What I Did On My Summer Holiday

Sep 18, 2006 14:26

Summer's over, and I'm heading back to Uni in a week's time. Time to recap...


What I didn't manage to do

Create Paradise
Spurred by 312z's programming project (a Risk-like strategy game based around the gangs and territories of industrial-island-turned-squatter-city Paradise) we decided that it would kick ass to set up a mini game studio and create a fully-fledged game. The Paradise setting had actually been developed way back in second year (mostly while sitting bored in class) as the setting for a game; it had then been co-opted for a pen/paper RPG; and finally it was coming full circle again. We thought up various plots and game mechanics, bought Half-Life 2 and started studying the Source documentation, created the theme music, set up a wiki for ideas. Then we went up to Dundee and nothing happened for the entire summer, and now we're back at Uni with little time to devote to a side-project.

Work
A while back, a few months before last Christmas, I was commissioned by my work to develop a GPS-based mobile mapping solution using Ordnance Survey maps uploaded from a PC. The pitch went something like this: "We've had a guy tell us he can do this for Christmas for £100. Here's a diagram - look, here's the PC, here's the PDA or mobile, here's the GPS, and here are some arrows connecting them. It can't be that hard, so I told him we already had someone."

Whoever the supposed man-with-the-plan was, he was either overconfident or much more competent than I, because it certainly is that hard. Every phone's Java implementation is bugged in different and subtle ways; the PC-based emulators which are meant to make my life easier actually make it harder by behaving totally differently to the actual phones; and the limited memory on today's phones means that I'm not even certain I can fit enough map into memory to be of any use. PDAs are a whole different matter: at least phones have Java built-in, rather than having to cope with several different optionally downloadable JVMs.

I only discovered this after I'd put in a decent amount of work and kept running into limitations left right and centre. I reckon I've put in enough hours to be owed that £100 (actually, £99.99 - I was told I would have to do it for cheaper) even working at minimum wage, and I've only laid the groundwork. As much as this project would be great to put on my CV, I don't even know if I could complete it, and even if I did it would probably be an all-consuming monster pain in the butt that would leave me burnt out and wishing never to program again.

On the up-side, it's given me experience with mobile Java implementations. On the down-side, it's left me with a sour taste in my mouth and a desire to never touch mobile Java with a bargepole. So, at some point, I need to contact my work and inform them that I can't continue with the project.

Clean house

Well, Nate and I did manage to spruce up the house quite nicely over the summer - Mum gave us a hardly-used carpet shampooer she'd bought a while back, and while we couldn't get the actual shampoo function to work, it makes a pretty good hoover (certainly better than the upright which came with the flat, which is so weedy that its only function is to herd the dirt into the centre of the room where it can be swept up.) However, we never got round to painting the bathroom, or fixing up shelves, or any of the other DIY tasks we'd planned.

What I did manage to do

Get engaged

'Nuff said.

After some kerfuffle with ordering rings, waiting weeks to get them, finding them too small and having to order again, Nate and I finally have matching rings - nice plain white gold bands. I'm happy.

Cook

The Chinese near the flat was closed for quite a while when we arrived in Dundee, so we were forced to improvise. As well as the usual student staples of noodles and cereal, we tried to cook at least a couple of good meals a week.

Whole chickens came in handy - we managed to make one stretch to seven meals (roast chicken, fried chicken, chicken sweetcorn soup, ginger chicken bao, bbq chicken wings, and two more that I can't remember.)

I honed my fried chicken/fried mushroom skills - by the end of the holidays, the batter contained flour, cornflour, egg, milk, salt, pepper, soy sauce, mustard, chilli, bruschetta mix (herbs and dried tomato), bbq sauce and sweet chilli sauce, and it was rather delicious.

We tried unusual things. Nate made orange turkey salad out of a book, except we had neither turkey nor orange, so it became clementine and chicken salad but remained delicious. Inspired by that, I made mango chilli prawns, which were quite tasty once all the chilli had been picked out to return them to merely mouth-burning levels of hotness. We baked the aforementioned bao, which were rather good, if somewhat over-yeasted (we don't have any kitchen scales, so weight measurements were made by calculating the density of one cc of yeast pellets and extrapolating from there) and slightly spoiled by using too much Thai fresh ginger instead of dried root ginger.

