2011.03.25
Posted in Music, Sasquatch 2011 at 9:08 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel
This past week I was in Texas for work. The rental car company decided to play some sort of silly joke and give me a suburban. Because that’s exactly what I needed to drive me and my 1 suitcase around the freeways of Houston. Aside from being about as much fun to drive as the average bus, it at least had satellite radio.
While I was driving from Victoria, TX back to Houston, I happened to catch a live set performed by Skrillex as part of the Ultra Music Festival 2011. I had never really paid attention to Skrillex before, but I knew he was on the lineup to play Sasquatch.
Now I’m quite excited to see him live. I realize he won’t have a big light show or anything, but I expect it will be a fun Monday night in the dance tent.
I’m also getting generally more excited about Sasquatch, as it’s only about 2 months away. I’ve also started figuring out what I’m going to do in the 6 days prior while I’m in Seattle. There are quite a few things I didn’t get to last time I was there, and I hope to do a bunch of them this time. If the weather cooperates it would be great to get a hike in somewhere, but we’ll see as the trip gets closer. I already have a bunch of hikes picked out as well.
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2011.03.06
Posted in Sasquatch 2011 at 8:34 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel
Previously, I mentioned I was working on a costume for Sasquatch 2011. The items I mail ordered arrived in the mail on Monday, and I set about constructing the costume this weekend.
I’m quite happy with the results.
The hat is a cheap straw cowboy hat I bought at Lammle’s on sale, and I used a little over 13 feet of yellow electroluminescent (EL) wire. I diagrammed out how I wanted to run the wire, punched a couple of holes in the hat, then ran the wire, using liberal amounts of hot glue as I went.
The belt is a cheap western-style belt, also bought at Lammle’s on sale. The buckle was bought from an online store in Montreal called Canada Buckles (no sense ruining an expensive buckle), and I used just under 8 feet of orange EL wire in total. The belt proved trickier than the hat, because the wire added to the belt’s stiffness when I tried to put it on for the first time, and the hot glue didn’t bond as well to the leather as it did to the wire. Also, I had to leave a bit of flex where the wire circled the buckle.
In the end, I wound up using crazy glue on a few key points of the belt to make sure the wire stayed put, more or less, although the bulk is still held on by hot glue.
A 4-foot lead wire is attached to the hat, and runs down my back and under my shirt. The Belt has 2 feet of lead wire that can be tucked under the belt and run to just above my right back pocket where I clip the driver for the EL wire. The hat’s lead wire is also attached to this same driver, keeping most of the lead wire under my shirt.
I shopped around a bit for EL wire suppliers, eventually ordering everything from ELWirePros as they seemed the most responsive to my inquiries and didn’t try to rip me off with shipping charges.
I’m already planning on adding to this costume over time, but I think this is a good start. And it’ll be easy to find me at Sasquatch this year. Well, after dark, anyways.
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2011.03.06
Posted in Board Games at 8:15 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve managed to try out both of the #1 and #2 games from BoardGameGeek for the first time.
Puerto Rico was thoroughly enjoyable. For my first attempt at the game, I focused on generating points through buildings, although I made a few mistakes along the way and didn’t generate as much money as I could have at a couple of times. It was the first game for all at the table, which meant nobody had a huge advantage (and nobody got frustrated with anyone else).
Twilight Struggle was a very intense game, more intense than I expected. Jason and I gave this a go on a Saturday evening, and it took a lot of mental energy from both of us. In the end, I managed to eke out a razor-thin victory for the USA, although I nearly blew it on the very final card play of the game.
Having now played both of them, I can say they’re both excellent games, and one thing they have in common is that they are probably best when the players have roughly the same experience / skill level with the game. I can see them becoming very unbalanced with differing experience levels.
If you haven’t tried Puerto Rico and you enjoy Eurogames, just stop what you’re doing right now and track down a copy at your local game store. Really. It’s that good. If you’re looking for a 2-player game with a lot of tension and depth, and enjoy area-control type mechanics, then Twilight Struggle is well worth the investment.
As for the rest of the top ten on BoardGameGeek, there are a few I haven’t tried yet. Perhaps I should track them down.
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