Eatercon 08 - Orbital
Back home and settled, pizza for dinner, caught up on LJ.
Thanks to a buzzing brain I didn't get much sleep Thursday night, but still managed to be surprisingly functional. Fortunately I seem to have got the worst of it out of my system and approached the weekend as a relatively normal person. Packing was completed, but I couldn't find my LJ badge anywhere. Eventually rushed to print and press a new one, and we escaped the house right on schedule. Flight was delayed, at Heathrow the baggage took a while to arrive, but we eventually made it to the hotel only an hour later than I had originally expected.
Checked in, then registration. Were impressed to find con' freebies included a mug and creme egg, Mostly by the mug, but the value of creme eggs should not be underestimated. We've been to enough UK cons now that we were already exchanging greetings with various people before we escaped the foyer. Always nice to feel you belong. Proceeded to get thoroughly confused by the hotel layout but found our room anyway.
Most of the afternoon was spent lurking in the Atrium and real ale bar, catching up with more people. The LJ badge lead to some confusion as I kept having people saying "Oh, you found the LJ Badge Lady, I can't find her!". Back at the last Redemption I was the elusive LJ Badge Lady, but I had quite forgotten that I was going to offer to make more before Eastercon and so never got around to it. Obviously someone else had taken up the job, which is cool, but I wasn't able to help people find them.
We eventually wandered down the road to dine on cheap pub food, returning in time for the Art Show opening thing. Browsed the art and were suitably impressed, as we always are by UK art shows. Took a closer look at sha_d's bags, which are really quite impressive. I think I want one but haven't figured out what sort of material I would want one in.
We filed in for the Opening Ceremony, which seemed a bit under-prepared. Possibly would have benefited from a more clear-cut end. Returned to our room to change, then lurked in the bar some more, David joining the other kilted Scots with whisky in hand, before toddling along to the ceilidh.
Apparently this was an "English Ceilidh", presumably so-called because ceilidh sounds cooler than "folk dance" or "barn dance". As far as I can tell English dances tend to be more complicated and precise, while the Scots prefer more room for improvisation and approximation, with maximum spinning around.
It was fun in any case, and we got an Orcadian Strip the Willow near the end which is my personal favourite. Still being somewhat hyper I tried employing some of the traditional Scottish Combat Ceilidh techniques, David seemed to cope fairly easily.
That was finished about 1ish or so I think, and I decided I should probably get some sleep. David was going to head back to the fun but made the mistake of lying down, eventually deciding I had the right idea.
We dragged ourselves from bed at 9ish, breakfasted, then made our way to China Mieville's Guest of Honour spot. (Amazingly, despite being right at the end of breakfast the hotel actually managed to still have a more or less full complement of food left for us every day of the convention.)
I had no idea what to expect, I've recently managed to read The Scar but that's all of his work I've read. It proved to be an interesting talk, mostly about reading critically and why it's a good thing.
Lurking followed, then I made my way to the video room to look at short films from the London SF Festival. Unfortunately the DVD apparently wasn't playing well with the official big screen set-up, so they had resorted to showing them on a laptop. This was less than ideal, particularly for subtitles, so I left after just a couple.
Lurking. Possibly food. Then the George Hay Memorial Lecture. This year we had Prof. David Southwood from the European Space Agency, talking about the influence of fiction on Science, a turn-around on the usual discussion at conventions.
We returned to the pub down the road for dinner, getting slightly snowed on.
Back at the con, we found our way down to one of the more far-flung rooms for a talk on permaculture. I've heard the word thrown about in a few different contexts recently and thought I should find out what it was all about. Turns out I'm actually already quite familiar with the concepts even though I don't remember hearing the term permaculture used. I arrived at them via the biology/ecology/environmental science route. (I was originally thinking of a degree in Env. Science, but got a bit bored with biology in my final year at high school and randomly selected Comp. Science instead).
Had to leave that early to make the Masquerade and Cabaret. Quite a few good acts, some very good singers, particularly an astounding opera singer, watervole's poi act, and a cute comedy routine particularly stick in the mind.
That ran well over time, but I wasn't planning to disco so I didn't mind. Lurking in bar and atrium followed. I can't really remember the details, but I eventually got to bed about 2:30ish. David joined me somewhat later.
Sunday dawned, and amazingly we managed to get organized in time for a 10am panel - Books on the Web. Followed this up with Charles Stross's Guest of Honour spot. This was a relatively wide-ranging talk on various tech-stuff he finds interesting, including comparing IT and Biotech to the Aerospace industry in terms of trends of technological development.
