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That's a classic "shoulder butt". My book's not (yet) in the plug-shit thread, but I can heartily recommend all Dutch listeners to go to http://www.uitgeverijleeuwenhart.nl and check out and/or purchase the book.

 

The peanut butter (Calvé, of course) is part of the decoration for the stand. It's a prop and delicious.

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Hey! I passed my tests! I'm finally going to actually receive my master's diploma!

I'm only two years later than intended. Also I still have no job. I need to find five new places to apply to. Nobody from last week has responded yet.

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Famous author stuff

So that's what El Muerte looks like. The avatar lies!

To a non-Dutch speaker, you were the least immediately unusual convention-goer. How do you feel about that?

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Just looked over some of my tax forms and realized that I had misunderstood something and haven't actually paid my taxes. Now I not only still owe, but owe additional interest. And I have a worrying feeling that this means I won't be eligible for next month's GST/HST credit that I was relying on to help bail me out. Right now I'm not even halfway through the month and I'm down to only a few dollars because I can't keep up with my debt. Argh. None of this would have ever happened if I hadn't taken the stupid job that brought me to Moncton and forced me into credit card debt.

You should contact the IRS and work with them. They are generally amiable to setting you up with a payment plan or something as long as you own up and aren't trying to dodge taxes. Failing that, the Taxpayer Advocate Office (http://www.irs.gov/Advocate) helped me a bunch when I was mistakenly charged $5000 for filing a fraudulent return.

Edit: The other thing to mention is that, while the letters they send are often quite stern, all they can really do for the moment is charge you more interest, so don't panic. Obviously, if you let this sit for years they'll come after you, but a few days plus or minus aren't going to make much difference.

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Congrats guys, for getting married, getting book published and officially becoming an anime expert and for passing tests and getting masters!

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I got it sorted out already; thanks.

Heh, I guess I didn't realize that was posted last week. The things you miss when you're sick....

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So that's what El Muerte looks like. The avatar lies!

 

I'm not two-lettered

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I'm not two-lettered

More like eight-lettered!

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Heh, I guess I didn't realize that was posted last week. The things you miss when you're sick....

 

Also she's in Canada, so contacting the IRS probably wouldn't be much help.

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"IRS, can you talk to the Canada Revenue Agency? I've heard you're pretty reasonable, and they're just NOT listening to me..."

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Thank you guys for all of the congratulations, it was one of the best weekends I ever had. I just had a beer before going on, but it really didn't help. I was all nervous and sweaty and messed up a line or two, but it's all par for the course I suppose. Everything went well overall.

 

Haha, I guess I am late to this party. Just drove up from Port Aransas and can confirm it's a pretty sweet weekend to Gulf. Have some belated fun! As for alcohol, I think I was the first one at my wedding to start drinking. It worked, no complaints but then again I get friendlier when I am drunk, others' mileage may vary.

Haha, yeah it was pretty nice. There was way too much seaweed so it wasn't really that great for swimming in at the moment, but otherwise weather was great!

That's awesome! I'm going to crash your wedding, okay?

Haha maybe I should have opened it up to Idleforums members.

 

But that's not all: the Dutch NOS news swooped by for an item on Japanese fan culture. They had asked me to give them a tour and explain what made this hobby so enduring and fun, and the result was on the air last friday and can be seen here: http://nos.nl/op3/video/660945-.html

 

So a pretty dull, average weekend in other words.

Is this a comic book? I couldn't find any info in English but I would like to know what's going on here! Gimme!

 

If not a comic, is that your art on the cover?

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It's not El Muerte next to me, it's the venerable Lu!

 

Pindakaas en Sushi is a young adult novel, and the art is by an illustrator from the scene. She's really good, way better than I'd be able to make it.

 

And yes, I was one of the people not in cosplay on the convention. I don't feel weird about that, it's anything goes. About half of the people (some 6000 visitors) are in costume, but it's not a must. If you do dress up, it's awesome though.

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Rodi, having no idea what was going on in that video, my favourite bit was where she put on the cape and then blended into the crowd as an embedded journalist.

