If it's not Raven, it's crap...

You're welcome, little dude. I'm a good wingwoman. I'm a horrible matchmaker. If you want to get someone's digits or an invite to the party in their pants, then I can help make that happen. My success rate for setting people up is abysmal. And, for crying out loud, don't ever ask me to evaluate your relationship/partner (at least not if you want to stay together). I've only actively made attempts to find someone for Schmiddy . This is because he gets cranky if he doesn't get "his medicine" (except replace "his medicine" with "to put his penis into a vagina"). It was overall a very self-serving mission to get him laid. Happy Schmiddy = Happy Raven = Happy Apartment. But I digress. On Friday, I went to a wedding reception. Not just any wedding reception, but one in which I was treated like some kind of hero. Now, you'd think the hero would actually be invited to the ceremony, but that was family only, so no hard feelings ther...

Last Saturday, I ran into Schmiddy and Babymaus while I was out running some errands in Altona. (Well, it was more like he ran up behind me and scared the crap out of me). Frosty and I had sent him a postcard. I would have sent more people postcards, if I could remember more addresses. Luckily for Schmiddy , I still remember my old address, which made things very easy. Anyway, the postcard had a picture of the Eiffel Tower and then, randomly, two giant kittens in a basket and across the top it read "Souvenir Paris". The scaling made the kittens look roughly the size of the Eiffel Tower. I saw it and figured that it belonged in my former kitchen. We stopped and chatted for a bit and I told him some bits and pieces about the Paris trip. He mentioned reading somewhere that the Eiffel Tower was on a list of the most overrated tourist attractions in the world (or something to that effect). I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but every time I think of the Eiffel Tower, I think a...

Around 80% of our pre-departure research was dedicated to food. And even that was probably not enough. Although we were allowed to use the hotel dining room to eat, we didn't have any way to cook anything (not that I really felt motivated to cook after a long day of sightseeing). I didn't want to live on baguettes and applesauce every day for over a week and being an employed person who is otherwise not really big on shopping, I figure I deserved this much. However, there was another thing to keep in mind, namely the fact that Frosty is vegan. I am not. That said, I'm also not a picky non-vegan that needs to have animal-based ingredients in all of my meals. If you're not vegan and you're going to date a vegan, this is the attitude that you should have; otherwise, you can almost never go out to eat together. Trying to find a restaurant that does meat and vegan food is tough. Moreover, even I would question the vegan-ness of the food in such an establishment. So usua...

I probably should have written about how to get around town before the whole tourist attraction part. For the most part, I'm a big fan of public transportation. As long as it's, you know, doesn't completely suck. And to me, not completely sucking involves several things: 1.) Public transportation vehicles run in intervals of (at the very most) 10 minutes 2.) They run until at least midnight 3.) Preferably some sort of mix (e.g. Bus + something else, e.g. Tram/Train) That's the basic list. Paris easily meets these requirements. The Paris Métro has very tightly knit network of underground lines, you're basically always in a few hundred yards of another station, which makes crossing the city -- which is massive -- easier than you might think. With one caveat, but I'll get to that in a sec. Like most of the main public transportation systems (at least the ones I've experienced), single trip tickets are more expensive than buying a bundle of tickets or (multi-)da...

I hate tourists. I hate being a tourist. It's a stupid thing to say if you're visiting a place on vacation, especially for the first time, but I'm serious. Tourists do and say the most fucking ridiculous shit. They don't know where they're going and they don't know how to get out of the way of people who do know where they're going. I hate it, but it's a necessary evil sometimes. You have to stumble around and get out all the oohs and ahs and lookie-over-theres(!) -- just to get it all out of your system, so that you can act like a normal human being in a new environment. Take a picture, it lasts longer...and all that other b.s. Paris is full of tourists. Duh. I was one. I said and did some dumb shit and took pictures like a maniac. In all, I took almost 300 pictures. Too many of them were of the Eiffel Tower. From far away, from close up, different angles, etc and so forth. So, I can't knock tourists so much. But I do try to do some things out of ...

French pillows are pretty crappy We chose a hotel in the Montmartre area of the city. In French, Montmartre means "mountain...something" but really only the mountain part is relevant. Though, in this case it's like the city type of mountain, which usually just means big-ass hill. The effect is roughly the same. Montmartre is also apparently the discount wedding dress/suit district, as there were "Mariage" shops one after the other. Other things that you can find in Montmartre include: inexpensive cigarettes from illegal street vendors and Afro shops. It was like I died and heaven was filled with all of my favorite black hair care products for half the price that I can find them in Hamburg. Frosty and C.Dub had stayed in the same hotel that we had booked during a few of their previous trips to Paris. It was a modest little place with a single star from the French tourism board. There was just a double bed, small bathroom, a desk with a chair and a wardrobe. The ...

Now that Dreamweek is over and I've had a chance to get a bit settled, I've got a bit of time to reflect and share some thoughts about my Paris vacation. It's going to be a multi-part "series" so that I can recall things better. Frosty will probably pipe up at some point in the comments to dispute my recollection of some events. There are two sides to every story, unfortunately his side of the story doesn't have a blog. :-P Spending 9 days in Paris for vacation is a bit overkill. Especially if it's your first trip, especially if you're trying to fit in most of the major attractions in the city. I don't know how people manage to see all that crap in one weekend (or crazier still, an under 48 hours trip). We spent an average of 8-10 hours walking around each day, I feel like I've only seen about 5% of what the city has to offer. I basically crashed into bed at the end of each day. That said, overall, it was a pleasant experience. I took a lot of...

Milk Coffee & Sugar - Prévu, pas prévu I'm posting this month's show as one file, since I don't feel like cutting it into two parts. I'm contemplating switching to SoundCloud widget since some people have had trouble downloading the file from DivShare. If this is the case then send me a mail and I'll hook you up. Once again, Zilv and I had to pre-record the show because of her work schedule. This time we thought we'd be clever and just record the show as though it were live, think that it would take (tops) 2 hours and then we'd be done. However, at the radio station we encountered some technical problems with the equipment -- namely, that you can't do a simultaneous playback & record on the computer in the studio. I'm not sure if this is a computer issue or a Linux issue, but it was quite an annoyance and we spent two hours trying to just get it to work. Note: Whenever we pre-produced before, we would just record the spoken parts alone and ...

I arrived back in Hamburg late Sunday night, but I haven't had time to write up my Paris trip, because it was back to work for me on Monday. This week, we (and when I say we, I mean my employer Bigpoint Games) rolled out our Dreamweek event. What's Dreamweek, you ask? Good question. Let me tell you. Dreamweek is a very ambitious project. It's part company-wide team building, part company challenge. In the preparation leading up to Dreamweek, employees had the opportunity to submit game ideas to a committe (also made up of employees) . From the submissions, a handful were chosen and the entire company voted to pick out the top two. The goal of Dreamweek is to conceptualize/program/produce the top two games - more or less from the ground up and within 7 days - launching a playable game to the public on the final day. Of course, there are limitations to what is actually feasible to create within a week. But like I said...it's pretty ambitious. Adding to the challenge is t...