Welcome to YWG

I have landed within the glorious city of Winnipeg, the capitol of Manitoba and the home town of my father and where most of his family takes up residence. This weekend I am in the prairie city for the first time since I was twelve years old because it is the wedding of my oldest cousin, wahoo weddings. I have not been back in such a long time which is weird because when I was growing up my parents had a system. This method of madness if you will was that alternating every year we would come out here to visit family and then the next year we would go to somewhere else.

Oh boy traveling by airplane, I am one of those people who actually enjoys the journey itself, whether it be by car or airplane. However the down side of my traveling adventure is that I am doing the trek with my direct family, it is not that I do not love them but they are not the most fun when it comes to traveling companions. My father is not the most enjoyable to travel with because he becomes a man on a mission leaving all the rest of us behind and he becomes irate when things don't seem to go his way. My mother is a nervous ninny who frets about ever single thing that happens and the worst case scenario, I was yelled at for touching some foam in a parking lot because she thought it might be a live wire that would kill me. Now for Brudar he has a bit of anxiety about getting separated so ultimately he becomes extremely clingy and since he is the size of a small tree having him hang off me is not the most fun thing in the world. I myself am probably not the most fun when it comes to travel and I very well have my own faults but this is why my functionally dysfunctional family is not the best to travel with.

I am here to have a good time and to show my Wifey apart of my past and so hopefully she can get to know some of my extended family before our own wedding. Today we are trekking out to the family cabin that I have not seen since I was a angst filled teenie-bopper and I am hoping to view it with new eyes. The wedding is tomorrow and how can you go wrong with a wedding, food and dancing that promises to be a blast upon itself.

Hopefully updates tomorrow.

sincerely Urban Yeti

Updated Plans

So I am sorry to all of my faithful readers I have not been updating as regularly as I had planned for the reboot of my blog. It has been stupendously busy the last couple weeks and thusly I have not been able to preform to my own set of stipulations.

That is however not to say I am done, oh no it is quite contrary to that. I am going to spend a fair amount of time over the next week preparing so as to continue my reboot. I am hoping to get ahead of the curve so as to make things a lot easier for when events like this start to happen.

This next week marks the start of my new job and so to ease the transition between jobs I will not be making my regular posts. However I will be traveling this weekend to Winnipeg for my cousins wedding. I am taking along my trusty camera and am hoping to take a bunch of photos to go along with it.

One of the new format changes I am making is to my name, Alternetive Design is now a group of projects that Wify, Brudar and myself do. So the name is now going to change to Adventures of an Urban Yeti. I am not actually a Yeti but I am a small Sasquatch, and Urban Yeti sounds so much better.

With the new blog I am going to start expanding my creative skill base by tackling so bigger projects. Including a bunch of video ideas, so I am going to actually load my own videos to YouTube.

The horizon holds big plans for me let's see if I can keep up.

Dungeons and Resources: Character Builder App

With so many advances in technology these days it is no surprise to me that there are now RPG apps. I myself am a iPhone user and I find myself using a lot of different apps for different things and GMing is no different.

I have spent a fair amount of time scouring the app store for any kind of app that would help me to build upon my game. As a GM keeping track of NPCs can be challenging especially in a world as in depth as shadowrun. Finally I made a discovery, an app that not only allows me to generate random characters but also lets me edit them how I need too. The app is called " RPG Character Generator " and let me start by say this needs to be included on every DM's iPhone or iPod Touch.

Granted that the random characters tend to be more fantasy based then sci-fi but it is a small detail that I can work around. One of the great features of this app is that it also stores the characters generated so as to be called upon at a later time. This becomes handy while behind a DM screen because sometimes my phone is easier to operate then a computer.

The code monkeys of lvl99games knew what they wanted when they put this wonderfully useful app together. After using this for a short while I could tell that this was designed with the kind of user in mind, because lets face it most DMs are the kind of people who are always changing things.

One of the advantages of having an app to do tasks like these is that now you can build your campaign while on the go. This allows that if you are out and have a random thought about some kind of enemy that would be awesome to throw at your players you can record it before you forget it.

A great big thank you goes out to one Mr. Steve Jobs for making geeks lives everywhere much easier. For the GM on the go this app is one I personally use and recommend for building a well integrated and complete fantasy world.

