Marsden is Here

Most people are probably aware that over the past going on 24 hours NZ has been hit by another series of major earthquakes starting at very just after midnight Sunday/Monday. I had not long gone to bed when it hit so after about 10 seconds of "aftershock" and then ~ 1:20 minutes of "nope, crap, that's a BIG quake inland just getting here" and some minutes on FB checking that no-one in Christchurch itself was reporting major issues I went off to sleep, thus not seeing the tsunami warning and evacuation notices (which didn't affect me anyway) until checking again during a wake around 4am. I figured if anyone needed transport or to shelter at my place I would get a message or txt directly so I slept for another few hours, starting the day feeling not significantly tireder than usual. That wasn't to last.

Fortunately I had already booked the day off work to recover from attending a 48 hour charity event over the weekend (more on that below). The first hour or so I spent touching base with various people by FB and phone before starting on my pre-existing chores list. I didn't get through as much of this as hoped - a somewhat overdue cleaning of the bathroom leaving me physically exhausted and attempting to set the ball rolling on a safety inspection of the Hall further soaked up energy. I eventually spent 2-3 hours napping - in part to shut down some nervous energy and generalised anxiety - before setting out to help a friend with transport and hugs, do the grocery shopping and after a simple dinner deliver some care packages. (One of which had already been on my to-do list but which under the circumstances I bulked up a bit more ;) ) I could tell that I probably shouldn't be driving well before I got home, and if I wasn't waiting for a better time to take my meds I would be back in bed already.

~~~
Friday / Saturday I spent about 24 hours total at SAGA's now-annual 48-hour gaming event to raise money for charity (this year AVIVA). I'll just copy and paste from my FB statuses here ...

---
Saturday 4:30pm
Plays so far:
Colony Wars (obliterated by Daniel Starky's base spam strategy)
Thurn & Taxis (resounding win)
Dominion w. Prosperity (barely last but a long way from the winner)
Broken Eagle the Learned Nano who Combines Words of Power is about to set out into the world of Numenera in search of greater knowledge.

Saturday 10:50pm
After Numenera finished off for the day with a game of Tiny Kingdoms. Didn't do particularly well but probably OK for a first time.
I'd liked to have stayed longer but it is patently obvious that it would be a very bad Idea. If I can get a good sleep tonight I may be able to stay later tomorrow night.

Sunday 3:20am
Didn't get to games until after 2pm but then stayed somewhat longer than expected. Still 3am is no later than I get home from a good party. Cat seems unimpressed by my long absence.
Plays today (pretty sure I have forgotten something)
Tiny Epic Kingdoms
Settlers of Catan
DC Heroes
Colony Wars
Zombie Dice
Biblios
Kingsburg
Seven Wonders
Istanbul (new)
---

... preliminary reports are that we raised well over $1000 if everyone comes through on their pledges. I enjoyed myself - overly much so without really realising it, on the Friday in particular which left me stuck in bed until much later than I had planned on Saturday. I did spend more time and energy than I had hoped taking the lead in deciding on and teaching games; the teaching not so much of a problem (I was actually recommended, to my face, and later even messaged thanks for the fun time someone had as a result). I also made sure one person who probably otherwise would not have made it but I knew would benefit greatly from getting out of the house got both there and home.

As always I experienced more downtime between games than I would have liked, but I had gone prepared for that also with things to do.

Sunday afternoon (you noticed the status update at 3:20AM above?) was spent on a few chores and Sunday evening instead of my usual game we chilled and watched Guardians of the Galaxy which a couple of our members had missed at the theatre. (I am really enjoying the new projector.) I actually went to bed feeling uncommonly relaxed and happy ... and then the quake hit.

~~~
That has filled in the time nicely; shortly I will be abed and hopefully will feel much better in the morning. Because otherwise I am /not/ looking forward to work tomorrow.

Well, that might be a bit excessive. But a guy can dream, and one of my dreams for a long time has been combining gaming and giving. Last weekend Gameathon was an attempt at that. It was a bit of a flop, some fault mine and some just reasons of circumstance.

I'm too stubborn to give up at the first stumble but I've also learnt (slowly and painfully) that there are some things that cannot be done by just one person. The thing about one-man-shows, they die with the man. I want to feel involved in something more than that.

