Docklands Firelight Festival

Brr.... it's cold in here! So they had a festival in the Docklands with fires in barrels so we could hobo it up. One of my co-workers said that he was going to take photos (he won an award last year), so I thought I'd go and see him work his magic. I went there after work, and it wasn't too crowded, which was nice. There were some brass bands playing, and whatever this instrument is called:

The smell of food from the nearby stalls was amazing, and there was a place that sold vegan crêpes!

Mine were better.... >_> Although mine weren't vegan, since they had egg. But I did like the poached pears they had in it.

I went to the water to try and stand in a good spot for the fireworks. My co-worker said to get there at 6:30, and it was 6pm, so I was right at the front.

By 6:15, my fingers were starting to get numb from the cold.

By 6:30, I saw no sign of my co-worker (whose phone number I don't have), and I checked the Facebook page. Fireworks due to start at 8pm.

My fingers felt frozen. And I was standing really close to one of the fire barrels. I didn't think I could survive until 8pm, and Lenny said it was going to get to 0 degrees overnight, so I decided to leave.

I'm going to a photography course run by my co-worker anyway, so I'll get to see him another time.

Music was nice, food looked good (though I ended up heading home for dinner), it was just too cold for me - it's definitely Winter now!

Girl in Real Life

In May, Valve changed their policy for ranked matchmaking games, making it so that you had to link a phone number to your Dota 2 account. The idea is to prevent bots from making a heap of accounts, getting them to a certain  matchmaking rank (MMR), and then selling them. And I guess to prevent smurfing. Which is a problem for my experiment, as I wanted to compare how I was treated on my smurf where I would use voice chat, and my regular account, where I would not (and thus hide my gender).

Fortunately, stingy me found that you can get a SIM from Aldi for $5, that lasts an entire year, so now I have a real fake phone number to give to spammers and people I don't care about.

You can order these online, and they don't even charge a shipping cost. Mine took a few days to arrive. You do need a form of ID though (driver's license, passport).

Now I'm all set to begin my experiment. I have played enough games (133) to unlock ranked matchmaking (which now requires a level 50 experience trophy). Before I begin, I do want to set out some guidelines, as I want to work out what it is I'm measuring so that I can be consistent throughout the entire experiment. I also want to set out some rules, and I also plan to record every game I play and upload to YouTube, so that other people can check my data if they really want to.

I had originally intended to compare my real account (~3.9k MMR) to my smurf account, which I had planned to tank to below 2k MMR. The idea behind this was that if I was playing well below my actual skill level, any complains about me being unskilled would more likely be because of my gender, rather than because I played badly. Unfortunately, according to Open Dota, it estimates my smurf account's MMR to be 3752. That's a looooooooooong drop. Voltzy offered his account (~900 MMR), but I didn't want to ruin his reputation. Though I find it funny how most of my records are on Shadow Fiend from all the practice I've had. Oh, I just realised those records are all from a stupid game we played against a team that looked to be all bots, and I went 35-0. Doesn't really count. :(

Anyway, as some people have pointed out, there are other flaws with that plan: it could just be that people at that skill level are unable to recognise that I'm playing well (e.g. being a low level due to roaming), or it could be that people at that level are just more toxic in general, so they aren't flaming me just because of my gender, but because they're angry people. So my new plan is to compare how I'm treated across my two accounts, which are now roughly the same MMR.

Background

I've been trying to find a list of common complaints female gamers have when playing online multiplayer games. There's this Buzzfeed article, but it's more about being a girl who plays games, rather than what you get in the games themselves. There are a bunch of threads on /r/girlGamers that I've read in the past, but I can't seem to find them right now. From memory, the main complaints I see on the sub are:

• there are no female playable characters
• armour for female characters is unrealistic
• people complain about having a girl on their team - comments like "gg we got a girl", etc.
• they are expected to play badly
• they get hit on while playing
• if they do get hit on, and reject the other person, then they get abused ("you're probably fat and ugly anyway")
• they are expected to play the healer / support role
• they get comments like "What are you doing outside the kitchen?"
• they get asked for pics / nudes
• they get hateful private messages from their opponents for playing well and winning (this one I don't understand, but I've seen enough screenshots to believe it exists)
• they get called attention whores
• they end up muting / reporting a lot of people

The ones I've bolded are things I think I can measure in a Dota 2 match. The one in italics I'm a bit unsure of, as it depends on the one before that, so it's a tough thing to measure.

There are definitely female playable characters, and I don't think they're particularly bad when it comes to sartorial choices. I guess Crystal Maiden is somewhat scantily clad for someone who spends all their time around ice, but given she's a frost mage, I would think that she's accustomed to the cold.

I don't know if I'll be expected to play the healer / support role, as it'll be too early in the game to really be using voice chat, and regardless, that's the role I want anyway, so I think it's an unfair metric to measure it on.

You can't message people on Steam without them adding you first, so I think it'll be hard to measure the hateful message from opponents one. I guess there is all chat, and post game chat, but since they're public, it'll be a bit different to the private messages that I've seen posted to /r/girlGamers.

Metrics

What I'm going to measure:

• how many friend requests I get
• how many commendations I get
• how many reports I get
• how many reports I make (or would I would report if I had run out of reports)
• how many of my four teammates would I be willing to play with again
• how many complaints I get about my play (this one is a bit hard to measure, as it will be tough to tell the difference between genuine feedback and a complaint. I'm going to roughly categorise a comment that suggests I do something differently as feedback, and a comment that just criticises my play, we a complaint. It will get a lot of false positives, but at least it should be consistent across both accounts as long as I keep the classification the same. Or maybe I'll break down the comments into different types)
• how many complaints about me being a girl
• how many times I get called an attention whore
• how many times I am asked for a picture of myself
• how many times I am hit on (this one is also a bit subjective, and I'm unsure about how to measure it. I'm thinking I might type out a transcript of the chat from every game, and have a group of 3 people look at it and vote on whether I was hit on that game or not

One thing that will be tough to rule out is what the effect of having voice chat will have on my play. Dota 2 is a game that requires a lot of team co-ordination, and it's much easier to do that via voice chat than text. 

I have never muted anyone in a game, because the game requires too much communication, and muting people just results in even worse play, so I'm not going to measure how many people I've muted.

I'm also going to make a rule that I'm not going to add anyone back as a friend. For the smurf account, it's mostly because I'll probably dump this account once the experiment is done, but also because I want to be able to keep playing solo ranked. It also makes it easier to keep track of who has added me. I already have some friends for that account anyway, so it won't look too suspicious seeing an account with no friends. For my real account, it's because I don't really like adding people I don't know (or know through someone else).

