hen
t h e e r
the blender blends ever onward
n e w s
Lets just blast through this one again. If you want to be impressed by IRC
logs, you know where to find them: on IRC channels. We tried something new
this time around, an earlier start time as requested by European would-be
competitors, not wanting to have to get up in what is to them the middle of the
night simply to have a chance to submit words and get out of the start gate at
the same time as everyone else. So, we wound the start time back. Then, two
mistakes happened, which happily canceled each other out: my daughters first
ballet lesson was right in conflict with the Blender start time in my calendar,
which was marked as being at an all-new early 2 pm PST. I told Warpus that Id
work out the schedule conflict with my wife, joking that she would be helping
him to start the compo out. But fear not, we got to have our ballet and run
the compo too -- it had actually been promoted as taking place at 2 pm EST,
hours earlier, so while I was unprepared to run the compo that early, at least
I was available to do so. People showed up at the scheduled time and submitted
words, and we got enough of them to get a good topic together, and then they
made some great art about those words! Everything a Blender should be!
k e e p i n g i t t o p i c a l
Sometimes you dont realise youre sitting on a worthy Blender topic until you
try all the available words in every possible combination. Sometimes one of
the three subjects is obvious right from the start gate but it still needs to
be examined from all angles. We knew this one would be starring GEESE, the
chaos-sewing heroes of 2019s untitled game. What would they be doing?
SMASHING, naturally. And what ought they to smash? The state? Well, yes...
but this time we siced them on an UNDERGROUND MILITARY INSTALLATION!
g e t t o t h e p o i n t . . .
Lots of wild, woolly and wonderful things took place between the start and the
end of this Blender. We determined that chanops in the blender IRC chatroom
actually serve as drag factor on your chances of winning. I got to try out a
new bidet attachment for our upstairs toilet. Verdict: paper still required,
for different reasons. Still, a dramatic wake-up call. After making fun of
him years ago for promoting the Blender in his artscene-unrelated forum of fans
of Sid Meiers Civilization, Warpus managed to get a couple members of his
CivFanatics cadre to actually participate in the compo -- one of whom took 3rd
place! Its wild. I also video streamed an accordion concert for an hour
Saturday night another debauched weekend to benefit my local Car-Free Day
organization. Business as usual, I suppose!
The topics suggested a certain similarity in how the entries would end up using
them, but AMADEUS of, er, the CivFanatics forum, managed to composite them into
a very credible gag that took home third place. MEL FARR SUPERSTAR turned in
solid work for second place, a substantial faux Wikipedia article complete
with illustrations describing a bizarre military conflict. He also had a
shorter second entry with an impressively beefy SAUCE metadata listing.
The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Again, we knew from the moment we laid eyes on it, MR ROBOTO had submitted
another first-place winner! This time the points go to Blocktronics, finally
moving it up from that disputed territory between its two vital colleagues Dark
Illustrated and Poffelipoff.
p o s t g a m e a n a l y s i s
Streamlining still in effect. Agile compo development. Another step toward
becoming 10x compo administrators. Rapid compo prototyping. All that... plus
the rush of a new bidet! Woah!
Did moving the time of the compo to accommodate Europeans result in any
increased participation from Europeans? Heck no! Are we going to stick with
it for next time? Oddly... yes! Did we open a new Facebook group and then
forget to use it to post any updates? Sure did! There are a lot of moving
parts and were still playing it by ear, it seems.
That said, its still a lot of fun, so well continue bumbling along and you
have more Blender in 2021 to look forward to, whatever else happens in this
trash fire of a world. Well catch you this summer! Cheers and, er, Blend on!
b y e
if there ever is another blender, it will most likely be held:
if not sooner!
saturday, july 17th - sunday, july 18th, 2021
2:00pm - 2:00pm est
blender on EFnet
please join us. - hennifer
warpus
cthulu