Organisation isn't an issue (there's very little involved compared to say a BoD), what seems missing are others who share enough belief in the idea to a) spread the word/stir up a wider enthusiasm, b) provide a minimum critical mass on the day.

Plenty of people said 'good idea'. The people who counted in the end were those who attended or made apologies when they couldn't. There need to be more of those people.

So here's the ask - are you prepared to try and commit to some sort of occasional (annual?) socially aware gaming event, be that eventually part of a wider money-raising effort such as a Telethon or a bring-a-can for the local foodbank; over a day, a weekend, or distributed?

If enough people say yes (10-12 ought to do it) I'll set up a google group or a facebook group or whatever else most people are happy with and we can talk about it some more. If not, back to the drawing board.

Please pass the question on if you know someone else who will be interested.

Event: Gameathon
Starting: 2009-08-08, the Afternoon of Saturday the 8th of August 2009
Ending: 2009-08-09, the Afternoon of Sunday the 9th of August 2009
Location: Christchurch, 16 Gladson Avenue
Contacts: Robert (marsden.marsden@gmail.com) 942 1585
Notes:

I'm hosting a board gaming Gameathon to to raise money for the Big Night
In telethon (http://www.bignightin.co.nz/) . The house will be open from
Saturday noon until people leave on Sunday. I don't expect games to run
all night but crash space will be available. If you have even a spare
hour please stop by :)

Donations will be in the form of a gold coin or equivalent per game
played in.

x-posted all over the place

Telethon song re-recorded for Big Night In

I'm of the opinion they should have done something new.

I just stopped by the Big Night In site to see if anything was new and noticed that the dates have changed. I admit that given my semi-oblivious state recently they may have been changed when the new site first went up and I failed to notice.

So the telethon, and thus the Gameathon, is now supposed to happen over the 8th and 9th of August.

This irritates me to the point that I am about to drop the whole idea on the basis that the organisation isn't organised enough to deserve my support.

I missed out on most of the famous New Zealand telethons. My family didn't have a TV so my first experience was in 3rd form and beyond watching my involvement only extended to being pressured to contribute a few more dollars to the bucket so it reached the value at which a housemaster would let his beard be shaved off by the head house prefect (and I recall the prefects getting a few seconds on TV when they took that bucket down to the local collection centre). That would have been 1988. I may have donated money to the later national telethons, but wasn't at all involved in any fund raising projects.

Still, they somehow left an impression. So many people were involved spontaneously - either coming up with something to do on the day or turning up to one of the mass events. To me, that level of community involvement is what actually makes a telethon worthy of the name. You can have all the famous names, huge corporate sponsors, state of the art graphics with your transmission - but if you don't connect with and positively mobilise the community you are at best going to be a footnote in Wikipedia, and at worst going to poison the well for future telethons.

x-posted Gameathon

( larger versions )

Darker numbers might go with a lighter colour text. White text obviously doesn't work with the lighting.

I spent a long time trying to find a way to make the faces display text via a texture or something, but it just doesn't work. In the end I went with very carefully positioned text objects, which I then had to convert to meshes to allow transparent colouring (ddeming the quickest way to get a darker or lighter version of the background colour to be setting the colour of the number to pure black or white then playing with the alpha).

I have learnt a whole lot about doing things in Blender, but there are a few things which still seem hit or miss - like changing the colour of a 3D text object.

Just because I'm still working on this logo doesn't mean I've lost my misgivings about Gameathon - the logo is a project in itself.

Rudimentary, but getting there.

( full size behind the cut )

Need to come up with a colour scheme and font that will go well with the template I used for the site.

Should I add faint numbers to the sides of the die?

http://blogactionday.org/
It might still be the 15th somewhere in the world ... I got a number of these through catching up with my feeds from the past few days, otherwise I'd never have remembered.

As I posted a while ago, the KidsCan charitable trust in partnership with TV3 is planning to bring back the NZ Telethon to benefit for Kiwi kids living in poverty. I've been following up my idea of organising some sort of a gameathon for the event, and although promotion and pimpage proper won't start for some time yet (next year I expect) now seems as good a time as any to post the website outside of friends-lock.


If people think it's a good idea, I'd love to see some more profiles and useful suggestions on there :)