<br />
<br />
This is probably way more detail than most people want, but if you WERE one of those people asking for specifics, here is essentially a high level diary of what I did at SOE Live this year (and why you saw me running back and forth for a lot of it)!</div>
<div>
<br />
Wednesday:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Arrived, checked in, rehearsed the Friday reveal presentation. The team discussed various changes of plan and how to overcome them.</li>
<li>Spent a lot of time doing last-minute playtests of the augmented reality mobile app we'd created for SOE Live; a few bugs were found and a lot of emails went back and forth discussing whether there was time to update before Friday.</li>
<li>Dinner with the Community Summit folks, a group of influential players invited for their input. Introduced as many of the EQN team as I could to as many of the players as I could; podcasters and similar will want to meet the team in particular.</li>
<li>Early (relatively speaking) night as Terry said he wanted to practice again in the morning.</li>
</ul>
<div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Pefhb_8ex9gJL8YaWqWUUEr6BE5XI0DlU8OPTWX8-E2Dc4faMbaT1u-4H6ASBlNPqQDvaWtym04UjORRlt1MjuCowXXiebyDCo8kvUVMDPuxHdleQzdCt81TbO9lb9AUA487Yg9yLvg/s1600/Community+dinner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Pefhb_8ex9gJL8YaWqWUUEr6BE5XI0DlU8OPTWX8-E2Dc4faMbaT1u-4H6ASBlNPqQDvaWtym04UjORRlt1MjuCowXXiebyDCo8kvUVMDPuxHdleQzdCt81TbO9lb9AUA487Yg9yLvg/s1600/Community+dinner.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i>Community Council dinner - my table</i></div>
<br />
Thursday:</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Headed down to the presentation area early, but turned out I was not immediately needed for practice. Found breakfast with some of our players, spent time chatting (though not about EQN, which was still all secret stuff!)</li>
<li>Up to the check-in area to see if any help was needed with setting up, then arranged for some relevant folks to sit in on the Friday morning run-through of the reveal.</li>
<li>Mid morning practice run of the reveal, and a few more changes based on feedback.</li>
<li>Gave some snack packs to the AV guys who were working nonstop setting up for the presentations. I always bring emergency snacks to SOE Live; there are always people who end up working through meals and getting too busy to find anything to eat. Especially the AV team, community, and folks supervising the game room areas. They later told me my snacks were all they had to eat for the entire day.</li>
<li>Spent a little time walking around getting oriented in the casino; new hotel from previous years and it's always good to know where things are.</li>
<li>Players started lining up to register in the early afternoon, and the lines were very long. I always take this time to walk along the lines saying welcome and hello. It sucks to be stuck in a line, and often people are happy to talk to a dev while they wait; even if not, a welcome is friendly! Community team were doing the same. Lots of familiar faces who said hello also, and many new ones looking nervous who said it was their first time. They're always unsure if coming was a big mistake, and I always reassure them they'll have a wonderful time (and they always do). This kept me busy for many hours. I noticed our #myEQstory winner in the line, Maergoth the paladin, and think I made his day by recognizing him in front of his guild. </li>
<li>Helped random lost press/media folks find the press room.</li>
<li>Periodically checked in with our EQNext authors, who had a stall in the hallway selling their other books and were looking forward to the big reveal as well as their own panel on Sunday. Made sure they had their schedules and everything they needed. Turned out they needed a couple of day passes for their spouses/kids, so I followed up on those.</li>
<li>The official welcome from Smed was Thursday night. Sat with the authors and made a few rounds of other tables welcoming people I recognized as well as newcomers. Also helped a player who was collecting dev signatures to get a few more.</li>
<li>After the welcome, another rehearsal for Friday's big EQNext reveal. This was cut a bit short by technical issues so we ended around 11:30 with admonitions to be back by 7:30 for more. So, another early night!</li>
</ul>
<div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGaRQ64wk55iQmu8Y9vRsQUZePn_d45DeIqKQDc1YxW8vO03bCzvCNxGdvkYxNKOI4QbsTxO7QMIgJRrsYnATqRXsTLy_SPehZCGNfz6XRG3wtGhDQmEYm_acwYzYzFiHvTnR7gtVCLXo/s1600/Jeff+backstage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGaRQ64wk55iQmu8Y9vRsQUZePn_d45DeIqKQDc1YxW8vO03bCzvCNxGdvkYxNKOI4QbsTxO7QMIgJRrsYnATqRXsTLy_SPehZCGNfz6XRG3wtGhDQmEYm_acwYzYzFiHvTnR7gtVCLXo/s1600/Jeff+backstage.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<i>Jeff dancing to appropriate music after someone accidentally deleted the database... panic moment</i></div>
<br />
<br />
Friday:<br />
<ul>
<li>Super early breakfast and practice for the noon reveal. Some issues with the sand painting and projection equipment actually meant we sat around for a while before we could start practicing but things eventually got started. We had a very short break before the actual reveal at noon, then gathered again. I sat with the team at a side corner table way out of the way, so that when Dave's presentation was drawing to an end we could slip unnoticeably behind the curtain and get to the live demo machines. </li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj00Ftf0lk9z1W-zQd1RE6UphV2AcVAHE_c4TAohZwCgfvAVGaHppAvVwbCQ9TqoqdRP1vnxDy6eNXzp2Ospg3TqI5aSRB7HAAJg3y8dA2jcbkC37zHUT9bvvZFEYy5P8I9GyX_Bd4dBzo/s1600/EQN+breakfast+pre+reveal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj00Ftf0lk9z1W-zQd1RE6UphV2AcVAHE_c4TAohZwCgfvAVGaHppAvVwbCQ9TqoqdRP1vnxDy6eNXzp2Ospg3TqI5aSRB7HAAJg3y8dA2jcbkC37zHUT9bvvZFEYy5P8I9GyX_Bd4dBzo/s1600/EQN+breakfast+pre+reveal.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i>The team who were backstage during the reveal</i></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Once Dave's presentation ended , they drew back a section of the curtains so that Terry, Darrin, and Jeff could be seen, and a group of 7 of us ran through some live play to show off the massive destruction and more of the wizard and warrior abilities. </li>
<li>Once again provided snacks to the AV team, at least once of whom once again had nothing else to eat for lunch on Friday. Those guys work like crazy at these events.</li>
<li>After the presentation ended, EQN had a 3 hour break until the first EQNext panel. Most were free to wander around, but I'd been assigned to meet a small group of VIP players from a particular gaming site and ensure they felt welcome, knew where they were going, and generally make them at home. I met up with them around 2 and made sure they had my number in case of emergencies, gave them a brief introduction and welcome, and then made sure they met up with the first EQN team members they had a scheduled interview with. I also followed up with the relevant team members to ensure they knew where to go and when!</li>
<li>Checked back on the guest passes for the authors' families and ensured they'd been delivered. </li>
<li>Discovered we'd omitted some details that needed arranging with the Round Table section of the website, and found the appropriate marketing person to confirm fixing this, then followed up with the social media guys to get it done. Updated the relevant EQN team on the changes.</li>
<li>Checked in a couple times on the VIPs to ensure their interviews were going well. Chatted with players in between. Everyone very excited about EQNext!</li>
<li>First EQN panel was at 5pm and we were all supposed to sit in the audience (only 5 people actually up front). When I turned up, Terry asked if I could film it with a handycam. Unfortunately, there was no tripod so I flipped a chair around and tried to steady my arms on the back of it. Added complication: marketing manager was texting me during filming with questions about the VIP players dinner plans which needed answering, so apologies to anyone who subsequently watches the video; if there's a time or two when the camera drifts completely off course, I blame marketing! My arms/hands were killing me by the end. Fortunately they found a tripod for all the subsequent panels.</li>
<li>After the panel I met up with Eric our Associate Producer and we took the 5 VIP players out to dinner at Hofbrauhaus. There is a tradition for a number of staff to go there for dinner each year before the pool party, though I have never been before as I'm usually too busy. Food was good and we had time to catch up with the players and learn more about them.</li>
<li>Back in time for the pool party; changed clothes appropriately and headed down, but almost as soon as I arrived I was introduced to Daniel, a player who runs a brewery and who had printed up many many cases of beer with special EQ themed labels (Blackburrow Stout, Ogre Swill, and Dwarven Ale) hoping to share them with us at the pool party. However, casino security had refused to allow him to bring the beer into the casino and he'd had to leave most of it behind, and even the 3 or so cases he did bring in a cooler he wasn't allowed to bring to the pool because they were in glass bottles. He was understandably very frustrated and had clearly gone to a lot of trouble and expense to do a nice thing for us which was being stymied. This kind of randomness is the kind of thing that becomes a producer's problem. So I found our Director of Community (Linda), explained the situation, confirmed we could bring them to the banquet tomorrow instead, and then escorted Daniel and his beer to my hotel room for overnight storage (of the beer, not the man!) as he was not staying at the same hotel.</li>
<li>Returned downstairs to the pool party and made sure that Daniel was thanked and enjoying himself, then bumped into one of our authors who was frustrated at the length of the bar lines and looking around for people he knew. As it turned out I had cases of beer in my room, we retreated to my room and shared a bottle of the Dwarven Ale (into plastic cups) which we were able to safely bring back to the pool party. This was actually the only drink I managed to get during the whole party, so fortunately it was very nice beer indeed.</li>
<li>I introduced the author to various other people and checked on the group of VIPs I'd had dinner with; they seemed to be doing well, so I tried to track down our legal team as the author had wanted to meet them. Unfortunately by the time I found a legal team member I couldn't locate our author. I did bump into Ten Ton Hammer staff, and recalled Daniel (the brewer) had wanted to deliver some of his EQ themed beer to them also, so I told them I had some and arranged to stop by their hosted breakfast in the morning with a few bottles. </li>
<li>The rest of the pool party I spent chatting with a number of our podcasters, making sure they were having a good time and had managed to meet up with all the various devs they were trying to find, and generally talking with players. I never actually did get within visible distance of a pool!</li>
<li>Towards the end I was handed a nice wooden "EQNext Fans" cigar box, still mostly full, which had apparently been left behind on a table. The person giving it to me thought it had been given to someone in the marketing team, so it was now clearly a producer's job to take care of it and get it back to its rightful owner. Which I did.</li>
<li>We were kicked out of the pool area at midnight and I went to a smaller room party in the suite of one of our EQ2 designers. Drinks and Cards Against Humanity were the main themes. Brought a couple of bottles of the EQ themed beer to the party and made sure Holly, the EQ2 producer, got a bottle. </li>
<li>Went down to the Heart Bar in the main casino to chat with players until about 2am. Linda introduced me to a player she knew from previous years who had offered to help film our EQN panels, and I arranged to introduce him to Terry in the morning.</li>
</ul>
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<i>Awesome beers in my bathroom!</i></div>
<br />
Saturday:</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>I was able to get a slightly late start this morning as panels didn't start till 11. First stop was the Ten Ton Hammer breakfast with a few of Daniel's beers to make sure they got some, but it seemed Daniel did manage to find them himself and was already there chatting with them. So I caught up a bit on twitter and facebook and got some photos and news posted before heading to the panels.</li>
<li>First EQNext panel was packed and crowd was very excited. The player who'd offered to help film was not to be found but Greg had located a tripod and someone other than me filmed the panel. This left me free to sit in back and watch, as well as do some last minute preparation for the player panel I would be MC'ing at 3.</li>
<li>Lunch break to allow players to get lunch between panels was at 12; I got to the room it would be in during the break and copied onto the PC their presentation (they'd shared it on Google Drive) and a preview EQN building video we'd got permission to show also. Texted them to let them know it was there and ready.</li>
<li>While there I noticed the list of panels on the sign for that room was wrong (our panel wasn't listed) so followed up with the registration desk to get that fixed up.</li>
<li>Checked in with our authors, our VIP players, various other players in the area, and fed AV team more snacks.</li>
<li>Provided Ibuprofen to some EQ2 devs who were in serious need. (Another thing I always pack.)</li>
<li>Brought the beer down out of my room (alas) and delivered it in the cooler to the info desk where Linda was going to pick it up for the banquet.</li>
<li>Checked in with wikia who were doing a great job encouraging players to sign up and update information. Nice to meet the wikia team, and I was sorry I didn't have more time to chat with them.</li>
<li>Panels from 1-3 (I sat in the back) and the player who offered to help film did show up, I put him in touch with Terry and he was very helpful with the remainder of the filming.</li>
<li>One of the players I know from previous years stopped by to show off the cloak she'd hand-sewn last year based on a quest I made long ago. She brought it specially so I could see it. I took a photo to show to the artist who created it, in case nobody had done so last year (apparently they hadn't; he just replied "I never saw this before such an excellent rendition" which I've passed back to her). I love showing the artists what costumes players create from their work, I think it's inspiring on both sides!</li>
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<i>Obann's "Cloak of the Gatherer"</i></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>At 3 there was another EQN panel but I went off to do the player panel: "EQ2 Hardcore Decorating". Since it was a player panel I didn't want to take the attention away from them, but I did the introduction, a brief overview of some of the history of changes in EQ2 decorating, and then let them do their stuff. I also helped with handing out (and gathering) reference cards and sign ups to win decorating stuff. At the very end I'd got permission to show the timelapse video of building in EQN Landmark, which is very relevant to decorator interests, and that went over very well as a little preview of what's to come. There was some good Q&A which the panelists handled, and then it was off to the last EQN panel of the day.</li>
