Making Chainmail

I've decided to make a set of chainmail. Ever since high school, I've known people who had either made or were making a set and I'd always wanted to give it a try. Finally, last weekend, I went and bought the equipment and materials that I would need to get started.

I've read about how to do it extensively and it was just a matter of getting started. Here's what you need to make chainmail:
- Wire. I chose 14 gauge aluminum wire. I plan to also get some copper, brass and maybe colored aluminum wire in the future to add some color and style to the armor.
- Wire cutters. Choose good, strong cutters with a nice grip. You'll be using them a lot to cut the rings and you want something that will last a long time and be comfortable to use.
- Steel Rod. You'll use this to wrap the wire around to make the rings. I bought a 4' long rod, but I might suggest a 3 or 2 foot rod instead as it can be hard to wrap the wire by yourself with that long of a rod. My rod is 3/8" in diameter, but I've read about people using other diameters.
- 2"x4" board. You'll build a contraption with the boards to hold the rod while you're wrapping the wire around it. I had some scraps in my garage that I used to build mine.
- Drill. You'll probably need this to build your contraption and also to help you wrap the wire around the rod.
- Gloves. You'll want at least one glove to protect your hand while wrapping the wire. Don't use gloves that have a rubber grip as it will stick to the wire and could get your finger stuck in the wrapped wire. Believe me that this hurts a lot.

I'm not going to go through all the steps, there are tons of tutorials out there from people with more experience. If you're interested, go check some of them out.

I started with the plan to just make a bracelet for my daughter, but it turned out to be so easy to make a chain that I just kept on going. My first attempt at wrapping the wire didn't go very well, I almost cut my finger off when it got stuck in between the wire and the steel rod when my gloves stuck to the wire and pulled my finger in. Ouch. Also, I had trouble keeping a constant gap, but I didn't have to throw away too much of my first attempt. I made 103 rings in my first attempt. I haven't had a second attempt yet, but I think I'll get to 115-130 or so rings when I do.

Here are shots of my progress. Stay tuned for updates!

My wire wrapping contraption

My first attempt made 103 rings.

My first two sets of five rings.

Connecting those two sets.

My first chain!

Using FreeMarker Templates in a Grails App

I've started in a new team at my job.  We're creating an admin system that is going to take the functionality of several disparate systems and put them all under one UI.  Since we're writing a whole new app from scratch that will interface with existing systems, we had our choice of technologies (within reason) and frameworks.  We ended up choosing Grails because we figured it would be easy to integrate with our other systems and provide us with easy to create RESTful services.

One of our requirements was to use FreeMarker to generate the HTML of our UI.  This is a  requirement because we're using FreeMarker in other areas and we've created a development tool that uses FreeMarker in addition to other front end technologies (JS, SASS).

The problem is that Grails wants to use GSPs (Grails Server Pages), which are like JSPs (and, in fact, compile down to JSPs).  Grails has the ability to incorporate third-party plugins into your project, and there's a FreeMarker plugin for Grails.  Unfortunately, the plugin was made for Grails 1.2 and we're trying to use Grails 2.2.1.  I tried for two days to try to get the FreeMarker plugin to work, but it just didn't seem to do anything.  It was a frustrating situation.

Having read a lot of Grails documentation over the last few days, I found that you could configure Grails similarly to how you configure a Spring application.  You put that configuration in the resources.groovy file.

import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.freemarker.FreeMarkerConfigurer
import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.freemarker.FreeMarkerViewResolver

// Place your Spring DSL code here
beans = {
 freemarkerConfig(FreeMarkerConfigurer) {
  templateLoaderPath = "/"
 }
 viewResolver(FreeMarkerViewResolver) {
  cache = "false"
  prefix = "bin/freemarker"
  suffix = ".ftl"
  exposeSpringMacroHelpers = "true"
 }
}

Spring configuration is, of course, XML and this is a Grails closure.  That part wasn't hard to convert.  You can find an example of how to configure FreeMarker in a Spring app looks like, here.  The only other thing we had to do was to put the line below into our BuildConfig.groovy file.

dependencies {
 ...
 runtime "org.freemarker:freemarker:latest.release"
 ...
}

Now, the only thing we had to figure out was where to put the FreeMarker templates.  At first, we had them in our views folder where the GSPs went, but we were getting 404s when we ran the app.  After some debugging (thanks Roy for helping debug!) we figured out that the template loader was looking for the templates in the web-app folder.  That was easy enough to fix, we copied our templates from the views folder over to the web-app folder.  After that, everything worked just fine!

So, to recap, we added a typical Spring configuration to the resources.groovy file, added the FreeMarker jar as a runtime dependency in the BuildConfig.groovy file and put our templates into the web-app folder (in the folder configured in the prefix of the viewResolver).

The solution was frustratingly simple after we figured it out.  I wrote this post because I researched and experimented on whether this was possible or not for over two days without any success.  Hopefully this helps anyone else who is trying to use FreeMarker in their Grails app.

