Hello (e:strip)pers! It's been awhile, but after spending a weekend in Idaho, I felt like I should update you on what we've been up to. It's been six weeks since we moved away from Buffalo. In some ways, it feels like forever, and in other ways it feels like just yesterday we were eating Indian food with (e:PMT). (We still haven't found a very good Indian food restaurant, but we're back on the Mexican stuff. o//)

So last weekend I went out to Idaho to hang out with my old friends and speak at an event in the Power of Play series. It was a great day of speakers (if I do say so myself), and I think everyone really had a good time. The lineup began with me, and I delivered an overview of games and game studies to try to provide some foundation for the mixed audience. Laurie Taylor (http://www.laurientaylor.com) followed up with an excellent discussion of gender in games. Rick Fehrenbacher gave a talk about medievalism in videogames. And then Julian Dibbell (http://www.juliandibbell.com) spoke about his new book, Play Money, which I had to break down and get signed. It was an irrepressible moment of fanboyness. But I don't think it hurt my cred... hehe Maybe I should have brought my copy of My Tiny Life? That might have actually increased my cred. Oh well, too little, too late.

Anyway, I have some photos from the event.



Here's me and Julian Dibbell talking about some really smart stuff.


This is all of us on the closing panel. From left to right, it's Rick, me, Julian, and Laurie.


And here is me, Rick and Laurie.

I have no idea who took these photos, but I was alerted to them by my good friend, Mike Wilchek. Woot for Mike!

It was especially great because not only did I get to see all of my old friends at University of Idaho, but I also got to have the kind of experience I remember so fondly seeing really inspiring folks talk about really interesting things. I remember all the cool people I met at UI who came by to tell us about interesting stuff: Scott McCloud, Ray Federman, Samuel R. Delany, Michael Joyce, Bruce Sterling, Ray Kurzweil, on and on and on. It might be way up there in the middle of nowhere, but it's got something funky going on.

I returned to work today at PBS. It's the end of week 6, although I've been gone for most of it. I'm still really enjoying my job, so it's not hard to go back.

Also, Sarah has gotten not one, but TWO jobs! She'll be teaching some courses at the Art Institute of Washington DC, and she'll be doing some children's workshops at the Corcoran Art Gallery. Both are really cool gigs that will lead to even cooler stuff. Sarah is already lined up to teach some adult education art courses next Spring at the Corcoran, which is a really great gallery.

And the winner is...

(e:Ladycroft) !

Of couse. How could this entry NOT win? (Plus, it was pretty much the only one... But that should not detract from how awesome Ladycroft's photo-choppin' is.



This is what it might look like for Ladycroft when she is at the J5 show, totally for free and with a friend, on August 24. In fact, I believe it will look VERY similar, since this is a shot I took last night at the Jurassic 5 show here in DC. Yeah, that's right: We discovered that J5 was playing the 9:30 club last night, so we bought new tickets. It's not like we could trade them or anything. Our friend Kevin came with us, and it was FUCKING AWESOME.

The new album is great, the X-Clan were fun for an opener, and J5 was 100% exactly what you would expect. Which is so, so good. Unfortunately, Cut Chemist is no longer with the band, but DJ Numark held it down nicely and did some really fun DJ tricks.

Sarah and I are very happy to award the tickets to (e:Ladycroft) -- CONGRATULATIONS! You're going to love it. Message me your address so we can get these in the mail ASAP!

(PS -- I have a good video clip from the show -- the others were fuXXored -- but the good one is too big for estrip right now -- I'll post it on my own site later and link to it here.)

Well, it was a big deal, but we made it. We're officially in VA. We've got internet. We've got driver's licenses, and we've got all of our stuff inside and gradually getting organized. I wanted to say hello to all of estrip and encourage everyone to enter the contest for the J5 tickets. So far (e:Ladycroft) has set the bar high, but we'd love to see more entries!

More later, including photos!

This is just a reminder of my previous post ( this one ) about giving away our tickets to the August 24 Jurassic 5 concert in Buffalo. It's easy to enter -- just reply in a comment or email to one of these posts and we'll consider your entry. Any plea will be duly considered: Artistic or emotional arguments for why you should win will be especially valued, but who knows -- anything could win. We just want to give the tickets to the person who wants them the most, so we only ask you to display your love of J5 and/or desire to go to the show.

