Lego video games

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For some reason the other day (other week?) I was thinking about the various Lego video game franchises out in the wild:

  • Lego Star Wars (2 games)
  • Lego Indiana Jones (2 games)
  • Lego Batman and Robin
  • Lego Harry Potter

These games are actually really fun, and I got to thinking about other franchises that might be good fits:

  • Lego Pirates of the Caribbean
  • Lego Matrix
  • Lego Lord of the Rings
  • Lego James Bond
  • Lego Spider-Man
  • Lego Back to the Future
  • Lego Die Hard

(Even though I just came up with that last one while writing this, it makes me smile; something about “Yippee-ki-yay” and Lego minifigs is just too good to pass up.)

So I typed in “Lego video games” in Google and linked to Wikipedia’s List of Lego video games and lo and behold, not only is there a third Lego Star Wars coming out this year… but there actually is a Lego Pirates of the Caribbean coming out as well.

Huh.

My Ignite Bend presentation

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Yes, it’s been weeks, but I’m finally talking about my Ignite Bend presentation—it helps that it’s finally on YouTube, since I’m going to embed it here.

I didn’t have to present until after intermission, and for the most part I was fine the first half, with occasional bouts of nerves. But standing to the side, lined up, waiting for my turn was nerve-wracking.

But once I hit the stage, two things surprised me: it really went very quickly—it was over almost before I knew it—and it was a lot of fun.

The only snafu I ran into was with my beer—as befitting Ignite Bend tradition, I had a bottle of Jubelale on stage with me; it was incorporated into my presentation and I was taking occasional sips. But! I failed to account for any spillage—which of course is exactly what happened. It’s really not obvious when you watch the YouTube video—if you didn’t know I spilled, you’d wonder why I talk about “cleaning the floor” and “afraid to take a sip.”

The spill happens right around the “bottling” slide, of course. The beer foamed up and spilled down the bottle as I drank, running down my hands and dripping on the stage floor. It threw me for a few seconds, but I was able to deal with it.

And the presentation turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself:

And, in case you’re interested in my actual slideshow, the Google Docs version is here.

Help fix homebrewing legislation in Oregon

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I’m cross-posting this with The Brew Site because it’s a hugely important issue for homebrewers in Oregon. This is an email from the Brewers Association that’s been hitting the inboxes of Oregon homebrewers over the past week, and it’s for a good cause: supporting Oregon Senate Bill 444 which seeks to amend the 30-year-old law regarding homebrewed beer which was reinterpreted last year.

Many of you are likely aware that the Oregon Liquor Control Commission determined last year that under existing Oregon law, homebrew cannot be consumed outside the home where the beer was produced.

The American Homebrewers Association is supporting an effort by the Oregon Home Brewers Alliance (OHBA) to resolve this issue. The OHBA has been working with Senator Floyd Prozanski, a homebrewer, on Senate Bill 444 along with the already filed amendments to SB 444. While there are other bills addressing homebrewing, the OHBA and the AHA support SB 444 as the most comprehensive of these in restoring to legality all of the activities homebrewers participated in prior to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission’s revision of their interpretation of homebrew law last year, including entering homebrew competitions and sharing homebrew at club meetings.

How Can You Help?
Senate Bill 444 is being scheduled for a hearing before the Senate Business, Transportation and Economic Development Committee Thursday, February 10. We ask you to take a few minutes to call or email the members of the committee and politely urge them to support the passage of SB 444 along with Senator Prozanski’s amendments to the bill. The committee members need to hear from you if this bill is to succeed. Contacting legislators is quick and easy, and every contact they get from homebrewers will help ensure our success.