If you're like me, though, you want to see more.  Here's an example of a generic Controller:

class ApplicationController {

    static defaultAction = "show"

    GrailsApplication grailsApplication

    def show() {
        [model: [version: getAppVersion()]]
    }

    private getAppVersion() {
        def metadata = grailsApplication.metadata
        return metadata['app.version']
    }
}

It has one public method, show.  We want that when you navigate to /app-name/application or /app-name/application/show that it displays the version of the app.  I created a template, /web-app/application/show.ftl.  Now, the template contents are:

hello world<br>
${model.version}

When I navigate to /app-name/application/show, I get:




Which is as expected.  Pretty slick.  We're still at the beginning, but this should allow us to borrow front -end devs from other teams since they'll already understand the view technology and we'll be using the same tools that their teams use.

Table Top Day

Along with millions of other gaming enthusiasts, I celebrated International Table Top Day recently.  I love playing games of all types and I've been playing board games since I was little.  When TableTop began on Geek & Sundry, I loved it.  I already liked Wil Wheaton a lot, but having him play some of my favorite games with other geeky celebrities was awesome.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't play board games as much as I'd like, but I think that's part of the point to International Table Top Day.  The point is to take time out of our busy lives to celebrate games and to get together with our friends to play our favorite games or to try new games with new people.

My wife and I decided to stop by The Source Comics and Games for Table Top Day because I'd heard that John Kovalic was planning on being there.  We went there and played a new game that we ended up liking enough to buy.  It's called "Hirelings: The Ascent".  It's kind of the reverse idea of the typical "dungeon delving" game.  You play as one of the hirelings of the heroes that delved into the dungeon and you're trying to escape after the party has all died.  You have the heroes' equipment and you use it to evade the monsters and get out of the dungeon before the dragon's fireball catches up to you.  It was pretty fun and we got to play with the game's creator.  I think we'll try it out with our five year old pretty soon.

The highlight, of course, of Table Top Day to me was meeting John Kovalic.  I've been following him on Twitter pretty much since I joined it and on Facebook for quite some time.  I love his art, Munchkin and Dork Tower.  Meeting him was awesome and he was so nice.  We chatted a bit about the game he was playing, about Apples to Apples and Munchkin.  He told my wife and I about a Disney version of Apples to Apples that we're going to try to find to play with our kids.  Plus, I got to get my picture taken with him AND he signed our copy of Munchkin and Apples to Apples!

Table Top (the show) has increased my already great love of games.  It's made me aware of games that I didn't know about before or made me interested in games that I wouldn't have thought I'd be interested in.  Table Top Day has done the same thing for me with a special interactive component.  I went to a great store that I don't go to often enough and bought a game that I tried there.  It was a great Table Top Day and I'm looking forward to the next one!

Inside Apples to Apples

The cover of my newly signed Munchkin box!

Random Pictures

In honor of having my best month on the blog ever (in terms of page views), I've decided to post some cool pictures.  If you're not interested in this kind of stuff, feel free to skip it.

The first item isn't a picture, but rather a video of my daughter signing the Mahna Mahna song with me.  Every now and then I hear her signing it, which means that I've raised her right.

This picture is Link from Link to the Past made out of Perler beads.  I've made quite a few 8-bit characters from them, but this is one of my favorites.

This is a portrait that Kate, my daughter, drew of me.  Pretty accurate, I think.

My wife and I saw this deer in our backyard the other day.  Pretty awesome!

This is a small walking trail near our house.  Kate had just said, "We're on an adventure!"

I was behind this Lotus in traffic the other day.  You don't realize how small they are until you're close to them.  I don't think that I'd even fit inside!

These are my kids looking at the penguins at the Minnesota Zoo.

More Perler bead characters that I've made.

Hope you enjoy these pics.  I'm working on a story that I'll post here in the next few weeks, or, if Chuck Wendig posts another interesting story challenge, maybe you'll see on of those on here soon.

Social Anxiety

If you've read my blog before, you'll realize that I'm a geek, or, if you prefer, a big nerd.  I'm cool with that.  It's who I am.  One of the reasons that I am who I am is because of social anxiety.  In high school, I would escape social situations by playing video games alone at home and only hanging out with the few close friends that I had.  I've always felt anxious in social situations, but only lately have I realized that even though work is obviously a social situation, I don't feel anxiety about going to work or meetings at work.

I started to wonder why this was true.  I thought that if I could figure out why I felt different about work that I could somehow apply that to normal social situations.  So far, the only thing that I can think of is that I don't see the people I work with as social entities.  That's hard to explain; even though I like most of the people around me at work, I guess that I don't feel like I'm there to be social.  I'm there to work.  I'm not a psychologist by any means, so I don't know if that's the right answer or not, but it presents a problem if that's true.  If that's true, it means that I can't apply it to other social situations because I am in those situations specifically to socialize.  I'm also not saying that I don't feel social anxiety while at work.  Running into someone you know just walking down the hall at work is quite an awkward situation for me.  Do I look in their direction?  When should I acknowledge them?  How do I acknowledge them?  I don't know how other people do it so effortlessly.

Just to be clear, the anxiety I feel about social situations isn't just a tiny amount of stress.  It's a nearly crippling, hard to breathe level of stress.  Just yesterday I had a company social event (we bowled at a fancy bowling alley place called Pinstripes).  Before the event, as I was driving there, I was practically in a panicked state.  I was thinking over and over that I didn't have to go and that I should just skip it.  Once I was there, the stress lessened, but I could still feel it in my gut the whole time I was there.

