Last week, I attended W00tstock 1.1. What is a W00tstock you might ask? Well, if you had clicked the convenient link I added you’d already know but since you asked here’s the description direct from Paul and Storm’s site:

For decades, geeks were ostracized, picked on, laughed at and punished by the sun’s harmful UV rays. But there is only so long that a people can be kept down before they rise up against their oppressors; and, indeed, the dawn of the 21st century has seen the ascendancy of geeks and geek culture.

We now celebrate that rise to power–and let’s face it, nerds pretty much run everything now–with w00tstock, a special event for geeks of every stripe. Television host/special-effects artist Adam Savage (”MythBusters”), actor/author/blogger Wil Wheaton (”Star Trek: The Next Generation”, “Stand By Me”) and music-comedy duo Paul and Storm (hey; that’s us!) present a night of songs, readings, comedy, demonstrations, short films, special guests, and other clever widgets born from and dedicated to the enthusiasms, obsessions, trials and joys of geek pride.

It was the brainchild of Paul and Storm, who wanted to do some west coast shows but weren’t sure they’d draw a big enough crowd on their own. So they got Wil Wheaton and Adam Savage to join them and planned three initial shows; two in San Fransico and one in LA. Each one had special guests, in LA it was: Hard and Phirm, Molly Lewis, Felicia Day, Jeff Lewis, and Sandeep Parikh. There was also a hilarious video from RiffTraxs and a few short “Moment with Wil” skits.

It was a great time. For me the real highlights were Wil’s reading of “The Trade” from his book Just a Geek with musical accompaniment by Paul and Storm; the acoustic performance of “Do you Want to Date my Avatar” and The finale of Paul and Storm’s pirate song which was a free for all of geeky pirate jokes.

There were a few ‘technical difficulties’ along the way including mic stands all over the place, broken mics, crooked projectors but they did detract from the show. If anything it made it more entertaining, you could tell it wasn’t something they had rehearsed hundreds of times and were regurgitating.  Everyone was having fun even the performers.

Lucky for you, there will be more W00tstock in the future, there’s not official dates or cities yet but if you demand it, they might, possibly, maybe come. Also, should you be so inclined w00tstock 1.1 live at the Largo available online here. (Thanks to @Jules_Party934 for the link). I highly recommend it.

View all w00tstock tour dates

I ended up arriving late and had to wait for over an hour in the will call line to pick up my pre-ordered
badge. Which was mildly annoying since it was only a two minute wait to buy a badge. Right after I got out of the badge line I got in line for the keynote, there were a lot of lines at PAX.

Ken Levine’s keynote was entertaining. He gave a brief overview of his history as a nerd. From his early days of wanting to fuck the scarlet witch and his first awkward experiences with D&D all the way to his failed screenwriting career and his decision to go get into the game industry and join Looking Glass Studios. The theme of the whole boiled down to “We’re all geeks, love it, embrace it and go have fun together”.

I skipped the Q&A panel to hit the exhibit floor. After a quick walk around I stopped and checked out Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour . I discovered that Brawndo The Thirst Mutilator, did indeed have what I (and plants) crave. It’s pretty tasty but oddly not got sale. (I’ve since learned that it wasn’t for sale because the convention center doesn’t allow non-convention vendors to sell food or drink)

Nintendo was nearby so I checked out some of their stuff. WarioLand: Shake It seems like a decent platformer although depending on how much it’s used; constantly shaking the controller could get annoying. Kirby Superstar Ultra was fun but there really isn’t much new about it. After that, I had some fun creating a creature in Spore Creature Creator for the DS. I couldn’t do anything more than walk around with it once it was created which makes me what the game play would be like in that game. I finished off my day in the exhibit hall with Left 4 Dead which was amazing.

Next up I hit the concerts. It was probably the strangest concert I’ve ever been too. No one was really getting into any of the bands mostly everyone was just sort of hanging out listening. The OneUps were kind of neat but it sounded a lot like they were just jamming the whole time and not really playing songs. Freezepop isn’t really my thing but they ended up being pretty good. During their entire set, there was a guy nearby playing Final Fantasy Tactics which was odd. Freezepop’s encore ended up being a cover of The Final Countdown and it was really good.

Finally Jonathan Coulton was up. I wasn’t really looking forward to seeing him but figured it would be cool to see “Still Alive” from Portal performed live. Of course, I was completely wrong and he ended up being the best of them all, I suppose that’s why he was “headlining”. I enjoyed all his songs, my favorite was “re: Your Brains” there is nothing cooler than a room of people out of sync and groaning “All we want to do is eat your brains”. He also managed to Rick Roll the whole audience twice. The first time the video played over the projectors and most of the crowd started singing along. The second time was mixed in the middle of “Mr. Fancy Pants”. For “Still Alive” Felicia Day, who is like geek goddess, came out and sang with him. He ended the night with a sing along cover of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” which was unexpected and really cool. Over all, Day One was amazing.

Pictures still to come.

Tonight I decided to clean this place up a bit. A few updates, a new post and a slight layout change. Amazing! Anyway, I bet you’re wondering: “What’s new with this Ryan fellow?”

No? Well let me tell you anyways….umm…not to much. I work about ten hours a day, then I run ~2 miles and end the day with a bit of Halo 3. I live a very exciting life. I’ve actually been really enjoying running each night. Almost to the point where I look forward to it. I’m trying to push myself a little faster/longer each day and my goal is to ramp it up until I can easily do 3 miles a day.