Scampered to the far end of the convention again to watch the panel on politics in YA fiction. Interesting, but mostly focused on including the writers politics (intentionally or not) in the text, rather than having politics as part of the story, which was what I'd been hoping for.
Dashed back again for the Neil Gaiman spot. Also very interesting, and included a couple of readings. The room was pretty much full, but they didn't seem to have needed over-flow space as was earlier feared. I don't know what the final numbers were, but I heard they were expecting 1500 people on site Sunday, about double what they were originally expecting when they started taking memberships.
There was time for a very quick tour of the Dealers Room and some book purchases before treking to the far end again for Space Travel: How it Works. Mostly a quick listing of various tech either in use or considered as real options for getting things into and around in space.
This time we had dinner in the hotel, more random wandering, and I changed into my corset for the evening. Didn't end up bothering with the (very loud) Dark Fantasy themed disco though. We joined the crowd watching Mitch Benn perform. Generally I'm not much of a stand-up comedy person, but as everyone promised this was indeed good fun (although also very loud). Apparently this is the sort of thing you can get with twice as many members as you budgeted for.
Stopped by the fan fund auction, which was being sponsored by the Melbourne 2010 bid. Ate Tim-Tams and paid over the odds for a HG Wells anthology and Chocolate Teddybear biscuits. (My favourites, and I haven't had any in years.)
We lurked some more, then joined in a couple of games of Werewolf. I gave up at about 4am, David followed sometime later.
Woke, breakfasted, packed, checked out, put bags in the luggage store.
I sat in on The Future of Privacy in a Surveillance Society, then rejoined David to sit in the Atrium bleary-eyed and trying not to doze off as lack of sleep was catching up with me. Revisited the dealers room and spent the last of our cash.
Our final activity was the panel "You're Reading it Wrong", mostly because we hadn't seen Tanith Lee in anything yet and thought we should see all the author-guests. It was of course also interesting, touching on the same themes as China Mieville's talk on Saturday, but we had to duck out early to go to the airport.
Plane was delayed slightly, but things went smoothly at the Glasgow end and we were back in the flat by 7pm.
Now it's past time for bed....
Thanks to a buzzing brain I didn't get much sleep Thursday night, but still managed to be surprisingly functional. Fortunately I seem to have got the worst of it out of my system and approached the weekend as a relatively normal person. Packing was completed, but I couldn't find my LJ badge anywhere. Eventually rushed to print and press a new one, and we escaped the house right on schedule. Flight was delayed, at Heathrow the baggage took a while to arrive, but we eventually made it to the hotel only an hour later than I had originally expected.
Checked in, then registration. Were impressed to find con' freebies included a mug and creme egg, Mostly by the mug, but the value of creme eggs should not be underestimated. We've been to enough UK cons now that we were already exchanging greetings with various people before we escaped the foyer. Always nice to feel you belong. Proceeded to get thoroughly confused by the hotel layout but found our room anyway.
Most of the afternoon was spent lurking in the Atrium and real ale bar, catching up with more people. The LJ badge lead to some confusion as I kept having people saying "Oh, you found the LJ Badge Lady, I can't find her!". Back at the last Redemption I was the elusive LJ Badge Lady, but I had quite forgotten that I was going to offer to make more before Eastercon and so never got around to it. Obviously someone else had taken up the job, which is cool, but I wasn't able to help people find them.
We eventually wandered down the road to dine on cheap pub food, returning in time for the Art Show opening thing. Browsed the art and were suitably impressed, as we always are by UK art shows. Took a closer look at sha_d's bags, which are really quite impressive. I think I want one but haven't figured out what sort of material I would want one in.
We filed in for the Opening Ceremony, which seemed a bit under-prepared. Possibly would have benefited from a more clear-cut end. Returned to our room to change, then lurked in the bar some more, David joining the other kilted Scots with whisky in hand, before toddling along to the ceilidh.
Apparently this was an "English Ceilidh", presumably so-called because ceilidh sounds cooler than "folk dance" or "barn dance". As far as I can tell English dances tend to be more complicated and precise, while the Scots prefer more room for improvisation and approximation, with maximum spinning around.
It was fun in any case, and we got an Orcadian Strip the Willow near the end which is my personal favourite. Still being somewhat hyper I tried employing some of the traditional Scottish Combat Ceilidh techniques, David seemed to cope fairly easily.