<li>Final Saturday panel was general Q&A and all of us who weren't sitting up front lined up on the side wall in case there were questions for us also. There were also a couple of Nagafen hat giveaways which Terry had me deliver to the winners.</li>
<li>During the session lady in a scooter beside our line knocked over her large soft drink, so I ran out to get paper towels and clean it up and let hotel cleaning know.</li>
<li>One of the players also brought up some bugs with Station Access that we hadn't been aware of so I also followed up to get his name so we could get more details later. Also followed up and thanked our filming assistant afterwards!</li>
<li>After that, there were 2 hours till the banquet. I checked the smaller panel rooms as I'd noticed during the player panel that there were some Nagafen hats that were intended for giveaways but had been forgotten. Gathered those up and got them to appropriate people before they went walking.</li>
<li>In between all the above I was tweeting as much as I could to share with the fans who were not able to come on-site, as well as checking in with marketing and Terry whenever I saw them to see if any help was needed with anything else. </li>
<li>Had been planning to get dinner, but nobody seemed to have plans (or at least, not plans that included me) and one of our new EQNext podcasters and his wife asked me if I had time for coffee. Miraculously, I did; apart from helping to follow up on who'd ended up with our cameras (which I could do by text message), I managed to spend a half hour with them at a table at the Coffee Bean talking about the industry in general. She was curious about how people got into it and whether there might be any jobs she could look at, and he was just generally curious. They were both very positive about their experience at SOE Live, and very impressed by how accessible all the staff from Dave's level on downwards made themselves. Other conventions they'd gone to had felt very impersonal and they said this made a huge difference. Of course, I explained how important we find our players and their opinions at SOE, especially as many of us started out as players ourselves, me included! It was nice to sit down for half an hour and get to know these guys. I hope that, like many of our EQ2 podcasters, they'll be back again in future years.</li>
<li>Followed up with Linda on the beer to ensure it had been collected for the banquet; it had. Followed up with Daniel the brewer to let him know, and also to meet up with him before the banquest so he was able to get into the hall as his vendor pass had been incorrectly set up. Met him outside and introduced him to one of our marketing managers also, in case they were interested to arrange some more formal agreement for EQ themed beers.</li>
<li>Escorted Daniel safely into the banquet, and sat him down with some friendly players I knew would keep him company. Walked around talking to players until it was clear there was room for staff to sit down (players come first, and it was sold out). Checked on our authors, guide program volunteers, various podcasters, our VIP player group, and generally walked around chatting to random tables making sure everyone was happy. Signed various things people wanted signed, and directed them to other devs for more signatures.</li>
<li>After the banquet, talked with the stragglers and bumped into the person from Massively who wrote the extraordinarily flattering and somewhat embarrassing article singing my praises when I rejoined the EQN team. She was having a great weekend and looking forward to seeing lots more of EQNext.</li>
<li>Many people decamped to the Heart Bar afterwards and I joined also. Spent more time talking to our friendly brewer, plus various players and podcasters, till well past 2am (probably closer to 3).</li>
</ul>
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<i>Good turn out for the decorating panel: ~70 people?</i></div>
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Sunday:</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Our brewer friend had been supposed to collect his cooler before leaving the hotel last night but he must have been drinking too late to remember, and it was uncollected. Fortunately I had his number so I followed up with him; he'd already left town to get back to work and told us to keep it. I let the community team know to just pack it up with the rest of our stuff. Perhaps we can get it back to him next year.</li>
<li>Dev Brunch at 10, so I had to be up, dressed, packed, and checked out of the hotel before that. Left my bags at the desk and headed to the brunch, where we were asked to spread out and ensure all tables had at least one dev. I ended up sitting with Rod Haza, who works on Dragon's Prophet, with a mix of players from EQ1, Planetside 2, and Dragon's Prophet. They were all very excited about EQNext. </li>
<li>One of the PS2 guys was collecting PS2 dev signatures so I pointed out a few devs to him, and one of the EQ1 players had his original EQ1 collector's edition box with him and was collecting EQ1 dev signatures. He got a few on his own and I helped him locate some others he particularly wanted. When he found out I was Domino from EQ2, he also insisted on getting mine although I reminded him I'd never actually worked on EQ1. It felt like a very serious moment to put a pen to an original EQ1 box and sign my name on it, something I would never have expected when I first picked up the game back in 2000. But then, I would never have expected any of this!</li>
<li>After the dev brunch it was time for the last EQNext panel, readings from our authors and a Q&A. I was called outside during the readings by our brand manager who needed help contacting the VIP players I'd been checking on; apparently one of them had missed his plane and they were attempting to help him make new arrangements. I gave him all the information I had, and later heard the player did successfully get home after some delays. Fortunately I'd read the authors' stories already, so I didn't miss out despite missing part of the readings, and the Q&A afterwards was interesting and surprisingly lively. I hadn't been quite sure how many people would be interested in the readings, given the hung-over state of many of them by Sunday, but it was a good turn-out.</li>
<li>Finally, the last panel was over. I gave a few last lost people directions to the EQ2 Q&A panel which was still ongoing, and said goodbyes to various of the stragglers left behind. Then it was time to collect my bags and head off to the airport; another SOE Live behind me. </li>
<li>I was still wearing my SOE staff shirt at the airport and was stopped by a couple of people in the airport to tell me what a wonderful time they'd had, and thank the team for a great weekend. :)</li>
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<i>Aliscious and Dellmon (EQ2 podcasters) with me and Dave at the pool party</i></div>
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Overall this year was a very positive experience, except for someone stealing one of the Silent Auction displays whose proceeds would have gone to the Child's Play charity - despicable - and a series of slightly irate tweets from a player who seemed to think I could get him for free into a sold-out event on one day's notice when even SOE staff were being told they might not be let in due to the numbers. I wish we really did have the time and powers to pull off miracles like that for everyone who wanted, but alas. I hope he'll plan in advance next year and pre-book tickets.</div>
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Players who attend SOE Live always have a great time and sometimes seem to assume that it is a holiday for SOE staff also. We almost always do have a great time as well, but it is definitely not a holiday and definitely exhausting. It's always nonstop from the time I wake up till the time I pass out; even if I do have a brief time to walk around on my own, it's always with the understanding that I could be called to drop everything at any time, or stopped by players and need to be immediately charming and sociable. I am always happy to do both, of course, but I'm very glad to have Monday off to relax and do absolutely nothing but catch up on sleep and laundry!</div>
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I'm not sure if that helps in the slightest to explain what a producer does at SOE Live - every year is different and could have a completely different set of problems. And I've certainly already forgotten some things from this list. But at least it probably illustrates the complete randomness of my job, and maybe that's what a producer does best: deal with whatever comes up and ensure as many people as possible get whatever they need to do their jobs, stay happy, and have a good time.</div>
Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-62628587727466943802013-07-14T15:18:00.002-07:002014-01-12T21:18:58.701-08:00Oatmeal crunch cookiesThis was modified from a recipe of my mother's which she called "Abbey Crunchies". I changed it slightly and here's my version. The recipe doesn't contain any eggs - that's not a mistake - so it's great for people with allergies! Use butter/milk substitutes too and it could easily be vegan.<br />
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<b><u>Oatmeal Crunch Cookies</u></b><br />
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<b>Ingredients </b><br />
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10 oz butter<br />
6 oz white sugar<br />
6 oz brown sugar<br />
2 tbs milk<br />
1 tbs maple syrup<br />
10 oz flour<br />
1 tbs baking powder<br />
2 tsp baking soda<br />
1 tsp salt<br />
8 oz "instant" rolled oats (Quaker oats)<br />
2 oz chopped macadamia nuts (optional)<br />
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<b>Instructions</b><br />
<br />
Cream butter and sugars, then mix in milk and syrup. Stir in dry ingredients, mixing well. Roll into small balls and place on a baking tray lined with parchment paper, and press lightly to flatten slightly. Bake at 300 F* for about half an hour, until light golden brown. Cool on a wire rack until crisp and dry.<br />
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* NOTE: this is lower temperature than most cookie recipes, if you cook at 350F they may brown too fast.<br />
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<br />
Before baking:<br />
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After baking:</div>
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<br />Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-57564403226370470942013-06-16T10:42:00.001-07:002013-06-16T20:11:05.145-07:00Plants vs Zombies FacebookI'm a huge fan of Plants vs Zombies, an adorably cute linear tower defense game that was released in 2009 and rapidly became one of the games of the year. I first bought and played it on my iPhone in almost one solid sitting, then realized extra levels and features were available in the PC version so bought that and played it too, then replayed it on my iPad, and then got the HD version for the iPad too. I've got almost every achievement on almost every platform and I don't even know how many times I've played through the main levels.<br />
<br />
I like that it's cute and friendly feeling. I like that I can pick it up at any time when I have time to kill and play a few levels or some of the extra challenges. I like trying different plant combinations to see what's most effective for different levels, or trying to pick up achievements I haven't got so far. So, when I saw the Plants vs Zombies facebook game released last month I immediately tried it out.<br />
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<b><u>The overview</u></b><br />
<div>
<br />
The biggest change is that the levels are no longer left-to-right linear like the original. The zombies now follow paths which may turn in multiple directions, even criss-crossing, like a more traditional tower defense game. This adds another dimension to laying out your plants, which now have 2-dimensional areas of effect, instead of just shooting straight ahead. There are some new plants also, an Aspearagus which shoots asparagus spears; and a Beet, which clubs zombies down. Judging from the title screen art there is probably also a Bamboo Shoot in my future, which looks unfortunately like a bad Asian caricature. The names of the plants have always been clever puns and Aspearagus and Beet follow this tradition, but some of the other plants just seem to give up on wit completely. "Magnet plant" isn't funny (why not "Mag-nut"?) and neither is "flaming pea". There are new types of zombies also: a barrel zombie, who's essentially the same as the newspaper original, and a rocket jet pack zombie who charges fast until a snow pea disables his rockets. Conga-line zombies are similar to the original disco zombie but linear, and a zombie with lots of hats is essentially a graphically more interesting way of showing a heavily armored zombie (each hat gets knocked off separately).<br />
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<b><u>Stockpile restrictions</u></b><br />
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<br />
The individual levels now lead you along a road trip path through different areas where you defend your camper van instead of a stationary house. You manage and build up a village which is your home base. Houses in your village earn you coins and buffs; coins purchase plants which you grow in village planter boxes. When you play a zombie level on the road trip, you only have available to you plants that you've previously grown at home and stockpiled. So, you have to keep collecting coin from your village and planting new plants for your stockpile. Adding a restriction on top of that, you can only choose a limited number of plant types from your stockpile, and can only use up to 5 of each even if you have more than that in your stockpile. Adding a further restriction, you can only stockpile up to 15 plants at a time (and only 2 buffs). All these artificial limits are way too restrictive and very annoying. If I spend the time to stockpile 50 plants, let me stockpile 50 plants. And if I have 10 snow peas in my stockpile, let me use them in a level if I want to. Sure, it would make some levels much easier, but it's still balanced out by the fact I then need to take the extra time to regrow those 10 snow peas instead of 5. And it would remove the problem of people getting stuck on levels and just giving up.<br />
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<div>
