wiredfool

So, big weekend last weekend.

It all started with the fair, where I had three pictures in, the kids all had veggie critters, Ben had a couple of ceramic pieces, and Rose had the big quilt and a little pair of up cycled baby pants. All reasonably successful — Rose got the quilt hung up in the rafters, I had two “Merit” ribbons, and the kids all got blue for their veggie critters. And then there’s the midway. Nate’s a monster on the rides. He preferred the airplanes, different colors each day. Tim really liked the roller coaster, and Ben liked to ride the ferris wheel.

Then there was Mindcamp 7. I’ve done a couple in the past, but missed a few after the move to the island. This felt smaller, with less momentum than the earlier ones. It could have used a few more people ready to give sessions, myself included. I led 1 and a half, and I really should have listened to the nagging thought that I should bring some lighting gear and do quick headshots. I didn’t bring the gear, but I still wound up running about half of the photo session anyway when the named presenter didn’t show. Then, just after that, I did a little roundtable discussion on raising geek kids. I was good to see other people’s approaches to kids and tech.

I was planning on Werewolf, but this time there was an iOS game remix programming contest. All night, 9pm to 9am. So, when I got there, I found Adam and David, werewolf players, and planned to do the contest but take it easy, and play werewolf if we felt like it was going that way. But somehow in the early hours of the morning, we got some good traction and started to get the game working in a fun way. We added gameplay. We added graphics. We added sounds. We added fading backgrounds, 2 different ways, till Kyle from Monstercostume showed us the third way that actually worked. And, somehow, at the end of it, we had a winner. A playable game, with shiny bits and sounds that went boom. And for that, we took home the iPads. 3 days later, I’m almost recovered from the sleep deprivation and thinking of looking at the code again, just to see if I still recognize it. Besides, there are a couple bugs, and the kids want to play it.