So, what do I do?  I push through the feelings as best I can.  Yesterday, I just forced myself to go inside and talk and bowl and try to have fun.  I still felt terribly awkward the whole time and hope that others didn't pick up on that.  In many social situations (such as parties), I can just stand around and not talk to anyone.  In these situations, I'm afraid that I come off as a pretentious jerk who doesn't want to talk to anyone.  That couldn't be further from the truth.  I would love to talk to people and get to know them, but I'm crippled by anxiety over saying the wrong thing, or not being able to follow social customs.  So, I just stay quiet and out of everyone's way.

Just writing about this is hard.  I don't even know why I decided to write about this at all.  Maybe I'm wondering how other people who have social anxiety handle it.  If you feel like sharing, leave a comment.  Maybe I hope that getting this off my chest will help me deal with the issue.  I don't know.  Sometimes I feel like Raj from The Big Bang Theory, but not as extreme and more general than just not being able to talk to pretty girls.

Recent Inactivity

Hello everyone.  As you may have noticed, it's been quite some time since I've posted on the blog.

I'm a creative person.  Creative people have to have creative outlets, or we go insane.  I have several creative outlets: software development (my job), writing (on here), and crafts.  Over the past year or so, I did a lot of writing that I've posted on here and a bit that I haven't.  That, along with work, was my main creative output.  Lately, though, I've been into crafting with Perler or iron beads.

I don't know if you've heard of these beads before, but they're used to create little trinkets.  I've taken the liberty of posting some of my creations below.  My wife and I have opened a joint Etsy shop where I plan to post these and future creations up for sale.

Is this the end of Story a Week?  Yes.  Will I continue to write and post stories up on my blog?  Most definitely.  I will continue to write because I love to do it.  I will just do it in my own time.  After all, I still have at least three storylines that I want to wrap up for you all.  I can't just leave you all hanging like that.  :)

So, enjoy these photos of my little creations.

I've also created a Mega Man, a Yoshi and a Princess Peach, but the camera battery died before I could take those pics.

Return to Java

 If you read my blog, you'll know that I just started a new job last week.  The new job is using Java and I've spent the last week getting re-familiar with the language and tools.  It's been a week of reading a lot of text books and using Eclipse heavily for the first time in several years.

The first thing that I've noticed again is how versatile Java is.  This week, I've played with some server side code, technical layer type code (API to a database) and client side code (web servlets, okay, not really client side, but web side anyway).  I get more and more excited about using Java again every day, even every hour it seems sometimes.  I've already got big plans to build a game engine and other stuff like that using Java.

When I started with Wyde, I had those same big ideas, but it just wasn't viable with the tools available.  First, just to develop with the IDE, you need a license.  That's fine if I'm using my work laptop, but I don't think that Wyde would have liked me getting a limitless license on my personal computer.  Plus, I'd have to compile it down to C++ using Visual Studio, which I didn't have access to on my own PC.

Man, Java is so much easier.  The best IDE (Eclipse) is free.  Most of the other good tools and frameworks are free.  Google has server space for your apps that is free.  Once again, I can't state how exciting this is.

Now, don't get me wrong, working for Wyde was one of the best experiences in my life.  I learned a lot about projects, business, insurance and myself during my time there.  I know that I can lead teams, run and participate in projects and design components in a larger application.  All of that I learned at Wyde.  Even if my knowledge of Wyde's proprietary language isn't particularly useful, the technical, personal and management skills that I learned there are invaluable to growing my career.

I think that I'm getting a little off topic, so I'd like to conclude this post by giving you all a link to my AppSpot and saying that you should check back there often.  Right now it's just a little "Hello world" app, but soon it will be so much more.  I'm planning something big that I hope you all will enjoy.  I will, of course, keep updating my blog with updates to the app that I'm building, but more frequent updates will come from my Twitter or Facebook pages.

Speaking Out With My Geek Out

As you all know, I'm a geek.  I wear that label proudly.  The word is in the name of this blog, after all.  In high school, being a geek or a nerd was a bad thing.  I didn't have a problem with my status, but I know a lot of people who did.  I've written a couple of posts in the past about being a geek or a nerd.  You can read about the differences (if any), and my own growth as a geek.

The reason that I'm writing another post about my own geekiness is for the Speak Out With Your Geek Out event.  I gave a couple links in my last post, but here they are again.  I think that geeks are quite vocal about our pursuits already, but I think that this event is designed to have us unite in our passions.  Passion for our hobbies/jobs/etc. is part of what makes us geeks.  Some put being smarter than other people as being a part of being a geek or a nerd, but I don't like that.  It puts us on a pedestal that I don't always think applies to all of us.  In fact, I think that there is a little geek in all of us.  Isn't there something that you are passionate about?  Is there something that you're willing to argue about for hours?  Then you might have a little geek in you.

A lot of people would either take offense to that, or let that bother them.  I say, own it!  Be proud of yourself!  I value my geekiness and it's part of what makes me, well, me.  I think that I've had pretty good self-esteem throughout most of my life and I think that it's good to feel good about every part of you.  I own my geekiness and I think that this is an integral part of the event.  Speak out with your geek out!