The requirement to stockpile plants also changes the gameplay significantly. Unlike the original where all you need is sun, now you also need to conserve your plant stockpile, so the incentive shifts to winning each level with the MINIMUM number of plants (and thus the least downtime in re-growing them) instead of trying to find the most efficient solution (which I enjoy). Now I find myself thinking "should I plant that extra beet, or just let the lawnmower catch the last wave of zombies?" And the answer is usually to not plant, and let the lawnmower do the work instead of your plants, which seems to me to clash with the essence of the game. The name of the game is not Lawnmowers vs Zombies, but the game mechanics have created a situation where you're heavily motivated to try to NOT plant plants and rely on lawnmowers instead. To have a Plants vs Zombies game which discourages you from planting plants seems absurd to me.</div>
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<b><u>Three currencies</u></b></div>
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In addition to coin there are "zombucks" which are earned from adventure levels and dropped by zombies and used to buy village houses and decorations; and gems which are the real money currency used to buy other currencies and shortcut gameplay (e.g. you can buy a plant with gems if you don't have one stockpiled). The three currencies are a little confusing and they're not clearly explained early on, though you eventually figure it out. Two currencies seem like they would be plenty from a user perspective (gems and coin). I understand it would be much easier for the developers to manage the economy by dividing purchases into coin and zombucks but it feels a bit like a lazy move at the sacrifice of player clarity. My main complaint about the currencies though is that it's WAY too easy to spend gems without meaning to: if you run out of plants during a level and try to plant another, it'll just deduct gems without a confirmation prompt. And early on since you have no idea what gems even are, you can easily use up your initial starting stash of gems without even noticing. (Oddly, it gives me prices for gems in UK pounds, despite the fact I live in the US.)<br />
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<b><u>The village, and visiting friends</u></b></div>
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<br />
As you travel in your mobile home and complete map areas, you slowly unlock new areas of your home village. The village seems to exist only to harvest coin/buffs and grow new plants. Buildings in the village occasionally get attacked by zombies, so you need to plant some defenses and plan your layout carefully. There's a limited ability to decorate your village, but any decoration that you add is actually an annoyance that gets in the way when zombies attack, so the incentive is actually to NOT decorate.<br />
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Like most facebook games, you're able to visit your friends' villages. However, unlike most facebook games, when you get there you're expected to attack your friends' buildings with your own army of zombies. If you succeed (which is unlikely since the zombies offered to you are very limited and can barely be controlled), then you destroy a friend's building and they have to repair it. What exactly is the point of this, I have no idea. It doesn't seem to benefit your friend at all, in fact it harms their village, so I have avoided doing it entirely. It's a disincentive to visit. It would be far more encouraging if you could do something positive in their village, like leave a free plant, or speed up their planter growth. What if visiting friends' villages allowed you to give them a gem? </div>
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<b><u>Slow progression</u></b></div>
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<br />
The requirement to stockpile plants you grow in your village is a deliberate slow-down mechanism, presumably to make the game last longer before you finish the content, but it's irritating. You can't just keep playing through the spare time you have free, you have to play a few levels then wait hours for your houses to generate coin and your plants to grow. It ensures you do NOT get immersed in the game and are constantly counting coin and plants, which isn't a particularly fun pastime. Worse, the further along in the game you get, the more this becomes a problem. Every new plant takes longer and longer to grow, and of course the higher levels require the new plants, so the time you have to wait between levels just gets longer and longer meaning you can play less and less. It's essentially punishing you for progressing. </div>
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Here are the plants I have so far, and the time it takes to grow them:</div>
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In the current levels I'm on, I will likely plant sunflowers (of course), snow peas, beets, wall-nuts, and a few magnets, and flaming peas. Assuming I had space to grow replacements all at the same time, I'm slowed down by the slowest-growing plant, the flaming pea. With a 6 hour replacement time for the flaming pea and a maximum of 15 possible to stockpile, I can play maybe five to six levels at the most before I have to sit for a MINIMUM of 6 hours. And in fact it's actually longer, because I don't have planter space to replant everything at once. Given that I work during most days and only play before and after work, this means I can now play 6-8 levels absolute maximum per day. It actually turns out to be less, since I'm not logging in at work (or waking up at night) to micromanage my plants so a lot of my free play time is spent growing also.<br />
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On top of the ever-slower plant growth, each subsequent map seems to have more and more levels to get through before you can progress further. The ramp-up in numbers is very rapid. While the first map has only 5 levels to get through, it's up to 21 by the fourth map, and stays up in the 20s consistently as far as I can see to the end of the game. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpdTFlr0IRI1X8TjyUArTV291QVUYNNo3c4QfQAwod9qF9U5Deo85JKNF4I_a7W42e9UkpcdjcXUgPjBueVBgMNWUyakZacjId1KeihMxxcuDOihIgPdMnJ2-YwMU4u7nIv2deRZq4QPU/s1600/levels+per+map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpdTFlr0IRI1X8TjyUArTV291QVUYNNo3c4QfQAwod9qF9U5Deo85JKNF4I_a7W42e9UkpcdjcXUgPjBueVBgMNWUyakZacjId1KeihMxxcuDOihIgPdMnJ2-YwMU4u7nIv2deRZq4QPU/s320/levels+per+map.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Looking at my friends' progress, a full 45% of my friends have stalled in level four "Park n Perish" where it makes the huge jump from 10 levels/map to 21. This seems to be where most people are quitting. Another 45% didn't make it even to map four, and the remainder are stuck in map five, aptly named Killjoy Park. Since each map has a "goal" at the end unlocking another region of your village there's a fairly big incentive to reach the end, so the fact the maps have so many levels in them is discouraging. Even though the gameplay would essentially be the same, it would be a lot more fun if each map contained only 5-10 levels and had some other reward at the end - such as replenishing your plant stockpile, for example!</div>
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On top of all these other artificial slow-downs, you cannot progress beyond the end of each map without getting friends to help you (and it requires more friends per map). To bypass this requirement you actually have to spend real $ on gems. So, each time I reach the end of a map I have to spam my friends with requests to help me on my road trip, and then wait until they answer and fill up the required slots before I can move to the next map. Since most of my friends work full time also, this can take up to a day during which I basically can't do anything except redecorate my village. I could in theory replay old levels, but that would just mean I have to regrow more plants, which discourages me. I can't even replay old levels while waiting in order to complete quests, since apparently that's not allowed - for example I currently have a quest to use the gardening glove in combat three times. The gardening glove is a buff I've found almost entirely useless and I don't think it would have been possible to finish most of the levels in the U of Z zone I just finished if I took that buff instead of a more useful one. But, I can't go back to an easier level to complete the quest since the glove doesn't even show up as an available option on those levels now. So there really is absolutely nothing I can do while sitting around waiting for friends to help me (friends who are increasingly quitting the game, so slower and slower to respond). Sure, I understand this is a mechanism to get me to invite my other friends to play. But it actually prevents me from playing, and that's not good. And since it requires more friends each time, it prevents me from playing for longer and longer. I don't like this gate at all, and would much prefer another way to encourage inviting friends, but at least if this is used it should remain a low number of friends (and preferably be bypassable with zombucks, not gems).</div>
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<b><u>Monetization</u></b><br />
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There are lots of opportunity to spend gems to speed things up faster, but it feels as if this was an alternate option just added to everything. It doesn't feel as if the game has a very clearly thought out understanding of why people will spend money. The pricing is odd. Some prices:<br />
<ul>
<li>to get a new buff (lawnmower, zombie zapper, etc) without waiting: about $1</li>
<li>to instantly buy a single plant: about $0.50 - $1</li>
<li>village decorations that increase speed of coin gain: about $0.50-$3</li>
<li>to bypass the need for friends to progress to the next map: about $0.50-$1</li>
<li>to bypass a quest (although it's unclear what, if any, benefit there is from doing this): about $0.50</li>
</ul>
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These prices seem to have little correlation to their actual value to the player. For example, I spend so much time waiting for my plants to regrow that I almost never run out of buffs, so I'd never spend money to get one faster. I also haven't run out of coin since I got past the first few levels of the game, so I see absolutely no value in buying coin boost buffs. On the other hand buying plants is clearly a huge time saver, but considering that you may use 10-15 plants in a single level, even $0.50 per plant is way too pricy. To replenish my stockpile of 15 flaming peas (6hrs each to grow) would be a total of 750 gems which will cost over UK<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;">£</span>12, or almost US$20 which is completely ridiculous to spend for plants which will last you only 3-4 levels.</div>
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I'm not a big spender on microtransactions, but if I'm enjoying a game and there's a clear value to me, I'll usually drop a few dollars to support the developers. In this game though there's really nothing I will buy. It's either valueless to me (buffs), or so overpriced (plants) that I don't feel it's worth it. The game needs more clear value items to spend gems on.<br />
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What if, instead of requiring you to beg friends to help you on your road trips, you could just give a gem a day to a certain number of friends? (Dragonvale does this very well.) Then the more friends you have, the more gems you get, and there's a strong incentive to invite your friends and keep them playing, without annoying long waits. This also keeps players interested in spending gems, while currently they run out and have little incentive to look at them again. Now add some clear value items: how about a Plant Nursery building for your village which takes zombucks to build at level 1, but gems to upgrade to higher levels. The Nursery would refill your plant stockpile completely when you click it, but has a long reuse timer. Upgraded versions shorten the reuse time. Paying with gems could also reset the reuse time. This would be a strong encouragement to gain gems, both through recruiting friends and purchasing. Or how about a Jewelry Store which allows you to give daily gems to a higher number of friends? Perhaps giving you a gem bonus also? PvZ monetization feels as if it's really missing the boat in providing tempting ways to leave money behind.</div>
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<b><u>In conclusion...</u></b></div>
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I'm currently level 18 and miles ahead of everybody else on my friends list (5197 zombie kills, while my next closest friend is 2 maps behind at 2867 kills). I watched all my friends jump in (everybody loves Plants vs Zombies) but they're dropping like flies, and to be honest the only reason I'm still playing is that I've been using it as a distraction while exercising. The sad fact is, it's just NOT FUN. The reason people play the original Plants vs Zombies is not that it's challenging, and it's not that it's ever-new content, it's that there's a joy in the gameplay that's just irresistable. PvZ facebook doesn't have this. All the fun parts have been removed or severely handicapped (being able to try out different combinations of plants; raining down superior firepower in overwhelming numbers; being able to play without interruption). Although there's lots of new content still ahead of me, I know it's going to be exactly like the old content only more annoying and requiring slower growing plants to get to, so where's the incentive to continue? More content is only a good thing if it's FUN content that you look forward to. Painfully tedious content in large quantities is no reward at all, it's a disincentive. Looking to my future I see only longer and longer wait times, and levels with the same old layouts but more and more blocked squares. There's really little to no choice of plants in each level, there's generally one best combination that you pretty much can't vary. And the choice of plants is very limited compared to the original.</div>
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The original PvZ didn't have any artificial blocks to try and extend gameplay, but people still played it again and again for the fun of it. Having good replayable content definitely beats artificially forcing people to play your limited and un-fun content slower. Because most won't; they'll just stop playing.</div>
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If I were working on this game, off the top of my head I'd start with the following changes:</div>
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<ul>
<li>break up the levels so that no map has more than 10 levels. As end-map rewards where there isn't a village area to unlock, add a treasure chest that refills your plant stockpile. Maybe some gems now and then.</li>
<li>remove the restrictions on only 5 plants of a type per level. If players grew them, let them plant them.</li>
<li>introduce more new plants earlier. New plants are fun, new plants add new gameplay, and trying to find the best combos is part of the fun. There should be many different combinations of plant possible to succeed.</li>
<li>remove the restriction that you can only stockpile 15 of each plant at a time. This should be unlimited. (It's particularly annoying when you open a treasure chest or a friend sends you a plant, but your stockpile is full so you lose out.)</li>
