Here are some of the highlights:

-DnD Red Box picture with TRS PAX crew!!  Dougie is in the front – the awesome guy that lets TRS (& me) get to PAX!!!!

-My first panel!
I sat on my first panel for Raid Warning!  Some of my old WoW raiding buddies run the Raid Warning podcast.  I came to support last minute, but ended up on stage shooting the shit about WoW news (hello CC again!) and drinking their beer.  I also handed out prizes to the audience members.  Thanks again Seven & crew.

-ZOMBIES!!
PopCap had zombies out in full force for Plants Vs Zombies – mostly by cones for your head.  I snatched one up, as seen in the picture below.  I also got a walnut tattoo – skipped the zombie face paint.  They had this guy dressed up as one of the zombies too handing out headshots – he talked like a crazy zombie too.  Loved it.  Braaaaaains.

-Table top games!
LOVE that the people I go to PAX with also love table top games.  It was at PAX two years ago I played my first game of DnD!  I decided that it was only appropriate that I buy my first set of dice at PAX as I think I have some more DnD in my immediate future.

We also got some limited time to sit down and try a few other games.  One being Traitor! – which is more or less a smaller card based version of the campfire game Mafia.

We also did this tabletop train game (Ticket to Ride) where you have to connect your color trains between different cities across the US.  I lost by 2 to Jeff

Alex also ended up picking up the Back to the Future Card game that had just come out this last weekend, for Dan.  We played some of that last night in the hotel room – and if you’re a fan of the movie you TOTALLY need to get this game.  Amazing movie references and also really fun game play.  Dan made the mistake of tweeting about what cards he had =p

-General Floor
I got hands on with Tera and Duke Nukem – mostly because TRS had appointments to see the games.  Tera was pretty fun! They set us up to do an instance with the guide healing.  I played tank (weird) – but also got to do it on an Xbox controller OR keyboard.  Considering I have a rather unique way I platy MMO’s, I went for the controller.  The game was really pretty and the instance as a whole was really fun.  We even won hoodies

Duke Nukem – meh.  Nuff said.

I also got a bit of time with some other indie games, but sadly didn’t grab cards or remember names.

There was also this sweet 2 person arcade style Castle Crashers machine setup!

-Matching shirts!!
It turned into a thing with the guys to find all the other people wearing the same shirt I had on.  I’m kind of sad I only took one picture – but my Girl Gamer shirt, space invader school shirt, mega man shirt where out in full force!  I also got this cute gameboy shirt from fangamer.com !  It included a cute bag and pin too

-Omegathon
At the end of every PAX, they have the final game for the Omegathon.  The Omegathon being different attendees pitted against each other to compete in a series of 10 games to win tickets to the Japanese version of E3 in Japan!  It always opens with “The Final Countdown” and Tyco and Gabe come out and say some closing remarks.  Two years ago it was Excite Bike on the NES, last year it was skeeball, and this year it was THE CLAW!  They two guys got about 7 tries each to see how many stuffed video game related animals they could get.  I love love the Omegathon.  It really feels like you and 2000 of your friends are on the couch cheering on your buddy to win. I can’t imagine a better ending to anything.  One of the guys had mad claw skills and got 4 animals out of the machine!  Who does that??

-That game from “Inglorious Basterds”
Sunday evening for the last two years, the TRS PAX crew grabs food with David Ellis (formally of 1up.com – now Xbox man) and play that game.  I have a few pictures from the evening, as well ACTUAL real working HALO 2600 Atari Cartridge.  David has promised to help me out with FPS gaming ;p

Until next year PAX (unless I do PAX East…)  I love you PAX!!

Also, here is me with another awesome lady in the same shirt! I’ve even seen a few guys wearing it! ;p

Have my own font is something I’ve been looking into for many years and was just getting to the tipping point of finding and installing a few pieces of software so that I could finally be able to write in my own font. It just always seemed like it was either going to be a lot of money or a really cumbersome process to get all the software I needed to create one.

Last night on some late night internet search, I decided to look into it again and finally found the answer of all my vain personal font dreams! YourFonts.com ! This site is AMAZING. I created my own personal font in about 10 minutes!! It actually creates the front as it uploads! How crazy cool is that?

However, I learned that there are some drawbacks to making the font process a little manual. I ended up redoing the font when I realized how many of my letters were floating around. I also had an ink spot mess up my g. I ended up taking the scans into photoshop and taking heavy advantage of the grids and then used the best drawing of each letter I liked in the end.

If you look below, you can see how in Try #1, some of the capitol letters are floating up into space.

Something GirlyLovely Airmail Stationary

It’s rare these days (or most of my life) that I hand write letters anymore! I actually did send one earlier this summer to an old best friend from high school, but never made it around to responding to her. It’s almost like I’m a pen pal again!