That brings up why geeks, in general, are so vocal about their hobbies/interests.  We're a passionate folk.  We love what we love and like to share it with others.  Sometimes this is received well, but other times we are derided for it.  This whole event was inspired by an article that a blogger, who will go unnamed here, wrote that derided a Magic player for his hobby.  Now, I've been known to be a little judgmental in my old age (btw, GET OFF MY LAWN), but I try not to be.  You shouldn't judge others by their perfectly healthy, normal and legal activities.  If it makes them happy, why is it your business to judge them for it?

That being said, I think that being a geek is becoming more mainstream.  I don't want to sound like a hipster here (I was a geek before it was cool), but I might end up doing that.  With the rise of superhero, popular science fiction and fantasy movies, things that were typically geeky are getting more popular.  Look at vampires.  True blood, Twilight, etc. are turning something that was the subject of geeky literature and roleplaying games into a mainstream money making machine.  And that's what it's all about.  The movie and television industries have found a way to turn these items into profitable ventures.  I, for one, applaud them for it.  I'm happy to have them producing fantasy/science fiction/superhero movies because they'll be better produced and better quality.

So, to wrap up this post.  If you're a geek, be proud of it!  If you don't think you're a geek, look within yourself and see your inner geek.  Don't shy away from it, accept it.  You might see that you like to identify with the geek culture that is evolving.

PS: Blogger, geekiness should be a word.

Critical Hit - MC Frontalot Concert Review

When I heard that MC Frontalot was coming to town, I was so excited.  I've enjoyed his music for years and I'd wanted to see him for quite some time.  Front was the first nerdcore act that I came in contact with through the GeekDad Hiptrax podcast.  The song was "Wallflower".  After that I soon found "This Old Man" and "It's Pitch Dark".  I quickly became a lifetime fan.

My wife agreed to go with me, which turned out to be totally awesome.  She was great company and enjoyed the atmosphere and the music.  We got there early and waited at the Spring Street Tavern (the club was in the basement).  We spotted Front walking around, which was cool and unexpected.

As the door time approached, I got more and more excited and the bar got more and more crowded.  They started allowing people down the stairs and Janice and I were second in line.  We paid our entrance fees (only $7 each!).  Right in the door was the merch table and I bought Solved! (before it's official release!).  I was excited to listen to it.

The first act came on a little later.  It was a band named "Trendy Trendy Space Vegans".  I originally thought they were called "Trendy Tranny Space Vegans", which fit into their attire (the sax player wore a bra on stage).  Their sound wasn't bad, and they did have a sax player, which I liked.  The lead singer had a lot of vocal range.  I'm not about to go out and buy all their music, but I'd listen to a couple of their songs if I happened upon them.






The next act was called "Valley Meadows".  They were an unlikely rap duo.  The shorter gentleman is a substitute teacher (I know because they rapped about it).  We didn't get much information on the other guy (except that he's divorced, they rapped about that too).  I thought their flow was pretty good, but they were rapping over borrowed beats and didn't write enough lyrics to last the entire song.  A couple of times they had to ask the DJ to cut the beat off after they'd finished their rapping.  I liked their rhymes and if they get their act a little more polished, they could put on a really good show.

The next act was Brandon Patton.  I'd heard the name before, but I didn't really remember where.  It struck me though when he took the stage that Brandon Patton was none other than Bl4k Lotus, MC Frontalot's bassist.  He was the real surprise of the concert too.  He played a set with an acoustic guitar and it seriously rocked.  He got the crowd into it with a Paula Abdul song of all things.  When he played a drinking song by the Pogues, the place practically vibrated with energy.  It was amazing.  I don't know how he did it; he played his own set and then went on to play a full set with MC Frontalot.  The man must have a ton of energy.

Front's set started out with a high energy version of "Tongue-Clucking Grammarian".  The way that the entire band got into the music was hypnotizing.  It was clear that the four of them are doing something that they love and truly enjoying performing the music.  They played three or four songs from Solved! after that with an older Front song or two mixed in.  I don't stay up late all that often, so before the MC Frontalot set began, I was getting pretty tired, but all of that melted away when they took the stage.  The band's energy was contagious and the whole set was a lot of fun.  When they played "It's Pitch Dark" and "Goth Girls", the crowd (me included, of course) really got into it.  It was truly amazing.  They finished their set with a two song encore featuring "I Heart Fags", which was dedicated to Minneapolis because we were recently named the gayest metropolis in the country; and the PAX Theme.  They merged in some elements from another theme quite popular with the geek crowd, but I'm not going to spoil it for those of you who might be attending PAX this year.  Let's just say that it sent shivers down my spine when they started playing it.

I've been to concerts before, but mostly in large venues with larger than life bands like Metallica and Megadeth.  The smallest venue I've seen a band in was when my wife, a friend and I went to Reel Big Fish at the Quest club in Minneapolis.  It was a two-story club with a large stage and large floor.  It was also a great concert, but none of the other concerts I've been to had the intimate feeling that the Frontalot concert did.  My wife and I managed to stand front (no pun intended) and center.  I have no trouble in saying that this was the best concert that I've ever been to.  I don't think that I'll ever go to another coliseum or festival show again, but I'd happily go see any of my favorite bands at a small club again.  MC Frontalot definitely scored a Critical Hit against Minneapolis last Friday.

