Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Wow from around the Net: Halloween Pranks


Let us start today with how I want to wish everyone a Happy Halloween and wish you all a happy Hump day, I guess this makes it a Happy Halloween Humping Day.  Usually Hump day signifies the low part of a week, so close to being over and yet the weekend still seems so far away.  However with the fun holiday of Halloween paired up with the super slow Hump day it makes for an interesting time.

Most people take the time on Hump day to post about funny things to make the week seem not as bad. Tonight being All Hallows Eve the night where all of the tricksters rule the night and harmless pranks are afoot. To start this day some of my co-workers decided to get in the mood early by “renovating” another co-workers cubicle.


On the topic of pulling pranks on friends it is now just over two weeks until I move into my new house. This subject actually relates because I think that me and one of my tenants may start a prank war. This is something I am actually excited about because it means that I will finally have someone good humored enough to deal with some pranks. This is all dependent upon if he is game to do such a thing or not, maybe I should ask him or not, this could go JackAss.

Also with Halloween and Pranking in mind I founds this hilarious account of a prank that this guy pulled. His description, and his facial expressions while talking, of what he did is so funny I almost pissed myself from laughing so hard.


Tonight I am celebrating by going to a Halloween party for me and I hope to share with all of you how that went tomorrow.

Sincerely Urban Yeti

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

YYC Food Crusade: 2 Polcinella


In yesterdays post I described the adventures of my friends and me around town as a self proclaimed tour guides. There is one little detail of that quest that I purposely left out in preparation for a post today. It has been a while since I did my very first Food Crusade restaurant review and I think that it is about time for a second.

For the tour of our home town we stopped in at a restaurant that was located in the Kensington area of Calgary. There is this awesome little gourmet pizza place that is down in that area of town called Polcinella. A couple months back my dad took my family here when our cousin was in town for the weekend, I just had to go back.




On the inside it is a large open space that merges classic Italian feelings with very modern artist type overlay. One of the coolest features is that you can see straight into the kitchen and watch as the chefs slave away at your food.




Our tummies were all a grumble so even though it was only lunch time some of us ordered appetizers anyway. I did not order any for myself but my friends shared with me anyway out of the kindness of their hearts.

Mr. White had the Calamari Fritti to start. This dish was lightly breaded and well seasoned leaving a pleasant after taste in your mouth that left you craving more. Also I found that whoever cooked this is good at his or her job because it was not over cooked to the point of being rubbery like so many other places.


Sir Kenneth the Third started his meal off with the Polpette, Meat balls made of both beef and pork. They came in three and he shared with all of us, the sauce that they were cooked in was deliciously sweet. These meatballs were so good they practically melted right in your mouth.


My beautiful Wifey got the Tuscan Bruschetta for an appetizer. According to the menu the Bruschetta was house made and came served on an Italian roll. It was a little salty for my taste but delicious none the less with a bitter yet sweet after taste resonating in your mouth.


Being that Polcinella is an authentic wood stove style pizza place we all ordered ourselves a pie all of our own. When it came to these pizzas they were so delicious we were all a lot less inclined to share with others. These are one of the very few kinds of pizza that I believe are ok to eat with a knife and fork, actually I encourage it.

For myself I found my interest drawn to one interestingly described pizza on the menu called Vegetali Grigliati. It is a vegetarian style pizza loaded with red peppers, zucchini and grilled aubergine. The combination of these different vegetables made this pizza an explosion interesting tastes.


Everyone else got their pizzas and pretty much inhaled them they were so scrumptious, you can always tell when a meal is good because the table is pretty much silent. While I was choosing what I wanted to order some of what my friends did order were what I chose between.

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The main reason that I go back to this place is for their dessert, normally I do not have any kind of a sweet tooth. They make this dessert that we call the nutella pizza and this is about the only time that I will ever say this about a dessert “It is to die for!!!!”. I know that is one of the most cliché things that anyone could ever say about a dessert but it is that good.


Time to rate this restaurant I suppose

Food: 5
Service: 3
Atmosphere: 3.5

Grand Total: 11.5 out of 15

If you are looking for a pizza fix but want to avoid the grease than this is a spot that you should go check out. If you do make sure to order that damn good dessert, if you do then you will be really glad that I told you about it.

Sincerely Urban Yeti

Monday, October 29, 2012

YYC Adventures: Kensington and Piercings


It seems to be that every Monday I find myself talking about just how busy my weekends always tend to be. Not that there is anything overly wrong with that, it just means that come the start of my blog time there is so much that I wish to share. With life being as eventful as it is and me always trying to make the most of my spare time it just always ends up that my weekends are generally jam packed.

What exactly did I do with my time this weekend, well to put it into the simplest terms I played tour guide. There has been a co-worker of my Wifey that has been in town for a couple weeks and we thought it best to show her around town. We could have taken her to the local landmarks but she seemed more interested in more of the hole in the wall type places. With her best interests in mind we took her to the Kensington area where there is a lot of place that we thought she would like.

It would probably be best to explain that my Wifey’s friend is an easterner who comes to us from the greater Toronto area. She insisted on seeing what our city transit was like because she had heard so many of complain about it. Therefore we started our journey by taking the train through downtown and to the shopping district known as Kensington.

We started our tour being the geeks that we are by heading over to the comic book store Another Dimension. Sure there are lots of comic book shops and geek Meccas around the city but none have a bust collection quite like AD. 


 




 After the Geek store we headed down the road peeking our head in a few other stores including a record shop. It is the kind of store that hipsters and audiophiles jus adore for their large selection of both new and used albums.