<li>no plant should take more than 1 hour to grow. Or unlock some kind of bonus so that the higher level you get, the faster you can grow plants. It should never be a punishment to continue playing; you should be feeling better and more powerful as you level up, not the reverse.</li>
<li>give a positive reward for visiting friends, instead of allowing them to attack with zombies - such as any friend who visits can make your plants grow faster, or give you free plants. </li>
<li>give a clear warning prompt when about to spend gems so players don't do it accidentally</li>
<li>realize that levels that are challenging are not fun on their own. Levels are fun when they make players feel clever finding a good solution. So just making an annoyingly difficult level with only one solution is not a good level. On this basis, quite a few levels definitely need redoing.</li>
<li>Make the gardening glove more useful. </li>
<li>Make the mega-perk more useful (and a much quicker re-use timer - it's far too long now).</li>
<li>Allow a choice of two or even all perks in a level, not just one.</li>
<li>Give players a way to replant their plants on mobile devices. Since it's a Facebook flash game, it doesn't work on iOS. If I could quickly check my plants and replant them while waiting for a meeting or sitting at lunch, that would be a huge help.</li>
<li>Remove the "attack your friends" visiting option and instead allow players to give daily gems/plants.</li>
<li>Monetization changes as suggested above, and sell plant packs or stockpile packs instead of individual plant purchases which are overpriced.</li>
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Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-61557113897214508602013-06-03T09:14:00.001-07:002016-04-24T10:01:20.214-07:00Banana Bread<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><u><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Banana Bread</span></u></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">4 oz. butter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">8 oz. sugar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">2 eggs (or: substitute 1/4 to 1/3 cup organic
apple sauce for each egg)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">8 oz. flour<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">1 tbs baking powder<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">1 tsp salt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">1 tbs lime juice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">2 peeled, mashed ripe bananas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">1 cup walnuts (or other nuts)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mix room temperature butter with
sugar until smooth. Mix in eggs (or apple sauce). Sift dry
ingredients and mix in. Stir in lime juice, banana pulp and nuts, mixing
as little as needed to blend smoothly. Transfer to a prepared (greased or
lined with parchment paper) loaf or square cake pan and bake at 350 F (180 C)
for about an hour, until a toothpick stuck into the middle comes out clean. (Note: takes longer to cook with apple sauce than with eggs.) Can also be made as cupcakes; bake slightly less long.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I've actually started to prefer the no-egg version made with apple sauce; it's even more deliciously moist and tender, and seems to form a bit more of a crispy crust at the top. </span><br />
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Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-51826767971285133442013-05-13T12:54:00.000-07:002013-05-13T12:54:11.285-07:00Defiance!I meant to write more about Defiance long ago, but actually working on Defiance kept me so busy that I just didn't have time! So what's this game I've been working on?<div>
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Defiance launched on schedule on 2nd April. That date was non-movable due to the tie-in with the TV show launch, so yes, there were definitely some late nights coming up to launch. At least 6 months of them. Yep, it would have been nice to push the date back, but we hit the deadline and the game is live. It was an amazing experience to watch how much and how well the game improved and grew to completion over that time! As the first game on which I've worked as a producer (they hired me as an associate, but soon promoted me to producer of the design team) it was one heck of a learning experience, without doubt. One I value highly.</div>
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I'm going to assume anyone reading this blog is somewhat familiar with the Defiance story, but in a nutshell: set a few decades in the future. Group of alien races in ark ships flee a dying star system and arrive at earth intending to colonize it, only to discover -- oops -- it's already occupied. Years of negotiations ensue, earth not being at all happy to welcome intergalactic immigrants onto an already-crowded planet. Some settlement starts but also some fighting, and at some point a disaster occurs: the ark ships parked in orbit (still containing most of the aliens and their colonization equipment) explode. Accident or sabotage? Human or alien doing? Nobody knows, but the damage from the destruction of the fleet, the ensuing war, and the not-as-occasional-as-one-would-hope alien terraforming equipment falling to earth and running amok result in a very changed planet. After years of war, remnants of both human and alien armies band together and defy orders that would result in massive civilian deaths, and the "defiance" movement begins to spread peace (albeit a highly-armed and rather jumpy type of peace). </div>
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Set in the area once known as San Francisco, the game allows players to take the character of "ark hunters", highly skilled types who make their living from recovering ark tech and similar valuables. Meanwhile in what was formerly called Saint Louis, the TV show follow the town of Defiance and its new mayor as they try to rebuild their city and protect themselves from outside dangers, of which there are no shortage.</div>
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The main characters from the show actually started off in the game, offering a series of missions that allowed game players to interact with the characters Nolan and Irisa. At the end of the mission line, the two depart, taking with them a crystalline bit of ark technology that later plays an important role in the pilot episode of the show. </div>
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Screenshot of Irisa, Nolan, and my character retrieving the ark tech in the game:</div>
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...And two weeks later, in the TV show pilot episode, Nolan and Irisa using the same tech to help the town of Defiance.</div>
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Here's the Defiance launch trailer and one with a little more back story:</div>
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And also, the live-action trailer and digital comic Ark Hunter chronicles that led up to the game's release:</div>
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Defiance is a strange beast, one from which nobody quite seems to know what to expect. It launched on three platforms: PC, Xbox, and PS3, which I believe is the first time any MMO has ever done that (and, having seen what was involved in getting that to happen, I fully understand why). It is an MMO, but not what you'd call an MMORPG. And in the gaming world of today where pretty much everyone hears "RPG" at the end of "MMO", that's definitely unexpected. It's a shooter, but third person, and massively multiplayer. It ties in with a TV show but is not dependent on it nor dictated to by it. As executive producer <a href="http://www.gamebreaker.tv/mmorpg/defiance-state-of-the-game/" target="_blank">Nathan Richardsson described it</a>, Defiance is an "MOTSCTPOWS": Massively-Online-TV-Show-Connected-Third-Person-Open-World-Shooter. I think Defiance's refusal to fit neatly into any existing game category is illustrated very well by the extremely polarized reviews on sites like Metacritic:</div>
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User reviews have totally polarized into "love it" or "hate it" with almost nobody in between, while critic reviews do the exact reverse. My interpretation of this madness (also based on reading comments) is that players who had a particular expectation ("it'll be an MMO like WoW!" "it'll be just like Call of Duty!") are strongly disappointed when it is not, but those who didn't have a strong expectation just play it with no expectations and have a ton of fun. Meanwhile the critics really have no idea what pigeonhole to fit it into, so they judge it on every possible category that a MMO or shooter might be judged on, which of course ends up right on the fence, since Defiance does some MMO things well and doesn't do others; and some shooter things well and doesn't do others.</div>
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I quite liked the review <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PuGU4_k3q1Y" target="_blank">from TotalBiscuit</a> which I think does a fair job summing up the things Defiance does well and still needs to improve on, and why a shooter MMO has to do some things in slightly different ways. Defiance is definitely an odd beast, but I'm very proud of all the design team did in the year up to launch. There are some amazing talents on the team and it's been impressive watching them at work. If you picked up, or will pick up, Defiance then I hope you enjoy it! It's not my normal type of game but I find myself enjoying playing, and it's great to have an MMO game where you can hop in and have fun for an hour without feeling you need to set aside your whole evening. Having played through the entire game post-launch I definitely had a lot of fun, while also seeing places there's room for future improvement. But of course, that's always the case with MMOs, the development is never really over. Looking forward to seeing what future DLCs and expansions will bring, and hopefully many other players are also! Since apparently <a href="http://trionworlds.com/en/news/2013/05/defiance-one-million/" target="_blank">over a million players have registered for Defiance</a> so far, seems there are a lot of other people looking forward to it also. </div>
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Above: Nolan talking to my character, while Irisa waits. </div>
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Below: a little accident I had in San Quentin. Did I do that? Er, well, yes I did. Fun times...</div>
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Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-3728900296139224892013-05-07T12:51:00.000-07:002013-05-07T14:11:33.409-07:00Blast from the past: an interview with me from 2006!While googling for something else entirely, I discovered <a href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/54994" target="_blank">this TenTonHammer interview with me</a> from back in February 2006. "Adeste" is the name of the main EverQuest II character I played at the time, primarily a carpenter. I didn't even remember that this interview existed. <br />
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To put this into perspective, in February 2006 I was still working as an IT manager in Australia. EQ2 was about a year and a half old, had launched its first expansion about 6 months prior to the interview, and was looking forward to the second expansion Kingdom of Sky. I had no idea at this time that I would be hired by SOE to fix the very tradeskill system I was complaining about in this interview; that didn't happen till April 2007. (Coincidentally my interviewer, Tony Jones, also later ended up working for SOE!) Carpentry (and tradeskills in general) back then were in a very sad and neglected state, and I was just a passionate forum poster trying to highlight ways they could be improved. The dev team didn't have anybody who really understood what the players in this niche wanted, and they were actually starting to debate whether to change tradeskills to require adventuring, like many MMOs do these days, instead of continuing to support the ability for tradeskillers to be independent of adventuring. And of all the tradeskill classes, carpentry was the least understood because it had absolutely nothing to do with adventuring at all. Housing was basic but also sadly neglected. But I believed in its potential!<br />
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It's fascinating to read now what I wrote back then and see how much of it I actually did fix once I was hired. Most of the statements I made back then are beliefs I still hold true, and which I spent almost 5 years on the EQ2 team working to support and improve. The tradeskill system in EQ2 is now unique among MMOs in providing a broad, robust, and adventuring-level-independent playstyle. The housing system in EQ2 is the best housing system in any MMO (though Rift's new dimension system and EQ1's new housing have done a good job too, albeit both by mirroring EQ2's extremely closely and both of which I was asked for advice on). Prestige houses, which I'd been championing since 2007, finally came into existence and are extremely popular. Furniture items went from a neglected "here are 30 types of barrels and 20 tables" which none of the designers understood what to do with, to highly desirable rewards that are now both given out by quests and sold for real $ on the marketplace, as well as being a mainstay of carpenters. I'm very proud of the part I played in transforming tradeskills and housing, and really believe it had a fundamental impact on the continued longevity of the game. And huge gratitude is due as always to Scott Hartsman, who took a chance and hired me to replace Beghn, changing the EQ2 tradeskilling/housing game forever, for better or for worse (the former I hope)!<br />
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Anyway, I was tickled pink to find this interview just now, so I'm reposting it below to preserve it for posterity. <br />
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[Also: editing the original post to add, as a friend pointed out on Facebook, it's pretty hard core to give an interview about a job that you won't be hired to do for another ~year and a half. I should be a time traveler!]<br />
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<a href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/54994" target="_blank">Crafting with the Carpenters</a></h4>
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<a href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/54994" target="_blank">An Interview with One of EverQuest 2's Premier Carpenters</a></h4>
by: Tony "RadarX" Jones<br />
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Ask anyone who knows me if I craft. Go ahead. You'll probably get "Radar? Ha!" or "Radar? Who is that? Oh, that Templar who keeps getting us killed?" I claim to know just enough about crafting to be destructive and hazardous. Crafting in my mind, is taking a rare harvest to the crafter, and waiting very impatiently for my Adept III spell.<br />
