Posts Tagged rock band
MiniCon Day One: Friday
Posted by Rockjaw in Day Today, MMO-related on March 27th, 2008
So let’s go back in time again… almost a week ago now. Boy, doesn’t feel it.
This is – believe it or not – a little lacking in detail, but I did my best. Let’s go…
The first day of a show, any show, pretty much unfolds the same way every time – a bit like the day after a show, actually. So Friday started with the entire team converging on our offices. I walked in to the compound to find several people freezing their asses off, just like I was thanks to some intense winds. I let them into the minibus I’d hired so they didn’t turn into people popsicles, and called Chris.
He was inside the office, collecting the last few pieces of stuff. I went to join him, and we did a few last minute things like printing out a few more maps and schedules to put up all over the centre. Then we piled everything onto our trolleys to move it downstairs.
This point on a ‘show timeline’ is always kind of maddening for me. We know we have to leave, but we’re slightly reluctant to, because we know there’s the possibility that we’re going to forget something. We’ve done plenty of shows when I’ve been half way to the venue and then suddenly started swearing because I’ve just remembered something. (The best example of this was when I realised en-route to Bristol Comic Expo last year that’d we’d forgotten the (then brand-new) CoH/V lapel pins, as well as our free trial DVDs. Considering how mad I was, I don’t look it.)
Eventually though, time forces you to just say ‘screw it’ and leave, so that’s what we did, walking back out into the cold to see that everyone had arrived. It helped that Chris had, quite literally, packed everything we had into the van he was driving, so we were pretty confident we’d have everything we need. Although there would be the small matter of finding it.
Is it Wednesday?
I’m losing track. Time’s sliding all over the place. This won’t be as concise as usual. Hence it may be more entertaining. Let me know.
The morning was mostly spent wrangling €400-odd of t-shirt ordering, which involved having to tell my bank that no, my credit card had not been stolen and that yes, I did need it ‘unblocked’ so I could keep ordering blocks of t-shirts. The provider we use, while generally very good, has installed a hidden “If you order above this amount, you have to pay by bloody bank transfer” feature which would have been nice to know about before I piled my shopping cart high with custom t-shirts and pushed it towards the virtual checkout.
There was a lot of coffee drunk today, but mostly by accident. Twice I was just handed coffee and expected to drink it. Hence I sort of sped through things like I feel like I’m speeding through this, and now feel like I’ve crashed into a fatigue wall.
What else.
Oh yes! Our iMacs turned up, which will warrant a separate post at some point no doubt. It doesn’t warrant a full glowing report right now because we only got to play with them for about 15 minutes, and when I say ‘play’ I mean ‘take them out of the box and turn them on so we can do the setup sequence’. Then we had to give them to the IT boys so they could install special ‘fun-leeching’ software on them, or something.
This mean I spent the rest of the day telepathically beaming the single command ‘Install your stupid software on my iMac already’ at IT whenever I walked past. Sigh.
Lunch in a new Mexican place not far from work, which is sort of half-way between a takeout place and a restaurant. It’s also been empty – as in, just the guy behind the counter – the two times I’ve been in so far. This worries me as I love Mexican and this one is like three minutes from my house, so I really want it to stay open. It’s called Las Taquitos. Or Los Taquitos. Anyway it’s good.
Sketchbook officially expanded by four more pages today. And might go higher. We got one new sketch in (Lord Recluse – our first of him!) and got hi-res versions of others we’d been waiting for. It’s coming together nicely.
Had a meeting after lunch with everyone working at the Omega Sektor MiniCon, and boy, did that reinforce how much we still have to do, so no point in dwelling on that.
Some other stuff happened but it wasn’t as fun as singing my lungs out on Rock Band after work. God, I hope the practice pays off.
Tuesday. It comes after Monday.
As Rorschach might say, “Huurrrrmmm.”
- First thing, some emails about finalising the sketchbook. We have a few more due to come in, so we’re going to up the page count. Awesome.
- A day late, I pick our ‘CrewNC Sidekicks’ from the application. We were thinking about going for four, but go with five in the end. You can never have enough gophers…
- Decide today’s the day to announce the final artist line-up at the MiniCon. Finally I get to publicly confirm that David Nakayama is making the trip over to join us – David was the official artist for a lot of issues on the City of Heroes comic, so we’re really excited to have him coming.
- Lunch is in our new staff room – Monkey Ranch – and is officially ‘band practice’. As in, Rock Band. And someone (Me) needs practice on vocals; Nirvana’s In Bloom starts me badly. I get a bit better during a Clash song, quite enjoy My Sharona, and then actually do pretty well on Wonderwall – but that isn’t saying much.
- Nip out for coffee and more player meet planning. Already we’re giving the Sidekicks tasks.
- Have to get back for a 4pm conference call, but it gets pushed to 4:15pm, which gives me time to…
- Check out some lovely videos of Aion: The Tower of Eternity, which our community guys have captured and want to use as part of a ‘demo-on-video’ for the MiniCon. Dang that game looks good.
- I look at a slide Spaff’s done for the Big Secret project. It involves Ghostbusters, as many of our references do. Everything in life is better with Ghostbusters. Therefore said slide is awesome.
- Caffeeeeeeiinnneeee kicks in from the coffee, just as the phone rings. I talk with a US colleague for about 45 minutes about Dungeon Runners and what we can do to promote it; we have the same thoughts on lots of stuff, which is great.
- Get off the phone at 5pm knowing lots more than I previously did about DR… quickly resolve a couple of queries about Draw the World Together with Chris.
- Check out some of the responses to the artist announcement – specifically the reaction to David coming. One particular response is worth quoting: “Ohhhhhhhhhh I think I just wet my pants”. I do, in fact, LOL.
- Design t-shirts for the MiniCon. The Sidekick ones are pretty cool but seriously, we want to own the TaskForce: Omega t-shirts that we’ve got for winners. They are, in Spaff’s exact words, ‘dope’. (They may also be ‘fly’.) Consequently, Chris and I design TaskForce: Omega crew shirts just for us, because we can.
- I start to checkout and buy said t-shirts aaannd… my password disappears and suddenly I can’t log back in. ROCKJAW ANGRY. ROCKJAW SMAAAASH!
Ahem. Which necessitates a trip to the gym and some aggressive exercise.
You said what?