After the record store and a couple of other stops we decided it was about time that we stop for lunch. This is a restraint that is a part of my food crusade so I will talk about that in a later post, probably sometime tomorrow. After we inhaled our lunch we found a candy store and decided to hit it up where we got a much needed sugar fix.


While in the candy store I was attacked by their zombie unicorn employee,


We spent the rest of the day showing our new found friend from across the country around our wonderful city. We browsed Chinook and helped her find a simple cow costume for a party she was going to later that day.  I hope that we showed her a good time cause I know for sure that I had a blast exploring my city.

On Sunday my friend Mr. White asked me if I would accompany him while he got a few new piercings. Naturally I said I would love to go and so the two of us had another day of toting around the city.  The both of us live in the south and don’t drive but the Tribal Expressions, the piercing parlor is in the north so it is quite a trek for us on public transit.


As I said I had yet another one of my very eventful weekends where a lot always seems to happen around me. Next weekend is yet another trek for me as Wifey and I head up to Edmonton for the Star Wars Identities exhibit and boy am I excited for that one too.

Sincerely Urban Yeti

Friday, October 26, 2012

Dugeons and Resources: Sci-Fi Cities


Tonight is my games night and even though it is not my turn to GM I figured I could share some of the things I do to make my world. When it comes to role-playing games it is a GM’s job to create a world that the players are immersed into. Sometimes coming up with new and interesting locations can be an especially daunting task.



My personal specialty when it comes to GMing is heavily set in the more Sci-Fi futuristic style settings. When I was learning how to be a good GM I borrowed some of the base concepts from a role-playing tips email newsletter I get and modified them to my style. Though their concept was more targeted for a game called Traveller, its basic concepts are transferable to any science fiction setting.

From what I understand the term "Startown" is the game Traveller's phrase for a city connected to a ground starport. Each city is therefore connected to their interstellar community. When building a world in a game with tens of thousands of planets, it becomes overwhelming for the GM to think about individual cities. But like with all things a little bit of organization and random generators, the burdensome part of the task of creating these places can be taken care of. I used this system to build my own cities in my created universe of Shadowrun my favorite Sci-Fi game.

First let us break it down into three basic ideas of what is important to think about when creating a city. Each game is different for example I use Shadowrun which is set on earth so all I had to do was think about a city or country and that would cover its location for me.

  1. Location
  2. Districts
  3. Connection

Location
If you look to the history books you will soon realize most cities were formed for a reason they did not just spring up out of nowhere. There are essentially six reasons for a city and therefore a simple roll of the die will tell you why and where the city is set up
Depending on the features of the Planet or Country, a city may be built near one of the following features (roll 1D6):

  • A river or a steep, deep ravine.
  • A crossroads or centrally located between two large cities.
  • A resource. For example, a lake, ore smelter, refinery or shipyard.
  • An Imperial Naval base, an Imperial Scout base or an Military Garrison.
  • A mountain or atop a plateau overlooking hundreds of kilometers of land.
  • The world's or country’s capital city.

If you want to you can roll two times to make a city more interesting and dynamic.

Districts
At any given time a large city will usually have about six very different districts:

1) Warehousing
This is the area of the city with mostly dingy buildings and seedy bars filled with unsavory type NPCs. Typically looks abandoned, except when a large shipment is being loaded or unloaded into a building. This area operates at a constant level of activity day and night, meaning something could be potentially happening whenever. This is a great place to put secret backroom games or word of mouth only clubs, primo place for underground type dealings.

2) Industrial
This is where all of the cities factories are located, whether they are clean and new or old and dirty here is where the city stashes them. Typically looks a little like a warehousing district, except with a lot of the ambient noise of construction. At night this tends to be where the more organized crime does all of their dirty deals and also dispose of the bodies.

3) The Old City
This is a more central area of the city, here there are many mixed zones that are coexisting in an uneasy peace. Wealthy urban living mixed with slums, office and medical complexes, museums, libraries all in some of the city’s oldest buildings. Activity here is at all hours, but primarily during the day for both the locals and the tourist traffic. This is where old turf wars are disputed as the gangs battle for domination of their old neighborhoods. This is also where the older colleges and hospitals would be located because this is the original start of the city.

4) Tall Corporate
The clean, urban towers of fancy hotels, restaurants, and wealthy, big businesses make their homes here. Activity here happens at all hours, with lots of transportation such as cabs and limos from all points in the city in and out. Mostly people in suits and fancy wear are here and those less dressed stand out like sore thumbs.

5) Ex-Urban Light Corporate
Usually this is the Silicon Valley, where the young and struggling start- up companies find a place to get on their feet. Also the location of some super-wealthy but low-profile businesses set up shop to keep out of the corporate spot light. The wealthy tend to like to live here because it is located farther away from the central corporate areas. This area is busy during the day but oddly peaceful at night, and tends to be monitored around the clock. This is also where the private medical practices set up shop to serve those who can pay a pretty penny.

6) Habitats
Apartments and housing blocks where typical citizens live take up a majority of the space in this area. These are microcosms of urban living, that include little shops, pubs, parks, small offices, schools, and various typical services built-in or close at hand. Active most of the time, though it tends to be fairly quieter in the late evening and early hours of the morning.

Connection
This refers to how easily the city is connected to others around it and whether or not it has a large airport or not. Most of the time cities have developed infrastructure to work closely with is neighbors so as to share resources. 

This is just an idea on how to build the basic structure for a large urban centre and gives you a starting point from where to go. Things like a city’s culture are completely up to you and I think that is where the creative fun generally comes from. I hope that this concept is helpful for any aspiring GMs out there who might have been intimidated by the idea of creating a city from nothing.

Sincerely Urban Yeti