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Over the course of a few months, I've read post after post about Carpenter issues. Statements like, "Where are the Tier 6 recipes?", and "Why don't we get cooler furniture?", etc... I'll admit I was quick to judge them as complaints, but even recently I've still been in the dark about what was going on. Adeste was gracious and kind enough to enlighten me on what it's like to be a Carpenter, and what a few of their issues are.<br />
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<b>Adeste, thanks again for answering a few questions about this. First, tell us a little bit about your MMO experience. What have you played?</b><br />
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I was first introduced to graphical MMO's when I started playing the original EverQuest back in 2001, around the time of the Kunark expansion. Prior to that I'd dabbled a bit in multiplayer text games via local BBS systems, but the graphics of EverQuest brought a whole new dimension to MMO's for me and I played it until EverQuest 2 was released. I took a brief look at Star Wars Galaxies and some others, but I work full time and don't have time to play more than one MMO at once, so I've remained pretty loyal to the EverQuest genre. I have City of Villains sitting on my desk waiting to be installed though - at the moment I'm enjoying EverQuest 2 too much to try it out, but if my interest wanes, that will be the next in line.</blockquote>
<b>EQ2's crafting system takes a special type of patience according to most people. What is your motivation to craft?</b><br />
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I get a lot of enjoyment out of other people's enjoyment, if that makes sense. It's something I have noticed since the original EverQuest - although so many people like to say it's "just a computer game", it isn't. The people on the other end of the pixels are real people, and you can really touch their lives with your actions. A week from now, you won't remember who you grouped with; a month from now, you won't remember the item you just looted from that named monster; and a year from now, whatever money you've saved up so far will seem completely trivial, if you remember at all. But years after the fact, you'll still remember a kind turn done for you by a complete stranger and the pleasure that you got from someone doing something nice for you. More than two years after the fact (and over a year since I've even logged into the first EverQuest) I've had a player that I thought was a total stranger, find out the name of one of my EQ1 characters and suddenly start gushing in vivid detail about how I met her young EQ1 druid in PoK one day and gave her some help and some equipment. I have no memory at all of the event, but I was floored what a huge impact it apparently had on the player. This is the real reward from the game that we'll take away years from now, not the number of heritage quests or the amount of platinum we have, but the real people's lives we've touched, and the real people we've made smile.<br />
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So what's this got to do with my motivation to craft? I craft because it's a way of helping other people and improving their game experience. As a carpenter, I give away a lot of furniture for prizes in roleplay events, and I donate furniture to houses set up as roleplay taverns, to encourage the community on my server. I give away beds to newbies arriving in my home village, to welcome them to the village and sometimes to the game. Playing my jeweller, I always keep a few items I've made in my bags when I go out hunting, and if I get in a pickup group, my groupmates get any upgrades they need. Crafting just to make a profit is as mindlessly dull to me as farming a named monster over and over. Boring! But crafting with the goal of helping someone or doing something creative with the result is much more interesting, as you keep your mind on the final outcome and know that it will be making someone else's day, not just your own.</blockquote>
<b>What drew you to this class? Why Carpentry over some of the more popular classes like Sage?</b><br />
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What drew me to carpentry is the tangible outcome of my work. In all the other tradeskill classes, you don't end up with something you can place and see and touch and admire. Nothing else results in a physical object added to the world. Classes that make consumables - like spells, poisons, and food - seem very ephemeral to me. Even classes that make equipment for others, such as weapons and armour, aren't as satisfying. An adventurer will wear the item for 10 levels, then sell it to a vendor, and it'll be gone as if it never existed. But furniture is forever, and can be enjoyed by everyone who sees it, not just the wearer. </blockquote>
<b>EverQuest 2 does seem to have some interesting furniture. Do you think tradeskilling is done more for the money or the creative aspect?</b></div>
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I think it depends entirely on the player. Tradeskilling CAN certainly be done to make money, as can adventuring. Tradeskilling can also be done for fun, as can adventuring. There does seem to be a perception out there among adventurers that you make tons of money by tradeskilling, and maybe even that you NEED to tradeskill to make money. That's rubbish. Nobody who actually tradeskills to any extent would agree with that. You can make money by tradeskilling; you can make money by adventuring. You can make money by doing neither, and playing the market. If you want to make money, you will, and you don't need to tradeskill to do it. Personally, I earn very little money from tradeskilling and support my habit of giving furniture away with my non- tradeskill income. I tradeskill for the creative and social aspect. But that's a decision that's different for every player.</blockquote>
<b>Carpenters have the unusual distinction of being the only crafting class that doesn't affect adventuring. What niche do you feel your tradeskill fits?</b></div>
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What I like most about carpentry is that it is the one and only class that can actually affect the physical environment of Norrath. And that's pretty cool. Carpenters, in our small way, actually add content to the game. Perhaps it's the aspiring game designer in me, but I find it very enjoyable to start with an empty "zone" - ie, a bare room - and create content. Through furniture items I can entirely change the look of the room, I can create a cheerful or a dark or a scary atmosphere, I can even add "mobs" to my "zone" with the use of house pets and arena champions. And whatever I create, others can enter and appreciate, and be influenced by it. I think that's an amazing ability for any class to have, tradeskill or adventurer. And there's nothing like decorating someone's room while they're out, then watching them enter for the first time and just stand there stunned, saying "holy $#!%!" That's something no other class can do, ever.<br />
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So no, carpentry doesn't affect adventuring directly, but it has the potential to affect everybody, adventurer or not. I feel carpentry has the potential to enhance the immersion of the game, and to enhance the roleplay aspect of the game also. And that even goes as far as to help keep people in the game, when they might otherwise have left. There are some people whose rooms I've decorated who barely play any more, but they still log in every now and then and go pay their rent, just to spend some time in their rooms! It's remarkable what the perception of having a "home" means to people, and how it enhances their enjoyment of the game and keeps them coming back. It may seem odd to those who aren't carpenters, but there is something very compelling about having a little corner of Norrath that is yours alone, and customized to your tastes. It's the difference between EQ2 being "a game", and being "a home". Even the least roleplay-interested players can be utterly blown away by a nice home decoration and completely converted to being house-proud. It's very hard to quantify the value carpentry adds to the game environment, but I think it is very important, and very underestimated.</blockquote>
<b>What is the biggest outstanding issue you feel the Carpenters have right now?</b><br />
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Missing furniture. Months and months ago - nearly a year now - NPC vendors sold furniture. There are still furniture stores in North Qeynos and East Freeport, though they no longer sell much. Many of their items looked identical to carpenter-made items but were much cheaper than we could make those items, so of course carpenters protested and asked that the identical items be removed. What actually happened though was that EVERY item they sold was removed, whether or not carpenters could make it. Some of those items were then given to carpenters, but although it was Frizznik's intention to give us all the recipes, many of the very nicest items were never added to our books. These items are now unavailable in game, neither from NPCs nor from carpenters. They include items like bookcases with books on them, wardrobes, stoves, urns, beds, and counters. As a carpenter, the three most-requested items that people ask from me are: ornate counters, bookcases with books, and chess boards. And there is nothing at all I can give them for any of these. Carpenters have been begging for these recipes for longer than I care to remember, with no response. It's very disheartening.<br />
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A more recent peeve, and a big one, is the fact that it's nearly half a year since tier 6 was added and carpenters still don't have advanced crafting books. If it were any other crafting or adventuring class overlooked in this way, all hell would have broken loose long ago. Carpenters are a pretty mature and realistic bunch, and realized that there were a lot of other more pressing issues after the DoF release that needed fixing before advanced furniture recipes. However, half a year is definitely too long to keep any class waiting for a fix, and the discontent levels in the carpentry forum are rapidly rising. </blockquote>
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I have a compiled list of outstanding bugs and wish lists related to the class <a href="http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=a5&message.id=1481">here</a>.</blockquote>
<b>How pleased are the Carpenters, in your opinion, with the craftable items in the game now before Kingdom of Sky?</b></div>
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I'd say it's a very mixed situation. As mentioned above, the three items we're asked for most, we can't make, so that's pretty discouraging. We do have many very nice items though, the rough linen rug and the halasian bearskin rug being two of my favorites. We have odd gaps in some areas though that really need filling -- for example, there are no non-rare large dining tables that have a nice polished surface, and no wardrobes at all. Tier 6 furniture was a mix of very nice items and really awful items, but didn't give us any new tables or chairs at all, and most of it is too large to put in a 1-room home. There is an excellent post in the carpentry forum ( <a href="http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=a5&message.id=3853">here</a>) providing screenshots and suggested recipes for many items that we would love to see in game. I'm really hoping that someone is listening and that many of these will show up in tier 7, and be added retrospectively to some of the lower tier books too. But at present, we're in an odd situation where about 70% of our items we will almost never make, and only 30% are actually desirable to most players. So ... not very happy, is the answer. We're getting by, but there's a LOT of room for improvement.</blockquote>
<b>What type of items are you hoping to see the Kingdom of Sky bring?</b></div>
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Ornate counters. Bookcases with nice colourful books and objects built in. Wardrobes. Nice non-rare tables with a professional, polished wood look texture, not the horrible crude rough greys of lower tiers. Those sconces from Stormhold that look like a flaming sword. More carpets, preferably with more intricate texture than the tier 6 ones (more like the tier 5 rough linen). Wall hangings. Chess boards. Smaller items than the gigantic tier 6 ones -- items that will reasonably fit in a 1-room home. Room divider screens, like the ones in Maj'dul. Nicer beds, like the ones in Poets Palace and Deathfist Citadel. Display cases and counters. Pool tables, like the ones in Nektropos Castle. And, tier 6 rare recipes. Basically, everything in this thread: <a href="http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=a5&message.id=3853">here</a>.</blockquote>
<b>Beghn has been on the job with revamping Tradeskills for only a few months. Has he made progress? Do you think SOE is heading in the right direction?</b></div>
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It's hard for me to say that, because I don't have visibility of everything that he has been working on. I know he's been very busy fixing a number of the bugs that were introduced with tier 6 tradeskills, and I know that people in the affected tradeskills have been happy with his solutions, so that's good work. From a carpenter point of view, I have to say there hasn't been much sign of progress in our craft, but Beghn is only one man covering a huge area -- what I would really like to see is a whole team of tradeskill devs, not just one. It would be completely unrealistic to have just one dev handle all the adventuring development -- I feel it's equally unrealistic to have just one dev handling all the tradeskill development. SOE will be heading in the right direction when they hire more tradeskill devs to help Beghn, make some clear vision statements clarifying where they want to see crafting going over the next few years, and interact more with the crafting community for feedback into that process.</blockquote>
<b>I couldn't speak to the popularity of Adventuring versus Tradeskilling, but I can see your point. If you could be guaranteed a fix on one Carpenter bug what would you choose and why?</b></div>
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Does missing furniture count as a bug? If so, I want my missing furniture! It's really challenging to decorate a room without access to some of the nicest items in game, and it's really painful to see the few remaining leftovers from the NPCs being sold on the broker for 10p and more because of their rarity.<br />
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If you mean an actual technical bug, I'd want to see the furniture placement issues fixed. Many of our bookcases are bugged so you can't actually place any books in them. The briarwood bookcase is the worst offender here, but most of the bookcases have the same issue at least to some extent. Given that we still haven't been given the recipe for bookcases with books in them, it's rather adding insult to injury that they haven't even fixed the empty bookcases we do make so you can place quested books in them!</blockquote>
