Rackbits

As of the 22nd of September the Date and Venue listed in the post are no longer valid. Please refer to my update post for the new date and venue.

Every year since our inception in 2008 SOGC have run a LANoWEEN event celebrating all things gaming and, in the spirit of the faux holiday, all things zombie killing.

Also, much like previous years, we are still awaiting the release of Dead Island which was has been in a perpetual state of coming soon since late 2008.

This year also represents a departure from previous LANoWEEN events, we are not holding this event at the Mossman club like the past two but rather at the Forrestville centre.

With plenty of space for 80 people, a whole lot of fun competitions, random prizes, and the usual crowd of epic people it looks like we’re going to have another epic LAN.

http://www.sogc.com.au/beta/

I should mention while our (new) site is in beta and some bits are probably quite broken it is more or less usable and signups should be working fine. If, however, you have difficulty please feel free to harass us on the forums. Jaytee and I frequently read the forums and we can get on top of any issues quickly if they are brought to our attention.

I’ve had my blog around in many variations for a long time now. Up until today I have been using a variation of the same theme for the past few years, and it has served me well. I basically wrote it once and left it, content in knowing that WordPress wouldn’t break it too much.

The problem with that is that, for me at least, anything left stable too long needs to be changed. Thus I whipped up a new theme in just about as much time as I gave myself last time (about a night). I think the results are nice, they emphasise the content a little better and some of the goofy metrics and sizes or elements are gone and replaced with much nicer more consistent rules.

I found this while looking through tvtropes. There are two videos, the first is embedded here and the second is linked as embedding is disabled.

There is a second video as well, also on youtube available here.

Life has gotten back to normal, for the most part anyway. I’m now working on my next epic adventure – my Japan trip. I’ve also started playing Starcraft 2, I’ve had the box sitting on my desk for just over a month now.

I have a whole lot of assorted tech stuff I need to start selling off, or even worst case throw out, just because it’s all taking up space I just don’t have.

I’ll be going through my mammoth collection of photos from my trip and posting any of the interesting (well, I say interesting…) photos right here as well as in my dA collection.

In other news the SOGC website has undergone another revision and we are apparently holding yet another LANoWEEN event. That should be a lot of fun – our last two LANoWEEN events certainly were (no wait, they were that other thing… chaotic).

There is only so long I can put this off, so here it is – my Quakecon 2010 plus swag report. For those not in the know Quakecon is a free annual event where gamers from all across the United States (and even a few from around the world) meet to play computer games and share in the awesomeness that is iD Software.

It provides four days of entertainment, competitions, and lots of free swag. Aside from the regularly provided free t-shirts there are often computer components and other gaming items being thrown out to the oft ravenous crowds. The sources of free goods can often be seen being swarmed upon by the horde.

This year the ‘con had a decidedly more commercial approach to it’s offerings and it showed in almost every aspect of the event. This year pre-registration was done away with, as well as the usual huge room sized queues that accompany the first come first serve line. This year everyone who had a hotel booking at the Hilton Anatole had a guaranteed spot in the BYOC. That didn’t prevent a queue from forming on the morning of the first day, but it did make everything move a lot faster than last year.

Everything from the signs to the vendor area construction had a more professional and slick approach. An unfortunate down side is that there was way less free swag. In the past vendors all had shirts, buttons, and all manners of random stuff to give out. This year there were vendors selling items directly at the con, shirts were in limited supply (relatively speaking) and at least one of the QuakeCon shirts was only available commercially.

This year the ‘con also made the understandable move of banning the popular DC++ file sharing system. This was met with some opposition from a particularly vocal minority, who even went so far as to create the DC++ chant which was a regularly recurring theme of the event.

The vendor area got a clean up but was a lot smaller than last year and did away with a lot of the fun areas from last such as the bean bag lounge. The sit and go areas were more hidden away and were quite a bit smaller. A plus side is that bethesda’s area had grown to include things people actually wanted to look at such as playable previews of Fallout New Vegas and Brink.

I’m not an expert at getting swag at events. Actually I’ll go so far as to say I’m among the worst at getting free stuff at anything. Half the reason I got as much stuff last year, aside from the shirts which you had have to try really *not* to get, was that I was always near Missingo – an absolute expert at getting free stuff.

As a result most of the free stuff I got was the result of my volunteer efforts, from both this year and last. By the end of the event I had scored two of the ‘free’ Quakecon shirts, a ‘retail’ Quakecon shirt (a prize for volunteering), a staff shirt, a Fallout New Vegas shirt, a Brink shirt, a Fallout New Vegas lithograph and a computer case.

The volunteer services were as good as ever and the volunteer army during teardown has reached a fearsome size which made it all go very quickly and smoothly.

All in all the ‘con was a good event. Perhaps familiarity, far fewer friends attending and a general disconnect from the better elements of last year’s con (like the venue, the Hilton is nowhere near as good as the Gaylord Texan) left me a little less positive about this year’s event over last. If this were my introductory year I’m not sure I would have gone back again. That said the negatives were far outweighed by the positives. John Carmack gave a much better talk and spent a lot more time in discussion with his fans that in itself made up for everything else.

After nearly 21 hours of flying time plus another 6 or so in airport time we are finally home.

Having spent the last month in the United States we are now on our way back home. I am writing this on the first of the two flights we have, the transcontinental flight from New York to Los Angeles where we’ll connect for our Sydney bound flight.

We have about 20 hours of flying time to enjoy as well as five or six hours of airport time. Then our holiday will be over and it’s back to reality.

So, epic usa trip 2011? At least I have my epic month in Japan coming up soon. I’ll be travelling with Navillus and Jaytee from team SOGC to the land of crazy vending machines, animu and bullet trains.