At Casual Connect. (Thanks, Paul!)
Casual Connect
Casual Success
For questwriting at work today, I needed a map of the Next Island tropical continent. We don’t have a giant printer, so I printed out pages of map sections. Then, I looked at the unlabeled squares of terrain that I needed to reassemble into a useful game map.
All my years of casual gaming were just preparation for this moment.
(If you ever need someone to unlock a door with a slider puzzle, or arrange things in threes, I’m your girl.)
Unconventional Dating
There’s my article in the summer issue of Kraze magazine! Unconventional Dates, that is. I don’t think we need any further comments on this.
I’m really proud of this one. You can find Kraze in (most) Barnes & Noble stores, and you can find my article on relationships in with great interviews, sex and dating columns, a gorgeous summer fashion spread, and a thoughtful editorial on polyamory.
Posted in My Other Writing, New York City
Tagged dead trees, Kraze, my other writing, New York City
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Further Uses For SCVNGR
“Have you noticed that by the time we sit down in a restaurant, you’re always starving?” I asked Harold. “I point this out only because I thought if I didn’t order quickly enough, you might stab me, and also, the waitress ran off after taking your order, and is now cowering in terror.”
“What do you mean?” Harold asked. “You might be exaggerating.”
To prove my point, I scrolled through my recent SCVNGR check-ins. “This is when you were starving so we went to Scopello’s –”
“You mean Restaurante Italiano?”
“You called it that because you said you were too hungry to remember the real name! This is when we went to that sandwich shop because you were starving to death. You starving to death again. Ok, you get a pass, this next check-in is me drinking with Roy. This one is you starving to death. Me eating lunch with Caitlin. You starving to death. Starving to death. Starving to death. Do you see where I’m going here?
“You can either start noticing when you’re a little bit hungry, or I will start carrying Ziploc bags of Goldfish and juiceboxes around in my purse.”
If you follow me on SCVNGR, you might have seen that my next check-in was a stop to buy Goldfish.
Fish Fountain At Classon
When I think about this summer in the future, this is the picture I want to have.
Apps That Need To Exist: Been There Map
The last time I was in Los Angeles, Figment and I were on Sunset going to Meltdown comics, and I magically started to recognize places. Places in Los Angeles are becoming familiar to me, which sort of blows my mind a little.
Then when I was in Seattle last week, I kept noting places for when I’m back in town for Serious Play. I found coffeeshops with truly stunning coffee (as opposed to the merely great coffee), a great Thai place (Thanks, Mona!) and a not-so-steep walk from my hotel to the conference.
Been There Map would have a one-button function to instantly mark my current location on a GPS, and allow me to add a little note like this is where you always turn left, Meg, but the subway’s actually to the right or watermelon margaritas I’ve been meaning to try.
Then, instead of getting directions based on those confusing street names and compass directions, I could see that where I’m going is two blocks down from the bad Starbucks or across from the good bookstore.
I think I want my real life to have the type of functionally that computer RPG maps have.
In A Name
At Casual Connect, Nicholas Berry from DataGenetics gave a really fascinating lecture on data mining and inference. The most interesting part was on names, using proper data to back up exactly the implications names give in fiction. (My words, not his.) Although, he did use charts and graphs to prove that people are called Ethel and Florence are old, and people called Madison and Jordann are tweens.
A day or so after that, I was chatting with someone about the DataGenetics talk. As alwaysm I dutifully turned up to mixers and networkers to nervously trade business cards, but ended up having my best conference chats waiting for the elevator, in line for coffee or sharing cabs.
“My wife’s best friend,” this fellow told me, after a short discussion of online privacy, “Is called Esther. Now, there aren’t a lot of young, hip Esthers, and she gets endless mail scams, obviously preying on the elderly.”
“My college roommate,” I said, almost choking with giggles, “Was called Esther, but she changed it. So your wife’s friend is defintely the only Esther under 60.”
Power Play
I was really excited when I saw posts on my Tumblr feed announcing Reilly Brown and Kurt Christenson’s new comic Power Play:
Our story revolves around Mac, a college student in NYC who suddenly finds himself with superpowers. Does he try to fight crime? Maybe try to take over the world? Maybe put his underwear on the outside just for fun? NO! He he joins the Power Play Games, a full contact, extreme sports league with other people with strange powers and remarkable abilities!
The premise sounds pretty great — I’ve been saying the imaginary X-Men spinoff I want to read is about daily life in Professor Xavier’s School for the gifted. Just the kids and their superpowers and teen angst, not trying to foil Magneto’s evil plots or save the world or do anything epic.
I’ve liked Reilly’s artwork since our high school magazine days and I enjoy Kurt’s essays on Unwinnable (a great blog covering indie games and comics), and I’m pretty excited to see what they’ve made. There’s a free preview issue out today on Comixology.
Long Walks In The Cloud
Long Walks In The Cloud, by Simpson’s Paradox
Saw this at the Microsoft table at Casual Connect.
The other shirt is “You Compute Me” — apparently these guys missed the memo that all game conference shirts must be XXL and black.