Well, Sarah and I found a place. It's a good place for a good price, but it's in the more suburb-y part of Alexandria. It's not quite living in East Amherst, but it's a little like living in a new development in North Tonawanda or something. Although, when I compare housing there to housing in Buffalo, I just have to laugh. Buffalo housing is so cheap and awesome. Plenty of rad old houses that have a world of possibility.

Our new landlord asked: So how do you feel about a 300% to your rent. And I asked if she knew of any cheaper 2bdr places available. We looked at cheaper places, but I have no desire to move into an apartment very much like what I would have expected in my undergrad years. (We saw this house some very nice hippies lived in, but it was split into several apartments with shared everything and not very clean or nice at all.)

Needless to say, we're right in our target area (1600 per month) and I told her that I didn't think it was possible to pay that much money for rent in Buffalo at all. I told her that I was pretty sure one could move into a mansion for that kind of money! hehehe



That's an image of the front. It's in the Kingstowne neighborhood/development in Alexandria, just south of the Beltway and a mile from the last top on the Blue line, which is four stops from PBS. So it should take me about 30-45 minutes door-to-door to commute. Not too bad. That's how long it takes me to get from my current house to North campus, but with no bus transfer!

We had only a few requirements, the primary one being a bit of grass for the dog to call her own. I guess I haven't written much about my dog on the site, but she's our little beast and she's getting older. I couldn't turn her back into an apartment dog after enjoying such a nice yard in Buffalo. It will be sad that she'll have to make all-new doggy friends. I'm not one of those people who refers to myself as my dog's "daddy" (in fact, I find that really really annoying) but I'd have to say that she's my fave animal in the whole world and I'd have to be REALLY starving in order to eat her (but all you other animals watch out!).

So here's Janis' little bit of grass:



And here's the small deck overlooking the yard/patio. It looks like I can put a BBQ on the patio, so that will be nice. I might be the only person who thinks the weather gets nice enough to BBQ in the winter... Apparently DC shuts down at the thought of snow, but I can't see cooking outdoors in weather like we saw there this weekend (which was a heatwave, granted).



Anyway, it's a lot different than our current location, but the landlord seems really nice and that's important. I've decided that I like renting from people who own only one other property and care about it a lot rather than somebody who is trying to support themselves or seriously supplement their income with rental properties. But more on that later.

In pennsylvania.

This is a test image from the new phone.

Hello estrip!

As you may know from the post below, Sarah and I are moving. While it's really exciting, it's sad that we'll miss both the Violent Femmes and the Jurassic 5 concerts this summer. The Femmes is free at TiTS, but J5 is a pay concert happening at the Towne Ballroom on Main St. on August 24th. It costs like $50 for two tickets.

And that's where we are: We bought two tickets for the show as soon as they were available. But we can't be the only Jurassic 5 fans in the city, can we? Their new album comes out on July 27th and a little birdie (name BitTorrent) told me it's really damn good, much more like Quality Control than Power in Numbers, which any J5 fan can tell you is good. Sarah saw and photographed J5 at a short set at E3 a few years back, and they were awesome. I'm sure this show will be really great. (And for those who don't know Cut Chemist and DJ NuMark are the J5 DJs, so expect some badass turntable antics, too.)

Anyway, we're not interested in scalping tickets, and we love J5 so much that it kills us to not be able to go. Still, we figure they'll hit DC sometime on this tour (Buffalo is the second date and the others have yet to be announced) and we've had some real good luck lately, so we thought we'd spread the love.

So we're NOT selling these tickets. We're GIVING THEM AWAY FOR FREE to somebody on estrip.org . That's the kind of love we have for this place and for J5. Hopefully the community won't let us down and some serious J5 fans will be rewarded.

So here's how we're going to do this. Your referees are Sarah and (e:shawnr) , so we're the ultimate deciding factor. We want to see any kind of show of devotion to or adoration of J5, and/or a display of desire to attend the show. Some ideas: Essays about why you love Jurassic 5, analyses of J5 lyrics/videos, poems about J5, photos showing demonstrations of J5 fandom, paintings about how great the show will be, comics about your love of J5, whatever.

