If you need a judge of any kind, apparently I’m your guy. Back in December I judged robots for 4th to 8th graders in the Cincinnati FIRST Lego League. A couple weeks ago I judged science fair projects at a local junior high school. And last week, I spent a long 12 hours judging robots for 7th to 12th graders at the Ohio FIRST Tech Challenge. But that’s not all! In March I will again be running a robotics event at the Cincinnati Science Olympiad. I guess ever since the high school robotics team which I mentored disbanded I’ve needed something to scratch that altruistic itch.
In other news, I seem to have a huge stack of volunteer t-shirts in the closet.
Posted Friday, February 6th, 2009 3:13 PMNo Comments
We just couldn’t make it through the winter without a good storm I suppose, so we were dealt a good one. Two to 3 inches of snow, followed by a solid inch of ice, followed by several more inches of snow. It really shut things down for a couple days. Too bad there’s no such things as ‘snow days’ in my line of work. As long as I have power and internet there’s no excuse for me not putting in full days. Still, working from the couch is pretty nice!
Posted Thursday, January 29th, 2009 1:35 PMNo Comments
No, it’s Joel McHale, and it’s still a felony! If none of this makes any sense to you, then congratulations for having higher standards and not wasting a moment of your time on the crap comprising pop culture. For the rest of us, we have The Soup on E! to help us wallow in it.
Last weekend, D and I caught Joel performing downtown. McHale’s been filming The Soup for over four years, but launched into a live standup tour last year. As you might expect, even without the clips and teleprompter, he is one funny dude. Along with his animated stage presence, his tales of Ryan Seacrest, Dick Clark, Tyra Banks, and his son Eddie (the genius/retard) were a hoot. From what I’ve read, preSoup Joel got his start in an improv group. It showed. While his set material was good, some of his best moments were improved remarks about audience members in the front row. The constant cracks directed at the ‘pirate woman’ were great. He said the only logical reason to be dressed like that was if she just got off work from a cheesy seafood restaurant. “Arr, would ye like to hear the specials?” I’m sure glad we were in the second row instead of the first!
Posted Friday, January 23rd, 2009 11:02 AM1 Comment
Another Lanwar has rolled around again and not a moment too soon. It’s been six months since Team Boom Tape last graced the grounds of the University of Louisville. Small group of just three of us going this time, making up our part of the roughly 150 attendees.
As usual lots of different games were played over the 28 hour event – lots of WoW (as is typical these days), various FPS games like Team Fortress 2, Unreal 3, Call of Duty (4 and 5), a little Halflife 2 deathmatch, and several RTS games (C&C; and even a few Starcraft matches). It’s gotten more common for gamers to pack up a console along with their computer, so there were plenty of Xbox games going on and a few Wii ones, too. One group even had a Rock Band setup going most of the night, which made for an excellent break between computer matches. But the real standout game this time was Left 4 Dead. There was always either a campaign or versus game to jump into, and we had some great competitive matches.
Tournament-wise TBT had great fun crashing and burning again. We scrambled to pull together a TF2 team at the last minute and with little practice took a swift beating in the first round. Few of us had played TF2 much since the last summer LAN and boy it showed. Of course, there was also another Duct Tape Wars competition, and for the third time in a row TBT has failed to meet the lofty expectations of everyone else. This year’s challenge was to design an airplane of some sort which would carry a computer mouse “passenger” and make it as far across the room as possible. After burning half our time with the phone-a-friend tactic, our resulting creation would’ve sunk to the bottom of the Hudson River. For what it’s worth, the other teams didn’t fair much better.
When it was all said and done TBT walked out of the LAN without winning a single prize, but we had a great time and vowed to make a return to Duct Tape glory at the next MillionManLan in July.
Posted Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 6:09 PMNo Comments
Just a note that I’m beginning to post something I’m listening to every week (give or take) over in the sidebar. Just spreading a little musical love this year. Party on Garth!
This week’s pick, “Dawn of the Dead”, falls squarely into my recent mode of all things undead (with reading “World War Z” and playing “Left 4 Dead”). This track by the British group Does it Offend You Yeah? is a guilty pleasure of mine of late. Along with that ultra poppy hook, I gotta give props to the combination of the Killers-esque guitar line, some very unexpected steel drums, and the tribal “Ooos” and “Ahs”.
Posted Friday, January 9th, 2009 4:49 PMNo Comments
I’m not usually one to give into making an obligatory end-of-year “best of” list, but I thought I’d give it a go for once.
Best Album: MGMT Oracular Spectacular
The New York duo MGMT exploded in 2008 with their debut on Columbia/Sony Records. They have a great vibe and can smoothly swing between indie rock and synth pop. I gotta admit that “Time to Pretend” has been played out after appearing in heavy rotation lists and so many TV shows and movies. But ya know what, I still love that track. “Kids” is also a manic bomb that hasn’t lost a bit of luster for me. Between the ambiguous yet catchy lyrics, pulsing synth bass, and thumping beat, this track has continually been in my playlists. “Electric Feel” is down right chillin, funky goodness. Other tracks like “The Youth”, “The Handshake”, and “Weekend Wars” recall a retro psychedelic feel without sounding recycled. Whether MGMT can follow Oracular with a second quality record remains to be seen, but they have certainly left their mark.
Best Concert (that I saw): The Faint @ Southgate House
For me this was a really weak year for attending shows. So many acts just don’t make it here, and for a change I didn’t chase any down. I missed Lolla (again) and all the reunion dinosaurs on tour this year. Jonathan Coulton was certainly a blast earlier in the year, but the recent show The Faint put on was just crazy.