Roles and Heroes

Since my support skill is still much stronger than my carry skill, I will pre-select a support hero every game, but if required, I will play carry, preferring mid over safe-lane. I will avoid locking in my role too early unless nobody else is picking, in order to try and fill whatever role is needed. Preferences for roles:

1. offlane support
2. safelane support
3. offlane
4. mid
5. safelane carry

If someone on the team has a suggested hero, I will pick it if I can confidently play it, otherwise I'll pick the hero I think matches the team the best.

Attitude

I think this is the important one, as Purge seems to think the only reason SirActionSlacks is such a highly rated player despite not knowing a lot of key Dota 2 mechanics / stealing last hits from carries is because he's such a cheerful person that he boosts the morale of his teammates. I try pretty hard not to get angry at teammates (unless they are getting angry at my friends, but this won't be an issue in solo queue). When two people start fighting, I try my best to diffuse the fight. 

I've been trying to think how I should behave when in my "girl" persona. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of players (of both genders) hate the whole "attention whore" / "gamer gurl" persona. If they think you're just there to be praised for being a girl who games, then you'll get a negative reaction. I thought about trying to emulate some of the popular female streamers (which would mean I need to start watching some streams), but Pharmacist asked me a good question: Why not just be yourself?

The pros to being myself are that it'll be easier to keep consistent between accounts, as I don't need to pretend. Though I think in order to keep things consistent, I will need to talk more on my no-voice account, as I tend to be pretty quiet when playing - saying only what's necessary to the match, and trying to break up fights if needed. This will also mean that 100% of my attention is focused on playing, rather than being split between playing and acting, which will hopefully rule that out as a possible confound.

The reason why I didn't want to do it at first is because I feel like perhaps I am not "girly" enough. But then I realised that this forced girliness would be in contrast with my desire not to cross the "gamer gurl" threshold. I am a girl / woman, so by definition, I am girly enough.

Sample Size

I'm thinking a sample of 50 games per account should be enough - that's potentially 200 different people per account to interact with. I don't know if that's a significant enough number. I guess I'll set that as a minimum and see how I go. 100 games of solo ranked is a lot. Especially since I rarely play solo ranked.

-------------------------------

I'm not too sure when I'll start this in earnest. I have a few other things going on at the moment to be able to commit much time to it. It might have to be early August. So if you have any comments, criticisms, suggestions, I'm open! Better to refine things now rather than find out partway through the experiment that I should have been measuring this other thing.

Cookie Monster

Warning: this is an emo post - continue at your own peril.

Even though the Dota 2 challenge with D is over, I've been playing some bot matches with him, his friend OCD and Jal. The games are pretty relaxed, and it's mostly just messing around, which is fun.

I've come to really appreciate how relaxed OCD is (despite the impress you get from the nickname I've given him). Absolutely nothing so far has phased him. Even in the official match, he was incredibly relaxed the whole time, and was very sportsmanlike despite his loss. That's the kind of person I want to be friends with.

Before the match, I upped the stakes and said that if I lost, I would buy D dinner at this American BBQ restaurant that he seems to love. OCD asked if we can go together anyway, even though they lost, and the other players seem keen to go. We haven't gone yet, and I'm incredibly nervous about meeting OCD. I really want him to like me, so that we can eventually become friends.

I found out that he likes cookies, so of course that meant I would bring him cookies when we first meet. After my near-loss to Captain in the choc-chip cookie bake-off, I realised that even though these cookies are my perfect ideal for cookies, they aren't everyone's cup of tea, so I set to work trying to improve them. I really liked how Captain's cookies were a lot thicker. I know OCD likes soft cookies, so I had to keep that property, but I remembered reading about Alton Brown's The Chewy, where he makes thick, chewy cookies by substituting bread flour for the plain flour and thought I might try the same.

Long story short, I baked a heap of cookies, with the plan to take them into the office and perform more A/B testing, with 6 batches. Bread flour vs pizza flour, and dark choc, milk choc and m&ms.

D sees the cookies in the kitchen and asks what weird thing I'm doing now. I explain about the quest to find the best cookies, and he says, "Normally it'd be creepy... but it's you."

I don't know if I was genuinely saddened by that comment, or it's just the grief finally hitting me, but I just completely deflated. I gave up on the experiment. I left the remainder of the cookies on a plate (though not before finding out the votes at that point - milk choc (11) beating dark choc (4.5) and m&ms (1.5)).

On the trip home, I thought about my past. I've jokingly referred to myself as a stalker, and my friends play along with it. I don't think I've ever done anything maliciously, but as someone pointed out to me, it's not about what I think is malicious, it's how the recipient sees it. D and OCD are best friends, so I would expect him to be able to predict OCD's reaction.

Some of the other things I've done could be classified as creepy, too. Taking someone's photo, printing out a picture of their face, and then filming a James Bond parody is pretty damn creepy if you think about it. Asking a friend to look up a co-worker's birthday on Facebook is pretty creepy. Recording people's likes, dislikes, and coffee preferences is pretty creepy.

I think this part is the grief talking: I feel like I've lost my joy de vivre. My passion for experiments is gone. All the little ideas I had floating in the back of my mind for cheering people up have vanished. I spent an hour looking at ice-cream recipes today, and not one of them gave me any inspiration.

A thought occurred to me: Is the reason why I feel so compelled to do "nice" things for people because I want to hide the fact that deep-down, I'm a creepy monster?

12-week challenge over!

(The idea for this image was a lot better in my head. I wasn't standing with the exact same posture, and there has been enough of a noticeable change (other than my hair being longer), so the silhouettes are just overlapping each other.)

Well, it's the end of the 12-week challenge, and I have made no progress on the weight front.

It has been an interesting 12 weeks. I've tried out some new sports, finally hit 10k, and made some interesting friends along the way. I completed my mini-One Punch Man challenge, and managed to go to the gym 10 times in a month.

I baked far too many cookies, and made far too much ice-cream, but I think it was all worth it.

I think my biggest problem is the lack of routine that I had back when I first tried to lose weight. I had my regular schedule of classes: yoga, pilates, zumba, plus a couple of gym sessions per week. I had a lot more self-discipline around eating, as well. I thought I could do it again without that structure if I had the challenge of trying to do it in 12-weeks, but I guess not.

I'm not too sure if I'll join a gym again. Maybe I will before we leave for Fiji.