That was finished about 1ish or so I think, and I decided I should probably get some sleep. David was going to head back to the fun but made the mistake of lying down, eventually deciding I had the right idea.
We dragged ourselves from bed at 9ish, breakfasted, then made our way to China Mieville's Guest of Honour spot. (Amazingly, despite being right at the end of breakfast the hotel actually managed to still have a more or less full complement of food left for us every day of the convention.)
I had no idea what to expect, I've recently managed to read The Scar but that's all of his work I've read. It proved to be an interesting talk, mostly about reading critically and why it's a good thing.
Lurking followed, then I made my way to the video room to look at short films from the London SF Festival. Unfortunately the DVD apparently wasn't playing well with the official big screen set-up, so they had resorted to showing them on a laptop. This was less than ideal, particularly for subtitles, so I left after just a couple.
Lurking. Possibly food. Then the George Hay Memorial Lecture. This year we had Prof. David Southwood from the European Space Agency, talking about the influence of fiction on Science, a turn-around on the usual discussion at conventions.
We returned to the pub down the road for dinner, getting slightly snowed on.
Back at the con, we found our way down to one of the more far-flung rooms for a talk on permaculture. I've heard the word thrown about in a few different contexts recently and thought I should find out what it was all about. Turns out I'm actually already quite familiar with the concepts even though I don't remember hearing the term permaculture used. I arrived at them via the biology/ecology/environmental science route. (I was originally thinking of a degree in Env. Science, but got a bit bored with biology in my final year at high school and randomly selected Comp. Science instead).
Had to leave that early to make the Masquerade and Cabaret. Quite a few good acts, some very good singers, particularly an astounding opera singer, watervole's poi act, and a cute comedy routine particularly stick in the mind.
That ran well over time, but I wasn't planning to disco so I didn't mind. Lurking in bar and atrium followed. I can't really remember the details, but I eventually got to bed about 2:30ish. David joined me somewhat later.
Sunday dawned, and amazingly we managed to get organized in time for a 10am panel - Books on the Web. Followed this up with Charles Stross's Guest of Honour spot. This was a relatively wide-ranging talk on various tech-stuff he finds interesting, including comparing IT and Biotech to the Aerospace industry in terms of trends of technological development.
Scampered to the far end of the convention again to watch the panel on politics in YA fiction. Interesting, but mostly focused on including the writers politics (intentionally or not) in the text, rather than having politics as part of the story, which was what I'd been hoping for.
Dashed back again for the Neil Gaiman spot. Also very interesting, and included a couple of readings. The room was pretty much full, but they didn't seem to have needed over-flow space as was earlier feared. I don't know what the final numbers were, but I heard they were expecting 1500 people on site Sunday, about double what they were originally expecting when they started taking memberships.
There was time for a very quick tour of the Dealers Room and some book purchases before treking to the far end again for Space Travel: How it Works. Mostly a quick listing of various tech either in use or considered as real options for getting things into and around in space.
This time we had dinner in the hotel, more random wandering, and I changed into my corset for the evening. Didn't end up bothering with the (very loud) Dark Fantasy themed disco though. We joined the crowd watching Mitch Benn perform. Generally I'm not much of a stand-up comedy person, but as everyone promised this was indeed good fun (although also very loud). Apparently this is the sort of thing you can get with twice as many members as you budgeted for.
Stopped by the fan fund auction, which was being sponsored by the Melbourne 2010 bid. Ate Tim-Tams and paid over the odds for a HG Wells anthology and Chocolate Teddybear biscuits. (My favourites, and I haven't had any in years.)
We lurked some more, then joined in a couple of games of Werewolf. I gave up at about 4am, David followed sometime later.
Woke, breakfasted, packed, checked out, put bags in the luggage store.
I sat in on The Future of Privacy in a Surveillance Society, then rejoined David to sit in the Atrium bleary-eyed and trying not to doze off as lack of sleep was catching up with me. Revisited the dealers room and spent the last of our cash.
Our final activity was the panel "You're Reading it Wrong", mostly because we hadn't seen Tanith Lee in anything yet and thought we should see all the author-guests. It was of course also interesting, touching on the same themes as China Mieville's talk on Saturday, but we had to duck out early to go to the airport.
Plane was delayed slightly, but things went smoothly at the Glasgow end and we were back in the flat by 7pm.
Now it's past time for bed....