Lego Photography

I've been following the "a LEGO a day" blog for a while now and if you like LEGO, you should check it out. Since before Janice got her new awesome camera, I've been wanting to try to take similar pictures with my personal collection of LEGO minifigs. So, before we moved I tried with her old camera. The outside pictures with the skier came out great, but the indoor ones that I tried didn't come out so well.

A few months later, I bought Janice her camera for her birthday. After that, we moved and a couple of weeks ago I tried again. Most of the shots I took with the new camera didn't come out. Apparently, having glasses is a big disadvantage when trying to manually focus the camera. Below are the fruits of my efforts from both tries.

Caption: The King leads his men across an old bridge.
Notes: This is the minifigs on the rail of our deck. I tried to focus on the king and have the knights be out of focus.

Caption: Halia is ready for the luau.
Notes: The minifig is standing on sand that we brought back from our trip to Hawaii.

Caption: Rick out for a midnight ski.
Notes: Taken with the old camera at our Hastings house. I think that the skier pics turned out great. There are three more below!

Caption: Rick pauses to admire the view.

Caption: The powder is awesome!

Caption: Rick doesn't seem to notice the cliff coming up!

My Favorite Websites

You like websites, don't you? Of course you do, you're on the Internet now reading my blog. Shouldn't you be working? Just kidding, come back! This post is about some of my favorite websites. I've done a post on my favorite websites before, here, but it has been a couple of years though, so I thought I'd put up an updated list today.

I'm always interested in seeing what pages that others visit frequently. I'd also like to share the sites I visit the most too as a way of "spreading the word", so to speak. I still visit most of these sites regularly, but not always directly. I've mentioned Feed Demon before and I still use it quite a bit to keep up with changes on my favorite websites. When I first mentioned the tool, I had about six or seven feeds, but now I'm up to fifty-six. That might sound like a lot, but it's a quick and easy way to keep up with a lot of websites in a short time.

The list here will mostly consist of the sites in my RSS feed, with the exception of:

Twitter - Twitter seems to be the kind of thing you either love or hate. I personally know a couple of people that absolutely love it, but I know a lot of people that absolutely refuse to even look at it. I fall into the love category. I think that it's interesting to have a look into other people's lives and what they choose to share in < 140 characters. There's a bit of celebrity <-> normal person interaction that occurs on Twitter that I like a lot too. I've only had a couple of short interactions with a couple of minor nerdy celebrities, but I've only been on Twitter for a few months now. Twitter is not in my RSS feed since it would probably overload Feed Demon. I normally just keep the Twitter website open or use the iPod/iPhone app.

Bad Astronomer - This is the Discovery blog written by Phil Plait. He's a brilliant astronomer and his posts are witty, smart and often filled with beautiful images of the universe. He does write about non-astronomy topics occasionally as he is a self described skeptic, but those posts are also well written and researched.

Dork Tower Logo

Disalmanac - I stumbled upon Disalmanac in a retweet from someone I follow on Twitter. I'm not sure who, or I would give them credit. I'm not really sure what to say about Disalmanac except for that it's really funny. The blog and Twitter posts are filled with fake facts about a topic. Check it out for a laugh or two.

Dork Tower - This is a web comic put on by John Kovalic, who you might know as the illustrator of the amazingly popular Munchkin card games. I also follow him on Twitter and he's quite funny.

Nerdy Apple Bottom - Right around Halloween this lady's blog went viral when her son wore a Daphne costume for Halloween. Her blog is interesting and I like her viewpoints on bullying and other topics that she's written about on her blog.

WWdN - This is Wil Wheaton's blog. Since he is a personal hero of mine, I follow him on Twitter and read his blog whenever there's a new post. He's quite a good writer and his posts are all very interesting. If you haven't read any of his work (books, short stories, blog), check it out, you'll be glad you did.

xkcd logo

XKCD - This site is a pretty long running web comic. It's often funny, often serious, always interesting.

What are some of your favorite sites? Like I said, I'm always interested in finding more sites to read.

New Career Path

I've been thinking a lot lately about my career. I'm just not sure that Software Development/Project Management is for me. I've always been interested in science and I've decided to pursue a career as a scientist. To be more specific, I'm going to be a MAD SCIENTIST!

I've been dabbling in all the fields that you'd expect from a Mad Scientist. Robotics, Lasers, Alien Technology, you know, the basics. I've got a nice prototype robot in my secret basement lair and enough spare body parts to attempt my own Frankenstein.

I'll be attending the Annual Mad Scientist Association Convention (AMSAC) in Toronto in a couple of months. They used to meet in Las Vegas, but they decided that Las Vegas was too predictable a locale. Toronto is a city on the rise in Mad Scientist circles. Maybe I'll see some of my heroes there, such as Dr. Horrible.

So, stay tuned for some big announcements concerning my demands and threats to national and world security.

New Look

Hello everyone. I've decided to go with a new look for the blog. The old template wasted a lot of screen real estate and I think that this new look is generally more appealing anyways.

Stay tuned for another Story a Week this Saturday! It's already written, it just needs a little editing.

First External Plug!

