The 2011 Halloween season kept me quite busy. I joined a professional haunted house in Dublin, OH called The Scare-A-Torium. I made tons of great new friends, and had a fantastic time scaring the customers every weekend for the entire month of October. I wore “The Experiment” as my costume and continued to make changes and improvements over the course of the month. The biggest change was adding a computer fan inside the “claw” and another inside the “box” on my head to keep me cool. I also did my make-up a little different every night just so I wouldn’t get bored. I am proud to have won two “Diaper Awards” which are given out at the end of the season to best actors in the haunt.

Then at the end of October, I took the last two weekends to turn my garage into a home haunt for Trick-or-Treat on the 31st. I wore my “Body Bag” costume which my neighborhood hadn’t seen yet, even though I made it back in 2008. The haunt in my garage included my laser-fog-tunnel, a bridge over a bottomless pit, a drop panel with a scary clown, and a black light room full of PVC pipe people. I was lucky to have two new friends, Shirley and Jim, help act in my haunt. I couldn’t have done it without them. And many thanks to Corey for taking photos again this year. I think the kids and adults in my neighborhood really had fun. I had fun seeing all of their great costumes and seeing the reactions on their faces when they came out of the haunt.

Scare-A-Torium

Home Haunt

Version 1

For the first version, I kept the lenses in the original frame. I used a dremel to cut off the hinges and temples. On the back side of the bridge, I cut a deep slit into the plastic so the bridge of my normal glasses fit inside. Then I used 5 of the tiny thermal fitting beads from a pair of Billy-Bob teeth to fill the slot and make a perfect fit for the bridge of my normal glasses. The thermal fitting beads work by heating them in a cup of very hot water until they turn clear. Then you press an object into the soft, hot, thermal material for 20 seconds or so. Pull the object out of the thermal material and let it cool until it turns white again. This version works just fine, but it adds the extra weight of the original 3D frames.

Version 2

For the second version, I decided to remove the realD 3D lenses from the original frame. They were almost wide enough for me to cut a tiny slot on either side of each lens and wedge them between the metal frame of my normal glasses. But after cutting the tiny slots, they were just a little too narrow to stay wedged in place. I found some other clear plastic material, similar in thickness to the lenses, and cut out 4 little hooks. I used Gorilla Super Glue to attach the little hooks to the 3D lenses. Now they rest on the metal frame of my glasses just fine. What I like most is how little extra weight they add. My last addition was to add the plastic bridge to connect the two lenses together. Now with the two lenses attached to each other, I’m less likely to loose them, and they also stay snapped in place on my glasses more securely. A helpful tip: I was able to clean off the excess super glue with acetone (found in fingernail polish remover) which dissolves super glue quite well, at least before it has had time to dry completely. It also didn’t damage the 3D lenses.

I tested these out for the first time at Transformers: Dark of the Moon 3D. They worked like a charm! And the movie was fun! 8/10 stars for me, better than Revenge of the Fallen by far. The opening sequence (battling space ships) was the best 3D in the whole movie (followed by the sky diving towards the end). Perhaps the opening scene was so good because it was entirely CG. It reminded me of the opening sequence of Star Wars: Episode III where Anakin and Obi-Wan were flying and fighting above Coruscant.

THE VOLDEMORT IS IN THE DETAILS

Great planning must take place to maximize our experience, so the adventure begins! Details to consider: movie lengths, food, sleep, food, break-time activites, food, 2D vs. 3D, and last but not least – food.

Movie Lengths

• 152 mins. – 2 hr 32 min – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
• 161 mins. – 2 hr 41 min – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
• 142 mins. – 2 hr 22 min – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• 157 mins. – 2 hr 37 min – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
• 139 mins. – 2 hr 19 min – Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• 153 mins. – 2 hr 33 min – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• 146 mins. – 2 hr 26 min – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
• 130 mins. – 2 hr 10 min – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
• 1,180 mins. – TOTAL LENGTH – That’s 19 hours 40 minutes! – Holy Harry, Batman!