Final results:

Weight: 58.4 / 59.1 / 58.9 / 58.6 / 58.3 / 58.5 / 58.5 / 59.1 / 58.7 / 57.4 / 58.7 / 58.7 / 58.5
Waist: 74.5 / 75.5 / 75.5 / 74.5 / 73 / 75 / 73 / 75.5 / 75 / 73.5 / 74.5 / 76 / 73
Hips: 88 / 89 / 90.5 / 88.5 / 88.5 / 90 / 87.5 / 89 / 89 / 88 / 89 / 90 / 88
Bust: 89.5 / 91 / 89.5 / 90 / 89.5 / 92 / 91.5 / 90 / 92 / 90 / 88 / 92 / 88
Left thigh: 52.5 / 51.5 / 53 / 52.5 / 52 / 53 / 53.5 / 53 / 53 / 52.5 / 52.5 / 51 / 52
Left calf: 35.5 / 35.5 / 37 / 35.5 / 35 / 34.5 / 34.5 / 37 / 35.5 / 35 / 36 / 36 / 35.5
Right thigh: 53.5 / 53.5 / 54 / 53 / 54 / 54 / 53.5 / 54 / 53.5 / 53.5 / 52.5 / 52 / 53.5
Right calf: 36.5 / 36 / 36.5 / 35 / 36 / 35.5 / 35.5 / 37 / 36 / 35.5 / 36 / 36 / 37
Left bicep: 31 / 29 / 29  / 29 / 30 / 28 / 28 / 28.5 / 30 / 29 / 29 / 29 / 28.5
Right bicep: 30 / 29 / 30.5 / 30.5 / 32 / 29.5 / 29.5 / 30.5 / 31.5 / 30 / 30 / 30 / 31

Hufflepuff and Build Your House Up

When we were preparing to go to the Harry Potter studio in London, MrFodder and I made accounts on Pottermore and got sorted. He was sorted into Gryffindor, and I... Hufflepuff. I was disappointed initially, because when you mentioned Hufflepuff, likely only two characters come to mind: the honourable, yet bland Cedric Diggory, and the house founder, Helga Hufflepuff. I don't even remember what Helga did that was so noteworthy - though I am not the devoutest of Harry Potter fans.

If you look at the description of the houses on the HP wiki:

Gryffindor values bravery, daring, nerve, and chivalry.

Hufflepuff values hard work, dedication, patience, loyalty, and fair play. 

Ravenclaw values intelligence, knowledge, and wit.

Slytherin house values ambition, cunning and resourcefulness.

I guess Hufflepuff really does describe me best.

I was told about this site called LessWrong, which features a series of blog posts on the topic of rationality - which, as you all know, is a favourite topic of mine. I've bought the recommended book to read before starting to delve into the site, though it's currently sitting behind a queue of about six books for me to read. However, one of the posts currently promoted on the site caught my eye: Project Hufflepuff: Planting the Flag.

It starts by talking about how Slytherin and Ravenclaw traits are often sought after and respected, but Hufflepuff traits are important to have in a community (which is something that they do cover in the Harry Potter books, as some characters will look down on Hufflepuffs, but I think it's Dumbledore who says that the qualities of each house contribute in a different way).

The author doesn't explain how such a thing will happen, and this is the first of the posts they plan to write on the topic after getting some feedback from the the community. The top voted reply questions whether it's possible to cultivate such a culture, when you have "parasites" in the community, which will be happy to suck up all the goodwill of the Hufflepuffs of the world.

I constantly get asked why I keep making farewell videos for the people I've worked with. My response is always the same: I really enjoyed working with them, and they played an important part in my life. I've been told that these videos (and some other "quirky" things that I do) are the highlights of my former co-workers' year, and something they really miss about not having me around.

I'm actually trying to stop myself from making these videos for my former co-workers because I feel like I am being exploited a little now. Team morale is at an all-time low, for reasons that I can't discuss. These little things that I do help keep people engaged, and I don't mind doing them, because the effort I put in is dwarfed by the enjoyment from the people around me. However, I am starting to feel some indirect pressure to keep doing these things so that the underlying morale issues don't have to be addressed.

On one hand, I don't mind doing it, and I like these people and I want them to be happy. On the other hand, if I keep them at a certain level of happiness, they'll never become unhappy enough to goad action into addressing the real issues. I feel exploited, and there aren't many things that I hate, but I really hate feeling manipulated into doing something that I wouldn't have done if I had known all the facts upfront.

I honestly don't know what the solution is, and if anyone has any ideas, I am open to hearing them. Until then, I'll just keep Hufflepuffing along - though maybe trying a bit harder to fly under the radar.

Where Do the Good Go?

Had a somewhat timely discussion about religion and spirituality. I don't consider myself religious. I was an atheist for a while, but I think I'm now a lazy agnostic. I don't actively subscribe to any particular religion, but I'm happy for people to believe what they want to believe. I have to admit that I believe in something. It's a pretty stupid story, actually, and I didn't realise how stupid it was until I said it out loud. My brother, father and I were playing The Lion King on the Sega, and there was one stage that we really struggled to get past which was fairly early in the game - the wildebeest stampede level. I made my first prayer, that we would get past the level, and in exchange, I would believe. Well, my brother beat the level, and I've kept up my side... at least somewhat.

I don't know what it is I believe, actually. I don't believe in heaven, but a part of my wants to believe that there is life after death, despite the fact that everything I know points to the fact that we will die, rot away, and that'll be it. I used to believe in karma (the whole idea of a cosmic set of checks and balances that rewards the "good" and punishes the "evil"), but I started to think about how impossible such a thing could be, because there is no universal sense of good or evil. I now believe that karma is self-made, which is why I try so hard to show gratitude to the people who are nice to me.

I had a friend who is Christian. I remember asking her about how she was going to achieve a certain goal that she had set, as she didn't meet some of the requirements. I don't remember what it was exactly, but I have never forgotten her response, "I'm not worried, God will make it happen."

At the time, I wanted to shake some sense into her, "No, He isn't going to suddenly give you qualifications and skills that you don't have! You are being unreasonable!" She didn't listen to me, and I'm not sure if she ever did what it was that she wanted.

I've never been able to articulate that feeling of frustration, but when I saw the episode "The Painted Lady" from Avatar: the Last Airbender, I feel like it described how I felt. In the episode, The Gaang visit a town where the villagers are quite sick, the water around them is polluted due to a nearby factory, and the people are suffering. The whole village doesn't seem that bothered by it, as they are confident that the Painted Lady will someday return and save them once again. Lo and behold, the next morning, food supplies mysteriously appear in the village, and there is talk of the return if the Painted Lady. Another night passes, and during the night, many of the sick villagers are healed.

The "Painted Lady" who is helping them turns out to be the waterbender, Katara, in disguise and the villagers are quite upset when they find out. Sokka points out that they can't just keep relying on the Painted Lady to save them, and they're going to have to start doing things for themselves if they're going to survive. Eventually, they are spurred into action, and begin to clean the river.