Hello dear readers. I just discovered that I've been plugged on one of the blogs that I read regularly, Hipster Please! I'm very excited about it. You can read the post here! Z, you rock!

w00tstock 2.6

So I went to a little show called w00tstock on Wednesday night in LA with a couple of coworkers. I originally learned about the group that does w00tstock just after they did a show in Minneapolis. Boy was I bummed that I had discovered them just after missing an opportunity to see them. Luckily, most of the show's participants live in CA, so I knew that I'd have an opportunity sooner or later, assuming that some shows would be during the week. Then, a couple of months ago, they announced a show in LA. I was so excited! I bought a ticket the same day they went on sale and practically counted the days until the show.

Before I get into the details of the show, let's do a little background on it. w00tstock, in case you didn't know, is a comedy/music show founded by Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage and the song duo Paul & Storm. It's kind of a nerdy variety show. They do a lot of music, standup and show funny videos. You can go to their website if you want more detailed information on the history and such. You could also use the google and the youtubes to find more information.

So, last night my coworkers and I left work, changed and headed to downtown LA. It took us about seventy-five minutes to drive the thirty some miles to the area that the show was located. One of my coworkers had done some research and found a decent restaurant within walking distance of the theater. It was called Norm's Restaurant and is on La Cienega Blvd. The food was excellent. I had a really good French Dip sandwich (probably the best I've ever had).

After dinner we walked to the theater and got our seat assignments from will call. The theater is called the Coronet theater. They have two show rooms, w00tstock was in the Largo room. Their website says that it seats around two hundred eighty people, so it was a very intimate show with a lot of crowd interaction, which was part of what made the show so great. I imagine that w00tstock could have probably drawn a thousand people or so, but that would have been too many, in my opinion.

My memories of the show are still blending in together into one big happy memory, which hinders my retelling, but alludes to what a great experience it was. I started the evening a little disappointed that one of my personal heroes, Wil Wheaton, was not going to be performing (he's filming Eureka in Vancouver), but I quickly got over it. I was also expecting to have parts of the show where I was bored or at the very least only mildly enjoying myself. It just wasn't true. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole show. Even the people I hadn't heard of before the show were very entertaining and the only time I ended up being bored or not entertained was during the intermission. I can tell you that I will be seeking out material made by the artists and such that performed from now on.

There were a lot of highlights. One of my favorite moments was Mike Phirman singing Chicken Monkey Duck. I'd seen the video online, but it was so much better live. Another highlight was the Pi song, by Hard & Phirm (Chris Hardwick and Mike Phirman). Chris Hardwick's monologue was good as was Adam Savage's. All of the music was very good. Some of the other artists (all good) were: Garfunkel & Oates, Molly Lewis, and Eric Schwartz. It was pretty awesome to see Dr. Demento live and hear some excerpts of songs that he's played in his forty years of broadcasting. Also, Weird Al showed up to pay tribute to Dr. Demento too! The crowd cheered for at least a couple of minutes when he came bounding onto the stage. A fun time was had by all.

If you ever considered going to w00tstock, don't hesistate! Even if you are not of the nerdy persuasion, you should go. It's a lot of fun and even though a lot of the references are nerdy in nature, the music is good and the comedy is good. I think that everyone would enjoy the event.

About the Prologue

The post below this one is the prologue to the novel that I'm trying to write. Please read it and if you have some feedback, leave a comment! Constructive criticism is never ignored and always appreciated!

A little background: I've been contemplating writing a novel for a very long time. I've written dozens of short stories, but they never told the whole story as I saw it in my head because of the short format of a short story. A novel seemed like too monumental of a task for me, but the feeling that I have stories to tell just never stopped and so I just started writing one day earlier this year.

I'm about halfway done with the novel. It's mostly a science fiction book, but I'd like to think that it will appeal to more than just sci fi geeks like myself. It's not overly sciency (is that a word?) and it's not too far out of the realm of plausibility.

The reason that I'm sharing the prologue here is that I'm absolutely dying to share the story with the world, but I know that I have to wait until it's complete, so I decided that it couldn't hurt to share the prologue. It's one part of the story that I'm particularly proud of, and isn't likely to change from here to publication date (if that ever happens!). I hope that you like it!

Favorite song of the moment: Spamtec - Come Around

Geeky Awakening

I've been a geek (or nerd, if you prefer) my entire life. I never had an issue with this. I always accepted that this was who I was and it was who I wanted to be. It wasn't until relatively recently, however, that I "discovered" the broader spectrum of geek culture.

Sure, I played D&D, video games, read sci-fi (or syfy, if you prefer) and fantasy books, etc., but I wasn't directly connected to geek culture, I was just moving on a parallel path. My journey into exploring geek culture started just over a year ago. I was looking for reading material or blogs or something about raising kids (we had an almost two year old and our son was on the way) when I did a search for geek and dad or something like that. I then stumbled upon the Geek Dad blog. I was immediately hooked and began to read it every day. I had found my first connection to the greater geek community, but it didn't stop there...

Through that blog I found their podcast that included regular episodes featuring geeky music. I really enjoyed listening to the podcasts, but I didn't make an effort to find out more about the artists or music. This was partly because I didn't realize at the time how big the scene was or that the information was readily available through quick searches. Nerds and geeks rule the internets, of course our music is going to be easily accessible there.

I was just starting to delve deeper when my son was born. I remained in a far orbit of the geek community for a long time during the first few months of his life. I didn't venture further inside, nor did I drift out of it to my prior state.

