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The cable channel G4 featured Donna’s Halloween costume on Monday’s episode of Attack of the Show! Check us out as third item in this clip:

I’m just digging that they called me a “nice, young man”. Ah, the anonymity of the internet.

And yes, I’m working on the Halloween website, but I’ve got a cold, so give a brother a break :)

for best costume!

Vote for the Powerloader in the College Humor costume contest (http://www.collegehumor.com/halloween). The site randomly pits two costumes against each other, so you probably will have to vote on several before you see Big Yella.

UPDATE: We didn’t win. At the time the contest ended we were in second place and prizeless.

You can’t blame a guy for trying to milk the most ambitious Halloween costume he’s ever taken on, right? Good. I’ve been posting Ripley and her Powerloader all over the net. I’m hoping we might even win an online contest or two.

Check out a full play-by-play of how we put it together in this Instructable. And here’s a little video from the party:

Lastly, here’s one more shot of Ripley on Halloween night with the treat-or-treaters.

Very happy to have delivered another great party to everyone last weekend! We had about 35 party goers and all had suburb costumes. As usual the night was a blast and it seemed to fly by far too quickly.

Our apologies for being a little late to getting things rolling. Rob and Stacey and then Keith and Farrah had to entertain themselves for a few minutes (without music!) while D and I slipped into our costumes. I think we finished our last decoration and started changing at a quarter to 8.

Speaking of which, our Aliens costumes finally came together the day of the party. The costumes we wore were awfully simple, but it was all about the accessories this year. In my case I built an M56 Smart Gun of the colonial marines. It had the pan and tilt harness, a working ammo counter, and lights and sounds when firing. It also plugged into my headset and sent a live, wireless video feed to the TV. Fun stuff to make.

But that was way outclassed by Donna’s “accessory” – a working Powerloader. The powerloader stood about 7 feet tall and had ten degrees of freedom built into it (that’s ten joints for the non-engineer types). There’s an electroluminescent light around the operator cage and of course a working beacon light on top. It was a blast to build, and though heavy, Donna could actually move in the thing pretty well. For her sweat and my tears we were rewarded with best costume.

The game was good – and while the questions were pretty easy for the scifi devotees, they also weren’t so hard to complete annoy everyone else. The Starship Troopers team warped to victory on the strength of their impersonations in the final round.

The nightmare website will be updated after a few more days with photos of all the action. Happy Halloween!