There are only 1,440 minutes in a day. Yeah, that sucks, I know. But rather than test the limits of our sanity and squeeze the first 7 movies (17.5 hours) into one day, we decided to spread our viewing out over three days. Here’s the plan:

• Thursday night: watch movies 1-2 (313 mins. = 5 hr 13 min)
• Friday all day: take a day of vacation to watch movies 3-6 (591 mins. = 9 hr 51 min)
• Saturday: watch movie 7:Part 1 in the morning, and finally a matinee of 7:Part 2 in the theater (276 mins. = 4 hr 36 min)
• We muggles shall endure!

2D or not 2D, that is the question

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and Part 2 were both filmed in 2D. Apparently they began the process of a post-production 3D conversion of Part 1, but stopped in mid-conversion, citing quality and time constraints as the driving concern. I guess they didn’t want to rush the process and end up with another Clash of the Titans 3D stink-a-roo on their hands. With Part 2, however, they have had an entire year to perform the 3D conversion, so in theory the 3D effects should look pretty good. (The Green Lantern, for example, was a post-production 3D conversion, and it turned out WAY better than Clash.) That leaves us with having to choose between the 2-D and 3-D versions in the theater. Actually, the decision wasn’t that difficult for us to make. We are going to the 2D version. Why? The 3D version costs $4 more than the 2D version. All 7 of the other movies were in 2D, and they were awesome. Jim doesn’t wear glasses, so wearing the 3D glasses bothers him. I do wear glasses, and having to wear a second pair bothers me. I’ll gladly don the 3D glasses for a fully computer animated movie, but sometimes, going to see a good old-fashioned 2D movie can be refreshing these days.

Break-Time Acitivies

Possible break-time activities include: sleeping, eating, playing LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4, taking a walk, eating, going mountain troll hunting, and eating.

Food, Glorious Food

Food was always a big part of the Harry Potter universe. It’s big in my universe too, and I can’t think of a better way to make a connection with Harry and his friends while watching them take on He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named than to eat foods that are inspired by the books and movies. I’m sure I’ll miss some obvious ones, but here is a list of the foods we plan to eat:

• Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor beans – I’ve had the ones made by Jelly Belly. Vomit made me want to vomit. I’ll stick to the standard Jelly Belly flavors, thank-you!
• Chocolate Frogs – OK, pretty much anything chocolate will do just fine. And Gummy Worms are similar, right?
• Butterbeer – check out these recipes. I’m thinking cream soda with a shot of butterscotch schnapps sounds good.
• What am I missing that we can imitate? Please leave comments below.

Harry Potter movies 1-7 on Blu-ray

Special thanks to the following people for letting me use their photos of my costume:

• ScareHouse Scott at www.scarehouse.com

More MARCon 46 photo galleries:

• gothpanda on Flickr
• g0d5m15t4k3 on Flickr
• SpiceLux on Flickr
• Loadhan on Flickr

My plans to make improvements include:

• Dirty up, or distress, the metal with fake rust and grime.
• Replace the yellow tubing with something less modern looking.
• Make a new outfit from leather and canvas that looks more authentic.
• Come up with some new make-up for my face instead of using the leather face mask.

I wore The Experiment to two local conventions in Columbus, OH: MARCon 46 and MHC 2011

Special thanks to the following people for letting me use their photos of my costume from various conventions:

• ScareHouse Scott at www.scarehouse.com
• SpiceLux on Flickr

I’m hoping that the next version of FileMaker will include something like a Get (OnTimerStatus) function to help us monitor what scripts are set to run in which windows and when, but until that time, I created my own solution using a Web Viewer. It acts as a progress bar that can be customized to display any color you specify, and set to advance over a specified period of time.

The solution uses 4 global fields, 3 scripts, and a Web Viewer. The Web Viewer can be set to any width and height (up to 100px high). It has to be given an Object Name, “ProgressBar” in my example, so the StartTimer script can target the Web Viewer to display a web page. The web page uses javascript and css to display the progress bar. I invite you to download my sample file and hope you can find a use for it in your next OnTimer solution.