UPDATE: We wanted to make clear: Lip sync and dance routine videos are perfectly acceptable homages to Jurassic 5. So get wacky with the webcams people!

You can post your entry in the comments here, either in its entirety (in the case of an essay, poem, etc.) or link to a website where we can see your entry. You can email us images, audio, video, etc. too. Just use the email link on my profile.

If you have any questions post them in the comments or emai/msg me. Sarah and I really look forward to giving somebody these tickets who will enjoy the show as much as we would have. The only thing we ask is that you post about it on estrip after you go.

So the deadline is August 15. That might seem like a long time, but it's only like 6 weeks. I have no idea how popular this will be, but I hope somebody is stoked.

Just for clarity: The Jurassic 5 Concert is August 24, 2006 in Buffalo, NY at the Towne Ballroom on Main St (theater stop).

I typically try to keep business businees, and estrip not business, and i plan to maintain that separation. But sometimes an offer comes along that one can't resist. Such is the case here:

In spite of how much I'd love to stay in Buffalo, there doesn't seem to be much paying work. Having graduated this summer from UB, the expected thing is for me to move on. Although there are a lot of things I can be involved with in Buffalo, I kept feeling like I could probably make it to another level of creation. I love the idea of what (e:paul) has found at Roswell -- somewhere with a cool group of people where I could do work that feels useful. I mean, c'mon, how cool is it to help doctors manage info to cure cancer? That's like crucial to the whole cancer-curing process.

So I started looking at sites like Idealist.org, not really thinking I'd find much, but my thought was that I either want to keep teaching, or to work in some kind of rewarding project "in the real world."

Well, I found it. I interviewed and now I have a job offer. I'm going to accept. We're moving to DC.



I'm going to work for PBS, as a "Web Technologist," on the Teacherline site which is an online school for teachers K-12. Teachers can enroll in accredited graduate courses in educational fields, as well as courses to prepare for different certifications and state tech requirements. I've always been a huge fan of PBS.org, and I'm thrilled about the job. The folks there were super nice, and I can really envision a good time. I think moving to DC will be an incredible adventure, and I'm so grateful that Buffalo has prepared me.

It kills me to leave my courses and my students. I've seen so many of them succeed this year, and so many promising young students coming up. But I think I'll be a better teacher for my experiences. And I'll be continuing a thread of my teaching experience that has been there for a long time: that is, online education and tutoring teachers in technology and working with them on experiments in tech integration into the classroom.

I don't plan on leaving estrip.org, so this should not be taken as a goodbye letter, or even a pre-goodbye. My wife's family is still based in Buffalo, and we'll be back from time to time I'm sure. I've made some real friends here, and I hope folks at UB and around will invite me back to present my artwork and fiction, which will continue unabated (perhaps even invigorated by more concentrated daytime development experience).

I think of (e:paul) as inspirational: what he has accomplished at Roswell is huge, plus he's made much of it available to everyone else to use with things like SurebertCom. I hope to continue to be as productive in my own work.

Anyway, I'm a bit of a hermit and kind of feel weird at parties, so it's not like I'll be a missing fixture at the big (e:strip) shindigs. I'll still be onine, but now I'll be working for PBS. woot!

My good pal PFC_Spengler from the Unofficial UB Forums (a must-read for any UB students/alum and pretty fun for many others) hooked me up with this awesome video and photo content all for estrip!

Story goes like this: This morning, somebody noticed this vehical perched precariously over a ~20 foot wall (located here ). The car was running and lights were on. Apparently the cops were being called...

This afternoon the car is turned off, but nobody has come to attend it. Kids on summer break gather.

This evening: The events you are about to witness.

The runup to the big pushover happens here:

::DOWNLOAD MEDIA::

And the vehicle goes over. I love the bleeting horn and the sound of screams! hahaha

::DOWNLOAD MEDIA::

And here are some images.

So apparently somebody thought it was a good idea to do a bunch of damage. Not sure who did this, but it wasn't there in the morning. Did I mention that according to witnesses most of the kids were totally drunk. Here are some close-ups of the vehicle. No plates? weird, huh?









And, of course, being so close to the Fourth of July in Buffalo, what would some mayhem be without a roman candle. No good shots of the candle going off here, but if you slideshow these three images you can see the smoke rise.