I feel like this kind of blind "It's all part of the Grand Plan" kind of faith is obstructive, as it can lead some people into feeling that all they need to do to achieve something is to pray hard enough. Or maybe some of it is the thought that whatever happens was fated to happen, and we really have no control over the future at all (but that's worthy of a whole other blog post).

To some degree, I admire the people who have faith like that. If you live with the belief that good things happen to good people, then it motivates you to be good in order for those good things to happen to you. I'm of the belief that bad things happen to everyone, so to be able to keep your faith in spite of the horrible things that happen in the world every day is quite an achievement.

The reason I'm writing this post today is because someone I respect was diagnosed with cancer earlier in the year, and the prognosis was not good. She was an amazing person to be around, the kind of person who brightens your day just by saying, "Hello". She was incredibly kind, put a lot of effort into cheering up the people around her, was great at her job, she did volunteer work, and seemed to have a healthy life outside of work, too. As one of the first people I worked with when I joined, I idolised her, and aspired to be like her.

Yesterday I got the news that things had taken a turn for the worst, and she would have at most a couple of days left to live. To say that I feel broken is an understatement. How can there be a God, or a Grand Plan if people like her are taken in such a way? What incentive is there to be a good person?

I guess when things like this happen, some people take comfort in the idea that it's all part of the bigger picture. The conspiracy theorist in me wants to believe that because she was such a good person, she was taken from this crummy place, and has moved on to a better place. The rational part of me knows that things like that are just a case of genetics, and in some cases, random. I crave understanding, and I always try to make sense of the things that are going on around me, but I think this is one of those things where I'm just going to have to accept that it doesn't make sense. There was a universal lottery, and she lost - the why is irrelevant. All anyone can really do is make the most of the time they have left until their number is up.

Don't worry, this isn't going to make be go all #YOLO. I just feel a bit like the night sky is just a little dimmer tonight.

An Ordinary Girl in an Ordinary World

Slept in today, and didn't get out of bed until around 9:30am, which felt pretty good, actually. But I decided to follow that up with a 10km run. Got home and stretched, planked for 3:11, rested for 30s, then did another 34 seconds, rested for 30s, then did another 1:15 while watching Snoop Dog on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire. Not as funny as him on Family Feud.

Played a game of Dota 2 and some FFXIV, slowly getting through the main story quests from the first game. It has hit a point where I am essentially an overqualified courier. I mean, I have slain primals (Ifrit, Garuda, Titan), taken down a corrupt organisation. You would think the quests that are assigned to me would be more meaningful than "Please take these earrings to the goldsmith to be repaired", or "Please find the children who are playing hide and seek in the main town". Or even worse "Please talk to the guy standing next to me for information". The good thing is that it has given me some time to catch up on some shows on Netflix.

Took a break from that to do five push-ups, and twenty-five squats.

Started making cookie dough (going to test out whether milk chocolate, dark chocolate or m&ms make the best choc-chips).

Did another ten push-ups while the oven was pre-heating.

Played some Dota 2.

Did another ten push-ups. Began writing this post.

This is my roundabout way of saying, other than the plank, which I was only able to do five minutes in total, rather than five continuous minutes, I have accomplished all of my mini-One Punch Man goals. I really doubt I was able to lose the weight that I was planning to lose, so no KFC for me. I guess I can't have wanted it that badly, otherwise I would have tried harder.

Follow-Up Girl

(Sorry, work stuff has been censored.)

I keep a to-do list at work of the tasks that I've been asked to do, but aren't urgent, or things that are too small to be worth raising a card for in our issue tracking system. Whenever I get a spare moment, I'll check the list to see if there's anything that's easy to pick off.

I haven't had one of those moments in a while, until Tuesday, when I checked the list and saw that someone had added a task "Chocolates for the_boss". Seeing as it was on my list, I ran to the nearest store and bought a box of chocolates to put on his desk before he got to work.

When he did arrive, he started asking around, wondering who had put the chocolates on his desk. When he finally got to me, I showed him my to-do list, and asked if he was the one who wrote that task. He replied that it was a joke, and he hadn't expected me to follow through with it. I said that it was on my list, so it had to get done.

The chocolates ended up sitting on his desk for most of the morning, until he came over while I was sitting with Jal, and said, "Fodder, I can't accept these chocolates. I'll have one of you decide to open it, but it doesn't feel right. It was just a joke!" Nev burst out laughing and said that it seems the joke backfired on him.

I ended up opening the box and sharing it with the team, but I honestly don't understand why he didn't want the chocolates. It was a joke, we all had a laugh, and I figured he'd open them himself and share them with the team. What difference did it make that I did it instead of him?

Anyway, laughs were had, and I got to go around the team explaining that they were "the_boss guilt chocolates", which was a great way to break the ice with some of the people that I hadn't really met yet. Slowly integrating myself into my new team, one chocolate at a time! I am trying to tone down the weirdness, I really am. :(

As a sidenote, in an act of "revenge", I picked out three Boost bars from the box of chocolates, and left them on D's desk. They're even smaller than the fun-sized ones that he gave me for winning the Dota 2 game.

Heal the World

(Sadly, I couldn't find a high res picture of my World of Warcraft priest to add to this image.)

GP linked me this reddit thread from /r/overwatch about why there are so many female Mercy mains. I haven't played Overwatch myself, but looking at the wiki page, Mercy sounds like the Medic from TF2, whose healing gun can also boost damage, and her ult allows her to resurrect fallen teammates.

I can't speak to why female players tend to play Mercy, but in most of the games that I play, I tend towards a support role, and I can speak about that.

I think the number one reason is because I'm better at it than any other role. I wrote already about my problems learning to play a mid hero. It's not just about playing aggressively, because you can do that as a support hero, too. It's about the different focus. As a support hero in Dota, there's a lot to focus on: stacking camps, warding, dewarding, ganks, counter-ganks, stealing runes, zoning. A lot of it isn't about focusing on one thing, but trying to see the game as a whole, and I think I'm better at that.

The same applies to playing healers in MMOs. A lot of people complain that you don't get to see the game outside of looking at HP bars, and it is true, but you also get to see the raid as a whole. You see who tends to stand in the fire, who doesn't seem to know the mechanics, who looks AFK / is lagging. I'm not really great at learning a DPS rotation and executing it with incredible precision, but I am good at looking at falling health bars and prioritising who needs to be healed now and who can wait a bit. I am good at working out whether I need to cast a quick, but expensive heal, or whether I can time a longer cast.

One of the arguments in the post is that boys were raised on shooter games, and so they gained transferable mechanical skills. My favourite games were management sims, where it was the same kind of skills - prioritisation, big picture outlook.