Regardless, I have the chance to maybe go to Ireland soon, where I have extended family! I was there about 17 years ago and met 5th cousins but haven’t seen them since. I’m hoping to write them a REAL letter to get their online information so I can hopefully meet-up with them next month.

More importantly, this gives me an excuse to use my Airmail stationary from Cranes I got about 15 years ago. I LOVE maps. So, MAPS + Cool light weight airmail stationary = my favorite stationary EVER. I mostly just wanted to share some pictures of its awesomeness and how thin it is!

BEHOLD:

Make your own Muppet Whatnot!

In anticipation of my trip to NYC next week, I’ve been looking at some of the things I want to do while I’m there.  One of them is to make my own Muppet Whatnot at FAO Schwarz!  That is, as long as I don’t decide that I can’t really justify the money to make one.  The good news is that if I decide to hold off, the online store is back up from the last time I checked.**

**Last time being a year ago.

Now for only $99 (used to be $150) you can create your own Muppet Whatnot online!

My ongoing issue with ever making any sort of avatar is do I make it look like me?  Or create something new?

Something Girly

Tortilla Soup!

I’ve made this a few times recently (for a dinner date and when I got sick last week) and it had been so long since the last time, I really had forgotten how tasty and easy it is to make!  I hate to chalk up the taste of my soup to a store bought product, but the spices in the Rotel just does the soup right.  Well, maybe the Rotel, copious amounts of cilantro, and the tortilla strips.

Ingredients:

-Carton of low sodium chicken broth
-Can of low sodium diced tomatoes
-Can of Rotel diced tomatoes with chilies (doesn’t HAVE to be Rotel, just get a can with chilies!)
-Fresh cilantro
-Red onion (many would go white here, but I like the flavor of red better)
-1-3 cloves of garlic depending on much you like garlic
-Olive oil
-Corn tortillas

Directions:

1) Dice the onion and garlic.  Put the olive oil in a pan over medium heat with the onion and garlic.  I add cilantro for flavor.

2) When the onions get soft (and start to change color) – add the chicken stock and the cans of tomatoes.  Bring to a boil and let boil for 3-5 minutes.

3) Cover the soup and let it summer over low heat for about 20 minutes.

4) As the soup simmers, prepare the tortilla strips.  Take 2-3 corn tortillas (depending on how big your pan is) and cut them into long strips.  Add about 1/2 Tbsp of olive oil per 2 tortillas.  Over medium heat, constantly sauté the strips until they get hard and wrinkly (for MAXIMUM yum factor).

5) Once strips are cool, serve yourself a delicious bowl of tortilla soup!  Add more cilantro for garnish and OF COURSE put some tortilla strips on top!  Enjoy!!

Kid Mario Halloween Costumes

I am currently helping watch a friend’s dog and house and they happen to have little kids.  I saw a costume magazine poking out from some mail and probably would not have given it a second thought if it wasn’t for seeing that kids on the cover were dressed as MARIO!  What the what?  Yes, Mario is still live and well to the young kids of today, but I’m pretty sure some genius at this costume place decided to prey on parent’s nostalgia and make these costumes.  I enjoy that they at least include bellies for Mario and Luigi.

Check out that Toad!

I have also included the Star Wars spread for good measure and the most ridiculous toddler costume. P.S. WHY ARE THESE THINGS OUT IN AUGUST?  And why does the website (costumeexpress.com) already have sales??

Something Girly

Types of Dresses!

I recently just purchased my first “maxi” dress - except I didn’t know that was what kind of dress it was until I showed a friend who said, “oh! I’ve been wanting to get a maxi dress!”  Clearly a hole in my girl knowledge.  So here, I present the different types of dresses that you’re most likely to come across these days!

The Maxi Dress - Just a long dress that is ankle or floor length – usually form fitting.

The Jumper Dress – A dress made to be worn over a shirt or something else.  I have one now I and feel like I’m 4 when I wear it.

The Surplice Dress – Seeming similar to the “wrap dress” – this dress is defined by the v-neckline being formed by two pieces of fabric overlapping to make the v-neck

The Wrap Dress - The dress that I think formed out of people liking to wear bathrobes – but it is a dress that wraps around your body and has this sewn on belt that you have to jam through a tiny hole one side of the dress to then wrap/tie around you to make sure you don’t show everyone the goods.

The Shirt Dress – I think this can just also be called the Gap/BR/J-Crew/Brooks Brothers/Ralph Loren dress?  It’s a longer than normal button down shirt…dress.  You tie something around your waist with this to add curve and give yourself shape.  The end. (Okay, so I DO like them, but they’re preppy as all hell).

The Sundress - Light, airy, worn in the summer or when it’s hot as hell.

The Sheath Dress – No waistline  and fits like a glove.

The Shift Dress – It’s basically the sheath dress with no waistline, but just not as form fitting.

The Tent Dress - Can’t say that this dress is typically referred to in a good way, but its style comes from the dress flaring out from the above the bust.

