Allow me to introduce you to the world of LARPing:

For the uninitiated, LARPing is Live Action Role-Playing.  Think Dungeons and Dragons, but in real life. 

My first interaction with the LARP community occurred when I attended a gaming convention in Milwaukee at the innocent age of sixteen…  After a fairly epic win in the Nuclear RISK tournament (it’s a variant of the standard RISK game you either love or hate – and I’m leaning towards hate right now..), I headed for a restaurant outside the convention center for lunch and was almost immediately surrounded by a bunch of idiots dressed like vampires – covered in fake blood and tattered clothing.  My naive and immediate response was, “Meh, cosplay idiots are getting in my way…”   I then went back to whatever conversation I was having (possibly about the creepy, hyper-realistic statue of a security guard inside the convention center) only to be shocked back to attention by some feminine screaming coming from behind me.  The vampires weren’t just dressed like idiots, they were attacking someone!

The real peculiarity came when I noticed that they were talking to the person they were attacking…  Almost giving instructions..  Kind of like you imagine pro-wrestlers tell each other, “Ok, now I want you to body slam me, and I’m going to kick-out when you try to cover me”.  I immediately sensed that the woman wasn’t in danger (probably tipped off by the Victorian age attire and super nerdy glasses), but my Creep-o-Meter was off the charts!  One of my buddies quickly explained what was going on (note: it is ALWAYS good to have one of those friends who knows something about everything weird and nerdy – they are some of the most useful people to have around) so we wouldn’t freak out too much, and we went on our way.  Creeped out.

Oh, and the best possible thing happened after that!  About a block away was another convention center… with a Christian something something Convention going on…  And the LARPing was happening between that convention center and all the hotels.  FTW

My experience aside, apparently this LARP stuff is becoming more and more popular; or perhaps it has always been a niche activity?  We rarely think Civil War re-enactments are the weirdest thing ever, but those are essentially LARPs, right?  I mean, Bulgaria had a national LARPing event in 2008, so maybe that validates it a little?

LARPing has, at the very least, reached the level of popularity that they’re making a movie about it: enter Unicorn City FTW!  (DISCLAIMER: yes, I know the producer of the movie… yes, that is a DigiCert t-shirt in the first shot and it’s sponsored by them…  but I do really think it looks like a funny movie!) Here’s a snippet from the press release:

UNICORN CITY is the story of gamers who move to the mountains to live out their fantasy lives. It is a loose adaptation of Don Quixote set in modern times and features Live Action Role Playing (LARP) culture in a light but tender hearted romantic comedy.

Check out the trailer:

It may not be for everyone (definitely not me), but come on - we can all learn something awesome from LARPing, right?  In mean, this young man has learned something useful – the “Magic Missile” spell!

I tried a new WordPress theme a few months ago and there were aspects of it I really liked, though I needed to dig deep and fix some php code…  Well, those who know me well know how wonderful of a programmer I can be (meaning I’m terrible), so I never really got the gumption to do something about it…  As a last straw, Aaronius commented on my last post that the comment fields were busted and didn’t give direction on what you were supposed to put in each field..  Welp, that’s all the patience I had for a theme that needed some major rework.

To remedy the situation, I searched far and wide for another theme that I could implement w/o a ton of work.  I finally found the current one (goes by the name of Scarlett?) and liked it enough to spend a couple hours tweaking and edited php at a level I feel comfortable with.  So, for you RSS folks who aren’t actually at the site, here’s a peak at what we’re looking at off to the left…

One of the major annoyances I’ve come across in the last year w/ a lot of the WordPress themes I find available is that they often include a bunch of junk code in the footer that allows the designer to link to some trashy websites and increase their SEO by hijacking my footer.  I’m all for giving credit to the designer or website I’m pulling the theme from, but I’m not about to let some doofus link to porn or some other inappropriate stuff using my outward facing journal of sorts.  I did a quick search and found some help here.  Essentially, this guy suggests putting some finder comments in your Main Index Template, refreshing your page in another tab/window, and then copying the code between the finder comments to paste into your footer.php file.

The process is fairly simple, but with a more complex theme like mine I couldn’t simply copy/paste the code from the page source like the link suggests..  Since I have a custom footer w/ an about me, Twitter feed, and Flickr feed I had to adjust the code I found in the page source w/ a php injection and then modify the remainder from there.  Not really a huge deal, but it took my feeble php skills a little while to remember how exactly to do a php injection properly.  Ick!

I’ve also done some simple stuff like getting the logo changed to the name of my blog, updating the top menu bar, getting the sexy flash tag cloud built out and modified, and setting images for the moving carousel of posts at the top.  I don’t know how much more tweaking I will do, but I feel fairly comfortable with it now.  Hopefully this is a little nicer and everyone approves..  Functionality is more important than appearance, however, so let me know if you see something!

Tangent: A quite humerous and adorable blog post about the rumorative power held by Facebook can be found here.  It may be of interest to frequent readers and those who know me personally.

