PAX Fever Begins

Rym went to Brazil this week on business, what a great time to make up for the lack of episodes with our third newsletter. Sadly, we will be lacking even more episodes in the near future on account of PAX. I apologize in advance to all of you who do not care about, or are not attending PAX Prime 2012. It's under a month away. Like every PAX, we can hardly contain ourselves. It is on our minds every day up until days after we have returned home from Seattle. This year I (Scott) won't even be returning home. I will be going direct from PAX to DjangoCon US 2012, because my company is paying for it. Don't expect too many podcasts until the middle of September. When we do get the podcast going full steam again we will have lots of material, so do look forward to that!

Meta Moment

Ask Rym and/or Scott

Last month we put out the call for people to ask us questions so we could answer them in the newsletter. Our listener Theo asked us our opinion on IT certifications. It turns out that was such a good question we dedicated an entire episode to it! 

The other question comes from listener Ted. He read this article in the NY Times about how hard it is to make true friends after you have already become old. He asked us how come we don't have this problem, and how we make new friends even though we are thirty years old.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-making-friends-as-an-adult.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Well Ted, I can tell you that one great way to make friends is to start a podcast. Haha, that's only sort of true. The real way to make friends is to become involved in communities. Our podcast made us friends because a community formed around it and we bonded with the dedicated and prominent members of that community. We make friends at PAX and other conventions because we actually get involved in the communities at those cons, and we don't spend our time shopping. We make friends at board game night, anime showings, etc. Pretty much every friend I have made is through some community. I even organize them on Google+ Circles based on which community I met them through.

If you are a geek there is something out there that you are very interested in. Find an online or in-person community that is dedicated to that thing you like. Then become heavily involved in that community. For example, maybe you get involved in a Pokemon fan art community. Start commenting. Get to know the other people there. Submit good fan arts. Organize meetups. Talk to people who make fan arts you enjoy. Over time these people will become your friends. 

The reason a community is necessary is because it keeps people coming back. You might meet cool people once, but never see them again. A community provides a set group of people that you will interact with on a regular and repeating basis. That frequent and repeated interaction creates the basis on which a friendship can form.

Convention Season Continues

You are no doubt away that  PAX Dev and PAX Prime 2012 in Seattle, WA are very soon. We are doing one panel at each convention. At Pax Dev we are moderating a discussion of developers entitled "Academia vs. Reality: Psychology, Game Theory, and Games." At Pax Prime we are doing another triple threat with multiple panels in one. It is called "Short Subjects in Gaming." There is more information available on our web site.

Book Club

The episode on 1Q84 is out! What a fantastic book that is. If you haven't read it yet, no worries. The episode and the book will both be available for a very long time to come.

The next book club selection is The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. It's actually a public domain book, so you can legally acquire it from Project Guttenberg for free. I chose to purchase the Penguin Classics edition because the cover is amazing, and I like the smell of books. Too much Kindle reading made me hungry for paper. The book is about a man of Scotland Yard who infiltrates a cell of Anarchists becoming their leader. Quite an exciting premise for a book that was first published in 1908. It's also short, and I know you lazy readers like short books.

New Videos

Let's Play Money Making Game: PAX East 2012

If you didn't see it in person at PAX East 2012, here is your chance to relive it through the magic of YouTube. Our panel "Let's Play Money Making Game" is all about how different monetization models necessarily affect the mechanics of the game they are applied to. I was starting to come down with illness during the panel, but it turned out very well. I actually watched this video myself, and it was worth the hour. I do really have to stop saying "right' and "you know." At least I'm conscious of it!

New Podcasts

Technical Certifications

A listener wrote in asking if technical certifications were worth the trouble for someone who already had a technical degree. If you want to know the answer, listen to this very useful episode! If you aren't someone who cares about getting jobs in the tech industry, then this probably won't be interesting to you. In that case, just listen to news and things of the day.

Takenoko

At board game night we played a new game which had an awesome panda theme! How could we not immediately use that game as the subject of our newest Tuesday episode? If you are a board gamer at all, you definitely want to check out this review. Takenoko is a game with broad appeal, many of you should probably buy. 

Forum Weather Report

It's stormy weather as summer begins to wind down. Listeners are staying indoors and playing lots of video games. At least they are using the power of the Internet to play together. Check out these threads where the two big forum games are discussed.

Dwarf Fortress Succession Game

Ever since we interviewed Tarn Adams long ago, we have had many Dwarf Fortress fans amongst in our community. Every once in awhile a succession game breaks out. Everyone takes turns managing the fort for a year, and reports back the events with some great role playing. Even if you don't know how to play, and don't want to know, read this thread for some dwarven awesomeness that is acessible to all!

FRC Forum Tekkit Server

Minecraft is popular everywhere on the net, but us geeky folk have setup a server with the Tekkit mod. It allows for all sorts of electronic creations that are otherwise not possible with regular minecraft. Nuclear reactors complete with meltdowns are all over the place. I'm keeping it primitive with a regular old castle, but that's just because I don't have time to learn the fancy stuff. If you are reading this newsletter, and you like Minecraft, you should probably join this thread and this server.

Thing of the Newsletter

For our things of the day in the podcast we try to avoid repeating the same things over and over again. If we use one MLP video, we aren't going to use another one even if it's very very good. That will turn thing of the day into pony video of the day. Well, lately I have been really digging into KPop, but I don't want to constantly use music videos on the show, but no such rule applies to the newsletter!

Actually, this video has been exploding all over the Internet. It only came out half a month ago, but it is exploding all over the place. YouTube is already filled with dance covers and parody videos. T-Pain even commented on Twitter how amazing it is. If you are ready to have a song stuck in your head, you had better learn some Gagnam Style! Also, just watch it anyway so you don't fall behind on the meme curve.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0

Fan Art

We didn't get any new fan art since the last newsletter, so please send us some. Even some stick figures or whatever are great. Do you have any idea how much it can stroke your ego if someone else goes out of their way to make a work of art, no matter how trivial, that focuses on you? For inspiration, here is my favorite piece of fan art that has ever been done for GeekNights. All credit goes to our amazing listener Mankoon. I get warm fuzzies just looking at it. Dig Dug!

Closing

Oh shit PAX IS COMING! I have reailzed that I get excited for PAX a month in advance. Since there are two PAXes a year, that is two months a year of excitement. Assuming they never reduce a PAX, I am likely to spend 1/6 of the remaining time in my life excited for PAX. I will spend a far smaller amount of time in my life writing these newsletters.