After a few months, things settled in my house and I got more free time (aka sleep). Also, I began to travel for work again, so I had more time to surf the net and listen to podcasts. That's when I started listening to Radio Free Hipster. Z, the geeky personality behind the podcast, introduced me to a lot more music that is right up my alley. Also, through Z's blog "Hipster, Please" and a few other blogs and websites that I found, I am getting more into the greater geek culture.

I discovered (or was led to) geeky icons like Jonathan Coulton, Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage, MC Frontalot, and a lot more. Of course I knew of Wil Wheaton and Adam Savage before my geeky awakening, but I hadn’t read much about them and didn’t know about wootstock either.

A couple of months ago I picked up a RSS reader, FeedDemon, which has helped me keep up with all of the websites that I am now fond of visiting. I've also often considered joining Twitter since a lot of my geeky idols are on there, but I can't bring myself to pull the trigger on that one.

My new affinity to the greater geek culture has led me to a dilemma of sorts. I've always known about PAX and Comic-con and other geeky gatherings, but the more I read about them from the websites I am now visiting, the more I want to go to them. I haven't been able to work going to any of them into my schedule, but maybe once I'm not regularly traveling, I might be able to work do just that. The problem is that with my travel schedule, I don't get enough time with my family as it is, much less taking a weekend out of that time to do something frivolous, not matter how much fun it might be. Going to PAX this weekend would be awesome, but at this point I don't want to take time away from my family to do that.

I find that I may have reached the pinnacle of my connectedness to geek culture by not going to one of these gatherings, but at this point, I can't convince myself to spend the time and money to travel out to something. If only there was a big convention like that in Minneapolis coming up soon! I've also read about people like me putting together small geeky conventions, such as Nerdapalooza, but I don't have the resources or time to do that, much less the connections or anything to get something like that going.

So, that’s the story of my geeky awakening. I feel like I identify more with the greater geeky community, which is good, but I also feel like I might be missing out on a lot of fun by skipping the awesome sounding events occurring around the country.

And, like always, I will be sharing my favorite song of the moment: The Grammar Club – Balloon Flight. The reason that I do this is to possibly introduce you to a song or artist you may not have heard before. I encourage you all to do a quick google search or youtube search for these songs/artists. You might like what you hear.

Role Playing Your Way to Fitness

In my last post I talked about an idea that I had to motivate myself to improve my physical fitness. Since this was an opportunity to improve in other ways too, I set out to develop a simple roleplaying style system that would allow me to track my progress and improvement in several areas. I used my knowledge of D&D and since I’ve heavily modified the rules of the game in the past it was quite easy to design a spreadsheet that did everything that I wanted it too using the basic rules of the game. Since I wasn’t quite sure the extent of the activities that I would want to track, I made the spreadsheet in such a way that it was quite easy to add a new activity type to track.

Developing the spreadsheet only took a couple of hours. I started with a basic D&D character sheet on the first page. It has the basic character information: name, race, class level, xp, traits (i.e. Strength, Wisdom, etc.) and abilities. I thought of adding feats and merits and flaws, but I thought that keeping it simple was the way to go.

The next step was to define some of the rules of the system. Some of these rules come straight out of D&D. The six basic traits are the same as the D&D ones with the bonuses that come from them calculated the same as well. Abilities are a set of skills that will garner bonus XP for activities. Each one has a trait that goes with it (i.e. the Aerobic ability goes with the Constitution trait) that gives a bonus (or detriment if your trait is low enough). Rather than using abilities to determine whether or not an action was successful, they instead award bonus XP when you complete an activity. This way, you can increase the amount of XP you gain for certain activities as a way to motivate yourself to gain levels faster.

The next thing that I did was to start making a list of activities. Each activity has an ability that goes with it (i.e. Jogging goes with the Aerobic ability) and a rate at which it awards XP (i.e. Jogging gives 5 points per 10 minutes). Once I had a decent list of activities and a pretty complete list of abilities, I went on to define the races and classes. I knew that your chosen race would adjust your trait scores (similar to D&D), but I didn’t quite know what a class would do for you. In D&D, your class effects your combat ability, the amount of abilities you get and a number of irrelevant items. I wanted the system to be fair, so I didn’t want a rogue to get more abilities than a barbarian (like in traditional D&D) because then a rogue would get XP so much faster. I looked back at what Ken Denmead (see my last post) did in his system, and thought that I could use a similar idea. He gave each class two bonus skills tags (I won’t explain tags, I didn’t employ that idea), so I thought that I could give each class two bonus abilities instead. This would help differentiate each class and would help someone specialize their character in two abilities to gain more XP in those two areas.

Right about now I was feeling pretty good about the completeness of the system. I entered the day’s activities as a way of testing the system and after a few minor adjustments I called my work complete. I tracked the next couple of days until I got home from my business trip. I showed the system to my wife and she was on board. We discussed the goal (level 10) and the Major Prize ™ and settled on something we could both agree upon. We also made a couple of minor changes to the system and added a bunch of activities that she thought of that I hadn’t. The game was afoot!