I did attempt to see Dark Knight this weekend but about two hours into the movie the fire alarm went off and they shut the movie off. Luckily it was just a false alarm but oddly enough when the alarm went off no one in the theatre got up to leave. Everyone just started complaining about the movie being shut off . When they got around to turning the movie back on they didn’t bother to rewind the movie so I missed about 10 minutes of it. About 10 minutes after that they cut the sound to the movie and I left. So I’ve seen 4/5th of the Dark Knight, at least I got two free tickets out of the deal.

As for the movie what I saw of it was awesome so far. Heath Ledger was excellent as the Joker. I went in halfway assuming that all the press about his performance was hyped up because of his death but I was very wrong. I’m hopefully going to see it in IMAX back at home this weekend.

So, it’s been awhile since I updated this thing*. To make up for this I’m putting up two new posts. The first (this one) is of the general “what’s new with Ryan” variety, the second (tomorrow soonish) is all about my new addiction, Team Fortress 2. OK so here are the highlights from the past few weeks:

Hollywood

About three of weeks ago I decided to take a trip to Hollywood and see what all the fuss was about. My directions led me to the wrong end of Hollywood Blvd and I found myself driving around in some shady areas and eventually paying to park in some shady lot. I made my way over to the walk of fame and … walked. Most of the names I didn’t recognize but I did see a couple Frank Sinatra (twice), Kermit the Frog, Rin Tin Tin and that’s about all I can remember. All the shops in this area seemed to consist of tattoo parlous and exotic clothing stores. The place in general seemed to be pretty dingy. Eventually I found a Borders and grabbed some coffee. After debating whether I should call it a bust and just head home, I decided to follow the crowd and see where it led me. Turns out sometimes following the crowd can be a good thing. In this case it led to a mall. This was basically a bunch of stores, a movie theatre and a couple of places to eat. Ok so it was fancy looking (Chinese Theatre), and I did get some pictures of the Hollywood sign and a pretzel because Auntie Anne’s rocks but not very exciting none the less. There were a lot of people dressed up as various characters on the streets which were kind of creepy and tons of people handing out free pamphlets & gum. This lead to a slight misunderstanding with someone selling CDs on the street; I thought they were free; he wanted to get paid…

Certification:

More importantly I retook my PRPC System Architect Exam. This is basically the exam that says I’m qualified to my job. I spent about two weeks avoiding doing anything fun, TV, DVDs, Wii, TF2, random trips etc, etc. It eventually paid off as I am now officially certified. Which give me a tiny bit more job security and makes me feel a lot better.

LA County Fair:

Yesterday, I decided to hit the LA County Fair. It took me roughly two hours to drive there (hurray traffic) and I forgot my camera but remembered the directions. When finally made it there I parked about a mile away and turned down an offer to have some guy pull me to the gate in a rickshaw-bike thing. The fair itself was huuuge way bigger than the ones back home. It was also really commercialized. There were about 8 buildings dedicated to selling you crap, the late night “call now for our special offer” kind of crap. Many of the companies were also set up in multiple buildings because you never know the fourth time you see that detoxification station you might just bite. One of the buildings was called “AT&T Winter Wonderland” which featured Santa (in September!) dressed as a lumberjack, an ice skating rink and fake snow complete with a hill for sledding. Having lived in a place that gets its fair share each yeah it seemed really pitiful but the kids seemed to enjoy it. All the animals seemed to come from a single farm as well and there were many of them, lots of variety but only a couple of each. McDonald’s also generously supplied a garden area with all sort of veggie and plants as well as eight or nine hi-def TVs playing McDonald’s ads on a constant loop. I didn’t see very many of the typical fair events, tractor pulling, animal judging, dung throwing… but at least some of those were in the program they gave me so I have to assume they were there. I did however find a place where I could bet on horse races. One of the cooler things I saw was the Shangri-la Acrobats. Some of the stuff they did made me cringe and think “oh crap that’s going to hurt.” The fair also had some really wicked looking rides such as the tango but I didn’t get to go on any of them. Overall it was fun and I got to eat my corndog which I missed out on at the Washington County Fair. I will say I always heard there are a lot of strange characters in LA and many of them seemed to be enjoying the fair.

Getty Museum:

Today I checked out the Getty Museum, which wasn’t my first choice but after realizing it’d take me almost 5 hours to get to the Joshua Tree National Park I decided to go somewhere a bit closer. I began by losing the detailed directions I wrote down (I think there’s a trend here somewhere) but managed to find the place without too much trouble. When you first get there all you see is a parking garage which seem kind of off but there is an actual museum. To get to there you take a tram up a mountain which is kind of cool. The museum also has free admission which made it extra nice. (Of course it costs eight bucks to park) Needless to say there are some pretty awesome views when you get to the top and some art too. The buildings are setup so you can wander from between them without actually realizing you it which I thought was neat. The bonus here is not only did I get to see some art, feel cultured, and justify buying a new camera but I also learn some stuff too. First, I learned that in the past people were pretty much always at minimum halfway naked. Unless they were going to be in a portrait then they tried to put as many clothes on as possible, perhaps to offset all the nakedness. Second, a museum on a mountain with free admission can make a lot of money by selling food and drink, say fifteen bucks for an iced tea and sandwich. Third, To be an artist all you really need to do is make/take pictures of strange objects (toilets, bananas, broken things, etc) and/or naked women. Although the wrong combinations (toilets & naked women) could get you labeled as a pornographer, which would arguably be more profitable.

That about sums up the last few weeks, in between I worked, surfed the web, went home for a weekend, watched some TV and played video games. I do indeed live an exciting life. Pics are coming just as soon as I figure out how this picture gallery plugin works.

*The conversion to wordpress doesn’t count, I had that ready to go minus a few tweaks weeks ago I just didn’t get around to switching it over until recently.

Some pictures from Simi Valley…
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