How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse: On the Horizon

Good morning Zombie Fans

This just in the world is going crazy and the first reports have been filing in for two weeks now. If you havn't heard you will certainly find yourself living under a rock located with in a bubble.
Now for those who don't seem to be wired in, there has been an event now commonly known as "the Miami Zombie." What happened was A stark naked man attacked a random 65 year old man and began to devour his face. This sent up a red flag on my zombie radar, currently I am on a stage 1 alert. Stage one means that all news gets picked over with a fine tooth comb, and I start stocking up.

Second report is from Maryland where a student admitted to killing and eating his roommate's heart and part of his brain. This is a strange account however the admittance and heart parts mean that it is nothing more then an early Hannibal Lector in the making. Also there is quite a distance between the two incidents with no recorded incidents in between.

Now for the next eyebrow raising incident, this one is my second red flag one more and I got to stage two. A man in New Jersey, still quite a distance from incident one, stabbed himself 50 times and then proceeded to throw pieces of his intestines at the police. After quite a struggle the man was taken down and apprehended.

Read this article for more:
Zombie News

There have been quite a few crazy stories raising out of the woodwork, my geek mind is now formulating other possibilities of what could be happening. My hypothesis is that we may be dealing with and H. P. Lovecraft type scenario in which an elder god has begun to drive men to madness. Rather accurate if you add in the mailing of body parts in Quebec or the mother eating her babies brain for youth. We could also be witnessing a series of fringe scenarios but ether way lets all keep our heads up and our ears to the ground.

What If Wednesday: Space Crew

The movie Prometheus is coming out just over a week from now and as a movie geek I am hoping that it will mark a new chapter in sci-fi films. Set in the same universe as the Alien films this film could potentially be one of the first stages that lead to the film series that is loved by movie lovers.

In my group of friends this movie has been a bit of a talking point, us being sci-fi fans and all. Well in the bar on Saturday Kenneth the third decided that we should participate in a little exercise. This is an exercise that is done by geeks all the time especially when it comes to geeky films coming out. The idea is to fill all of the positions a deep space exploration ship would need for a full crew with you playing the role of a civilian scientist.

Here it is: IF YOU WERE ON A SPACE EXPLORATION TEAM WHO WOULD MAKE UP THAT TEAM (movie casting couch)

Captain - Hugh Laurie

This grizzled looking man has the charisma to entice anyone to do his bidding as well as his attitude demands respect. Think of Dr. House's genius when he is not pumping drugs into his veins commanding a ship. The only thing is I would want Hugh to use his true British accent that he has been repressing all this time.

Ex O - Angelina Jolie

The stunning Mrs. Angelina Jolie would make an excellent ExO her firm attitude off put by her sensual looks. She has already played a role like this once before in the very steampunk film "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" and let me tell you she did awesome.

Navigator - Matt LeBlanc

Yes he played the dumb but lovable Joey on friends and that is what he is best known for but don't count him out for sci-fi just yet. For those who don't remember he played Major Don West in the 1998 remake of lost in space he did pretty good in that flick and I think playing the navigator would be right up his ally.

Warrant Officer- Vinnie Jones

This Soccer hooligan is one of my favorite cult actors and has a tendency to play gruff take no attitude kind of guy. As a warrant officer aboard the ship he would scary anyone who tried to step out of line. I would probably make sure there is an Exoskeleton Suit called the juggernaut, just for fandom sake.

Chem Eng - Robert Downey JR

Don't think of the brilliant but boozy Tony Stark think more like the drugged up Sherlock Holmes, ether way he seems to be type cast and does it very well. As the ships mandatory chemical engineer he would work closely with me the civilian scientist and be a mediator between me and the others.

Tech Officer - Ryan Reynolds

First off this cast needed a Canadian that is for sure, so why not the sexy and witty Ryan Reynolds. Now every crew needs a smart ass who fixes everything when it breaks down and I think the Ryan and his smokin abs are perfect for this job.

Love Interest - Scarlet Johanson

She is the military assigned scientist on this trek to discovery, she is cute and geeky. She is not a fan of having to share her lab with me and we start off on a very wrong foot, but after some humbling moments and a couple of near death experiences we begin to fall for each other.

