Updating the Website

In a recent post I mentioned that I had done the Cruise Against Hodgman decks. Part of this required me to get a website. So I put something together and have slowly updated it as I go. However, I am now thinking about expanding into more board game design. So my existing “hardcoded” website isn’t going to cut it.

I have started looking at using Umbraco, a CMS solution. I picked it because it was based on C# and MVC, which I already have experience with. It looks nice from the standpoint of being able to create Document Types with different data pieces and then a template that explains how to display it. I have a nice editor that allows me to easily tweak pages without republishing everything. Some of the other features look promising too, like setting publish/unpublish dates.

However, I am not sure how to work around some of the patterns I am used to. Being able to independently work on multiple different computers. The configuration on how the Document Types are setup are paired with files on disk that are created at runtime. This just makes it very hard to publish a site to a new location without wiping everything there.

Do you have a CMS system in place? How do you handle development, code changes, and publishing? How do you handle backup and restores?

Cruise Against Hodgman

Leading up to JCCC4 I kept hearing people talk about Cards Against Humanity. It is a popular game on the boat to the point that there was talk of a celebrity match. I wanted to be involved, but not being a celebrity I wasn’t sure how. Finally, I decided that I wanted to print up a deck based on jokes, quotes, and themes from JCCC and the surrounding nerd sphere. But I wanted the deck to be nice. I mean really nice. Like matching-the-Cards-Against-Humanity-quality nice because if you are going to go through that process, why not?

Along with James and Beth, we started looking into printing options, ideas, coordinating, etc. After a couple meetings brainstorming and refining we had a deck of cards, it ended up being not as hard as I expected. Last thing was to coordinate with a bunch of people on the cruise to chip in and I was able to printed enough to make it reasonable to print at that quality.

I got the decks and carefully packed them into a duffel bag and headed to the airport. Of course I was going to carry the decks onto the plane because why would I want to pay to check them? Apparently, TSA doesn’t like large bags of decks of cards. They pulled me to the side, and opened up the bag and the proceeded to pull out each deck and wipe it down. Apparently decks of cards look a lot like C4 and so they needed to test each one to make sure that they weren’t explosives. That took a while.

I ended up trying to get all of the people I based cards on to sign a card.  It was an awesome way to get up to meet them, although I never really knew what to say to them which sadly ended up being more about getting the signature than getting to really meet them.

John Hodgman was the “villain” of the cruise on JCCC3. So when I was trying to figure out what to name the deck, I obviously needed “Cruise” as the first word, but what was a good H? Then it hit me, Hodgman. I met him early on on the cruise and I asked him to sign one of the cards about him. He looked at it and made a comment about misspelling his name. I went on to explain how I was so worried I would do that and constantly was checking again. And then he showed me the card. The ONE spot I misspelled his name was on his card. I was so embarrassed. Later in the cruise Hodgman came out onto stage before someone else’s performance and went on little rant about how I misspelled his name and how he was going to sue me out of existence. It was oddly scary and awesome.

Another person I got to meet on the cruise was Max Tempkin! Cards Against Humanity was a sponsor for the cruise, so it made things a little awkward. Max was a very nice guy and we had a good chat. I’m really sorry if I ended up preventing him from getting to leave because a group of people formed around us as we were starting to leave obviously looking to talk with him.

For JoCo Cruise 5, work kept me busy till the last second so there was a mad rush at the end to get everything in and done. But I did it right this time, I pre-shipped the cards down to Florida and I brought a hand truck to move the cards around. This made the whole trip and experience much easier. Hodgman was unable to make the cruise, so I am not sure who really won there. Again I made a few small mistakes on the cards, because of course.

For JoCo Cruise 2016, I wanted to expand my crew a little to ensure that we had a bunch of good cards so I asked my friend Nick to join us. We came up with a ton a new cards and a lot of great feedback. However, that was a learning experience as I believe everyone had their own idea of what we were making and how. So at the end when we needed to lock down it become obvious that we had misconceptions. We resolved our differences and came to a common ground and were able to print the deck on time. Everyone seemed to really like the deck.

It was a lot fun to get to create something like this. I hope everyone enjoyed their decks. You can see the cards that we printed up here, http://hyperentertainment.org/.