I do agree that I was taught to be more nurturing, by the people around me, and that probably did contribute to wanting to play healers or support-type characters. But I think that was at the start, and I found that the role suited me, so I kept doing it. The first class I played in World of Warcraft was shaman, and I picked it because I knew I wanted to play an orc, and they were listed as being able to heal, DPS, and tank. I wanted to be able to cover whichever role my cousins needed me to play. Well, the tanking ability of shaman was greatly overrated, and I tried to do damage, but kept falling back into the healing role. I actually struggled a lot while levelling because I picked all the healing talents, and that meant it took forever to kill something - but I never died! That's not true because I died all the time as I ran out of mana...

For a while, I was a bit worried about falling into the female stereotype of playing a healer, but to be honest, I don't really care. It's what I enjoy doing, and I like to think that I'm good at it.

School of Hard Rocks

Ajay is a new developer on my old team, hired as the replacement for GD. He's far more outgoing than GD, but I don't think anyone will ever replace him in my mind. We were talking about sports for me to try, and he suggested I try rock climbing. I am afraid of heights, but this year is the year of trying new things, so I said that I'd do it.

It took a long time for me to actually go after making that decision. Maybe a part of me was putting it off because I didn't really want to go, but every time Ajay saw me in the office, he'd ask whether I'd been rock climbing yet, and I'd shamefully make an excuse as to why I hadn't. Well, excuses are no longer needed, as I have now gone.

I went to Hard Rock, in the CBD, with Pharmacist and redbeanpork. D told me that it's a stupid idea to go with an uneven number of people, as every climber needs someone to belay them, but oh well. D also told me to try and stick with the same coloured holds if possible, and to use my legs rather than my arms.

Once we got there, we had to climb up some stairs, which didn't seem all that difficult. The three of us passed that test quite easily. After getting up to where the walls where, my stomach sank. It was much higher than I had pictured, and I suddenly wanted to leave, but the thought of disappointing Ajay again made me push myself to keep going. Which is really stupid if you think about it. I barely know this guy, I've met him probably four or five times, and yet I didn't want to disappoint him.

We had to fill in a form and hire shoes and a harness. Then we had to go through a safety induction, which involved showing how to clip our harness onto the ropes when climbing, and how to belay someone. When you reach the top, you shout down to your belayer, "Ready", and when they're ready to let you down, they respond, "Safe". That was the easy part.

Out of the three of us, Pharmacist actually wanted to climb, so we let him go first, with redbeanpork  acting as his belayer. He made it to the top of the practice wall with ease. Next, redbeanpork made the climb, and I was the belayer. It's a lot harder than it looks, and it's actually pretty tough to keep up with the climber. But I started to get into the rhythm of it. Fortunately, he didn't fall off the wall - though I let him down far too fast and he ended up falling on his ass when he got to the ground. Oops. :(

Then it was my turn. I got off the ground OK, but once I hit the middle of the wall, I started to regret it. I kept picturing Ajay's look of disappointment, so I continued upwards. Once I made it to the bottom, I shouted, "Ready" down to Pharmacist. I made the mistake of looking down at him when I did so. I have no idea if he responded or not. All I could see was the ground, and how far away it was. As stupid as it sounds, my hands are actually sweating right now as I type up this post.

It reminded me of a school camp we went on, where we hiked to the top of this area, and had to abseil down. I was the last one to go down, and I was crying the entire way down. Everyone else was talking about how much of a thrill it was, and they wanted to go again, but I was shaking so much. They were all nice about it, telling me how well I did, and congratulating me, but I just felt so embarrassed and weak, and I didn't want their pity.

I could feel myself just hanging there on the wall, refusing to let go. I knew in my mind that I had to let go to get back on the ground, but I also knew in my mind that letting go is how you fall down to the ground and die.

I think I sort of started climbing down the wall, which is a lot harder than it seems. I sort of slipped and ended up letting go accidentally, and realised Pharmacist was lowering me slowly, so I went with it and semi-abseiled down. Every time he lowered me, I felt like I couldn't breathe and my heart was going to explode. Thankfully, I made it to the ground without an incident.

We tried a few walls, of around a difficulty level of 11. We tried some 13s and 14s, but would always get stuck at some point. I stopped following D's advice, and at the suggestion of Pharmacist, just climbed to the top using whichever colours I could. I ended up falling off the wall at one point, but redbeanpork held the rope steady, and I made it back to the wall. That is something I'm not too keen to experience again.

Pharmacist and redbeanpork were convinced that the door at the top of one of the walls had a secret urinal (it's SFW, but a bit WTF - imgur link, and in case it gets taken down, I saved it into a Google photos album). So of course we had to climb up there and take a look. You could see into the room through a gap in the door, and... well, it's something you have to see for yourself.

I actually have a huge bruise on my knee, as I ended up hitting the rocks with my knee a lot. I hit my head a couple of times, too. I guess clumsiness and rock climbing aren't good partners.

As much as I complained about it in this post, I am glad that I went. While it's not something that I'd be cheerful about, it was good exercise, and it really is something outside my comfort zone. As I was being lowered, I realised how much you have to trust the person who is belaying you. If they let go of the rope, you aren't really in a position to grab onto the rocks - or at least you'd have to be pretty quick to do it.

To segue back to the topic of touching other people, Special K asked me how I would know whether I'm close enough to someone to feel comfortable touching them or having them touch me. I didn't know the answer at the time, but I think if you are willing to let someone belay you, then you have to be really close to them, right?

Will It Press - Crêpes (Galettes)

Taking the David Lebovitz crêpe (technically galette with the inclusion of buckwheat?) recipe into the office, I thought I'd try it as my next sandwich press challenge, as they're already flat, so what could go wrong?

My usual attempt to avoid making the sandwich press dirty holds, and I tried covering it with aluminium foil.

I melted some butter on the foil, and spread it out with a paper towel.

Then I put the batter on the grill and closed the lid. It immediately started hissing, and steam came out the sides, but no smoke, which was a good sign given my last workplace cooking disaster! After about a minute (it was hard to tell how cooked it was with the lid down), I braved a peek and my heart immediately broke.

I guess it was cooked, but there were holes everywhere, and it was too crunchy to actually fold. I made the mistake of inviting some of my early-starting co-workers to join me, and so they were starting to get hungry and I gave up on more experiments with the lid down.

Next I tried the "regular" cook on one side and then flip method.

It didn't brown very well, and started to stick to the foil (having too much butter just made them really oily).

Finally, my co-workers convinced me to abandon the foil idea, and cook directly on the grill itself.

