osuuskuntahastur: Summer of eventfullness

Wow, a long break from the blog again. Some timely information for youz guyz now.

We attended Ropecon! It was fun! It was hot! Fliers were passed, sauna and medieval swordsmanship in the blazing sun was enjoyed!

I had a very interesting two weeks, first volunteering at H2Ö alternative music festival in the beautiful Turku, lugging stuff around in the blazing heat and entertaining ticket buyer folks at Lippakiska (small kiosk in front of Turku station that worked as some kind of unofficial H2Ö-headquarters) and trying to desperately find a chiropractor for these two norweigian artists. A very welcome break away from the computer just doing real stuff like carrying things, eating sandwiches and drinking copious amounts of coffee to keep awake thru the long nights of unpaid slave labour (i mean volunteering =) to build the grooviest festival in Finland.

And groovy it was. 100 artists, 9(!) stages in two days. And we pulled it off too! Nice crowd of hippies wondering about (I think the attendance was like 7500 people) without no fuss whatsoever, nice maze of a festival area, things were arranged so that there was a new thing to see everytime you turned around a corner. And heaps and heaps of mirrorballs. And a weird, huge, string chtulhu thing hanging from a tower crane. The preparation, festival and teardown days were easily the most fun I had this summer. Mark H2Ö down in your calendars ladies and gentlemen, if you happen to be in Finland next summer and need some groovy time with like minded entities, H2Ö is for you!

Being quite exhausted after all the work (and the heat!) I finally dragged myself down to Helsinki, the grand capital of this wonderful country. More heat, intense coding to get a sample adventure module ready for ropecon. Result: did not make it in time. Perfectionism never helps with a tight deadline. Anyway, made good progress with the thing so it was all good. Took walks around Herttoniemi, very nice part of the city near the sea and enjoyed some nice Nepalese food. Dream!

Friday happened, mr Z and about fourty others rolled out of the ropecon bus in Dipoli, espoo. They'd left 6am in the morning, the bus's air conditioning had conked out very early on and it sounded like they had a lot of fun in the bus with air temp rising over 40c with people getting sweatty and panicky by every kilometer that passed. But they made it!

Ropecon was bustling with life, two blacksmiths banging away on the parking lot, thai foooooooood stall, this and that and a long queue. We had our sailor merchant passes but joined the line with everyone else (actually that's a lie, we went to smoke with this resin doll maker and tried again when the lines were much shorter). It was hot! Getting inside the dipoli we noticed how bit the event was. And hot! We got a place at 'kokemuspiste' (the experience zone) to promote our wares and set up the table with video facility and fliers. It took about three minutes for one of our permanently stoned friends to finds us and start dispelling any non-hippies around. And there were a plenty =)

Running the test booth was a hard exercise, it was so hot inside and the air was so bad, it was easy to tell that the building was not designed for any summer activity. But the people Gamed on! On every floor there was something going on, Boardgames, Card games, Japanese mahjong, MTG tournaments.. you name it. Being stuck at the booth was a bit of a bummer in a way, I wanted to LARP!

Towards the end of the night me and the Tornio Hippie equipped ourselves with some beers and headed over to the sauna. Skinny dipping! It was still ultra hot but refreshing anyway. After the sauna we dragged ourselves to a nearby seashore, somebody had brought a boombox bicycle and people grouped to drink and relax. Maybe it was RPG people this time around but the beard and long hair situation hadn't changed much comparing to H2Ö. And they played Michael Jackson. And it sounded awesome. =)

Saturday morning was more game promotion, the feedback was very good and people excited to hear about Hoodowr. All I can remember is the heat my aching bones after sleeping for few hours on this dorm kind of thing without no mattress. H2Ö won that round, at least the accommodation (some random commune where it was OK to crash at even nobody knew you) on a proper sofa doesn't kill you like a hard concrete floor. My bad tho, I foolishly thought that I would go back to the apartment for the night. Note to self: Next time prepare to be lured by Beer, Sauna and MJ and bring a mattress, even a tiny one.

The evening got too hot for me and after a brief visit to the DISCO LARP (of course there is a disco larp!) I headed back to get some shuteye. Sunday was just coma and softdrinks sitting on the lawn and listening to people ramble on and on about matters of extreme importance for roleplaying folks.

The bus aircon had been mended and we headed back to Oulu in relative comfort and more explicit moobs than you can shake a stick at. Our accountant and bassist Olli was kind enough to come and pick us up at 4am-is and dropped what was left of team Hoodownr back to basecamp. There was no milk for coffee, disappointed, sleep!

All in all a lot of fun was had and now it's back to the old grindstone to finish and release the game, Last week was fiddling about with webGL again (I made a crappy summer intro at hoodownr.com in a fit of nostalgy for summer coding when life was new, take a look if you've got a webGL browser like Chrome). This week is more coding and planning and an announcement. Huuum. Ent-like.

Hope you enjoyed! To Be Continued!

Sami
Hoodownr