Senate Business, Transportation and Economic Development Committee Contact Information:

Sen. Lee Beyer, Chair
sen.leebeyer@state.or.us
Capitol Phone: 503-986-1706

Sen. Jason Atkinson, Vice-Chair
sen.jasonatkinson@state.or.us
Capitol Phone: 503-986-1703
District Phone: 541-282-6502

Sen. Ginny Burdick
sen.ginnyburdick@state.or.us
Capitol Phone: 503-986-1718

Sen. Chris Edwards
sen.chrisedwards@state.or.us
Capitol Phone: 503-986-1707

Sen. Fred Girod
sen.fredgirod@state.or.us
Capitol Phone: 503-986-1709
District Phone: 503-769-4321

Sen. Bruce Starr
sen.brucestarr@state.or.us
Capitol Phone: 503-986-1715
District Phone: 503-352-0922

Thank you for your support of homebrewers, your action could make the difference in whether or not this legislation becomes law. Please forward this message on to any other Oregon residents that you feel would be interested in supporting this bill.

On the road to Ignite Bend

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In my previous post I talked about submitting a proposal to Ignite Bend (and what Ignite actually is). Today was the official “reveal” of the nine speakers selected to present, and yes, I was picked.

(I actually received the official email yesterday.)

Now of course the real nerves and doubts set in. I’ve already started working on my slides—several days ago in fact—and it’s immediately apparent that distilling down information about brewing beer (in “10 Easy Steps”!) while coordinating with 15-second intervals on the slide rotation is no small chore.

Although it occurred to me that I don’t have to cover every piece of information in the speaking portion of the presentation—that’s what the slides are for. So the trick is in balancing slides between humor and information and letting them do half the work.

One of my problems in talking about beer and brewing is, of course, that I can talk on and on about the subject and unload a lot of information about it; so this will be an interesting challenge.

Ignite Bend

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So I went and did something today I’ve never really done before, and is already making me nervous: I submitted a proposal to do a presentation at the next Ignite Bend event.

First, though, some backstory. Ignite Bend is the local version of the “Ignite” series of events started by O’Reilly; it’s a fun, high-energy event where speakers get five minutes on stage with a PowerPoint (or compatible) slideshow to do a presentation on anything they want. Here’s the Ignite tagline:

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Launch a web site? Teach a hack? Talk about recent learnings, successes, failures? Around the world communities have been putting together Ignite events to show their answers.

So you get five minutes on stage, and a total of 20 slides in your slideshow—which will automatically rotate after 15 seconds, no matter what.

I’ve watched most of the previous Ignite Bend events online and attended the last one and it was incredibly fun and good-spirited; and in the back of my mind I thought it might be cool to do a presentation, too. After all, it’s only five minutes, right? And even though I’ve enjoyed all the other speakers I’ve seen, many were clearly as nervous as I imagine I would be and they still did great.

So today I did it: I submitted a proposal to do a presentation called “How to Brew Beer in 10 Easy Steps.” I don’t know yet for sure if I will be picked; mine is one of 20 submissions and only nine speakers will be selected (by vote). But I figure pick something I know, right?

But even so, this is way out of my usual comfort zone; in Real Life I am not a public speaker and am much more of an introvert than you might think. So I’m (at the moment, until the real nerves kick in) looking at this as an opportunity to try something new and hopefully grow from it. (Cue after-school special music.)

Ignite Bend is taking place next month, February 9th. I’ll post more about it as it unfolds.

Pandora

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The last several weeks I’ve been checking out Pandora, the “Internet Radio” site that lets you build custom stations of music based on your personal preferences (and provides a live stream of said music). You can give it artists or genres to choose from, and from there—and based on what you tell it you like and dislike in real time, as the music plays—it figures out other music to play for you.

So far it’s remarkably good. It’s like magic.

(Yes, I am well aware that by writing about Pandora now, in 2011, I’ve missed out on something like four or five years of its existence. One might say I missed the boat, and am now late to the show. I’m all right with that.)