I am so sorry to everyone who used the grill after me, but at least MrBrioche did a great job cleaning it. It actually cooked quite well. I ended up buying a wooden crêpe spreader, which helped me spread the batter out. They ended up amazingly thin, though they were a bit too thin for my liking.

Lastly, I tried without the foil, and pressing the lid down. I didn't get a chance to take a photo of the crêpe on the grill, but it cooked really quickly. And having the lid down meant that both sides cooked at the same time, it was pretty much done as soon as I lifted the lid. They ended up much softer, almost like a thin pancake, which made them much easier to roll up. It was this type that ended up in today's photo-of-the-day, which I ended up giving to one of the testers on my team who said she loves crêpes.

I actually think this one was a success - though I think it worked well because the grill was non-stick and I stopped using foil. Unfortunately, the grill doesn't seem to get hot enough to brown the crêpes very well - or maybe it was starting to cool down as I had been cooking on it for about an hour, seeing as the first few crêpes had patches of brown.

Having them cooked in a pan made it easier to get a nice round shape, as well as a thicker crêpe, but in a pinch, the sandwich press will do! All of my co-workers thought they tasted great.

Choc-Chip Cookie Bake-Off!

Captain was baking choc-chip cookies for a morning tea and I challenged him to a bake-off. In exchange for him baking me some cookies, I had to change my Facebook cover photo to a picture of myself as the MGM lion from the James Bond parody I made. Well worth it.

My usual go-to recipe is the Serious Eats choc-chip cookie recipe, which I made using regular plain flour, so the cookies were somewhat chewy, but also spread out quite a lot.

We had 6 judges, and *drumroll*, I won the initial vote 4-2. However, after excluding two of the judges for being biased, the vote ended up tied. :(

I think both of the cookies had merit, with Captain's cookies being a lot thicker, but with a stronger flour and butter flavour. I liked the texture of his cookies, and I think I will try bread flour again.

D's friend who played against me in the 3v1 Dota game is really nice, and I found out that he loves cookies. So I've been super keen to meet him, and when I do, I want to bring him some cookies so that I'll make a good first impression on him. He said he prefers softer, chewy cookies, so that's what I'm aiming for.

Queen Victoria Market Photo Walk

It was Truffle Weekend this weekend, and Michaels Camera, Canon and Truffle Melbourne got together and put on a free photo walk around the Queen Victoria Market. You could bring your own camera, or try one of theirs. I got to try the Canon EOS 80D, which was much bigger than any photo camera I had used in the past, and I have never owned a DSLR before, so I was pretty intimidated by all the different controls.

However, there was someone from Canon, and someone from Michaels, and they gave us a quick rundown on how to use the camera. We spent most of the time in the P-mode, which is auto-mode, but allows you to manually override certain settings. Fortunately, as I was part of the 9am group, the market wasn't quite that busy yet, so I got some time to try playing around with the shutter speed and aperture, but once the group started moving, there were too many things to take photos of!

Even though it was still somewhat dark (as it was early, and a bit overcast), I found the pictures turned out quite vibrant. They gave us an 8GB SD card, which we were allowed to keep (which was nice).

And the setting, with all the fruits and vegetables, made for some really colourful photos.

I think the real focus was the truffles though, and there were a few stalls selling various truffle-based things, as well as truffles themselves.

One of the stallholders explained how to tell good from bad truffle-products. He said that you'll often find places that sell truffle oil, with bits of truffle in it. He explained that the fungus would actually go rancid if left in there, so those products are likely to be oils infused with truffle essence (similar to the relation between vanilla extract and vanilla essence, in that the extract comes from the original thing, but the essence is just a chemical compound that tries to reproduce the same flavour).

The camera was really nice to use, once I got the hang of holding such a large camera. It was pretty comfortable, with the right side of the camera having a comfortable grip, and the shutter button being pretty easy to reach from there so that you're not holding the camera in an uncomfortable position.

I almost felt like buying one after the session, but fortunately, I had to rush to meet Pharmacist and redbeanpork somewhere else, and didn't have time.

They also offered to make an A3 print of one of the photos each of us took, but I didn't know what I would do with a print out of some fruits or a truffle, so I gave it a miss, but the printer (which I think was a Canon Selphy) seemed really nice, and the prints that I did see looked great. With the almost-auto mode, it seemed so easy to take great looking pictures, even for a photography noob like me.

The auto-mode did frustrate me at some points, as I had trouble getting the camera to focus on what I wanted it to focus on, but for the most part, the photos came out great, and it felt very quick to save a picture, so I could take quite a few pictures in succession.

I'm on the fence about buying a camera. I have been looking at buying a proper video camera for a while, and a lot of sites recommend just using a photo camera and buying a microphone, but I might wait until I have an actual need for a camera before committing one way or another.

Frame of Mind

When Renée Zellweger was researching her role for Bridget Jones' Diary, she worked at a book publishing company, with the name Bridget Cavendish, doing office-y things. She was dating Jim Carrey at the time, and kept a photo of him on her desk, which confused her co-workers who had no idea who she was. I love that story, and have been thinking about doing something similar at the office, but I couldn't think of a good person to have on my desk.

In honour of his recent departure, I had a photo of Adam West printed, and it now sits in the place of honour on my desk at work. Nobody has asked about it yet, but I'll give it a few more weeks.

It got me thinking about whether people would know it was him or assume it was MrFodder. Nobody from my new team has met MrFodder in person, so they have no idea what he looks like. A few of them know what his name is, but not many, as I usually refer to him as "my husband" or "my partner" rather than by his first name.

That got me thinking about what kind of assumptions people tend to make when they see other people together. I am Asian, and look Asian. MrFodder is not, and does not. There have been some times in the past where people have assumed we're just friends / roommates. It isn't just MrFodder though, I've noticed that when I spend time with darkpast (Asian) compared to when I spend time with Graham (not Asian), I feel like more people assume that darkpast and I are dating than think Graham and I are dating, despite the fact that I don't think my body language is all that different with either of them.

A and I have this thing where we come up with experiments to try and show that people are innately racist. His current experiment involves eating yum cha. He tends to do this a lot with non-Asian people, and he'll often be the only Asian person at the table. So he's trying to see how things change depending on where he sits at the table. Usually he'll sit on the side where the people serving the food tend to go past, but lately, he's positioning himself in inconvenient locations, and trying to see whether the staff try talking to him first, or just talk to whoever happens to be the closest. I'm not sure what his results are so far.

It was at a lunch with MrBrioche (Asian) and Michael (not Asian) that I had a thought - if I asked one of the staff members which of the three of us they thought was married to each other, who would they guess? MrBrioche and I are both Asian, however, he is older than me. Michael and I are obviously of different nationalities (he is Caucasian), but we are both the same age. Would they play the race card, and assume MrBrioche and I are together, or play the age card, and assume Michael and I are together? Or would they go completely left-field and assume that MrBrioche and Michael are together?