I finally learned how to make proper cheese sauce. Forever shall be banished the weird cheese/egg concotions of yesteryear, the ones which made people think Nate and I were having a serious domestic when we discovered we'd been lying and actually hated each others' cheesy pasta.

Oh, also, 312z has mad bakery-fu skillz. He turned up for our farewell roast dinner at the end of the holidays bearing home-made apple pie and the simultaneously delicious and deadly Chocolate Cake of Death.

I never did get to taste yorkshire puddings, however.

Play Exalted

It was only meant to be a Solar-team-vs-monster-of-the-week romp, but I realised after the first session that combats were boring on their own and set out to build Epic Plot. Unfortunately, the end of summer rolled around too fast, so I had to fast-forward through the plot - in two sessions, the team of Dragon-Blooded went from sworn adversaries to fast friends placing themselves and their army under Solar command.

However, there were Epic Battles (fighting on flying stone blocks orbiting a First Age defense system manse, assaulting the Imperial City, kicking demon ass in the heart of the Imperial Manse), Memorable Characters (Praetor the Roman-esque centurion, Renais the pink-haired nine-year-old with a sugar habit and twin daiklaves, Asp the sneak thief, and Nameless* the invulnerable demon hunting battle fortress), Memorable NPCs (Qui-Annu the surfer god) and downright hilarious situations, mostly caused by the players ("Hm, I'm trapped inside the flamethrower arm of a warstrider. I'll try cutting through the sparking flame-producing machinery and make my way to the reactor!" and later "Okay, the giant warstrider cannon fell off. Can I put Essence into it and fire it?" "You have no idea how it works, and it'll probably blow up." "Cool, I'll just randomly poke Essence into it.")

Ultimately, it was great fun, but I don't think I'll be DMing again for a while - I want to actually sit back and let someone else do all the hard work for a bit.

* Yes, 312z did forget to name his character for two sessions, and it eventually stuck.

Grow my hair

I've never been one for haircuts - I usually get it cut when it reaches a couple of inches long, and have it cut short enough that I don't need another haircut for months. However, I went up to Dundee just before I'd normally have my hair cut, and eventually my procrastination about finding a barber turned into a desire to see how long I could grow it. It's now at the stage where I can put it into a three-inch ponytail, and I'm planning on continuing. Surprisingly, my mum didn't freak out when she saw it, although she's still ambivalent on it - I have the feeling she thinks it makes me look gay...

Achieve level 55 on World of Warcraft

I'm not sure whether this should be filed under "what I did manage to do" or "why I didn't manage to do other stuff". Anyway, Khyrana, my female dwarven hunter, is doing quite well, and I've joined a guild named The Nottingham Avengers on the recommendation of deji. They're a friendly bunch, and not focused on dungeon raiding every week, which is great - I may be addicted to the game, but not that addicted. I'll need to either severely cut my hours or give up completely when Uni restarts in earnest - probably the latter, since I have problems with "just playing for a little while" (and, similarly, "just eating a little bit"). This problem is not usually too bad - I play a game for far too many hours per day, but eventually I complete it, and that's that. However, WoW doesn't end...

Other stuff

We never managed to see a show at the Dundee Rep, but we did organise everyone to go to Camperdown Animal Park and see the wolves (of course, every animal was out in force except the wolves, of which there were none to be seen), and to the Botanic Gardens. We also saw Snakes On A Plane, which was pretty cool, and Pirates II, which wasn't that great and was further spoiled by asshole security guards at the cinema. We got hooked into another couple of anime - Avatar, which is actually a US show but is still awesome ("Hmm ... delicious tea ... or deadly poison?") and Utawaremono, which is an odd but cool mix of cute relationship drama and peasant rebellion warfare.

All in all, despite never managing to achieve most of what I set out to achieve, it's still been a good and memorable summer, mostly thanks to everyone else living up in Dundee. My last summer before leaving Uni...

paradise, gaming, food, hair, work, life, roleplay, cooking

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