Pimp Your Stuff Friday

[filkertom]

• This weekend is PenguiCon at the Marriott in Troy, MI. Whole lotta FuMP members there, excellent author guests, open-source folks, good time. I'm performing at 2:00 p.m. Saturday, and again during the Masquerade Halftime Saturday night (sadly, up against The Great Luke Ski, so it's a really simple choice -- funny rap and parody versus funny folk-rock and costuming Pick your poison and be there).
• Those of you who won't be at PenguiCon could be in Ann Arbor at The Ark, wherein you'll hear the fantabulous Uncle Bonsai. We has a ticket ('cause dummy me got all confuzzled and committed to the Masquerade Halftime while forgetting the Uncle Bonsai concert), so if you want it, send a PM to either me or huskiebear.
• Huge news for computer musicians! Camel Audio's superb Alchemy Player, available for both Mac and Windows, is now free. It comes with about 1 GB of content, and all you have to do is create an account and login. Along with that is something utterly self-serving: If you follow this link to purchase anything at Camel Audio, you get a 10% discount, and I get the same amount in credit! I commend to you the following sound sets: Planet Earth, Cinematic Atmospheres, and Cinematic Impacts. The brand new Steamworx also has excellent noise.
• A reminder that next Saturday is Free Comic Book Day, and (with Mad World Radio) I'll be at Comic City of Canton, 42727 Ford Road in Canton, MI. Fun, silly, and FREE COMICS!

Ready... set... Pimp Your Stuff!

Comments

[trektone.livejournal.com]

I hope the fantabulous Uncle Bonsai have concerts local to me in the near future! No Ashley, but still!

[bellebet.livejournal.com]

I'm pimping for a friend. :)

Storied Threads (www.storiedthreads.com) is now selling Doctor Who Awareness Ribbon Patches: http://tinyurl.com/3mzajoa

Plus, you can get a discount by purchasing them at the Connecticut Renaissance Faire during the next few weeks.

See? Two pimps in one!

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

I wish they hadn't given it the same name as their flagship product. When I read that, I thought that Alchemy itself was now free, and I about danced in my cubical -- that's one I'm saving up for. But I was let down when it turned out to be another soundfont player. Oh well, guess I'll keep saving.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Well, it does still have the mix pads. And the sounds are great.

[bayushisan.livejournal.com]

I'll be at Panguicon Saturday. Do you know what room you'll be performing in yet?

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I think the Niles room, the one down at the end of the long hall.

[bayushisan.livejournal.com]

Excellent. I'll see you tomorrow then :)

[saganth.livejournal.com]

I won't be at the con but a close ladyfriend of mine will be. If you take dedication requests, think in your concert you could give a rendition of "I Wanna Be Peter Lorre" for Heather on behalf of Adam? *^_^*

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Oh, man. Part of me wants to claim the ducat and get straight over to the airport.

My wallet, however, vetos this idea, and so I send regrets only to Andrew, his guitar (and why does mine never sound like that one? :-), the ladies, and Doug.

Have a great time at the con!

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

I'd like to pimp a Kickstarter project: The Invisible Instrument:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/37992553/the-invisible-instrument?ref=category

I'd really like to see this become a reality, not just for me (who's musically inept) but for a couple of nephews who want to get into music but don't know which instrument to get.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

Good luck with it! Kickstarter is pretty cool. They helped make this game "Alien Frontiers" that I'm going to see if I can try tonight.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/clevermojogames/alien-frontiers-retro-future-sci-fi-board-game?ref=search

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

I discovered Kickstarter a few days after that game timed out so I was too late to get in on it. Let me know how it plays. I've since backed over a dozen games, all but one have made it so far. And I've got a few friends who are working on getting kickstarter projects started.

Hmmmm... wonder if someone could come up with a FuMP game and use Kickstarter to get it started.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

Well it's pretty clear it works best with 4 players. There are rules for 3 and 2, but the game itself is designed for 4. The game was fun, but the flow is easily broken if a person is trying to squeeze out every last action possible. Also I think we found a break.

The core of the game are the dice. Getting pairs or triples are desired most of the time, but if you get a straight on 3 dice you can steal 4 resources from the other players. There are also abilities that let you increase or decrease the value of the die by 1 or even flip it over. If you have one of them, you can more easily steal resources. One player kept doing it and eventually won. I think it's a flaw in the system that should be fixed.

The alien-tech cards are also a bit unbalanced. Getting a good card can be more important than getting resources (since the right card can let you steal resources too) so part of the game becomes a race to get the best cards, or getting lucky and getting them early on.

I only played it once, but I would like to try it again to see if I like it or not. The retro-sci-fi look is great though. But needing 4 people and the stealing part was a bit of a turn off.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

Bummer. I have a hard enough time finding one person to play with. Been years since I had two or three people in one place at the same time to play games with.

Thanks for the review, and the observations on those problems. Doesn't sound like anything a few "home rules" can't fix.

[rickvs.livejournal.com]

I've put a new submission up at shirt.woot: http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=52464

And my Spoonflower fabric is now actually purchasable: http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric_items/new?design_id=533195

[enigmaticfox.livejournal.com]

Oh wow! I'm ashamed to admit it, but I hadn't realized that Uncle Bonsai was still together and doing concerts and recordings! Thank you so much for the tip, I'm going to have to go check out their more recent work and add it to my collection.

Family Ties & Torn Skies

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

LOL--I thought something was wrong when I was the first to comment on the other copy of this post! Whas'up with LJ anyway?

Anyway, the anthology went to the printer! As a contributor, I got a sneak peek at the final cover and some sample pages, and gosh, it's pretty! We'll have a preorder page up soon.

(Edited because I hate typos.)

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Whoa! Uncle Bonsai lives! I thought they broke up! That's awesome.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

The DucKon filk schedule is up!
http://www.duckon.org/filk_schedule.html
Tom Smith is preforming at 8:30 pm Saturday.
Lukeski is on at 2pm Sunday

And it's not just concerts, there's a guitar workshop, Guidelines to Spontaneous Accompaniment panel, and Analog to Digital Audio Conversion workshop panel.

Pity Nate Bucklin, for he will have to help me tune the world's most poorly tuned guitar. :)