I asked MrBrioche how old he is, and unfortunately, I don't think the age gap is enough to be obvious. I asked someone else I had worked with, who is twenty years older than me, and found another non-Asian person to do the lunch experiment.

I brought it up with Jal, as I thought he would make a good "control group". He is non-Asian, and my age, and there's another person we work with who is Asian and also our age. So I figure we can eliminate the age factor and see if the affect is still there. However, he brought up another potential confound.

When you are a group of 3, the table seating results in two people seated next to each other, and one person seated across from the other two. He believes that couples tend to sit next to each other, whereas I believe couples tend to sit across from each other (so you can look at each other). Lacking any data to support one over the other, it means there will have to be more experiments with all of the different seating configurations. I don't know if my experiment budget can handle this.

At least I have an excuse to get people to eat lunch with me, who normally never would have considered it.

Adobe Premiere Pro Finally Supports Captions!

I'm so happy that they finally did this. It was such a pain in the ass having to create a bunch of title objects if you wanted to add subtitles to something. If it was a particularly long video with lots of audio, you'd end up creating hundreds of title files which litters up your project. :(

I'm so glad they finally did it. And it's so easy to drag them around!

That is all. I am exhausted from another rushed video job. Each one is worse and worse, but... the show must go on!

Our Stories

It's no secret that I love games, in particular Dota 2. It's also no secret that I enjoy writing, and now film-making.

Eggmond linked this podcast: http://gamehugs.com/episode-52-katie-stegs-lumi-consulting/, and he said there have been others in this series that go into different jobs in the game industry. He mentioned that he has been inspired to think about different aspects of the games industry that people who aren't developers or professional players can get into.

I've been thinking about how I can contribute. It does make me sad that eSports isn't as big in Australia as it is in some other countries, and for a while, I wanted to go down the path of forming an eSports Federation. One of the issues that can come up is the problem of money. There have been a few famous incidents of tournaments that have been organised, and people have run off with the money. Or organisations that sign-on players, but then don't pay them their winnings. Some players will have contracts, but not all, and it's hard to know what's fair, or what is the industry standard, especially if you're new. There's no accountability - if something doesn't happen, the player may speak out, or the organisation, but it turns into a he said, she said kind of situation.

I had envisioned some sort of central entity, a bit like KeSPA, but I didn't want it to be some crazed, rules-based, you can't talk in game except to say "gg" kind of thing. I just wanted a central place to organise competitions, keep track of player / organisation contracts / obligations, things like that. Well, I have no experience in management, or law, so that never really got off the ground, but there are other skills I do have.

I think my favourite part of the large Dota 2 tournaments is the player videos. I can't remember when they started, but lately, at all the major Valve tournaments, they have short videos going into the lives of some of the players. When you have a game like Dota 2, which is free-to-play, and is on the lower end of hardware requirements (at least I think so), you get such a variety of players, and so it's really fascinating to look at their stories. (By the way, if you haven't already, check out the documentary Valve made called Free to Play which looks at three of the players who ended up at The International.)

Why do we need to wait for a large tournament to find out about the lives of the players? I think every player, and every game probably has a story behind it. There are thousands of games that are played every week, and there are funny things that happen all the time. There are teams who will probably never make it to the international stage, but who have poured a lot of time and effort into mastering the art of Dota, and they also have a story to tell.

I don't know if I'll still be interested in Dota at the end of the year (I probably will), and when I don't have this blog to write in every day, maybe I can go out and find some of those stories. I have been working on my interview skills through work, finding out more about the people I work with, so maybe I can use that to try and get some of those stories.

Strawberry Cheesecake Ice-Cream

The ice-cream challenge continues. I have now used my ice-cream machine more than twice the number of times as the person who set me this challenge. This flavour was inspired by a strawberry cheesecake milkshake MrFodder had from the burger restaurant, 8-bit. I had a sip, and it was amazing. This ice-cream doesn't really do it justice, and so I am going to work on improving the recipe. The cheese flavour wasn't really strong enough, though it may be because I used lactose-free cream cheese. It was still delicious though!

Coles and Woolworths used to sell the Tofutti non-dairy cream cheese, but they don't seem to anymore, and I haven't been able to find it at any of the wholefood stores I've looked at (tried the CBD, Brunswick and Fitzroy, all the famous hipster places). In the end, I settled for Liddle's lactose-free cream cheese. My recipe is based off this vegan strawberry ice-cream recipe, as well as the Serious Eats vegan vanilla ice cream base.

Ingredients
400ml coconut cream
400ml soy milk
125g white sugar
80g dextrose
15g pea protein
3g xanthan gum
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
250g cream cheese

250g strawberries - hulled, and diced
50g sugar

20g Nuttelex / margarine
80g speculoos biscuits, roughly crushed (or you can just use anything you'd use for a cheesecake base: digestives, graham crackers, gingersnaps)

Method
1. In a medium saucepan, whisk together the coconut cream, soy milk, white sugar, dextrose, pea protein, xanthan gum, and once it has mostly dissolved, heat over a medium-low heat while whisking until smooth and it comes to a gentle simmer. Put into another container and place in the fridge to cool for at least 4 hours.

2. In a small saucepan, over low heat, gently cook the strawberries and sugar. While it's cooking crush the strawberries with a fork, and it should eventually become a syrup (though it won't be smooth, but that's OK, it'll add texture to the ice-cream).

3. Melt the Nuttelex and add the crushed speculoos and stir to mix so the crumbs get coated. It doesn't matter if you have some bigger crumbs, it'll soften in the ice-cream.

4. Once the milk mixture is cool, blend together with the vanilla extract and cream cheese. Allow to cool for another 20-30 minutes - if you have an ice-cream machine that needs pre-cooling, now is the time to start.

5. Prepare the milk / cheese mixture in your ice-cream machine as instructed. About halfway through, drop in the speculoos mix (I ended up with about 15g leftover, which I saved for sprinkling over the ice-cream at the end). When it's done, spoon about a third of the ice-cream into the container, then drop half of the strawberry mixture, third ice-cream, last half of the strawberry, third ice-cream.

You should have a layer of ice-cream at the top, but if you have some leftover strawberry mix, feel free to add it to the top. Using a knife, or a spatula, start stabbing down into the ice-cream and swirling a bit, to distribute the strawberry mixture. Put in the freezer to harden into a scoopable state (a few hours / overnight). Though it's semi-scoopable in this state, so you can eat it right away!