Now, I’m not a big music guy—most of the time I listen to whatever’s on the radio in the car while driving to or from work, and I’ll play the occasional CD (I do own a few). I like music, it’s just more of a background to my life, and I don’t invest a lot of time into it. But with Pandora, it tweaks just the right buttons—I’m as interested in the algorithm behind what it will pick for me next as in the music itself. So I’ve been letting it play in the background at work and generally marveling at it.

I’ve only created one station thus far, but since it lets you create different stations I’m fascinated by the potential for creating other, vastly different ones based on mood (for instance).

It’s kind of cliché to say, but this is one of those internet technologies that just works, works well, and makes me feel like I’m living in the future.

New books

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Got some new books from Barnes & Noble that came last week (online order via gift card):

Also a set of three “cahier” Moleskine notebooks—the pocket-sized ones (in black). And I’m waiting on two more books to arrive: Brewing with Wheat (Stan Hieronymus) and Yeast (Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff).

Yes, there is a certain irony in the fact that I’m linking to the Amazon pages for all of these items, despite purchasing them all from B&N. What can I say, I have an Amazon affiliate code—if you click through I might earn a few cents.

V

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So the new season of “V” premiered tonight; you might recall it’s the TV remake (reimagining?) of the the original nearly-30-year-old alien invasion TV series. I watched it from the beginning last season, with the presumption that I’d bail if it looked like it was going to go off the rails.

It must have been good enough, because here we are at the start of the second season and I’m still watching it; I’m still operating under the same ready-to-bail presumption though. Overall the show is better than I’d thought it would be, though it could very easily swerve into extremely cheesy territory. It’s this tenuousness, I think, along with occasional plot/character moments that seem a little too “What the–?” or convenient that have me wavering still.

Plus, for an advanced alien race with seemingly godlike omniscient technology—and rampant lizard paranoia—it sure seems awfully easy to manage and get away with all sorts of conspiracy literally right under their leader’s nose.

Two brilliant (goofy?) ideas

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One of the goals I have in mind for 2011 is to get back to writing more on this, my first blog (without slacking off on my other two blogs). Sometimes that will be in the form of braindumps, just random ideas I have bouncing around my head that need to be recorded somewhere. Brilliant? Maybe. Goofy? Possibly. Here are two.

#1: Santa Claus, Zombie Killer. This just seems so obvious that I’m not sure why I haven’t seen it somewhere before. Although I admit I may have been subliminally influenced by Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter; it’s hard not to see a title like that and not internalize it somehow.

#2: Godzilla vs. Voltron. This popped into my head on New Year’s Eve while we were over at our friends’, watching a Godzilla movie (one of the ’90s ones). Since Godzilla is usually the villain this would totally work; it would of course have to be the lion Voltron fighting Godzilla. This would be completely awesome, though I bet the licensing on this type of deal would be a real bitch.

New Year

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It’s kind of nice having New Year’s Day on a Saturday (and Christmas last week as well); knowing there’s another day to this weekend (and actually another after that for me—I have Monday off as well) makes it easy to be lazy and recover from New Year’s Eve.

…Not that there was much for me to recover from; we spent the afternoon and evening with friends and overate and yes, drank plenty of beer along with champagne at midnight and—get this—a glass of absinthe, but I was careful enough not to wake up with a hangover this morning (lots of water plus aspirin before bed). Tired yes—for some reason I was up before eight, which is bogus considering last night I didn’t get to bed until after 1:30am.

So today was lazy but a few things were done. I sorted and cleaned out my old emails for the past year, reducing my inbox from just under 1000 (I think?) to 18 emails; straightened up the desk in the office (one of my goals is to re-work the office overall, but the first step is being able to see the desk surface); read the novella “Big Driver” in Stephen King’s latest book, Full Dark, No Stars (the second story in the collection; the first, “1922″ is longer and took me several sporadic days to complete).

And of course, the day was also spent being reflective about 2010 and thinking about what 2011 should be like, as these things go. I’ve not gone so far as to have worked up any resolutions, but working up some possible goals—you know how it is this time of year.