Post-Swancon
Back from Swancon. Was a good con, and got home in happy exhaustion, although all that good will promptly vanished when I got an email from work telling me I'd need to be in Cloverdale by 7 the next morning. Admittedly, their reason for the change was better than usual - one of the techs had a heart attack - but given we're already down other techs, and minus two vans, and the builders are trying to squeeze a week's worth of jobs into three days, the rest of this week is going to be a nightmare.
( EDIT: aaaaaand today my van was out of commission for 3 hours - immobiliser chip in the key fob broke - although the rest of it has been broken for months, and I've been waiting ever since - so I couldn't start the van until somebody got out to me with a new key )
The cats weren't exactly overjoyed at being left to their own devices since Thursday, either. Tiggy snarls if we so much as walk past her, Jiji hid for hours and only came out mewling for attention and grabbing my nipples with his claws when I was trying to get to sleep, and Miralda glommed onto Des, and looks up with mortified pleading if Des so much as moves.
Ah well. Anyway, the con. Despite my fatigue, was quite enjoyable. A good mix of panels and events, and I gather the guests were worthwhile, although I somehow managed to miss any panels they were actually on. Panels I did get to ranged from the alarming (not being a tech head, I was unaware if just how pervasive and complete data-mining has become, although Google etc efforts to target ads at me remain hilariously ill-matched, although given most of my searches are things like 'chalcopteroides perth' that is perhaps unsurprising) to the the depressing - the Bacterial Resistance presentation did not give me much hope for the future. When chemotherapy in India is now a death sentence, thanks to resistant bacterial strains, and the resistance genes are all on one cassette that the bacteria are sharing around, and some of the fuckers has evolved heat resistance as well... all very bad news.
Whoever was supposed to be doing the Brain-eating Amoeba panel never showed up, so Corynne and I did one from memory, covering that amoeba, Entamoeba histolytica, hydatid cysts and other worms you can get in your head, and split-gill mushrooms in your skull. Seemed to be well received, and it was nice to throw cues at each other, such as faecal transplants, confident the other would run with it for a few minutes. The audience was suitably squicked.
Corynne: I've drawn this tapeworm too cute...
Me: tapeworms are cute!
Corynne: ...
She also compared the brain to a shopping mall made of chocolate, as far as the amoeba is concerned.
The Mythological Animals as Pets panel was amusing as well - pegasi proved the most popular with the audience, Rocs not so much. One of the pros for unicorns was the pooping of rainbows, which lead to the following logic - if they poop rainbows, they can only poop when it's raining and sunny. So unicorns in Africa's dry season would become bloated, and cranky. Therefore, rhinos.
Reused the Ammonite headdress from a few years back for the Masquerade - seemed well-received, but I suspect the glowsticks it held in the tentacles may have helped.
Winner was Neferkitty's full-body Bast outfit - very nice
All in all, a good con
( EDIT: aaaaaand today my van was out of commission for 3 hours - immobiliser chip in the key fob broke - although the rest of it has been broken for months, and I've been waiting ever since - so I couldn't start the van until somebody got out to me with a new key )
The cats weren't exactly overjoyed at being left to their own devices since Thursday, either. Tiggy snarls if we so much as walk past her, Jiji hid for hours and only came out mewling for attention and grabbing my nipples with his claws when I was trying to get to sleep, and Miralda glommed onto Des, and looks up with mortified pleading if Des so much as moves.
Ah well. Anyway, the con. Despite my fatigue, was quite enjoyable. A good mix of panels and events, and I gather the guests were worthwhile, although I somehow managed to miss any panels they were actually on. Panels I did get to ranged from the alarming (not being a tech head, I was unaware if just how pervasive and complete data-mining has become, although Google etc efforts to target ads at me remain hilariously ill-matched, although given most of my searches are things like 'chalcopteroides perth' that is perhaps unsurprising) to the the depressing - the Bacterial Resistance presentation did not give me much hope for the future. When chemotherapy in India is now a death sentence, thanks to resistant bacterial strains, and the resistance genes are all on one cassette that the bacteria are sharing around, and some of the fuckers has evolved heat resistance as well... all very bad news.
Whoever was supposed to be doing the Brain-eating Amoeba panel never showed up, so Corynne and I did one from memory, covering that amoeba, Entamoeba histolytica, hydatid cysts and other worms you can get in your head, and split-gill mushrooms in your skull. Seemed to be well received, and it was nice to throw cues at each other, such as faecal transplants, confident the other would run with it for a few minutes. The audience was suitably squicked.
Corynne: I've drawn this tapeworm too cute...
Me: tapeworms are cute!
Corynne: ...
She also compared the brain to a shopping mall made of chocolate, as far as the amoeba is concerned.
The Mythological Animals as Pets panel was amusing as well - pegasi proved the most popular with the audience, Rocs not so much. One of the pros for unicorns was the pooping of rainbows, which lead to the following logic - if they poop rainbows, they can only poop when it's raining and sunny. So unicorns in Africa's dry season would become bloated, and cranky. Therefore, rhinos.
Reused the Ammonite headdress from a few years back for the Masquerade - seemed well-received, but I suspect the glowsticks it held in the tentacles may have helped.
Winner was Neferkitty's full-body Bast outfit - very nice
All in all, a good con