<b>If you could change something about the Tradeskill system as a whole, what would you change?</b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I would change the way that experience is earned across the crafting levels. It doesn't make sense for crafters to level up so fast through teir 1 that they can't even make half the items in their recipe books, yet have to make piles of finished product to get through the upper levels. There is a chronic shortage of crafted stuff in tier 1-3, and a vast glut on the market in upper tiers, because crafters have to make more and more of the products as they rise in level. Yet, when you look at the actual player market, there should logically be the same number of tier 2 players that need a sword as there are tier 5 players -- if anything, there are more in tier 2. It benefits no-one that the crafters are forced to make hundreds of unwanted tier 5 swords just to gain experience, when all the demand is in a lower tier. I'd like to see crafters level up slower in the lower tiers, and faster in the upper tiers, than currently happens. I'd also like to see higher level crafters still get some kind of benefit from making the lower tier items - perhaps not full experience, but why not the same type of experience as an adventurer would get by mentoring? Both of these changes would result in more items available in lower tiers, and less of a market overload in the upper tiers.</blockquote>
<b>The server merges cometh! How do you think the they will affect tradeskilling and the market?</b></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A higher population on merged servers will mean both more crafters and more customers. It will probably put more life back into the crafting communities on those servers, and give the economy a general boost overall. The economy of a well-populated server such as Antonia Bayle can probably be used as a rough model for what other server economies will develop into, if they reach the same population level.</blockquote>
<b>Is there anything you'd like to add or say to SOE?</b></div>
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Carpenters are some of your most mature, understanding, and loyal customers, and we also help keep people interested in the game and enhance the experience for many players. Please help us to do this, give us the missing recipes, and add those recipes we are asking for!</blockquote>
Thanks so much again for your time and happy crafting. I hope the Carpenters can get some love.Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-18084273866052024222013-03-17T22:50:00.000-07:002013-05-07T19:01:49.621-07:00Tradeskilling the Luck o' the IrishHappy St. Patrick's Day!<br />
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Not a holiday I've ever paid much attention to, but apparently it's kind of a big deal around here. Although this is not exactly how I'd ever pictured St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, I guess it could work!<br />
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<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic769gCwRVd164afoCpsFYsH14wRg3FoW8Whc7MUouutxtKhFiPOMBUX4fIEdtZa2yhHWaNgd2vpQQI69I5DpgT3vnFD4PTuL2aKcdAGhh9Mz5N9_v9Xmh66Z246Z1P5vXCaRE1YbsyOI/s640/blogger-image--359190397.jpg" /></div>
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Completely unrelated to the above photo (it was too good not to share), walking through the park near my apartment today I found 5 four-leafed clovers today and one five-leafed, in an under-20 minute walk. Luck o' the Irish for me this St. Patrick's Day, apparently! <br />
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Can you spot the four-leaved clover in this photo I took today?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfzZeL0PoNxiUioxhzwd2LyaNPnKo0myx1aOVqII37UC-MOX1AcqksteCYN6JIJ1G06UWYMzrFCzrYYuaZWL9bDbsBDVuRPsBSARy5FlGVj1JvE5fDXs1wpn1q5jHioCkCfZYHbXkZ_WU/s640/blogger-image-2064261736.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfzZeL0PoNxiUioxhzwd2LyaNPnKo0myx1aOVqII37UC-MOX1AcqksteCYN6JIJ1G06UWYMzrFCzrYYuaZWL9bDbsBDVuRPsBSARy5FlGVj1JvE5fDXs1wpn1q5jHioCkCfZYHbXkZ_WU/s640/blogger-image-2064261736.jpg" /></a></div>
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(Hint: it's in tbe south-west quadrant.)<br />
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I seem to have a knack for spotting four-leafed clovers and have found several there before, and I never know what to do with them. So, I've been playing around with jeweler's resin. I tried small paperweights first, then had the idea to try necklaces.<br />
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Paperweights/keychain:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBWJrLFOBlkJhShqKqBeeHDrIFxHeYnaM5eXqkfeAwdT387TVPdJByI__KqxxvPFKsgPhhVFI4RG51FfVgi1LOwWobx4kdCKUEfXymqiXt5B1MAJZvYQtzupNPqPlelNUY6gASgN6Ww9s/s1600/blogger-image-365168657.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBWJrLFOBlkJhShqKqBeeHDrIFxHeYnaM5eXqkfeAwdT387TVPdJByI__KqxxvPFKsgPhhVFI4RG51FfVgi1LOwWobx4kdCKUEfXymqiXt5B1MAJZvYQtzupNPqPlelNUY6gASgN6Ww9s/s320/blogger-image-365168657.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Necklace (first attempt):<br />
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I took some photos of making necklackes as I went. Tradeskilling ftw!<br />
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First: bought some jewelry findings. I tried out a couple of different shapes, including sterling silver hoop (above) and rectangle (below). Plus, some silver flat head pins.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq-yIcII768iWhBcAeNnICQrhWcKYlW1vXsFvD61rksaupYRu2G1tjKF6lC6ejwdBhAS1r6TTK3ZeWeOj69LjsIWDvGpnAgx9Vt5aw3rjdYH4eZ1RZ3uYzpyltA9L3CeAIrFQ1B06mPzA/s640/blogger-image-989036799.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq-yIcII768iWhBcAeNnICQrhWcKYlW1vXsFvD61rksaupYRu2G1tjKF6lC6ejwdBhAS1r6TTK3ZeWeOj69LjsIWDvGpnAgx9Vt5aw3rjdYH4eZ1RZ3uYzpyltA9L3CeAIrFQ1B06mPzA/s640/blogger-image-989036799.jpg" /></a></div>
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Next, resin. I tried ICE jeweler's resin brand, from Amazon. Mix equal parts from the 2 bottles:<br />
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Then pour into the jewelry findings. I tried a few shapes. I used masking tape on the back, and poured in just enough resin to cover the bottom. Mixing causes a lot of bubbles which slowly come out as it hardens, but I found using a pin to help smooth them out also was useful.<br />
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It takes about 24 hours to harden fully. Next day, I removed the tape. It left a rough surface, but I flipped over each one, then added more resin on the back to make the back smooth.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqR5xDmNpW6lFPgDiL3um8u6zDyEWAyPnF9bnW8oAstcrPnGzk3pQqOWoaagTpaHOuy2hOmNPymokP-YaXNst36u9TGlQT6ocsEG0P2WU-iqZpG9iIP_MKuM-82w0OjKl9UOh6AhRiNac/s640/blogger-image-919660105.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqR5xDmNpW6lFPgDiL3um8u6zDyEWAyPnF9bnW8oAstcrPnGzk3pQqOWoaagTpaHOuy2hOmNPymokP-YaXNst36u9TGlQT6ocsEG0P2WU-iqZpG9iIP_MKuM-82w0OjKl9UOh6AhRiNac/s640/blogger-image-919660105.jpg" /></a></div>
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Once that is hard, add the clover (or whatever else will go in the pendant) and cover with more resin to make a convex surface.<br />
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If using a clover or other plant, you need to press and dry it first. I'd previously pressed my clovers for at least a few weeks under some heavy books; if you don't, they may decay inside the resin which obviously doesn't look good. There are plenty of YouTube tutorials with detailed walk throughs.<br />
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Finally, once the resin was hard, I added a chain and some extra beads to finish it off as a necklace.<br />
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Since this one was a gift for someone who loves ladybugs, I also added a small ladybug charm I got from Etsy.<br />
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And a gift box - plain cardboard from Michael's:<br />
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Plus some paint and wire, which I already had lying around:<br />
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A little box of good luck and good wishes, ready to deliver!</div>
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Still not quite sure what to do with all the clovers I found today, but they're in a book now being pressed and dried. These do make nice little gifts for friends who're needing a little luck. And, of course, great accessories to go with your St. Patrick's Day tutu!<br />
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Update: adding some photos of more clover pendants I've made since the original post!<br />
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Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-84175304542164022262013-01-08T20:39:00.000-08:002013-01-09T06:47:54.627-08:00Video game fan videosOver the years playing various games I've created a few random videos, all just for fun, when inspiration struck. I'm certainly not a master of video creation, lacking both talent and time, but occasionally I get an idea that amuses me. And if you don't spend your life doing things that amuse you, then what's the point of your life, right?<br />
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I was looking at the stats on my YouTube channel today and I noticed I have some pretty impressive view numbers for some of them (considering they're just random things I did for fun). And I realized I haven't ever linked any of them on my blog, or at least not that I recall.<br />
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So here's a blog post about some of the videos I've made. For the very first one, flash back to October 2006. I was living in Australia, playing a lot of EverQuest II, and trying to convince them to hire me too. Back then I was part of a wonderful family type roleplay guild called Saga, which had carried over from the original EverQuest. We hosted a tavern night on a semi-regular basis which included a quiz game for prizes and well as chat and entertainment. One night, a trio of male halflings stopped in and offered their dancing skills to entertain us: they jumped up on the bar and did a fantastic synchronized dance in perfect time, using various emotes to coordinate their movements. It was hysterically funny and they showed up for a number of subsequent tavern nights to repeat the performance. I assume the trio were probably the same player running three accounts and with macros set up to coordinate the movements perfectly, and the enjoyment from those performances inspired me to create this video using my halfling and an alt of my then-boyfriend's; with the computers side by side and some macros set up, I could also coordinate the dancing to create the same effect.<br />
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And thus was created: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZQG8ax5xOg" target="_blank">The Secret Life of Halflings</a>. I sent it to the EQ2 dev team to give them a good laugh, as they were hard at work crunching away on the upcoming Echoes of Faydwer expansion. Over 4000 views as I write this. Maybe not even all halflings.<br />
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A month or two later I created a video tribute to the EQ2 Echoes of Faydwer expansion, set to Van Halen's "Jump", which featured the fae jumping and flying around (and at the end, a halfling also trying to jump and plummeting off Kelethin to her death). It reached over 7100 views before YouTube said I had to remove it due to unlicensed use of the Van Halen song, so alas, it is no longer viewable.<br />
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In April of the following year, 2007, I was actually hired by SOE to work on EverQuest II as the tradeskill developer. I had very little time for making fan videos during those years, though I greatly enjoyed a lot of the ones that other fans created. (One of my favorites is still the "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FbV4zT_ZTY" target="_blank">Pirates of the Saskatchewan</a>" video created by user Monkeydarren. The Arrogant Worms, who sing the song, are actually a Canadian band from my own home town of Kingston, and in case you're not familiar with the geography of Canada, Saskatchewan is an entirely land-locked province. Ok, I might be a little biased by the awesomeness of the song, but it's catchy!)<br />
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In 2011 as I started playing a lot of Minecraft on a multiplayer server and having tons of fun creating (and destroying) things, I started playing around with some videos again. A friend and I built an amazing snow castle for Christmas 2011, complete with an aerial powered mine cart track that played "we wish you a merry Christmas" on musical note blocks as you circled the castle. We invited everyone on the server to join us one weekend before Christmas, build stacks of snow golems, and let them loose at night to battle skeletons and zombies in a huge snowball fight. It was epic and wonderful and I filmed parts of it, and although sadly the details of the snowball fight didn't film very well (since it had to be at night to get the monster spawns) I incorporated parts of that into an overall video that I set to the same music the mine cart plays, to show off the details of the castle. I finished this video very late at night on Christmas eve, hunched over my laptop desperately trying to get it finished in time to give it to my co-builder as a Christmas present (via an in-game treasure hunt leading to the URL written on an in-game sign). The ending of the video is footage from the snowball fight, and for days afterwards as the snow golems escaped across the landscape, you'd hear random "KABOOM!"s as they encountered annoyed creepers.<br />
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A month later, a server upgrade mysteriously changed the world biomes around, causing snow to fall in areas that previously weren't snow biomes, including the snow castle (which wasn't actually originally in a snow biome), my original tower, and several other people's home bases too. A second video set to Frank Sinatra's "Let It Snow" was inspired:<br />
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For several years while working on EQ2 I'd been wanting to make more EQ2 videos, but time and inspiration didn't hit until after I'd left the EQ2 team. In August 2012 the "SOEmote" feature was added to EQ2, which allows players to use their webcam to capture their facial expressions and mirror it with their character's face. Having worked on the team I knew this was coming many months in advance, and had been impatiently awaiting its arrival to create a masterpiece of pop culture, "EverQuest II Numa Numa". In case you're not familiar with the meme, the "Numa numa guy" <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60og9gwKh1o" target="_blank">posted a short video of himself</a> lipsyncing to the strange Romanian song "Dragostea Din Tei" by O-Zone. It went viral and many parodies and some new versions were made, including a WoW video which misinterpreted the Romanian words into similar sounding English phrases. I chose to use the English translation of the song, and picked a male halfling to sing it, and the result has had almost 4000 hits since August:<br />