We weighed in and started tracking our activities, I started over in order to be fair (I had amassed some XP in my testing days). It hasn’t been too long, but she is leading by about 10%. I’m not too worried about the deficit. I think that I can bridge the gap and the game has just begun anyways. I would like to mention that my mother-in-law and my wife have also begun a separate challenge between the two of them. They aren’t using the same D&D style system, but their system is points based as well. I’m not privy to all of the details of their challenge, but I know that their activity list is different and I’m sure that the point values are too.
I plan to post an update in perhaps a month to let you all know how the system is working out. If you are interested in having the spreadsheet, please leave a comment with your email (or contact me privately if you know me personally) and I’ll send it out to you.

I’ll post some screenshots in the space below, so keep reading if you’d like to see them.

Favorite song of the moment: Supercommuter – Itty Bitty Pigeons

None of these screenshots show the inner workings of the spreadsheet, if you want these details contact me and I will send you the sheet. It works pretty much on formulas and lookups without the use of macros.

This is the generic info for a character. The race and class boxes are drop downs for easy entry. The XP boxes will also automatically fill themselves out based on your activities and level.




These are the character's traits. All you have to do is enter the score you have and the bonuses will be automatically calculated. The zero at the bottom is the number of traits you have left to distribute among the six options. Instead of rolling, I chose to allow manual distribution starting with each score at a 10 (then modifying for race) and giving 18 points for distribution. Also, at every third level you get an additional point (i.e. the zero will change to a one automatically at level three).



This is the list of abilities for a character. You start with six abilities to apply in the ranks column and you will get six at each level. The number in the bottom row will update when a level is made showing how many ranks are left to assign.









This is a sample of entering activities in the sheet. The activity boxes are all drop downs allowing for easy data entry. The types then are automatically filled out based on the activity and the points will be automatically calculated when a volume is entered for the activity. The bonus is also automatic as is the total. One issue is that if you add ranks to a skill, the total will automatically adjust, hence the banked points column. You must hand enter this and it will update the XP on the character sheet.

Back in Business

Hello people on the intarwebs. I know that I haven’t posted since September (and in that post promised more posts to come), but who cares? It’s not like anyone reads this anyways… no, don’t hit the back button…I do want you to read my blog.

Anyways, I would like to state my intention to write at least ten entries before the year is out (that’s two a month for those keeping track). I have the next three or four entry ideas in my head and even have the first one written already (I’m not going to share it today, I’d like to re-read it first).

I think that I’ve set myself an attainable goal and with all of the travelling I’ve been doing lately, I think that I’ll actually have the time to put the jumble of words in my head into a somewhat cohesive string for your perusal.

That’s it for now, stay tuned for my upcoming post. It should be a good one.

Frink out.

Favorite Websites

I haven't posted in quite a while. My wife and I have welcomed our son into the world and now that it's been over two months since he's come, I feel ready to renew my interest in continuing this blog. I'd like to apologize for my absence and I hope that it doesn't detract from any enjoyment anyone has had from reading my blog.
As my first back to blogging post, I thought that I'd give a quick rundown of some of my favorite websites that I regularly visit.

Geek Dad Blog - A Wired blog that I found that talks a lot about being a geek and being a parent (they have a lot of female contributors, regardless of the name). A lot of the posts I find really interesting and many are direct corollaries with my own life as a geekparent.

Hipster Please - Hipsterplease is a website I found after I subscribed to the GeekDad podcast. Every other GeekDad podcast episode is dedicated to geeky music. This website is the blog for one of the contributors of the GeekDad hiptrax podcast episodes. It shares a lot about music and most of it is geeky music.

Lego365 - I recently ran into this photo blog and I find that it's full of awesomeness. I looked at every photo in one single sitting because I couldn't wait to see all of them. I just wish that the writer of this blog would continue his work past 365 days.

Facebook - Yes, I like Facebook. I enjoy keeping in contact with friends from all over the world and follow their lives by glancing at what they are willing to share on their facebook pages. While it's true that many people can be truly annoying with constant updates, unending comments on everything, etc.; I still find it a rewarding and fun website.

Kongregate - This is a site dedicated to hosting flash games. It's also a major time sink for me at times. Many games have acheivements attached to them and each user can collect these badges and earn points to gain levels. While levels don't do anything for you, it's really a competitive thing for me. I like going into one of the chat rooms (you can chat while playing) and being the highest level user in the room (I'm level 40 currently, almost 41).

Woot - Kids Woot - Shirt Woot - Woot is really awesome if you're looking for a good deal on random stuff. They sell a new item every day until the end of the day, or it sells out. You do have to watch out though because some of the items are labelled "Refurbished". I haven't bought any of those, but I almost did when I saw a Quad-core computer for $399.

Dr. Horrible - This is the most awesome musical that has or ever will be made. You can watch it for free on hulu, but I paid for it on iTunes because I wanted to support the idea of independent online studios like what Joss Whedon was trying to do when he came up with this.

Penny Arcade - If you haven't heard of Penny Arcade, then I feel sorry for you. Just kidding. It's a web comic that's been going for over a decade and is full of win. Read some of them and you'll be hooked. In my humble opinion, it's the best web comic I've ever read.

So, those are the sites that I like. Feel free to leave a comment listing some of your favorite websites.
Favorite song of the moment - RickRoll + Mario by I Fight Dragons. Awesome live song with some chiptunes thrown in.