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I neglected to tell you the best thing: during the recordings I totally tried to sneak in an Idle Thumbs reference. When explaining that cosplay wasn't just about Japanese shows but also ones from other countries, I listed some choice properties people could dress up as: "Iron Man, Sherlock, Jeff Goldblum..."

 

Regrettably, it was cut.

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Yea, that was lots of fun. Sitting at the booth, seeing streams of people pass by with all manner of costumes. If I had to take away anything from that community is that it's in general a very accepting one, and you could tell everyone was having a lot of fun. 

 

I gotta say, first time I met Rodi (in the flesh) and 2 days later he got me into his hotel bed. He's quite the charmer.

 

I may or may not have missed the last train home on saturday evening. Rodi to the rescue!

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I'm running an event. It's broken even, except for one thing: It doesn't look like I'll get to pay myself for the last two months of work I've done, and my next freelance job has to subsidise that.

 

Marketing it in any way has been a nightmare. A couple of other business owners and editors told me that this year seems to be an inbox/notification apocalypse, and getting anything noticed seems to be exponentially harder. I'm exhausted and only have more work ahead of me.

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I'm running an event. It's broken even, except for one thing: It doesn't look like I'll get to pay myself for the last two months of work I've done, and my next freelance job has to subsidise that.

 

Marketing it in any way has been a nightmare. A couple of other business owners and editors told me that this year seems to be an inbox/notification apocalypse, and getting anything noticed seems to be exponentially harder. I'm exhausted and only have more work ahead of me.

 

You should try making it viral.

 

There you go, i'm pretty much marketing advice gold.

 

 

On the real hand, sucks that all your work didn't get you paid. Do you think you can continue to run events that will pay you?

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"IRS, can you talk to the Canada Revenue Agency? I've heard you're pretty reasonable, and they're just NOT listening to me..."

 

All the wierd smiley selections on this forum, and there isn't an embarassed one to be found.

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On the real hand, sucks that all your work didn't get you paid. Do you think you can continue to run events that will pay you?

 

I don't know. Without really big jobs like the one off thing I had last year, I don't get enough work to pay for myself year round.

 

I've done a lot of indie related stuff for the past seven years or so, made some really good friends, and helped a lot of developers, but for some of them I'm clearly just a stepping stone. I meet quite a few now who treat game development as a lottery ticket to be Notch, and are about as realistic over their chances as people who think they'll win a regular lottery. Where my current event is targeted is at the fringes, where interesting collaborations and weird stuff happen, but the meetups I've been to all over the UK give me the impression that people are more interested in pitching their game and "Five surefire ways to sell your iOS thing!" than, y'know, game design, the future, culture and interesting crossovers.

 

Nowhere in the UK seems to have the culture or critical mass to so much as start something like Arcane Kids. I meet the odd developer here and there, but most meetups seem to be students mixed with middle aged guys talking about the big studio job they were recently laid off from, or the next one they're hoping to get, and meanwhile let's spend a year or two making the helicopter game for iOS, but really shiny.

 

I desperately want something like A MAZE to exist in the UK, and have been trying for the past three years, but events with UK developers all feel like they circle the same drain. I get a lot of people asking if they can playtest their game at the event, basically asking me for free expo space and everyone else for free labour, but pitching it as if they're offering everyone an amazing bit of programming. Just today someone asked me if he could speak there about scummy persuasion techniques, and as if that wasn't bad enough, I looked at his portfolio and it was all "Here's some artwork I ripped off for a client".

 

Programming is actually the easiest part of this event, but the audience feels less ambitious yet more hungry every year. Some really amazing, interesting developers I didn't know well at the time said after the first one that it was the only game developer event that properly felt like home… but it shrinks every year, and that's super depressing.

 

Mood: cynical.

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Haha maybe I should have opened it up to Idleforums members.

 

Ha ha, it's cool. You wouldn't want to explain why you invited a giant pirate penguin from the Internet to your wedding. :-P

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Aw, Nachimir, that sucks. I've been wondering lately at length about how good audiences are made and my wandering has gone absolutely nowhere.

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