The Professional Gamer - March 21, 2016

This has been a week full of emotions.  As you may have noted in my article last week, I started watching Your Lie in April last week.  I finished up the series on Thursday of this week, and was pretty much left an emotional wreck at the end of it.  Although emotional draining, the series was really great.  It has a really uplifting message about artistic endeavor and recovery after trauma.  There were a few cases where I felt that the series pushed a little too hard to produce an emotional response.  For the majority of the series, however, the pathos generated was genuine.  The animation was of very good quality through the entire series, with some great use of computer animation to produce the instruments, especially the piano.  There are some great sweeping shots going the from the stage area with Arima at the piano, to inside the piano showing the action of the hammers and dampers.  And they blend the CG well with the traditional animation.

Overall, I recommend the series.  But keep in mind that it could leave you emotionally drained.  Personally, I recommend following up Your Lie in April with a large dose of Joy of Painting with Bob Ross.

StarFest in Pictures

I love geek conventions. There is always so much to see in such a small amount of time. In order to try and remember everything that happened I let my photographers ADD go wild, and here are results.

These photos can also be seen here.

StarFest - Jim's Report

Hello readers.  As you may have gathered from my Professional Gamer article this week, I’ve been at StarFest this weekend.  More specifically, Crystal and Chris have had a table set up to sell art and plexiglass, and while I have gone to a few panels and talked to a lot fans.  In the end, Chris spent a fair amount of time away from the table to take pictures, so I was often filling in for him to help run the table.  Helping run a table for a whole weekend, is not the perspective that I am used to at a convention.  In this case, it meant that I got to watch the convention crowd walk past me, rather than being part of that crowd myself.

In total, I was able to attend three panels/events.  The first was on Saturday in Avistrum, a kid-friendly Harry Potter themed space.  While I was there, an “instructor” presented a lecture on the History of Magic as it related to lucky charms and talismans.  He talked about the various symbols associated with luck around the world, then provided the kids with materials to craft their own talismans.  The kids all seemed to be having a lot of fun with the whole event.  It is really welcoming to see a convention that is not just kid-friendly, but makes an effort to have dedicated spaces and events for kids.  This was something that I haven’t seen in the other Denver area conventions, but I think it would be worthwhile for more of them to include this type of programming.

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The second panel I attended was about recent and future exploration of Mars.  The panel was presented by Carrolyn Collins Petersen with help from engineers Christopher Grasso and Pieter Kallemeyn.  The panelist discussed recent missions, including Spirit, Opportunity, Phoenix and Curiosity, as well as the upcoming mission, Insight.  This happened to be the first time that I had heard anything about Insight, but it sounds like a very interesting and scientifically promising mission.  At its crux, Insight will help us to define the inner structure of Mars.  The mission will include three primary scientific instruments: a seismometer, a thermal probe, and an X-band radio transponder.  The planned mission has a 700 day duration in order to collect the detailed measurements required to characterize the inner structure of the planet.

The third panel that I attended was called “Star Wars as Story”, and included local authors Betsy Dornbusch, Carrolyn Kay, and Lisa Manifold, and was moderated by David Boop.  The panel looked at Star Wars and Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey”, and discussed how the authors applied these story elements in their own writing.  The authors noted that in most cases, these story elements come out naturally in dramatic writing and therefore, authors who push against the norms tend to be more interesting.

Finally, in sitting around and watching the crowds go by I got to see a lot of great costumes.  The most surprising to me was a guy wearing a Starfleet uniform based on Star Trek: The Motion Picture.  I, like many others, have never been very fond of the movie, but I still enjoy the costume design (at least for the male Starfleet crew and officers.

In conclusion, the convention was well run.  Staff and volunteers were easy to find and friendly.  Being in the Crowne Plaza is a blast from the past (NDK used to hold their convention here).  The fans were fun and full of passion.  I’m planning to come again next year, and hope to meet a lot more fans and creators.

The Professional Gamer - March 7, 2016

In order to make up for last week's flurry of geeky activity, I had a week full of other business to do.  For one thing, Tuesday night was occupied with attending the Colorado Caucuses and exercising my ability to direct the future leadership of our country.  Then, I met up with my parents for dinner on Wednesday, and spent Thursday trying to learn how to design rockfall protection barriers.  I've watched a few more episodes of Snow White with the Red Hair, and am really excited as I get closer to conclusion of this series.  

So, that's really ended up being most of my week.  Hopefully, I can find a little bit more time next week.

Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon Announced!

Nintendo has been having fun with the 20th anniversary of Pokémon. They have given away cards with a free level 100 Mew for the 3DS games. They have had the first Pokémon moviee on the official Pokémon site streaming. And now, during the recent Nintendo Pokémon Direct they have announced the next game in this massive series, Pokémon Moon and Pokémon Sun.

If this is not good enough for you, Nintendo is also releasing the original Pokémon games, Pokémon Red, Pokémon Blue, and Pokémon Yellow (Ok, that one is original-ish). These games are now available in the Nintendo eShop for the 3DS. A new feature in these digital versions will be access to the Pokémon Bank. These means you can go and catch the original 150, and then transfer them to Pokémon Sun or Pokémon Moon. Sounds like a completionist dream to me.