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The video I most wanted to make, however, I'd been contemplating for at least three years but had never found the time or enough motivation to coordinate it, since I knew it would take a lot of help from other people to create. Basically, I wanted to recreate in EQ2 the beautiful 2008 video "Where the Hell is Matt", created by Matt Harding as he traveled through the world and recorded himself dancing with people of all nationalities and backgrounds. Matt's video not only went viral but also made the news in <a href="http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1855948_1864281_1864282,00.html" target="_blank">Time magazine</a> and many other press outlets. If you haven't seen the original, click through now and watch it; it's beautiful.<br />
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Anyway, I had been contemplating how to recreate this video in EverQuest II for years, but hadn't figured out the best way to do it. It was the revamp of the old Qeynos city zones that finally spurred me into action in September, long after I left the EQ2 team: with the city revamp, the old racial villages were being removed from game and would no longer be accessible except in quests. Hastily, a few days before their final removal, I logged into game and put out a call for players of the appropriate races to come dance with me in each zone to record them for posterity. A wonderful, helpful bunch of tradeskillers, decorators, test server players, and random others spent a couple of hours following me around the world and dancing on queue in all sorts of zones, which I compiled and then assembled into the following tribute to "Where the Hell is Matt". The main character in this one is Domino, the character I created to represent myself when I was a game developer, and she's wearing many of the tradeskilled items that I'd created over the years for various tradeskill quests. <br />
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The video includes scenes from many zones now retired from the game, as well as featuring a couple of cameo appearances from some of the well-known players of EQ2 including Jethal Silverwing, author and singer of <a href="http://kithicor.org/music" target="_blank">many wonderful filk songs</a> themed to EverQuest and EverQuest II. My main regret with this video is the haste I had to film the disappearing zones meant I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to round up other EQ2 devs and players that I'd have liked to include. But it still makes me smile to watch it. Favorite scene: the section of the Matt video where he mimics the indian dancers in saris is mirrored by me mimicking the goblin in the Isle of Refuge treehouse. The video is now up to 1300+ views, clearly not as catchy as dancing Numa Numa halflings, but still pretty respectable!<br />
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Alas, my video editing skillz are pretty basic and I've been using freeware programs so haven't had the ability to do anything sophisticated. Still, they amuse me and that's the important thing, and hopefully the view counts mean they amused a few other people too!<br />
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I can't create videos yet for the game I'm currently working on - it's not yet released and still very much under NDA - but who knows. Come April, maybe inspiration will strike again. We'll see!Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-62218899701301541702013-01-08T09:07:00.003-08:002013-01-08T09:08:41.097-08:00Board games: Smash Up<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://www.alderac.com/smashup/" target="_blank">Smash Up</a> is a relatively new card game I got to play last weekend. Requires 2-4 players (preferably 3-4), takes about an hour, depending how long people spend thinking about moves.<br />
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There are 8 factions of cards to choose from (indicated by the little drawing on the bottom right corner): robots, ninjas, pirates, wizards, dinosaurs, aliens, tricksters, and zombies. To start the game, each player picks two factions, and shuffles them together to create his or her custom deck: for example, I played zombie robots. Each faction has certain strengths and a certain theme to the game play which mean they're best played in slightly different ways. Faction cards may be either Minions, or Actions.<br />
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In addition to the faction decks, there are bases. The goal of the game is to gain victory points, which you obtain primarily by capturing bases (there are a couple cards that can directly award a point here and there too, but they seem rare). Four bases are randomly chosen and laid out to start the game. Each base has a strength number that indicates how much power is required to capture it (top left) as well as three point values indicating how many victory points are awarded when it's captured. The first number is what the person who contributed the most points to the capture gets, the second and third numbers go to the second and third contributors. As shown in the examples below, the first place is USUALLY the most points, but not necessarily always. Each base also has text describing its specific special properties.<br />
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Play progresses as each player in turn can play minions or actions against a base. You get to play one minion and one action each turn, unless the cards or the base tell you to do otherwise (which they often do). Each minion has a certain amount of power points associated with it. Once the sum of the minions' power equals is enough to capture the base, the cards are totaled up to determine which player won the base (whoever has most power there) and who got which victory points, then the base is removed from play and a new one replaces it.<br />
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First player to reach 15 victory points wins the game. Simple! But the fact your deck is different every time depending which factions you pick makes each game very variable. We found some faction combinations felt better than others (Ninjas and Tricksters seemed a little too similar in function to combine well for example) but both games we played were extremely close in score which indicates it's surprisingly well balanced considering all the multiple variations possible. I really liked the fun factions, the simple rules, and the many variations that combining the two factions can create in each game.<br />
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More good news: there's already <a href="http://www.alderac.com/smashup/awesome-level-9000/" target="_blank">an expansion planned</a> adding 4 new factions, and the original box has plenty of extra space leaving lots of room for those expansions!Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-68689448141531192392012-12-25T10:39:00.001-08:002012-12-25T10:39:28.501-08:00Board games: RevolutionI used to play board games as a kid, but switched to computer games and the occasional card game long ago. I hadn't really touched board games for years when I moved to San Diego 5 years ago, but as I moved into the computer game industry I also discovered many new friends and co-workers who still enjoyed playing board games, so I've been catching up on some great board games (and card games) in the past few years.<br />
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Someone on Facebook asked me to post some reviews of my favorites, but having realized how long it would take to write up a top 10 (or even decide on them), instead I will just post about a board or card game from time to time.<br />
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To start, here's one of my favorites: Revolution. It's published by Steve Jackson games, a well-respected name you'll see on many board and card games including the infamous Munchkin series.<br />
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I like it for a number of reasons:<br />
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<li>It's very simple to explain and play. No hours of reading a 50 page rule book here.</li>
<li>There's no luck or memorization involved, it's all about guessing what your opponents are planning.</li>
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So what's it about? The board shows you the layout of a small town, which contains a town hall, cathedral, market, barracks, harbor, and similar buildings. Each building has a certain amount of room for people who work in it. For example, you can see from the photo below that the cathedral (the cross-shaped building in the top right) has room for 7 people (who stand in those little white squares). The harbor has room for 6, one in each boat. Etc.<br />
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As the game's name suggests, there is a revolution afoot, and all players are vying for control of the town. Whoever gains the most influence in the town will take over and win. Players gain influence by outright buying it (as you accumulate influence directly, you move a token around the outside track on the board to keep count), and also indirectly, by gaining control of the buildings in the town. Each building is worth a lump sum of influence which goes to whoever controls it at the end of the game. <br />
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To gain influence directly and to gain control of the buildings, players can bribe, threaten, or blackmail the town's key residents. Each resident has influence over a different area of the town and can benefit players in different ways. Each turn, all players try to bribe, threaten, and blackmail the residents they choose, and then their success (or not) affects their presence in the town. For example, if you win over the priest to your side, you'll gain influence in the cathedral, meaning you can place one of your people in the cathedral that turn. Next turn, you could try to win the priest again and place a second person in the cathedral - or perhaps someone else will win him away from you. At the end of the game if there are more of your people in the cathedral than anybody else's, you'll gain the influence points that the cathedral is worth to add to your total.<br />
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The turns are simple: everyone has a combination of tokens indicating either bribes (gold coins), blackmail (black envelope), or force (red fist). Everyone has a card listing the 12 key residents in the town who can be influenced. In secret at the start of each turn, all players allocate their tokens onto the people they wish to attempt to influence. Some residents are immune to certain types of influence: for example, the General cannot have force used on him, the Magistrate cannot be blackmailed. This is indicated by the colour of that person's square on the board: you can't use a red force token on someone whose square is coloured red, and you can't use the blackmail token on someone whose square is coloured black. Everyone can be persuaded by coins.<br />
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Once all players have placed their tokens, as shown below, the privacy shields are removed and players evaluate who won influence over which town resident. There is a hierarchy: force beats blackmail which beats coin, and more of something beats less of it. So for example, one force token beats any number of blackmail or coin; but two blackmail beats one blackmail. One blackmail and three coin beats one blackmail alone. In the case of a tie, nobody wins.<br />
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Depending on the town resident, they will have different effects. Some directly give influence on the board's outside track. Some allow you to gain influence within a town building, as in the priest example. Others give you less direct reward but may give you extra tokens to be used the next round. Some allow you to change places of markers on the board. The strategy can be quite simple but can also become as complex as you want to make it, if you try to not only second-guess who your fellow players will be trying to influence but also who you need to influence this round to gain useful tokens to win next round also. Many's the game I've seen where nobody puts even a single coin on the most valuable town resident, all assuming that someone else will have done so.<br />
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And that's all there is to the game. Rounds continue until all spaces on in the town buildings are completely filled up, and when that happens, the influence from controlling buildings is added to the influence scores on the outside score track to determine the final winner overall.<br />
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The base game is from 2-4 players (best with 3-4) and there is an expansion which adds an additional building and more town residents, and takes the player total up to 6.Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-5718690340967830962012-11-14T20:51:00.000-08:002012-11-14T20:51:26.117-08:00Minecraft cake!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is what a cake looks like in Minecraft:<br />
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A Minecraft cake is something I've been wanting an excuse to try making for a while, since I'm a big fan of Minecraft, and of cake. So what could be better than a Minecraft cake? Duh, NOTHING! This was made for fun and given away as an attempted peace offering. It was fun to make and pretty simple!<br />
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I used my super quick and easy egg-free cake recipe (see below - instead of chocolate chips I used a bar of orange dark chocolate, chopped up into small chunks), and a whisky-heavy dark chocolate butter cream icing. Conveniently, I already had a whole tub of the home made buttercream icing made up in the fridge, since I've been making a lot of cupcakes and cakes for people having birthdays at work and at my former work. As I made this, I found myself saying "it's always useful to keep a tub of chocolate buttercream icing handy in the fridge!" ...Words that 10 years ago I would never have expected I'd find myself saying, but there you go.<br />
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So anyway, I needed two square cakes. All I had was some square pyrex dishes, but I lined them with some parchment paper for ease of extraction and then trimmed the edges off once they were cooked to make them fully square and flat sided.<br />
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Cake trimmings: just as yummy as the cake. Although I gave the cake away, I did get to eat the trimmed off edges. Part of a nutritious and delicious breakfast!</div>