The Muumuu Dress - Okay, you might not wear one of these, but they do exist   A Hawaiian styled dress that I think is basically the Hawaiian version of the tent dress.

The Hoodie Dress – Or the grunge dress.  They’re pretty cute now, but I know the first one I owned was all black and worn with my Doc Martin boots. 

]]> http://girlhack.com/2010/08/sgsg-kid-mario-halloween-costumes-and-types-of-dresses/feed/ 2 http://girlhack.com/2010/08/sgsg-blog-dark-energy-designer-luggage-pirate-bay/ http://girlhack.com/2010/08/sgsg-blog-dark-energy-designer-luggage-pirate-bay/#comments Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:40:14 +0000 girl http://girlhack.com/?p=546 The actual videos you’ve been seeing is technically “an experiment” and I am reserving my right to switch to possibly blogging for a few days this week while I work on bigger and better episodes!  Not to mention, a good friend challenged me to step up my game.

So, in lieu of out of sync sound and rushed editing, here is Something Geeky Something Girly via blog!

Something Geeky:

Dark Energy!

One of my roommates and I have been on space kick lately (or always).  He found this show called “Through the Wormhole” on Science Discovery Channel (narrated by none other than every one’s favorite movie god: Morgan Freeman).

In a fairly recent episode (Dark Matter: Beyond the Darkness), Dark Energy is brought up as being something discovered in tandem with Dark Matter.  The “dark” prefix really just means that much is unknown.  In fact!  I’ll let NASA tell you better that IS known:

” What Is Dark Energy? More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the Universe’s expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 70% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest – everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter – adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t be called “normal” matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the Universe. “(Source: http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/)

I think both my roommate and I had an utter “ugh” moment in regards to feeling like dark energy isn’t the only thing in the dark, but humans as a whole.
What was neat for me though, is not more than 30 days after this episode aired, that I got a newsletter update from JPL saying that a Cosmic Lens was used to Prop Dark Energy for the first time!

The full article is here – and apparently they have updated the numbers saying that us “normal matter” and “normal energy” only make up 4% now!  Sigh.
I will say, it was pretty cool to watch a show about something “cutting edge” with space and then get an email with an update from NASA.

Something Girly:

Designer Luggage Pirate Bay

Since I sold my Sony PD170 (in 12 hours!), I’ve been having the profit burn a hole in my pocket.  Combo that with a little need of retail therapy after a trying weekend filled one of those big crazy life moments, and you arrive at designer luggage.

Okay, hear me out first!  I fell in love with the idea of getting a Louis Vuitton trunk about four years ago while I was sight seeing mansions in Newport, Rhode Island.  In these turn of the century mansions, they had LV trunks on display in old rooms where the families like the Rockafellers used to “summer”.  Something struck me right then and there as someday wanting to be able to have one of these vintage trunks.  Over the past four years, the idea of having a vintage trunk has morphed into a carry on duffel bag instead.

I’ve had a saved “Louis Vuitton Speedy 55″ search on eBay for about three months now and have an itchy bidder finger.

However, this led to me to look at knock-offs too.  Did I want one?  Would it make a difference?  Would I just *always* know I had a fake?

I’ve ultimately decided that for the LV duffel bag purchase, I want the real-ebay-deal – accessories and other bags, I might go the faux route.

What is more crazy is that I found a few sites that had these crazy take down notices for selling fake bags.  I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Pirate Bay and general piracy.  These sites are just pretty much the “girly” version of pirating BlueRay or software suites from Adobe or Apple.  I thought it was amusing and worth sharing.

• -Wireless mighty mouse + wireless apple keyboard (previous gen) – - a girl and her mouse
• -Wired previous Apple gen keyboard with USB extension cord – - a gift for you!
• -Travel speakers – - BOOMBOX town
• -Apple mac book pro power supplies (2) old connector style – - Power necklace!

The story of a little mighty mouse – and the wireless old school Apple keyboard.

Once there was a girl and mouse.

They would hang out, while the girl typed on the wireless keyboard.

Sometimes they would blow kisses.

But then the mouse took a big dump.

It was over.

$40 OBO – includes shipping

More pictures here! http://gallery.me.com/meg.campbell#100277

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I got you this gift!  It’s still in the plastic and I tied this USB extender bow on it!!

$20 OBO – includes shipping

More pictures here! http://gallery.me.com/meg.campbell#100277

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YO!  You know you want to be blastin’ “My backpack gots jets, I’m Bobba the Fett”

$20 OBO – includes shipping & comes with a case.  Battery powered, unless you get a universal power adapter

More pictures here! http://gallery.me.com/meg.campbell#100277

———-

Turns out, this is NOT ALL THE LATEST FASHION RAAAAAAAAAGGGGEEEE

I have two.  One has a long cord and one just has the 2 prong wall adapter.

$40 for cord

$35 w/out cord

More pictures here! http://gallery.me.com/meg.campbell#100277

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.