Monthly Archives: October 2003

Friday, 31 October 2003

Still Gamin'

We made it back from Essen alive and well. Well, almost. David and I caught a cold somewhere on the way. But it’s not that bad and we’re already recovering.

We had so much fun in Essen. We were playing games nonstop. Well, almost nonstop. The other part was spent squeezing ourselves through crowds of people blocking our path or beating people up for wanting to take our spot at a table by which we had just waited half an hour for a chance to playtest a new game. We got to meet up with quite a bunch of our friends, so that was great as well. Only problem was that we had to split up during the day because it was much easier to squeeze ourselves through and get a table with just three people instead of seven.

Ever since we got back we basically continued doing what we had been doing all weekend. Only without the squeezing and fighting for tables part. So I doubt I’ll have time to write a complete Essen report with pictures before next week. But I did take a pic of almost every game we played and also some crowd pictures. So look for this sometime next week.

I’m sure you’ll understand that thoroughly playtesting all the games we bought is the most important thing to us right now :)

  Posted by Edda at 00:52 CET  |    1 comments

Wednesday, 22 October 2003

Gaming Deluxe

Didn’t have much time to post recently. Our friend David arrived here on Sunday and ever since then all we’ve basically done was play games. Today we’re heading for Essen, to go to the leading game fair in the world were we will stay until Sunday testing hopefully hundreds of games. I will take my camera with me and write a report of the fair and of all the games we’ve played. Look for it here in a week or so…

Huzzah!

  Posted by Edda at 12:20 CET  |    0 comments

Wednesday, 15 October 2003

Dump your Brain!

brain-dump.com, Michi and my newest project is now finally officially live. You might remember me writing about this a while ago. It is a community site for geeks and non-geeks about all kinds of technology culture related topics. The idea is for people to write articles about things they think might be of help or interest to other like-minded people.

Michi wrote a great article about encoding a CD collection to MP3. Also be sure to check out the article about his very helpful AdminLinks plugin for Movable Type. We got word from a friend who is already in the process of writing an article for brain-dump.com. If, after visiting the site, you feel the urge to do so yourself please don’t hesitate and dump your brain.

That is all. Thank you.

  Posted by Edda at 17:55 CET  |    0 comments

Monday, 13 October 2003

Waiting

Michi and I spent most of the morning waiting at the employment office to let the state know that we’re currently unemployed. We knew that we wouldn’t get any money from them. In order to get benefits you have to have had a real job for at least a year. The student jobs we have had until recently do not qualify as “real jobs”. But we had read something about them at least paying your health insurance for you. We found out however that they only pay your health insurance if you are eligible for benefits. In fact, most of their great services only apply to you if you are eligible.

So basically if you are a university graduate the only way to get money from this country is to apply for welfare. But I will only go there if I absolutely have to since I’m too scared that they’ll decide that someone on welfare doesn’t need video consoles or computers or games and take them away.

It was interesting to sit in the waiting room watching the other people in there. You could immediately tell the experienced people from the first-timers. The experienced all brought something to read or otherwise entertain themselves while waiting. One guy, who looked like a professional advantage-taker of the German social system, even brought a rad new iBook (if he can afford that why does he need more money from the state?).

It was an interesting experience but I hope I’ll find a job soon and will never have to go there again. Especially since everything I accomplished by going there was to add another person to the already bad unemployment statistics…

  Posted by Edda at 17:38 CET  |    3 comments

Saturday, 11 October 2003

otaku no jinsei ha yabai na!

Esther said it’s my turn to keep the world up to date what’s happening in our life. Ok - I didn’t know that such responsibility would come with posting a few times in her blog but here we go.

Yesterday we watched a nightlong special about japanese über-geeks. I already knew that japanese fandom can seem quite odd to outsiders. What I didn’t know was that even in Japan there’s a whole socially unaccepted subculture of fanboys called Otaku. These people mold their whole life around nothing but a certain aspect of japanese culture. Usually they focus on some fictional character, a pop star, an anime show, videogames or even porn. You might think that this can be compared to what we call geeks or dorks and american anime fans even picked up “otaku” as a positive term. In Japan though it is apparently extremely negative in meaning. Their fanatism is so bad that they totally fall through the cracks and have no social or love life at all.
For example there was an interview with a guy who worshiped a pop star (excuse my ignorance but I can’t remember her name or what’s so special about her). For him that pop star is a godess. He adores her so much that he even disallows himself to even think about any other woman. That’s what I call samurai spirit…

Well, coincidentally I just came by an an article about the “ten geekiest hobbies” posted in Wave Magazine. Before I even read the article I already feared that there will be a close match with my hobbies. To make matters worse they even ranked each hobby in how negatively it affects the participants social and sexual life. Gulp. So let’s see how much of a geek I am. Here’s my personal comment to each hobby on their list:

1. Comic Books: I don’t own or buy a lot of comics. I love to read Comics though (5/10).
2. Role Playing Games: I used to play MERP back in the old times. Didn’t touch a pen and paper RPG in years (1/10).
3. Scrapbooking: I don’t even know what that is… (0/10, looks quite good so far)
4. Star Wars: Episode 1 sucked balls. Episode 2 got a little better but Star Wars combined with Lego rocks. I give it (6/10).
5. Vampirism: I never got into Buffy or Angel. I know some people who are into Vampire LARPs though (1/10).
6. Collectible Card Games: I admit that I love to play Magic. It’s a very cool game. I even own quite some (virtual) cards. It’s tooooo expensive though and I never get to play with my old cards. (7/10)
7. Everquest: Umm (0/10).
8. Star Trek: I don’t consider myself a Trekkie but I saw everything except the orginal series. (7/10)
9. Furries/Plushies: Does a stuffed Totoro count? (0/10)
10. Live Action Role Playing: Some of my friends are into LARPs. They even have their own con. I never had the guts and ambition (making clothes and stuff) to play with them though. I think I’d like to play an NPC sometime (1/10).

Wait a sec, I’m adding it all up… I guess 70% of people who read this will think I’m a freak. Just 65% will have no sex with me? I think I can live with that.

  Posted by Michi at 16:34 CET  |    0 comments