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Once the cake was cooked and cooled it went into the freezer overnight (because it's easier to frost a frozen cake). Meanwhile I was melting white chocolate chips in a plastic freezer bag, in a bowl of warm (but not too hot) water. If you get chocolate too hot the texture changes and becomes all grainy, so you have to melt it very slowly and carefully. Most of the white chocolate chips were melted in one big bag, as shown below, but I separated out a few into a smaller ziploc bag and added red food colouring to that bag only.<br />
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Once the chocolate was melted, I poured it out onto a sheet of parchment paper, used a spatula to smooth it flat into an approximate square, and covered with cling film to keep it clean while it cooled.<br />
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The red coloured white chocolate had to be mixed up carefully before the colour was smooth and homogeneous. It was softer than the pure white due to the added colour, but that just made it a bit easier to work with. It too was spread out flat to cool.<br />
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Once the sheets of chocolate were mostly but not entirely cool, I used a sharp knife to cut them into squares. If the chocolate gets too cool it'll just shatter when you try to cut it, so it needs to be cut before it's totally cooled.<br />
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Next day I removed the cake from the freezer and put the first layer of cake into the container it would be delivered in, and covered it with buttercream icing. You don't have to freeze the cake, but it has to be cool (or the buttercream will melt) and it's much more crumbly if it's not frozen which makes icing it neatly a lot harder.<br />
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The container is just a simple clear box with lid picked up from an office supply store. The base of the container is a layer of cardboard which (a couple days before) I'd cut to fit the container, and painted to look like a sheet of Minecraft grass, and then wrapped in cling film. It took a little extra time to make this base, but it ended up looking great!<br />
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Once the first layer of the cake was iced top and sides, I put the second layer of cake on top, and also covered it in butter cream. Once that was in place, it was time to start decorating. The sheets of white chocolate had been cut up into squares previously and stored in the freezer to keep them hard. I placed the white chocolate squares so they covered the top, with small spaces in between to keep the pixellated look. Around the upper edges I placed full and half squares, alternating, to look like the Minecraft cake edge you see above. Technically I should have done 7x7 squares instead of 5x5 to be completely accurate, but I failed to plan this well enough when cutting the squares. This was easier anyway and still looks good!<br />
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Finally, on top of the white chocolate, a few red chocolate squares of varying sizes, to match the pattern of the Minecraft cake as much as possible.<br />
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I'm definitely not a very skilled cake decorator so I was happy this worked, and was also pretty easy. I think it turned out really well, although I will improve a few things for next time.<br />
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Ta da! Minecraft cake! Looks awesome and tastes absolutely delicious.<br />
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<b><u>Egg-free chocolate cake</u></b><br /> <br />3 oz salted butter<br />2 oz cocoa powder <br />8 oz (1cup) sugar <br />7 oz all-purpose flour <br />½ tsp baking powder <br />½ tsp baking soda <br />½ tsp salt <br />1/3 cup organic apple sauce (note: this substitutes for 1 egg) <br />2/3 cup water <br />½ tsp vanilla <br />½ cup mini dark chocolate chips or your favorite chocolate of choice<br /><br />Melt butter gently and allow to cool for a minute or two. Add everything else except chocolate chips and mix well using a fork or whisk until smooth. Add chocolate chips (can either mix in, or leave sprinkled on top). Pour into a cake pan and bake in a preheated oven at 350F for about 30 minutes, until a toothpick stuck into the middle comes out clean. Wait until cool (refrigerate or freeze so it won't crumble when being iced), then cover with the icing below. (You can also use this recipe to make cupcakes, these will bake faster in about 20 minutes so check sooner.)<br /> <br /> <br /><br /><br /><b><u> Buttercream icing </u></b><br /><br />4 oz (½ cup) salted butter, at room temperature <br />2 cups powdered confectioner's sugar <br />1-2 shots of whisky or other strong alcohol (e.g grand marnier, brandy, rum, Bailey's) or cream <br />½ cup cocoa powder (or more, for a stronger chocolate taste) <br /><br />Mix well, adding more liquid if needed to soften up. Spread on cooled cupcakes then refrigerate. <div>
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Note: the icing ingredient measurements are pretty flexible - add more or less of anything according to whatever tastes good!<br /></div>
Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-3726671548235065552012-11-01T22:27:00.000-07:002012-11-01T22:31:37.251-07:00Wonder Woman costumeAll the Avengers and other super hero costumes last year inspired me to try a Wonder Woman costume for Halloween 2012. I loved the old Lynda Carter TV show way back when it was new, so I started looking at the details of her costume:<br />
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After making my <a href="http://tradeskill.blogspot.com/2009/11/girl-blog-touch-of-hero-worship.html" target="_blank">Felicia Day "Codex" costume</a> 3 years ago, and sewing the corset from scratch, I swore I was never going to do that again, so the first task was to find a corset of the right color that I could use as a base.<br />
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To the rescue: sexy "Santa Baby" costume, which I think was from Amazon, or possibly ebay:<br />
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The straps were already removable, and the hat, belt, and g-string no use, but the corset itself was just the right colour and a good starting base.<br />
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However, this corset had metal hook-and-eye fastenings up the front, and laces up the back, which were both problems. I unpicked the stitches and removed both. The front had to be solid fabric, because the gold eagle would be sewn on top of it; and the laces at the back looked wrong for Wonder Woman. I sewed both up, and instead unpicked the side seams and sewed in zippers.<br />
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Since removing the laces and the hooks made the corset width smaller, it was now too small, and I needed to add some extra fabric at the sides also so I could fit into it! Fortunately, a matching red satin was pretty easy to find at the local fabric shop.<br />
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Once the corset fit comfortably, it was time to sew on the golden decorations. The fabric shop also had gold spandex and thread, so I sewed a lot of gold tubes, and the cat was VERY helpful as I tried to lay out the eagle wings.<br />
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The spandex was a real pain to sew; I think I wasn't using the right type of needle, but I'm definitely going to avoid spandex again as much as possible! However, eventually the feathers and then the eagle and rest of the gold detail were in place, and the top was done.<br />
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I didn't try to make the outfit a one-piece; I ordered some stretchy blue athletic shorts from Amazon and simply sewed some white stars onto them. Comfortable and not too high cut.<br />
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<span style="text-align: start;">The shorts were still fairly short however and female super hero costumes tend to be rather more revealing than male ones, and since I'd likely be wearing it around work colleagues, I decided an added skirt would be appropriate.</span> I came across this great blue gauzy material with silver stars in the "seasonal" fabric section: apparently it's Christmas-y? It was perfect for a skirt. And, apparently, a cat tent.<br />
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Rather than make a full skirt, I just sewed the fabric to some more of the gold spandex as a waist band and added a fastening at the front so it would be open at front, but long at the back. I also sewed lots of gathers into the skirt so that rather than hanging down straight, it hangs in gathers.<br />
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Wrist band and headband were easily sewn out of the same gold spandex.</div>
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I'd found the boots fairly cheaply on Zappos.com back around February, and I used white bandage tape to add the highlights. Add some flesh coloured stockings, and of course the invisible plane.</div>
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And so it was assembled!<br />
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This took a LOT of work, probably more than last year's <a href="http://tradeskill.blogspot.com/2012/03/dalek-dress.html" target="_blank">dalek outfit</a>, but everyone seemed to like it. And it was actually pretty comfortable too - the headband (which was slightly too tight) and the contact lenses were the most uncomfortable parts.<br />
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Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402295191503748159.post-82327416843085604022012-07-28T19:53:00.002-07:002012-11-01T22:28:04.515-07:00Game designer at the races<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Just got back from an afternoon with friends at the Del Mar Racetrack, watching the horse races. <br />
<br />
This is only the second time I've been to horse races, and I was really just there for the fun and the company, not expecting win anything since I certainly don't have the knowledge needed to put the odds anything close to in my favour. And nor did anybody else there; the others with me that I asked said their strategies for picking horses were:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>pick a particular colour in each race (in this case, pink)</li>
<li>pick the names you like best</li>
<li>bet on the horse with the longest odds (backing the underdog ... or underhorse I suppose)</li>
</ul>
<div>
Reverting to my scientific training not to mention game design habits of thought, I decided to take the opportunity to do a little experiment. My plan: in each of the races I would put a bet on two horses to win. </div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>logical method: the horse ridden by the best of the top 3 jockeys listed for most wins this season; or if none of the top jockeys were in the race, the expert's recommendation in the official race booklet listing the race details;</li>
<li>irrational method: the horse with the most romantic sounding name.</li>
</ol>
<div>
Then I would compare the overall results and see if there was a significant difference.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here are the results (I missed the first 2 races as I arrived late):</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Race 3:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Logical pick: Awesome Annie. First place winner.</li>
<li>Irrational pick: Wink and Wish. Didn't place.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Race 4:</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Logical pick: God of War. First place winner.</li>
<li>Irrational pick: Nearly Was Mine. Didn't place.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Race 5:</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Logical pick: Gab Power. Placed third.</li>
<li>Irrational pick: Until You. Didn't place.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Race 6:</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Logical pick: Starlight Magic. First place winner.</li>
<li>Irrational pick: River Kiss. Didn't place.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Race 7:</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Logical pick: Flashy Dame. Didn't place.</li>
<li>Irrational pick: Romantic Wish. Placed 2nd.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Race 8:</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Logical pick: Take Control.
Didn't place.</li>
<li>Irrational pick: Prayer for Relief (ok, not a very romantic name, but choices in this race were very limited...) Didn't place.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Race 9:</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Logical pick: Smoken Legacy. Placed 2nd.</li>
<li>Irrational pick: Frisky Moment. Didn't place.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Final conclusion: out of 7 races, the logical choice based on my criteria above won 3 and placed 5 times (placed means 1st or 2nd). The irrational pick based solely on the name didn't win at all and placed only once.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
While this certainly isn't a big enough sample size to be statistically significant, it's still a pretty suggestive difference. I used the jockey win record as a basis for picking the winner because it seemed logical and just happened to be available in the race booklet. I imagine it would be possible to take a little longer to study more information and find some other important factors besides the jockey's track record which would give better odds. (I'm told my grandfather used to supplement a meagre student income by betting fairly successfully on horses, but felt it was appropriate to give this up when he became a clergyman.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That said, the successful jockeys are riding good horses and are expected to perform well, so the odds on the bets don't return a whole lot. For races 3 and 4 I just doubled my bet, and for bet 6 I quadrupled it, but these do not make the kind of big wins you retire on. Overall I still did not break even (I was betting on each horse to win). If I'd bet on the horses to place (first or second) instead of win, I would have won 5 times instead of 3, but won only half as much money since that changes the odds, so I still don't think I would have come out ahead.</div>
<br />All of which just goes to show that:<br /> <br /><ul>
<li>randomly picking names is not a good way to bet on horses; </li>
<li>jockey experience does seem to make a big difference to a horse's success; </li>
<li>I am probably not going to retire based on horse betting winnings; and </li>
<li>being romantic doesn't pay off. </li>
</ul>
Also, that you can look for game design in almost anything if you try, even horse races. This is the kind of thing that scientists, and game designers, think about when they look at any kind of game ...<div>
<br /></div>Dominohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06741716047456882665noreply@blogger.com0