Saturday 27 August 2016

Post-Blaugust Creativity

I don't know about you guys, but I'm looking forward to the end of Blaugust and my life returning to something more closely resembling real life. To be fair, it's the domestic situation rather than the blogging one that's been throwing things off, but I can't wait to things getting a little more normal. That said, it's not as if I'm planning to disappear into full time hibernation come the end of Blaugust, as I've got a couple of bring projects on the horizon.

The first should come as no surprise to any regular followers, as after Blaugust comes Raptember, a month of extremely hardcore rap extravaganza, and I hope that this year will be no different. I haven't got any really amazing ideas heading in to the month, but since that's par for the course and if you ask me we've managed some half-decent efforts in the past, I'm not too worried. If you have an clever ideas for rap parodies or ideas you'd like covered in the traditional Thomly style, feel free to hit me up and help me get excited about this little project. There's not enough rap in my life right now, and it's time for that to change.

The second big project, and one with slightly higher priority given that it's the annual festival with an even longer pedigree than Raptember, is the LoAP puzzlehunt, which Mrs. Owl and I promised that we'd run this year after a couple of years off to give our good friend Dan a bit of a break (the poor guy has been working his butt off to run the thing almost single-handed for the last six years). This means that I'll have my head down working on a suite of 25 lateral thinking puzzles for the puzzlers to join in on some time in December. This one's been bubbling along for quite a few months now, so I have a lot of ideas, but it's definitely time to start turning ideas into concrete puzzles to stump those foolish enough to join in.

There's always a theme and a story, which Dan has done a great job of in the past, and I'm a little bit worried if I'll be able to live up to the heavy mantle that he's passed on. I've been working on making this one themed like a super-hero comic, which just has the slight problem of my inability to draw letting it down. Here's a sneak-peek at what the intro puzzle will look like if I end up going down this route, based on some rough sketches that I've had running around my head the last few weeks, to give you a little bit of an idea of the sort of problem we're talking about here.


This is totally an ad, by the way. If you haven't already, you should totally look at making a little team (or going it solo) and taking a stab at the Puzzlehunt, which is in the same vein as the famous MUMS hunt but generally solvable by human beings. Sign up on the puzzlehunt website, watch the Leaflocker for updates, but get ready to start the hunt come the week of December 5th 2016.

Blaugust Writing Prompts
1) What are you going to do with your time come the end of Blaugust?
2) What's your favourite superhero story?
3) Got a good topic for a rap, educational or otherwise?

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