PAX West 2018 Sunday

I had gone to bed early, just bummed about the weirdness. This meant waking up early. I read stuff, and checked various things.

Church was cool. The opening prayer was basically a 5 minute talk. One kid had a monocle and a scar on his face. I wanted to high five him, but feared booby traps. Instead, I nodded gentlemanly.

The drive to the ferry was quick, but I expected to miss. There was a long line for parking tickets. Then I had to carry a backpack and RC car.

I got in at the last call. They actually kept the door open for me. Once I was feeling a little better, I took the RC car over to a plug, so I could charge my phone and write notes.

I wrote notes while on the ferry, and got odd comments on the car. An enforcer -volunteer for PAX- asked how high my camera would be. I explained it would be on a tripod, and about the height of my mom. The volunteer was worried I was going for upskirt shots.

I drove the car to the lower area of the ferry terminal, and asked a taxi driver for a ride. He spoke with a soft voice, and I had a hard time understanding him. Eventually he said yes, and we drove to the Living Computer museum. The pay was about $15.

At the museum, I did an initial tour to enjoy what was there, and plan out the path of the car. There were dead ends, so I knew editing would be involved. Still, it was easy. I filmed one part that I hoped would show up properly, but was disappointed.

The middle floor was a single shot, and pretty easy. I ended up playing Minecraft a bit to ease my mind.

The third floor was not as easy. I took several long trails, finding dead ends everywhere. The cold room would need editing because of how loud it was.

For the next four hours, I sat and converted video to be edited. It was very boring. About halfway through, I found my RC car was still on. I hope the battery does well.

As I was uploading, the museum promised to get me an Uber.  That trip was also fast. The guy didn't park, so much as stopped at a point, and helped me unload. I got the car in, and people were oggling my ride. It took me a couple turns, and an elevator, but I found room 205 and parked.

They gave me a badge, and a lanyard quickly. I was selling as fast as I could. My hook was a 3 foot tall dice tower. It's like marble works, only for dice. People would love that, and then I would transition to the tables and other stuff around me. I didn't know much, but I sold the best I could and found out stuff as I went.

Eventually I got a hunger headache, because I hadn't eaten all day. I had some breakfast/dinner and wandered around a bit. I figured out a path for my car on the 6th floor, but I fear the 4th.

In the end I filmed the 2nd, and hoped it was good enough. I promised I would do the rest the next day. It's all I had.

After that, I grabbed the camera, and most of my stuff for the ferry. It was a quick walk, and I saw the usual sadness and tourism as any other time.

At the ferry, I joked with a guy on what sound everyone makes when they all line up. Moo, baaa, tweet tweet. We knew he had gone birdey when he said Tweet.

On the ferry I worked to convert the 360 video files, but something was wrong. I had to redo halfway and it wasn't enough. On the other hand, I recorded a notes video, and caught up to most of the day.

The video became a plague.

I got to Adam's and worked to upload stuff. He was playing Captain Toad on the Wii U. I knew about the game, but had never played. It was simple fun puzzles, that had a joyous feel to them. I played a few of the earlier levels and was quite satisfied.

The interesting part was how the graphics looked. The Wii U is supposedly so powerless the big game makers refused to make things for it. I've interviewed indie game makers and they claimed the console wasn't powerful enough. It looked just fine, and had very few problems. It made me think about how quickly the games for other consoles are dated quickly.

I think a part of it is I am used to PS1 and PS2 graphics since I play those games a lot. Also, Nintendo works to make their games nice to look at, not graphically intensive. It's difficult to explain, and yet very obvious.

While thinking about this my battery ran out. I had to restart my computer completely, and went to bed while the video tour of the board games floor was converting.