Best Movie: The Dark Knight
I neither intend to be on the fan wagon nor pick the most obvious choice, but quite simply I paid to see this twice within a couple weeks of its release, and that NEVER happens. It’s not a perfect flick, but it was a great, gritty turning point for comic-based movies. As everyone knows Heath Ledger put in a heck of a performance that was both funny and fearful, but there were other quality moments. Hearing Michael Caine say how “some men just want to watch the world burn” was classic. And let’s not forget the visual effect masterpiece in the tumbler turned bat-pod sequence.
Best Video Game: Rock Band 1&2
A real tough call here, but I gotta give the nod to a game I don’t even own. No other game quite redefined Friday and Saturday nights throughout the year like this one. Rock Band forever changed the face of rhythm games as it brought more people into the jam session. It also reminded me that playing drums (even silly plastic ones) is a hullava good time. From fearing “Run to the Hills” and closing with “Still Alive” to rocking the endless setlist – 1 3/4 times – the Dubya Oh had a blast in 08.
Posted Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 2:54 AMNo Comments
D and I took a trip down to the Southgate House to catch The Faint Wednesday night. I find it’s getting harder and harder to pull me out of my comfy suburb to see a show in a smokey club – especially in the middle of the week – but every now and then one comes along that can’t be missed. This was one of those nights.
My friend’s band Eat Sugar opened and put on a solid set. People were still filtering in when they went on, so it wasn’t as packed for them as they might’ve hoped, but everyone seemed to be having a good time. Their music was a great fit with The Faint, so hopefully they picked up a few new fans and sold some discs.
The next act, The Show is the Rainbow, was a hot mess and doesn’t merit any space here. Let me just say Rainbow is a single dude onstage flailing away to prerecorded laptop tracks in some terrible, unmusical, unfunny version of Jack Black. I was cringing with his first song and cowering by the sweaty, shirtless finale.
The Faint came on about 11 and played for an hour (with a three song encore) and they completed shook the joint. For the unfamiliar, they are an electro-punk-pop band from Omaha who really started taking off around 2000. As expected they played a lot of tracks from their latest album, Fasciination, but also threw in their older, harder rocking favs as well. They brought all the AV equipment they might normally use in a much larger venue – so much that they actually had their own generator running in the ally to help power it all. On stage there was barely enough room to move. In addition to the drums, four keyboards, and lots of monitors I counted at least 6 LED light panels, 4 flood strobes, 2 spot strobes, 6 programmed scanner spots, and 2 huge video projectors. The lighting and video (mostly black and white processed collages) was intense and meshed with their sound perfectly. The audio was very good and balanced considering it can be a hard room to mix for. The bass was heavy and throbbing and the synths growled and screamed nicely. And to top it off, singer, Todd Fink, performed in a very Dr. Horrible-esque outfit. Mad scientists or not, they were legen…dary.
Posted Friday, December 19th, 2008 5:29 PMNo Comments
D and I shot over to Indy last Saturday to watch a doubleheader of Men’s Basketball – the first basketball games to ever be played in Lucas Oil Stadium. Lucas Oil will be the site of the Midwest Regional NCAA finals later this season and the site of the Final Four in 2010, so it was kind of cool to get a sneak peak at what they may be like.
The first game was 5th ranked Gonzaga versus Indiana. IU, working with a new coach and nearly entirely new roster, kept it close in the first half. IU stayed within 10 most of the second half, but as soon as they’d crack into the single digit deficit, Gonzaga pulled out a three point play. IU sealed their fate with 24 turnovers and the Zags went on to win by 16 in front of the large Hoosier crowd.
The second game was 7th ranked Notre Dame taking on Ohio State. The Irish have a powerhouse on the team in the 6-8 freshman Luke Harangody. As expected, Luke had a strong game, but he also made their team fairly one dimensional. On the other side on the court, the Buckeyes’ Evan Turner surpassed Harangody’s 25 points with 28 of his own (a career high). Turner’s double-double made up for OSU’s horrible three point shooting (3-16) and the Bucks upset ND by five points.
After the game we headed over to Dave and Christian’s for a tree trimming party in which every guest brings the hosts a Christmas ornament, and in return, the hosts give the guests many drinks. In typical, inappropriate fashion, D and I gave them a full size zombie head (from Halloween a couple years ago) with a metal hook attached on top. It’s definitely an attention grabber on the tree and actually not the most inappropriate ornament they’ve gotten.
Posted Friday, December 12th, 2008 1:44 AM1 Comment
I’m pleased to announce that the Powerloader has won the Instructables.com DIY Halloween Contest! We were awarded the Craft Grand Prize and the Core77 Editors’ Choice Award (Core77 is a design website/zine). There were a bunch of prizes and different categories, and I’m sure the Instructables editors wanted to spread the wealth a bit, so we’re not mentioned under the costume category which is sort of humorous.
In all there were 328 contest entries including some projects that were really ingenious and complicated. After entering and losing three other online contests it’s sweet to have nabbed some of the top honors in this one (this site, after all, is near and dear to the DIY geek community and was the one I was really gunning for). The swag we should be receiving is quite generous – over $900 worth if you can believe that! While the hourly rate spent on the costume doesn’t even match up to minimum wage, the prizes easily pay for the materials of the costume several times over.
I really encourage those of you who routinely blow us away with your Halloween creativity to document your efforts next year…it very well may pay off!
Posted Thursday, December 4th, 2008 4:22 PM1 Comment
