Christmas in Canada: Winnipeg

Oh gosh, I've put this off for way too long... I was originally going to publish this back in January, and then in March, and then I thought it would work well to publish it for Christmas in July, and then... you get the picture. But hey, I've finally buckled down and finished it off. That's right, the story of what I did at Christmas is coming some 10 months later. Enjoy!

Actually, once again for Christmas I didn't travel to any exotic locations. In fact, it's probably going to continue that way for the foreseeable future, because I don't have any trips planned at all right now, including this upcoming Christmas. I haven't had any trips since then, either. It's kind of sad, but maybe in a year or two I'll get to go somewhere. Goodness knows I love to travel!

So, instead of traveling far away, I went back home to Canada to get my yearly snow and cold fix, and while I was there I spent a couple of days in Winnipeg. I've always loved going to Winnipeg. It's probably the place I've visited the most, so the city has quite a bit of nostalgia value for me. Yes, there are plenty of reasons to complain about it (like the roads; no planning whatsoever!), but I still look at it through rose-coloured glasses. For the past several years a new museum had been under construction in Winnipeg: the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Last September (the one in 2014) the museum finally opened, and I decided that while I was in town, I was going to check it out.

Indoor Skydiving

So, a couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to go skydiving. Inside. Weird, right? Well, it kind of was, but it was also super awesome, and a whole lot of fun.

How is it that I ended up on this excursion? It doesn't really seem like the kind of thing that I'd end up doing on my own, does it? Well, it's fairly simple: for his birthday, my friend's grandma payed for him and a friend to go do this, and I ended up being the plus one. The facility that we went to was iFly Dallas, the local site of a company that sets up these facilities all around the world. They've got sites all around America, in Australia, Singapore, the UAE, England, Russia, and a whole bunch of others. If it's something you want to check out, you can go to their website and see if there are any facilities near where you live. In any case, let's talk about my experience.

Grace Hopper Celebration 2013: It's For Men Too

So, this past weekend I was up in Minneapolis, MN attending my very first professional conference: The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2013. Yes, yes, I know I'm not a woman. It's the celebration of women in computing, not for women in computing. It's totally ok for men to attend.

Nevertheless, I was definitely in the minority. Being a tall, blond haired, blue eyed, Caucasian male made me stand out from the crowd, that's for sure. And you know what? That's not a bad thing. It made me memorable to everyone else attending. I met several people over the course of the conference that recognized me later and came over to say hello, which was very nice because I didn't know anyone there. I came up from school by myself to present at the poster session as part of a group that had never met before, so I felt a little lonely. Not knowing anyone in a crowd of 4,807 can kind of get you down. So whenever someone that I had met previously saw me again and said hi, it picked my spirits up.

My First Con: RWBY at RTX

Well, now that RWBY has been premiered, I think that it's about time for me to write up my time at RTX. By which I mean that I should have done this sooner, but I'm only getting around to it now so that I don't fall too far behind current. For those of you who don't know, RTX stands for "Rooster Teeth Expo." Not that it's any clearer what that means if you haven't heard of Rooster Teeth...

Rooster Teeth is an production company that makes TV series for the internet. Their most famous series (and the one that started them off) is Red vs. Blue, a machinima (which means that it is filmed in a video game, specifically Halo). Red vs. Blue has actually just started its 11th season, which is pretty impressive for something made on the internet. Other series of theirs include P.A.N.I.C.S., Immersion, and now RWBY. Rooster Teeth is also the parent company of Achievement Hunter, one of the most popular video game community websites on the internet.

For the past three years, Rooster Teeth has held the RTX convention in their hometown of Austin, TX. Three years isn't very long for a convention to have been around, but this past year, there were over 10,000 people that attended. It's pretty nuts. They had major game publishers there, as well as famous voice actors and lots of panels from industry professionals. This year they also premiered the first two episodes of RWBY.