I went and saw Scott Pilgrim vs the World on Saturday and I love, love, love, LOVED it!  It’s the kind of movie a comic book/video game/hopeless romantic/kinda stupid nerd would love, and I think that description defines me pretty well (except for maybe not the stupid part – you decide!).  If you grew up playing games in the 80′s and 90′s, and you love movies that make you laugh and are insanely different than anything else Hollywood does, do yourself a favor and see Scott Pilgrim.  I promise, you’ll love, love, love, LOVE it!  And if not, lie to me and say you did.

I’m saddened that the film is “failing” in the eyes of the movie industry, and I think there are 2 legitimate reasons why..  Every movie blog within the blogosphere has  come up with their own guesses, but I only really consider a these 2 to be legit:

1. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is hard to categorize. This is one of the aspects of the story that I really love, but it has to be a marketer’s worst nightmare!  The posters with Scott rocking out on the guitar have been slammed for making people think the movie was about a rockstar, which is not the case, but they do make sense if you already know the story.  You also can’t sell it as a love story, because that’s only one component of the whole.  And an action movie?  With Michael Cera?  That won’t fly…  So, how do you categorize this film if you’re Blockbuster Video?  It doesn’t even fit in with the goofy punk/skateboarder movies I remember from the 80′s and 90′s (Gleaming the Cube, anyone?)…  Universal Pictures tried, but mixed messages left potential audiences confused, which is a shame.

2.  This movie was made for a small subsection of the population – the comic book/video game/hopeless romantic/kinda stupid (maybe) nerds of this world.  I honestly don’t see this movie having a strong appeal to the masses when you consider the ever rising barrier to entry for this kind of thing (e.g. the $9 movie ticket).  Those who have read the comic, which is supremely delightful and highly recommended, will be immediately drawn to the move.  Those who love Michael Cera (a dwindling fan base) might be drawn.  Those who love Edgar Wright (the director) may have been drawn…  Aside from some of those pretty small fan bases, you’re lucky to pull in the occasional straggler (like my buddy Spencer, who was a rockstar for coming with the lady and I).  Does the movie deserve a wider audience?  YES, but that doesn’t mean it will automatically have one.

If you’re reading this and find anything I’ve said interesting, go see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and love yourself for it.  It will treat you to something wholly different than anything else Hollywood has produced in a very long time.  I thought the acting was good, the writing was witty, the transition from page to screen was handled marvelously, and I finally got to see a girl kick some butt with a giant hammer (+5 against girls).

K.O.

I recently read Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and I LOVED it! Fantastic read! Definitely a nerd’s tale, which is likely why I loved it so much. I ripped through the books in just a couple of days, it’s that good. I’m very excited for the movie, but for the time being you can check out the GREATEST ONLINE TRAILER EVER CONCEIVED!!

Noooot really, but we like to joke that I am. Jason likes to joke that I am turning into a mini-HaX0r since I tend to know workarounds for just about everything he wants to do these days, but since I almost universally refuse to touch code, Jeff != HaX0r Really, all I did this time was jailbreak the iPhone.

Simply put, this was long overdue. Travis sung the praises of a jailbreak over a year ago, but I hesitated because I viewed it as a hassle when it comes to installing firmware updates and things of that nature (which I still haven’t quite figured out how all that will work, but I will). Since then I have felt the frustration of all that the iPhone doesn’t (thanks Droid ads for pointing this out over and over again), I have gone ahead and done what was necessary. I now introduce you to, Jeff’s iPhone 2.0:

(FYI – I was charging the phone when I took these screenshots)

Kinda neat, yeah?  Nothing mind blowing, but I love that I can run multiple apps (notice the radio icon in the bottom right corner as a “waiting” tab on it, meaning it’s running in the background), have 5 apps in the dock down below, a theme/skin (custom icons, a background other than black, my own name instead of AT&T in the upper corner, etc…), a simplified lock-screen…  Simple stuff that’s apparent right away, and very very nice!

The jailbreak process is incredibly straight forward.  I used the Pwnage Tool (google it and you’ll find a plethora of information), made sure I had current backups in iTunes (which is essential if you wanna keep your Apple App Store applications where you left them), and followed a couple different tutorials (one for when I worked on my phone and a different one for Jason’s – only really because I lost the first link).   This is why I can’t call myself a HaX0r…  The real geeks made it easy for schlubs like me!

Really, a key feature is being able to run multiple apps at once – something the phone SHOULD be able to do but Apple keeps it from happening..  I installed an app called Backgrounder (off of Cydia, the jailbreak app store) to run the multiple apps, and another called ProSwicther which gives me the fun look and feel of a Palm Pre when switching through applications, including the same touch gestures (see below – to close an app you can hit the (x) or slide it off the top of the screen).

