Giant pre-con post
[this was written circa Friday and not posted till now. Not much has changed since then.]
I haven't heard any convention-space-sharing stories in a long time. So here's a setup: Tekkoshocon, third and fourth floors, anime and manga convention; Pittsburgh Farm to Table Conference, first and second floors, local and organic agriculture conference.
Oh, dear.
The understandable bummer is that you have to pay the door fee for the conference in order to shop at the farmer's market. Okay, okay; it's kind of analogous to a dealer's room. Fine. I was psyched at the possibility that it would be outside, that I could get some real food during a convention (ha! hahahahahahaha! ha), but I don't blame them.
But exposing your average Prius-driving eco-geek to the rampantly consumerist and outlandish otaku crowd, even just to pass one another in the parking garage, doesn't seem like a good idea. Not that the convention center is at fault for anything. It's just bad luck.
If I hear anything good, I'll post. ;) I just hope that my peers don't make asses of themselves any more than necessary.
As for the farmer's market, the convention is still a five-minute drive from the Strip District, Pittsburgh's wholesale/market district, a personal shopping mecca that has still not gotten old to me. (Hey, a Polish deli opened! We gotta check that out! And this! And that! etc.) I don't think there's cause to complain. And I do hope that the Strip eateries are close enough to siphon off at least some of the con crowd, so that we don't get the Otakon effect: the handful of restaurants accessible to the convention center are utterly swamped, with no other reasonable options. Not fun.
Sushi Kim is still screwed, though. And possibly the Lemon Grass Cafe.
(Oh! Oh! We should check out Big Mama's House of Soul. I haven't been there yet. Though that doesn't really help the deep-fried con food problem.)
ANYWAY. Hey, I'm too old to subsist on nothing but Pocky and Mountain Dew. I feel like crap after half a day on that stuff. I can't take the my-body-is-a-temple snob road, since I am usually propped up by energy drinks during cons (soon we will begin the semi-annual hunt for sugar-free No Fear, which nobody freakin' carries), but surviving on fast food gets really unappetizing once you head toward your dotage. ;P
As for other con prep, I've finished as many of my major projects as I can, and am doing some smaller ones in the remaining time as well as finishing Eric's costume. I'm sorry to say that I ditched my showpiece, a Zelda-themed quilt. Though I hope to make it after the con and post it on Etsy, at least.
We also have Able Sisters team jerseys now, a spin-off of Jay's double-nerdness hockey-themed cosplay. That will be fun, since I haven't made any new costumes for myself this time. It might be fun to do something for Otakon. I don't know, really. Cosplay is so goddamn competitive, and I haven't come across any ideas that I liked enough to make me not care that people are laughing at me. My sister was tossing around the idea of doing one of the character classes from Team Fortress 2, so I might copycat that idea and do a character class from an RPG. Maybe something from Disgaea. I might take another look at the FFTA2 ones, too. Eh. The only ones I could do would be Nu Mou classes, and they tend to be bulky and heatstroke-causing.
Anyway. What else. Oh, my "Most Exciting Thing" video failed out of the AMV competition, but Collaborative Video 2, a.k.a. "Bootlegs," made it to finals for Trailers. Yay! It's going to get crushed. A Death Note / Dark Knight video, also in that category, is like a creature genetically created in a laboratory to win everything it breathes on. But that's OK. [Edit upon posting: Aaaand one of the others won the VCA for Best Trailer. Though watching the two of them duke it out should be interesting.]
I've been watching AMVs again, at least some of them, having remembered that the 360 plays x.264-encoded MP4s quite happily. So if people are still using that format, I should be able to watch the VCAs. I'm looking forward to that. We flipped through a disc of last year's finalists a few days ago; I'd forgotten about many of them (including a couple that I really liked. Yay!). Also on the same disc (I forget why) was the first - first! - DDR Project, vintage 2001, which kind of blew my mind. Tape sources, lipflap all over the place, series that nobody even remembers anymore, long long loooo-oooooong shots; and ten minutes of segments would go by without any hint of effects. The distance that the form has come in eight years is pretty amazing. If you showed a newbie the c.2001 videos and 2008's (many of which were actually made in '07), they'd probably be nearly unrecognizable. And the "newer" ones are two years old at this point! Whew.
Long story short, at least I can watch some videos these days, if I download enough to bother burning them onto DVD. I still haven't found a good solution to making them yet. I found out that my computer is so old that it can't even be upgraded anymore, only scrapped. I don't really want to invest in a new one right now, especially since I just got a new sewing machine, and we've built up a backlog of DVDs from Best Buy's anime clearances and various Rightstuf sales. That's quite enough gratuitous consumerism for one year; I'd like to think that I have some self-control. So it's back to whipping a little more time out of the creaker. It'll take some sleight of hand, and I haven't come up with a plan yet.
Culture clashes, Artists' Alley, restaurant-hunting, costuming, and AMVs. That's what cons are about to me. Heh.
