Morning, second day of Genghis Con

Breakfast at the hotel was buffet style - very nice, nothing out of the ordinary, but what do you expect for $15? Entertained myself but probably no-one else by failing miserably trying to play Street Fighter on the X-box. It is a cliche but I can't get over how ordinary the graphics, sound and gameplay is on those things - did we really use to play crappy games like that for days at a time?

Highlight was the live action MAG Blast game outside. It had got a bit warm by this point so it was good to get sprayed with the water pistols every so often! Endless thanks for Tim and Bronwyn for explaining the rules at least a hundred times during the first game (and even sacrificing their own advantages by telling us better strategies to follow). Second game was much quicker and smoother (and a hell of a lot more competitive). I have to apologize to Chris too - in both games it was me who delivered the killing blow to you command ship. I swear I wasn't picking on you! Tim and Bronwyn must have done their job very well because I could actually get the basics of the game quite fluently. I hadn't quite progressed to the point of working out any kind of strategy but to add a Dreadnought to my fleet by way of a single laser strike (by way of a "Direct Hit Effect" card + a "Boarding Party" card) was sweet indeed!

Thanks to Tim and Bronwyn for their extremely patient instruction.

Afternoon, second day of Genghis Con

Couldn't face any lunch after the enormous breakfast this morning but I went for a drive with Darren down to Subway and read the paper while he grabbed lunch.

Back to the Con and it was Robo Rally with Wez. I only watched while Darren played the live action version. Again, everybody was very patient with the instructions and it was well organised. On a personal note, I found this game to have too much of a random element to it for me to enjoy it. That said, everybody on the board seemed to be having a good time!

Combat LARP started about halfway through so I headed over there with my sword. I lost in the first round but did get a good suicide cut in on my opponent in the second round when I was on my knees and I lunged forward and scored a (lethal) torso cut from underneath his guard as he moved in to finish me off! The guy I lost (2-1) to was an eventual semi-finalist so I didn't feel too bad about that. He did get a few good hard shots in on me though!

After the LARP, Darren and I headed over to the Trebuchet firing (water balloons only). Very impressive scale model it was too and the action was very authentic, no springs or coils, just counterweight. When it fired, it worked very well and gave the same high trajectory a trebuchet should - the sling seemed to cause a lot of problems though.

Went off to watch "An Inconvenient Truth" which I will review later in the week, after I have processed it a little more.

Evening, second day of Genghis Con

Went into Freo for dinner and had my favourite - Oyako-don from Taka's Kitchen in the Old Shanghai Foodhall. Absolutely perfect as always and only $7.70 (despite what it says in the link) for the large portion. Strangely, I had a strong urge for a chocolate thickshake so I grabbed one from Shanghai Sweets. Very nice one - large, thick, strong chocolate flavour but it was a little sweet.

Headed back to the Con and went into the "Getting Out There" panel. It was a very interesting panel discussion on current space exploration programmes, well led by Graham Mann, with Rob Masters and Mark Bivens adding their expertise. Clearly there is a lot happening just now and some of the future speculation was fascinating. The VTOL vehicles were a sight to see and the molded/extruded housing robots were an interesting diversion.

After the panel we headed over to the AV room to watch a couple of locally made fan films: Return of the Killer Bikini Vampire Girls and The Killer Bikini Vampire Girls Strike Back (no link for the second one). Short but funny and exploiting every vampire cliche you could imagine to good effect. Reasonable production values given budget and resources etc. I am certainly looking forward to Killer Bikini Vampire Girls 3: A New Hope (which got a very big laugh for the title alone) whenever it comes out!

Back to the room a little earlier than last night but then we talked for ages.