Recent G.I.R.L. blogs

Things I've been writing elsewhere while I wasn't writing here!

G.I.R.L. Talk with Tiffany Chu
G.I.R.L. Talk with Jennifer Chan
G.I.R.L. Talk with Judy Tyrer

Recent G.I.R.L. blogs

Some of what I've been writing while I wasn't here ...

Making Mother-Friendly Games
G.I.R.L. Talk With Abby Watt
The Ghost of Christmas Presents
Rescuing the Princess.... From Stereotyping

Got several more Q&As coming up over the next month on the G.I.R.L. blog too, so watch out for those!

Recent G.I.R.L. blogs

Some recent posts I've written for SOE's G.I.R.L. blog:

G.I.R.L. Talk with Lesly Irwin

Fan Faire: It's All About the People

Joe "Rystall" Shoopack also followed up with some of the previous G.I.R.L. scholarship winners in this Summer Art Internships post.

G.I.R.L. blog Q&As

Over the past month or two I've been doing some little Q&A sessions with women who work in the computer game industry.  I've been lucky to talk to some very interesting and smart ladies, who took the time to answer questions about themselves, their jobs, and their opinions about women in gaming!  The goal of these little Q&A blogs is to demonstrate that there ARE plenty of women working in gaming, and highlight the many different roles that they can play within the industry.

Brenda Brathwaite - it's also well worth checking out her talk from GDC 2010

Sylvia Liu (our latest G.I.R.L. scholarship winner!)

Laralyn McWilliams

Terry Redfield

Also, the G.I.R.L. blog is now posting as a subcategory of the general SOE blog, instead of having a separate address of its own (all the SOE blogs have been consolidated at the one address for ease of finding them).  So, to find G.I.R.L. category posts at the new address, you can check here: http://stationblog.wordpress.com/category/girl/

G.I.R.L. blog: Catching up

Some of the G.I.R.L. blog posts I've written over the past few months, but may have missed linking to:

Should Barbie Be A Game Designer?

April Fool's Day Reflections

Thinking Pink?  Please Don't

The Grandmother Test

Risk Taking In The Bike Lanes

Happy Birthday, EverQuest II 

Q&A With Rebecca

G.I.R.L. blog: A Touch of Hero Worship

This week on SOE's GIRL blog I talked a little bit about Felicia Day, creator of the web series "The Guild":

A Touch of Hero Worship

What I didn't mention (as it wasn't quite finished when I actually wrote the post) was that I decided to dress as Felicia Day's character Codex from "Do You Wanna Date My Avatar" for Halloween this year.

And to do that, required a little bit of Real Life tradeskilling.

Fortunately, out of all the costumes from The Guild, Codex's looked to be the simplest to make.

Unfortunately, I'm really not that good at sewing things and can only plod along at the most basic level! I do have a sewing machine now (it was a Christmas present last year) but all I've made with it so far has been a small quilt, some curtains for the house, and some linings for bags I've crocheted. This was a step beyond that!

Still, I picked up some fabric and a corset pattern, and a white bra to use as the foundation of the dress, and learned a lot.  Mostly, I learned why people charge $500 for corsets they sell online.  They are a pain to make, even with helpful tips from the lady at the fabric store!  (Best tip:  use the large size plastic cable ties from Home Depot instead of commercial corset boning.  Much cheaper and generally stronger too!)

From this:

To this:

I broke 3 sewing machine needles in the process and ran out of time so the staff and accessories (like kneepads and bracers) are less detailed than I would like, but on the whole I'm pretty happy with it as a first attempt!  If I wear it again I may try to improve some of those details I didn't have time for this year.

(The Dr. Horrible lab coat was something I made last year.  We couldn't find a side-closing lab coat like Dr. Horrible's, so I converted a front-button one to a side-button one, added some details, and embroidered the little caduceus logo on the pocket - that caduceus along took almost 3 hours!)

The funniest observation came from "Dr. Horrible" as Halloween approached and I was madly trying to finish up the sewing.

"Are you going to dye your hair too?" he asked (since Codex/Felicia Day is in fact a redhead).

"Good grief no, that's way too much effort," was my immediate reflexive response.  At which he just looked at me for a moment and then pointed out that relative to the weeks of sewing effort I'd already put into the thing, dyeing hair really wasn't much effort at all.  And I had to laugh at myself a bit because it was very true.

Nonetheless I did not dye my hair. Probably because making the costume was interesting and a tradeskill challenge; dyeing hair is a nuisance and smelly and not fun at all.  You gotta draw a line somewhere, after all!

Anyway, as I said in the GIRL blog post, Felicia Day is a pretty impressive lady and a great role model for girls in gaming (for anybody, in fact).  If you haven't yet watched The Guild, visit their site, find season 1, and get started.  Episodes are very short, generally 3-7 minutes, and if you've ever played any MMO I guarantee you'll find it hilarious.  You can also buy the DVD now and support a great independently produced show.  And incidentally, I was not paid to say any of this ... it's just true.  So go do it.  =)

G.I.R.L. blog: Adventures in D&D

Another G.I.R.L. blog is up, this time it's my aged maundering about the trials of being a girl with a D&D Players Handbook.

Adventures in Dungeons and Dragons

Yeah, this is the cover I remember! =)

G.I.R.L. blog: What's In A Name?

A little pondering about naming quest NPCs, and just how DID some of those characters get their names anyway ...

What's In A Name?

G.I.R.L. blog: My First Multiplayer Game

A little bit of "good old days" remininscence for my birthday on the G.I.R.L. blog:

My First Multiplayer Game

Also for my birthday BBQ, I made a (rather lazy) version of the cake from Portal:

Not quite as good as the version I made a year or two ago for a friend at work (below), but I didn't have a lot of time this weekend.

This weekend's cake was just a regular white cake, with orange chocolate buttercream icing and covered in mini chocolate chips. The cake tasted ok but was a little dry, it was just a random recipe I pulled up which I hadn't tried before. Might need to look around for a better vanilla cake recipe if I make one again. Oh well, still tasted ok and the BBQ part was delicious too!

G.I.R.L. blog: Character Creation

A new GIRL post is up today:

Character Creation

Enjoy!

G.I.R.L. blog updates

Couple more of my G.I.R.L. blogs have been posted. Yeah, I suck at thinking up clever blog titles!

A Goo-d Game

I'm not as weird as you think I am ...

G.I.R.L. Blog updates

My first few posts on the G.I.R.L. blog are now up:

And so it begins again...

A busy weekend in San Diego

The tales we tell

Real life got suddenly busy lately so I've been a bit slow updating this blog, but I hope to be back to a more regular schedule soon. The idea is to talk about crafting stuff (both game and RL) here, and general women and gaming thoughts over there.

For those who play EQ2, you might want to check out the discussion thread on the SOE forums for proposed upcoming changes to the transmuting system. I was a little scared when I checked back on it after half a day and saw it was already up to 5 pages, but responses actually seem to be very positive, which is great to see (not to mention somewhat unusual)! =)