GDC 2006

I DJ'd at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose (California) last night, and then flew back up to New Brunswick today. It was a lot of fun, but next year I'm going to have to try to take a week off and go back so I can sit in on some of the seminars. Wow, there was a lot of stuff happening there!

GDC is an annual conference devoted to computer software programmers, or "coders." Quite often, I don't think the general public appreciates just how much work goes into creating software, and just how big an impact computers have had on increasing the standard of living and GDP in the past few decades. The coders are the people who make it all work, and although this conference is designed specifically for developers of video games, people who work in just about every branch of programming should find something of interest.

The show was very well organized by the ShoutCreative team (www.shoutcreative.com). After I played, Uberzone (www.uberzone.net) took to the stage, playing a set based on Ableton Live with scratching and live drumming. It was basically a breaks set with a lot of interaction and effects, and it was really enjoyable. If you ever get a chance to see Uberzone, do it. After seeing that, I realized that I've got to get myself up to speed with Ableton.

One of the craziest parts of the night was the fact that there were combot wars happening at the party. A "combot" is a specialized type of robot, built specifically for these matches. Basically, it's like a hi-tech version of smash-up derby, with remotely controlled machines that are about the size of Fat Forrest (my 110 pound black Labrador). Now I'll admit that I had never seen anything like this before, so I didn't know what to expect. Before the show, I noticed that there was a huge enclosed structure built for the competition, and I thought to myself, "that's a little bit over the top." After all, I thought this was more of a game than a sport (it's only a sport if you can lose an eye). Or so I thought.

Anyway, while I was playing later on, I could just barely see the combot arena from the stage, and at one point during my set I looked over just as two of the combots attacked each other. All I saw was large chunks of wood and metal flying about eight feet up in the air as a huge cheer went up from the crowd around the arena.

All in all, it was a very fun experience, although I don't think in general that the Americans drink nearly as much alcohol as Canadians do. The party had open bars everywhere, and if they had that kind of setup in Canada (complimentary drinks with a thousand people in the room), they would have needed truckloads of beer and liquor!

Saint Patrick's Day

Last night was Saint Patrick's Day, and we had a pretty good deal on at my bar. We were selling pitchers of green beer for $5.50 each, from opening until closing, for anyone wearing green. For readers who are from other countries who wonder if that's a good deal, the answer is "yes" - that's slightly under the cost of buying the equivalent amount of bottled beer from our provincial government liquor store, and in comparison to minimum wage, that's the amount of money that people in the lowest wage-earning positions in this province can earn in about 50 minutes. Of course, that's still higher than prices in the United States, but in Canada, the government taxes us highly for our sins.

Anyway, let's just say that we poured off quite a number of kegs, and a good time was had by all. Here are a couple photos from the evening:





God bless the Irish.

This evening I'll be bartending again, although I bet that with the partying that everyone did last night, the club probably won't be as full as usual. After work, I'm heading up to Saint John to play a set at Club Nitro. Saint John, in my opinion, has the best underground music scene of any city in the Maritimes. Halifax has a bigger scene, but Saint John is just so friendly and open-minded that many people have grown to love partying in that city.

I'll Have a Bucket of Booze

So I guess that pretty much everybody knows that it is possible to buy home wine and beer making kits. They are pretty popular, and I've made batches myself several times over the last decade or so. I never had much success with making good-tasting home-made beer, although I did manage to pull off a few good batches of wine. However, I just learned last week from a friend of mine that it is possible to make hard liquor now!

Basically, if you buy a package of the right type of yeast (which cost me $7.95), add it to 25 litres of water, and add eight kilograms of sugar, then stir it up and cover it so air can't get in to contaminate the yeast, it will slowly turn into a form of edible alcohol. It would sort of be like "alcool" or "grain alcohol" I guess, just ethanol mixed with water, without much flavor. After about a day or so, the bucket reaches 20 proof (10%) and eventually, after about a week of fermenting, the strength tops out at 40 proof, or 20%. At that point, it just needs to be run through a carbon filter to clean out the yeast in the mix, and voila, a big bucket of booze.

As long as I don't resell it, I can't get into trouble for bootlegging. As long as I don't distill it to try to make it stronger, I don't run into safety issues or get in trouble for running a still. I did pay a fair amount of money for the initial setup (a glass bucket to ensure better sterility, carbon filters, yeast, spoons, bubbler to allow gas to release without air getting back into bucket, etc.) but it came in at less than $80.00 overall. Now that I have all the equipment, I just have to buy packets of yeast and the sugar, so a batch of about 20 litres of 40 proof alcohol will cost me well under a dollar per litre.

Now the big test will come next week when I taste the first batch. Because my liquor is made with refined white sugar as a base, it will be fairly tasteless. Other types of alcohol use different bases (and additives) to give them flavor. For example, I believe that bourbon is made with corn mash, Canadian rye whiskey is made from rye & other grains, vodka is often made with potatos, rum is often made with sugar cane and/or molasses, etc. The neat thing here is that I can buy little bottles of additives that will change the taste of the alcohol to make it taste like certain categories of liquor. These extract bottles are expensive, because it costs about $3 for enough extract to "convert" one litre. However, that still puts the total cost per litre at only about $4, compared to the scandalous price of $32 per litre from Canadian liquor stores.

Obviously, this is just a fun little project for personal consumption, not for redistribution, but I'm looking forward to bottling my own personal brand of "Bolivia Bourbon."

Frustrating Customers, Part One

Last night (a Saturday) I was bartending, and a girl came up and ordered a double rum & coke, which should have come to $3.75 per ounce or $7.50 total. Since we had a special that wasn't actually advertised on posters in the bar, I thought I'd be nice and point it out to her: coconut rum with coke for $2.00 per ounce. Our staff do need to be aware of revenue maximization issues, so I don't usually venture such information unless a customer asks directly, because it reduces sales by a few dollars. However, this was a student whom I hadn't seen before. We are a not-for-profit organization, after all, and it would be a good way to start building a business relationship with a customer & increasing brand loyalty, which could be really positive in the long run.

She thought the special was a good idea and was glad that I pointed it out to her, so she paid the price for a double ($4.00) by giving me a five. I then gave her back four quarters, because after all, these are students. Hoping for a full dollar as a tip would be unlikely. She looked at the four quarters in her hand, put them in her pocket, and walked away. I couldn't believe it. After volunteering info to her that saved her $3.50 on just one purchase, she didn't even bother to leave a quarter for a tip. Jillian (the other bartender) and I served about five hundred drinks last night between the two of us, and we each took home $22.50 in tips for the evening.

Don't get me wrong, a tip should be considered an extra bonus, not an obligation, and I'm thankful for the tips that we do get. But it sure makes me wish some days that I was working in a city bar, rather than a student club on campus.