Captain’s log - August 19 – Baltimore Sheraton

Yeah I know, another late blog.

But anyway, I’ll be blogging yesterday and today. Nothing much happened, my last blog ended with me waiting for Amr to arrive from Washington DC. After Amr showed up, we took the hotel shuttle to the “Light line”, a train/bus thing that stop on server stations throughout the city. We went to Phillips at the Inner Harbor for a sea food lunch. After that we were planning to visit the Aquarium and the science museum, but since there was a long line and the fact that they both close around 6 pm, we decided to call it a day. I took the light line back to the station we started at, but then I didn’t have the phone number for the shuttle, so ….. I walked! On my way I found a shop called “Game Workshop” where they sell …. Ummm tabletop fantasy games, I guess (Special shout out to the guys there. They were really nice and explained everything to me). It’s the games where each side has a couple of figurines and according to the rule book they have special abilities that allow them to defend and attack the other side. After that its part strategy part luck as dice is involved in the game. Here is how the site puts it:

“It’s all about two people facing each other across a battlefield, each attempting to move their models into position to fire upon their opponent’s force or attack it in hand-to-hand combat. The victor is decided by a combination of skill and luck with the players rolling dice to determine whether an arrow hits or a foe is struck down.”

I bought the one they recommend for “educational value” with regard to math and number crunching. I continued my walk back to the hotel, it was a bit of a long walk, but I made it. Looking at the watch it was 7 pm and looking online I found that the nearby Barns and Noble closes at 11pm, so I was out the door again. It was a short walk to the store, and I spent the time there trying to find good art and computer graphics books, sadly they were shy when it comes to the computer books. There were a couple of digital drawing magazines that I wanted to buy, but I thought the price was ridicules for such things I can find online (spread out, but still can be found). I bought a coffee from the in-store Starbucks, and I also took the autographed cup (I will write a post about them later). On my way back I pass “UKAZOO Books”. There was still an hour before they close so I went in. The staff was REALLY friendly and the girl at the desk explained to me that it’s a used books store. She pointed to me where the computer books are and what’s the general story pricing policy. I browsed around, sadly nothing excited me in the computer books or the art books, but I took a book from the marketing shelf (it looked really great and I thought to myself “That guy knows how to market his book, let’s check it out. And hey! It’s cheap!”) And I also took 2 Cowboy Bebop manga books. I had a quick chat with the front desk staff and then I went back to my room and went to sleep. I woke up today and went out to get me some breakfast and to check out a book store Google maps pointed out. I didn’t find the bookstore but I found “Towson Diner”. I had an Omelet breakfast, orange juice and coffee then I went out again. It was about to rain when I got in and by the time I’m out its started to rain. Luckily the hotel was close by and I hurried back before me and my laptop were soaked. I talked with Josh Petrie on the gamedev chat room and check with him when is he coming by (I arranged to meet with him the day before) and I went to wait down in the lobby. I had a good chat with Branden McCarthy (works at the hotel) about politics back in the middle east and the Iraq war (he is a political science major so … yeah, that’s what we talked about) and we also talked about videogames and the game I bought the day before (turned out he is a fellow geek! GO Geekdom). 5 min after the conversation was over Josh showed up. He was shorter than I expected (Frankly no image was in my head, I just thought he was taller than me at least). We went to a coffee place and talked about a few things here and there (mostly game programming and chat/forum related stuff). I mentioned that I couldn’t find the books he recommended so he suggested that we go to the nearby Borders book store. There we continue talking about programming while looking for good books (sadly, they too had a shy collection when it comes to graphical/game programming). I bought one book Josh said was good. He drove me back to the hotel and I got back to my room to leave my book and go out to the next mall to get lunch. I passed by Radio Shack and got me an AC plug for my music player and also a small backup battery that can charge devices that rely on USB charging (like the music player and my cell phone). The shop lady asked if I wanted to have an extended replacement warranty and I had to again tell the story that I am not from here and count the stops that I am taking in the US. I went back to my room and ate my launch and I sat down to write this blog. So that’s take this day out of the way, and now I have to go meet a guy about a horse. See you tomorrow, and have a nice day.