We found that the ice-cream was really hard when pulled out of the freezer, but if you leave it out to soften (I know, we're heathens letting ice-crystals form in our ice-cream like that) for about 10 minutes, it does become scoopable.

I really like how it looks with the crumbs and strawberry distributed all over the ice-cream.

The recipe I used for the galettes above was from David Lebovitz. I just substituted soy milk for the milk, and Nuttelex for the margarine. I did include eggs though, as I think I may be growing out of my egg allergy! Something I discovered when making the sponge cakes. Here's to hoping!

Game Review - Agricola: All Creatures Great and Small

Edit: Oops, QCN pointed out that the game isn't Agricola, but Agricola: All Creatures Great and Small.

Agricola: All Creatures Great and Small is a 2-player game where each player manages their own farm. There's a central playing area that's shared between the players, and each player takes turn to put one of their three workers on a particular action square to perform that action. Actions involve either obtaining resources, obtaining farm animals or building / upgrading buildings. The aim of the game is to score the most points, with points being scored via having farm animals, having buildings, or if you manage to build the storehouse, having resources in your stockpile.

The game is only 8 rounds long, which makes it pretty quick to play, once you know how it works.

At the start of each round, resources get replenished on the board. The resources that get replenished can stack, e.g. if nobody took the 3 wood action last turn, this turn it will have 6 wood. The player who has the "first turn" token gets to choose an action first. When you choose an action, it happens immediately. Your farm animals must be fenced, so if you see a large stack of animals in the stockpile, but don't have room to house them, then the excess animals will run away. So it's not just a matter of grabbing as many animals as you can, but on the same note, you want to pick things up before your opponent does, so you can't afford to take your time building up your farm either.

There is some benefit to grabbing animals first, because if you have at least two of any animal, they will breed at the end of the round, granting you an extra one. But that also means you need to make sure you have the infrastructure in place to house these free animals.

I thought the game was interesting, and it'll be good to see how the strategy evolves once you've played a few games against each other. However, given that there's no random element in the game, I wonder if there's some optimal strategy that you tend to settle towards after a few games. One of the things I thought of doing was trying to hog all the expansion squares, but since there are only 8 rounds, and you must use an action each round to grab one of the expansions, I eventually decided that it wasn't worth it, as my opponent could have taken the time to just build feeding troughs and better utilised her farm space.

We both actually misread the rules and thought you had to have at least three of each animal to avoid losing points, but it turns out that you lose three points for each type of animal you have three or fewer of.

I should also have bought more stalls when I could, and used those walls, as I realised I didn't really have the optimal barrier placement, and stalls are another thing that are limited in supply (there are only 4, though if you upgrade to an open stable, one goes back into the stockpile).

Overall, I thought it was a nice 2-player game (note: It's only for 2 players). It's surprisingly difficult to find good 2-player games, probably because people tend to play board games in larger groups. But someone did ask me for a recommendation for some 2-player board games, and while this game isn't overly sophisticated, and I don't think it's the kind of game you could play very frequently, it was still really enjoyable.

Hip Hop Scotch

It seems all good things must come to an end, and so it is with another one of my co-workers who is such a pleasure to have around. He was the star of my farewell movie, and the one who convinced me to go out drinking a few weeks ago. Whenever I talk to him, I'm usually rolling over with laughter, but when the situation demands it, he can be serious, and is actually an incredibly talented developer.

I barely had any time for this, but it seems like it's going to have to be a rush farewell video. Given how much he loves to dance, I thought I'd do a parody of So You Think You Can Dance / Australian Idol. But nobody really wants to dance for the video, so I thought I'd try again.

Lucy invited me to a dance class with her, and in the spirit of trying new things, I said yes. It was a hip hop class, and I had no idea what hip hop was, but I figured if Grandpa Simpson could do it, then so could I.

We started with a dance warm-up, which reminded me a lot of Zumba. It really doesn't feel like exercise when your mind is entirely focused on following the next step. We moved on to learning a routine, and before I knew it, class was over. I didn't manage to do the entire routine, but it was pretty fun moving in a way that's different to how I normally move. The steps were both fluid and sharp at the same time, so you could definitely break each step down into a beat (or half-beat), but it all flowed together so well that you might mistake it for one continuous motion.

The dance teacher was really talented. I watched him dance before the start of the class, and it was almost intimidating seeing how well he danced. But I thought he was a good teacher, and I enjoyed the class.

I had planned to do that dance for the video, but I stumbled across this video of Snoop Dog on Family Feud and I couldn't stop laughing, so I felt like I had to do a Snoop Dog song. I picked Drop It Like It's Hot and ended up making my own moves up. Two of my former co-workers were actually in the office today, despite the fact that it's a public holiday, so I didn't film for very long in case they wandered into the kitchen.

There will probably be short posts again until the video is done. Why do I keep doing this to myself?

Pow! Go West, Young Adam

Some people remember what they were doing when they first found out about Princess Diana's death, or the twin towers falling. I think I will always remember what I was doing when I found out that Adam West had passed away - doing leg lifts by the stairs. It's really close to the office, so I heard MrFodder yell out really loudly, and then he suddenly opened the door and I nearly fell over.

MrFodder: Oh no, I have some bad news!
Me: What happened?
MrFodder: Adam West is dead.

The greatest Batman there ever was is dead.

I think what I like most about him is the fact that he is the master of self-deprecating humour. I mean, just look at all the entries under the TV Tropes page for Adam Westing. And oh my gosh, he was offered the role of James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever, but declined because he thought James Bond should always be played by a Brit. I really admire the way that he handled being associated with Batman, and given that the 60s Batman is my not-so-guilty pleasure, I am forever grateful that he donned the cape (which in the movie commentary, he says was a lot heavier than it looks, but it was made from the silk of a billion Chinese silk worms - I don't know if he's being sarcastic, as it is really hard to tell).

To commemorate, a viewing of Batman, the Movie is required. With audio commentary by Adam West and Burt Ward, of course. We had a VHS copy of the movie when I was a kid, and I'm pretty sure I wore out the tape. In the behind-the-scenes, they spoke about how suited Burt Ward was to the role of Robin, and you can tell it even from the audio commentary. He will often say, "Oh, heck!" and "Holy formaldehyde!". I don't know how old he was when he did it, but he still sounds so young (he says, "Holy formaldehyde" in response to a comment he made about how he and Adam West are ageless and timeless, and haven't aged).

I got home too late to watch the entire movie before my blog deadline, unfortunately, so I'll just upload some of my favourite moments.

According to the commentary, the motto on Bruce Wayne's blazer is Latin for "Don't be a cheeseburger" - some sort of crew in-joke.

MrFodder and I often say this to each other when we want to leave an event.