Charloween

...is over. I am exhausted. The best was the mega-Q&A with David Nykl, David Hewlett and surprise special guest Kate Hewlett. I haven't watched SGA since its second season, but that doesn't mean two hours of solid high-energy snark and laughs wasn't well appreciated. It was well, well appreciated. I hope the full video surfaces online somewhere. If you see a link, please point me there.

David Hewlett's punchy last-quarter comment, "We're getting to the point of the day where the answer is 'SANDWICH'", and Nykl's riff of only replying to questions "Cheeseburger", may well become my shorthand for "I'm tired, hungry and don't know the answer."

Otherwise, autographs were successfully collected from Claudia Black and Michael Hogan, panels were attended, stuff was purchased and somehow in the middle of it all watching TV was accomplished.

serrico, firstgold, extrathursday, : *high five* We survived.

I'm going to sleep for a week.

ETA: serrico has an excellent and comprehensive con report. Whenever we parted ways, I was usually sitting somewhere, being tired. :D

What do you think about netbooks? Useful, wasteful, the perfect size for a little on-the-go computing or too damn small to be worth anything?

Grabbing a cute little computer so soon after getting my desktop resurrected seems to exceed my undefined budget for how many computers I can buy in any given 6-week span, but those little netbooks just seem... useful.

Or is this just a fad that I shouldn't waste money on?

( I spend my time wondering about this rather than doing schoolwork )

Thoughts? Observations? Opinions? If you have a netbook, how do you use it? Do you like it? Should I be scared of buying anything from Acer again (my current laptop is Acer) or would HP do me fine (my workhorse of a desktop was HP and lasted 7ish years)?

*goes back to schoolwork, no really*


EDIT: I asked Hunch.com if I should get one and it said 78% yes (I should).

( Pictures! )

Polaris is very different con to the FanExpo. It's smaller, less commercial, and tends to have an older crowd. More Klingons and fewer teen anime fans, that kind of thing. Being smaller and friendlier than some other cons, and staged in a hotel rather than a convention center, the big-name guests tend to wander the same halls as the peons who pay to be there.

It can get quite surreal, quite fast.

Sure, I was planning to get Jason Dohring's autograph, but then later when we passed each other in the hall the little voice in the back of my head is trying to process that Logan Echolls just nodded at me in the hall. And yeah, you see an actor doing a Q&A and autograph sessions, and they're live-and-in-person, but there's still a performer/audience split going on. It breaks down when you see Gareth David-Lloyd wandering past the Harvey's window on his way (you notice, because the line is long and not moving fast) to buy smokes at the Shell station across the street.

Didn't mean to get all philosophical. Yay! Con! Screenings! Attending three of Jim Butcher's appearances! Panels! There was one neat panel called "How To Get Fired From Torchwood", where every fireable offense was met with, "Yes, but they didn't fire the guy that kept a WMD in the basement". It was an interesting combination of being totally silly and mocking the lack of personal responsibility held by any of the characters. Oh, fandom.

The best part (for me) was running into old friends (sorry we missed each other, hoskie), people I haven't seen in a long time that I used to work with at the renfaire here. Teagan got the whole con experience, from the hanging out in someone's hotel room, to the meeting actors and authors, to the people who take their nerdery far more seriously that I ever could/would be willing to show off in public... good times.

Four days until we leave for London! And Cardiff!

My abstract got accepted to the Whoniverse Conference!

I'm on the technology panel, which rocks.

This means I'm a) officially an A-1 nerd and b) officially an academic!  I might also be c) officially insane, because the conference is in Cardiff.  But I'm also d) looking for flights to Wales, and they're not that pricy.

I've got months and months to prepare, and to figure out what the heck one does when one presents* at a conference (thucyken , piratefanatic : expect many emails), and plan another day of standing in line at the RSC to buy tickets to see David Tennant in Love's Labours Lost on the tail-end of its run.  Hey, a girl can dream.

whoniverse_conf  has updates about the conference.

I'm going to run around and tell everyone at the office now.  :D

*about the convergence of avant-garde and commercial forms of electronic music in the early days of the medium; more accurately the way the work of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop (peopled by innovators and then-cutting-edge sound artists) reached a large audience through being the ambient noise and background music of classic Doctor Who episodes...

OH EM GEE.

Gareth David-Lloyd is going to be at Polaris/Toronto Trek.

The one consistently good part of Torchwood! At Toronto Trek!

And irony of ironies, the very weekend after TT I've got plans to be in Cardiff...

Fun is channeling Rodney McKay while writing grant applications. 

I haven't a hope in hell of getting my SSHRC on this year.  I'm applying as a New Scholar and since it's the same application and same pool of money for the tenured profs, it's a total Frostee-in-Hades situation.

Therefore, I'm having a bit of fun with the 1000-word "Why I'm fantastic and here's what I study" part of the form.  Tres amusant.  I just hope I don't sound like too much of an arrogant prick.

Yesterday was spectacularly unusual and also quite satisfying. There was a lot of day in the day. ( Read more... )

Edit: FIC REC: An Undying Passion for Cupcakes by ignipes, Harry Potter AU.
Author's summary: This one is totally AU post-Voldie happily-ever-aftersunshine-and-toe-biting-tulips. I, uh, got a little carried away. Youknow, when you have a little idea, and it's cute like a clownfishdarting through the coral--and then it grows? Tentacles? Fangs?Seaweed dripping all over? The ancient rumbling of Cthulu risingthrough the waves? Yeah. That's what happened. ...and that says it all, really. Happy and touching, just a little hurty in parts and absolutely unfluffy.

...

Edit: ( dork moment )

The other day, Alex and I were talking about Chinese zodiac (we're both rats) and the way the Thems have tied in elements to the zodiac. I brought it up because my little brother is a fire rabbit and that's just too hilarious. All I can see is that killer bunny from the end of Holy Grail, but 40 feet tall and spitting fire. (I'm a wood rat, which is a good and sensible animal to be born under.)

So the only right thing to do would be to check what Sam and Dean are, right *cha-cha-cha wiki-fu*

Dean = earth horse (he should feel lucky, he missed being an earth sheep by a mere three days)
Sam = water pig (which is apparently very lucky, because pigs are supposed to be very lucky... but then I think "ha ha, KAGURA and yeah, it's *perfect*. Last night's uber-snuggle (tm) was totally a Kagura move.)

( Who else can I find? )

I was working on a photomanip for aoshi, so I was already in a manippy mood when I got talking to xtinethepirate about how SPN keeps referring to Sammy going "Dark Side". So, like, what if they *were* Jedi? And what if they *did* wear robes, and have lightsabres, and were generally Jedi-awesome?

( Deano-wan Kenobi )

( Sammykin )

EDIT: Credit to piratefanatic for the "Jedichesters" label. Hee!