While some of that stuff is just aesthetics (btw, did I mention my ring-tone is now the hidden door sound of the original Legend of Zelda? Major shout-out to Derek Christensen for the idea), there are some serious tweaks going on in the background.  To name a few, I’m running open SSH to gain access to my file structure, NetaTalk (uses Apple Protocol) to allow wireless access to my iPhone’s file structure, 3G Unrestrictor which gets past the “You Can Only Use This App on Wireless, not 3G” stuff, and SBSettings (see images below) to have easy access to turning features on and off as well as free up memory or kill applications.

(Note the “Available Memory” in the first image.  I hit “Free Up Memory” and it cleared a considerable amount that was being wasted.  Also note that the SSH toggle on the right only exists because I have Open SSH installed)

Finally the iPhone is what it should have been, arguably, from the beginning!  Does everything work perfectly?  Surprisingly, it’s pretty close!  Apple continually spews lies about how running multiple apps will kill the battery or destroy the memory management, but it seems pretty obvious that the jailbreak community has figure some of this stuff out.  MAYBE my battery dies a bit faster than it would otherwise, but I have to charge it every night anyway…  And with the ability to quickly turn off 3G, location awareness, and wifi in SBSettings, it’s really easy to actually conserve more battery that way.   This is the only reason I have some hope for the iPad – Apple made a fail of a product, but perhaps the jailbreak community can actually make it cool!

Oh, and my favorite jailbreak app?

WHAAA?!  You mean I can haz texts in appz?!  (Sorry I’m using you as an example Aly!) I didn’t take a screen shot of the actual reply function, but essentially I just hit that reply button and an overlay of the texting screen pops up and I can immediately respond without going to the texting application (don’t fool yourself, it’s an app like the others but with a push notification like setup – it is NOT like the phone or email clients that are constantly running).   This is a HUGE plus for me!  HUGE!  I get text messages throughout the day, and I hated having to close whatever I was working on to reply.  Granted, now that I can run multiple apps I could just move from app to app, but this streamlines the process even more!  Why does this not exist in the native iPhone OS?  Ask El Jobso, cause it freakin’ should!

All in all, I’m happy as a clam.  Yes, the novelty of it all has kind of worn off, but that doesn’t mean I’m not super happy about it.  Really, truly, this is the kind of stuff the iPhone should already be able to do.  If Apple adds a majority of these improvements to the standard OS then maybe I’ll switch back at that point, but right now the jailbreak community has figured out how to truly unlock the power of the device.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had an over-the-top action movie with a killer (pun intended) cast and some serious action. Tropic Thunder doesn’t count.

With respect to the awesome action flicks of the 80′s and early 90′s, I present to you Sly Stallone’s latest project: The Expendables

UPDATE: Thanks Jason for pointing out that the older video wasn’t working. Hopefully this embed works for the time being…

UPDATE: Looks like the internets just can’t handle such a sweet movie trailer. Look for it yourself, somewhere else. I don’t know why it keeps getting pulled, but I know I’m not going to repost it every five minutes.  Here’s a picture of a kitty that exemplifies how I feel:

It’s no major secret that Fiddler on the Roof is probably my favorite musical…  I have been dying to see it in a professional show for years, trying to satiate my love for the story with the movie and semi-decent high school performances – but the wait is over!  Not only did I get to see the show performed by a professional company, but I got to see the greatest Tevye of all time – Topol!

When I first moved to Houston I took a look to see what shows would be coming through the area (not sure whether or not to trust the people who told me that the Theater District is one of the best) and I saw that this tour was coming through.  I pretty much Mountain Dew’d my pants on the spot and added 2 or 3 reminders to my calendar to check for tickets.  Eventually they come up on the ExxonMobil discount page (we get a small discount by purchasing group tickets) and I snapped up some good seats in the lower section towards the middle.  I got 4 tickets in my excitement!

My new best friend, Jenny, and I went with Matt Anderton and his wife (who was in the dark until we walked into the theatre and she finally saw a sign telling her what show we were there for – she was pretty euphoric).  Honestly, I had probably about 20 nerdgasms during the show as I tried to hold myself back from singing along and cheering during certain dance numbers.  Topol was everything I could have hoped to see in person – at the 74 years old he still has an incredibly powerful voice, a ton of character, and the energy to keep going!  Jenny and I noticed in the playbill that he has performed the role over 2,500 times throughout his career!  We may as well have been watching the real Tevye from the original short stories…

This was definitely one of the “Before You Die” goals that can now be crossed off.  I’m still smiling on a Monday morning back at work – and I hope the smile lasts for a looooooong time! :-D

I caught this during the ten minutes when I actually had a break at work today

[svgallery name="Star Wars Chipmunk"]

Seriously, some people are crazy creative – and it make life a wonderful thing!

Check this out:

Since I am currently in a stage where I feel like I need to work on my level of creativity I thought this was pretty interesting. Not much else to add to that, but I thought I’d share.

Hopefully I’ll get a more substantial update in soon – I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, reading, and photographing. :)

Check this kid out… I seriously can’t get more than a couple seconds into the song on expert before it fails me and I have to start over. This kid makes it through 7+ minutes and does it without making a single mistake!

Malwitz, I officially challenge you to beat me at this song someday… ;-)