Download OnTimerProgressBar.fp7

To use the new sound sets:

1) Download and unzip the sound set(s).
2) Move the folder(s) that end in “.eragesoundset” to the Entourage Sound Sets folder located at:
      Documents / Microsoft User Data / Entourage Sound Sets
3) Open Preferences in Entourage: Entourage menu > Preferences…
4) Select Notifications in the left column.
5) Select the name of your new sound set in the bottom drop-down list.

Download the Sound Sets:

HomestarRunner
LittleBritain
MacMailApp
R2D2
StarTrek
StarWars
SuperMarioBros
SuperMarioWorld
Water
ZeldaOcarina

I got several of these sound sets from http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=cats&cat_id=3 which are formatted to work with another application, Adium. A few simple modifications allow you to use the same sound sets with Entourage.

First, edit the folder name to end with “.eragesoundset” instead of “.AdiumSoundset”. Then, place a copy of the “soundset.plist” file from one of my Entourage sound sets into your new sound set folder. Next, edit the sound file names in the .plist file to match the names of the 6 sounds you want to use. For example, the last sound listed in the .plist file is the Welcome sound that plays when you first launch Entourage. Edit the value to match the name of the sound file sitting in the sound set folder that you want to use. You can use any text editor to edit the .plist file if it doesn’t open automatically with the Property List Editor app.

All of these sound file formats work (possible others too): .aif .wav .mp3 .m4a You can even use more than one sound format within the same sound set. I did find, however, that some of the sounds that I got from the Adium sound sets caused problems, preventing Entourage from accepting the sound set. To get around those problems, I either selected a different sound, or I reformatted the sound as an .aif using Garageband (Share > Export Song to Disk… and uncheck the Compress box).

These websites helped me figure out how to make the sound set files:

http://blog.mikefullerton.com/2008/04/22/entourage-sound-sets/

http://fuzzyco.com/news/geekery/converting_or_creating_sound_sets_for_entourage_2008.html

I’ve played a few first-person shooters in the past, like Call of Duty 4 and Unreal Tournament 3, and I liked them both, but I was never able to get good enough to play online against other players. I am always the guy at the bottom of the kill list. My problem: I suck at using the PS3 DualShock 3 controller. When things get intense in a game, my dexterity goes to crap and I end up throwing grenades instead of firing, or stabbing with the knife when the closest enemy is 50 feet away.

Why do I love playing Killzone 3? The PS3 Move controller! It has made all the difference in the world for me. There are fewer buttons to learn, and I can adjust the sensitivity to match my lack of fine motor skills. When you calibrate the glowing controller, there are 5 or 6 levels of sensitivity, and the lowest one works great for me. I have to move my hand 3 or 4 inches from side to side in order to cover the full width of my TV. As you can see in the video below, if you select a higher sensitivity, you barely have to move your hand at all to aim.

The game also allows you to calibrate the Move controller to be held horizontally or vertically. I sit in a reclined position on my couch when I play, and it feels natural to hold the controller vertically. If I had to hold it horizontally so it was pointing at the screen like a gun, my wrist would quickly get strained.

Add the immersive surround sound and the eye-popping graphics, and you have one sweet game for the PS3. I highly recommend you give it a try if you even remotely enjoy first-person shooters. And if you are sitting on the fence when it comes to buying the Move controllers, this might be the game that makes that decision easier for you to make. Let’s see the 360 try to pull this off with the Kinect. I don’t think so.

UPDATE: (3/8/11) I completed the campaign mode a few days ago, and I have never, ever played a video game all the way through before. So that says something about this game. Either the campaign mode is short, or it was exciting enough to keep me playing it, or perhaps a little of both. I have also been playing multiplayer online for a few days now, and I’ll be honest. I am not the best soldier on the battle field. Most of the time I finish the round in the bottom half of the list. BUT, I have been first a couple of times now with the most kills. And that NEVER happened playing CoD with the sixaxis controller. One more huge WIN for the PS3 Move controller.

A couple of blurry screen shots taken with my iPhone. Trust me, the graphics are WAY better than these shots make it look.

This is a nice long preview showing how you can hold the Move controller in a vertical position.