Med Officer - Sigourney Weaver

What is science fiction without it's queen, nothing! Therefore it is a must that we have the fantastic Sigorne Weaver on the grand stage as the Med Officer. For fun however and the pure irony of it she will have to probably die second just to screw with people.

Synthetic - Alan Rickmen

What every sci-fi film needs is a sense of AI, be it a computer or a cyborg it needs to be there. As geeks the robot is usually one of the favorite characters, and using a cult British actor seems the perfect fit. That and his monochromatic tone is just perfect for a synthetic life form.

Dungeons and Resources: Imaginary Wars

It is Tuesday and this is the day I like to put some time aside to think of all the fantastic kinds of geeky and non-geeky games there are in the world. I like to find those games, expansions or little extras that make the games more fun and interesting but alas there is very few geekdom shops in my area of Calgary. But wait Great news everyone there is this new geek shop that has opened it's doors up to the public in the south east of Calgary. This haven of geekism goes by the handle IMAGINARY WARS.

Located on the corner of elbow and southland this is a fairly central location in the south east of Calgary and a hop, skip and a nice walking distance from a train. Situated right behind a good old Timmie Hoes so all the geeks can get their caffeine fix easily, and a giant tiger is in the perfect position (being just down the parking lot) for easy stocking of snacks.

The customer service is spot on, the staff is very knowledgable of the products carried which in the geek kingdom not being so could mean your demise. On top of that I had a very excellent experience when I went in to the shop with some friends, one of us purchased munchkin a game non of us had ever played. It was not busy being a Friday morning and the gentleman behind the counter offered to let us play in the store if we wanted. We took him up on his offer and he helped us learn how to play so we could teach our friends.

If you are a geek in Calgary this is a place to check out. They are a new shop right now and a bit of an underdog so let us show them that we appreciate the little guy and give them our business.

Cooking Concoctions: Spring Yummy

It is Friday and that means that I go and take a gander through my list of recipes I have found online that I would like to try out. I have started to collect all sorts of recipes that look yummy and will increase my skill base. It has been a crazy couple weeks for me over here and I have unfortunately not gotten the chance to get into my cooking groove. Then in the last couple weeks one of my friends asked me why I stopped and my main reason was because I hate cooking when I am the only one enjoying it. Then he volunteered to be my food guinea pig and so this week I was joined by my favorite ginger, so for the weeks where he is kind enough to be my test subject I will start calling those segments Cooking With My Favorite Ginger!

So this week since I have been absent from my poor lowly kitchen for so long that I decided that I needed to double dose my recipes this week. So we have creamy zesty shrimp skewers and a sweet potato salad. This Week I was joined by two of the Monstars, who opposed bugs bunny and pals in the masterpiece of my child hood space jam. They were kind enough to pose for photos as well as join us for dinner.

lets start with:
The Creamy Zesty Shrimp Skewers

 Ingredients:
3 1/2 table Spoons of Light Mayo
2 Table Spoons of Chopped Chives
1 1/2 tbsp of sweet with heat (or any thai chili sauce you like)
1 tsp of chili powder
2 tsp of my favorite spice, rooster sauce (Sriracha Sauce)
about 30 De-viened shrimp

 
so this dish takes a little prep work to make but turns out freaking delicious, but you should start by skewering the shrimp. I put about five or six of the slippery little devils onto each skewer, it helps to heat up the skewers a little bit so that they slide straight on through. Once you have stabbed your fair share of crustaceans with thin wooden sticks then in a small bowel mix all the rest of the ingredients together.


Apply the mix to the shrimp sticks and throw another shrimp on the barbie. use your better judgement to tell when they are done cooking.
 

Next up

Sweet Potato Salad

Ingredients:
 1 Yukon Gold Potato Cubed
1 Sweet Potato Cubed
half a cucumber Cut
1 cup of apple cider viniger
Honey Mustard (to your own taste)
1 tbsp Dill Weed
 

Start by boiling both the kinds of potatoes in a large pot of water until they are soft enough to poke a fork through them, this takes about 20 min. Then drain the water away leaving the soft potatoes

Next the easy part.... add every other ingredient to the potatoes, mix and chill for 10 min then serve.

This is a very light meal and is great for the summer months, I made up some green beans to partner up with the shrimp.