I haven't heard any convention-space-sharing stories in a long time. So here's a setup: Tekkoshocon, third and fourth floors, anime and manga convention; Pittsburgh Farm to Table Conference, first and second floors, local and organic agriculture conference.
Oh, dear.
The understandable bummer is that you have to pay the door fee for the conference in order to shop at the farmer's market. Okay, okay; it's kind of analogous to a dealer's room. Fine. I was psyched at the possibility that it would be outside, that I could get some real food during a convention (ha! hahahahahahaha! ha), but I don't blame them.
But exposing your average Prius-driving eco-geek to the rampantly consumerist and outlandish otaku crowd, even just to pass one another in the parking garage, doesn't seem like a good idea. Not that the convention center is at fault for anything. It's just bad luck.
If I hear anything good, I'll post. ;) I just hope that my peers don't make asses of themselves any more than necessary.
As for the farmer's market, the convention is still a five-minute drive from the Strip District, Pittsburgh's wholesale/market district, a personal shopping mecca that has still not gotten old to me. (Hey, a Polish deli opened! We gotta check that out! And this! And that! etc.) I don't think there's cause to complain. And I do hope that the Strip eateries are close enough to siphon off at least some of the con crowd, so that we don't get the Otakon effect: the handful of restaurants accessible to the convention center are utterly swamped, with no other reasonable options. Not fun.
Sushi Kim is still screwed, though. And possibly the Lemon Grass Cafe.
(Oh! Oh! We should check out Big Mama's House of Soul. I haven't been there yet. Though that doesn't really help the deep-fried con food problem.)
ANYWAY. Hey, I'm too old to subsist on nothing but Pocky and Mountain Dew. I feel like crap after half a day on that stuff. I can't take the my-body-is-a-temple snob road, since I am usually propped up by energy drinks during cons (soon we will begin the semi-annual hunt for sugar-free No Fear, which nobody freakin' carries), but surviving on fast food gets really unappetizing once you head toward your dotage. ;P
As for other con prep, I've finished as many of my major projects as I can, and am doing some smaller ones in the remaining time as well as finishing Eric's costume. I'm sorry to say that I ditched my showpiece, a Zelda-themed quilt. Though I hope to make it after the con and post it on Etsy, at least.
We also have Able Sisters team jerseys now, a spin-off of Jay's double-nerdness hockey-themed cosplay. That will be fun, since I haven't made any new costumes for myself this time. It might be fun to do something for Otakon. I don't know, really. Cosplay is so goddamn competitive, and I haven't come across any ideas that I liked enough to make me not care that people are laughing at me. My sister was tossing around the idea of doing one of the character classes from Team Fortress 2, so I might copycat that idea and do a character class from an RPG. Maybe something from Disgaea. I might take another look at the FFTA2 ones, too. Eh. The only ones I could do would be Nu Mou classes, and they tend to be bulky and heatstroke-causing.
Anyway. What else. Oh, my "Most Exciting Thing" video failed out of the AMV competition, but Collaborative Video 2, a.k.a. "Bootlegs," made it to finals for Trailers. Yay! It's going to get crushed. A Death Note / Dark Knight video, also in that category, is like a creature genetically created in a laboratory to win everything it breathes on. But that's OK. [Edit upon posting: Aaaand one of the others won the VCA for Best Trailer. Though watching the two of them duke it out should be interesting.]
I've been watching AMVs again, at least some of them, having remembered that the 360 plays x.264-encoded MP4s quite happily. So if people are still using that format, I should be able to watch the VCAs. I'm looking forward to that. We flipped through a disc of last year's finalists a few days ago; I'd forgotten about many of them (including a couple that I really liked. Yay!). Also on the same disc (I forget why) was the first - first! - DDR Project, vintage 2001, which kind of blew my mind. Tape sources, lipflap all over the place, series that nobody even remembers anymore, long long loooo-oooooong shots; and ten minutes of segments would go by without any hint of effects. The distance that the form has come in eight years is pretty amazing. If you showed a newbie the c.2001 videos and 2008's (many of which were actually made in '07), they'd probably be nearly unrecognizable. And the "newer" ones are two years old at this point! Whew.
Long story short, at least I can watch some videos these days, if I download enough to bother burning them onto DVD. I still haven't found a good solution to making them yet. I found out that my computer is so old that it can't even be upgraded anymore, only scrapped. I don't really want to invest in a new one right now, especially since I just got a new sewing machine, and we've built up a backlog of DVDs from Best Buy's anime clearances and various Rightstuf sales. That's quite enough gratuitous consumerism for one year; I'd like to think that I have some self-control. So it's back to whipping a little more time out of the creaker. It'll take some sleight of hand, and I haven't come up with a plan yet.
Culture clashes, Artists' Alley, restaurant-hunting, costuming, and AMVs. That's what cons are about to me. Heh.