alias_sqbr

Today was nicely restful, though I'm missing having staff to magically clean up my spills while I'm out of the room. (I'm such a slob, I always feel bad for the hotel staff)

I've added a few small things to previous posts that I missed before but nothing major. And now I'm done!
( Social media and science fiction fandom, Comics you should be reading, closing ceremony )

Ug. I seem to have become One Of Those Fans who starts off with a reasonable question then goes into a ramble about a pet topic or, worse, a self righteous and only barely relevant rant. I think it's a combination of less ability to concentrate on what I'm saying and my social skills being rusty.

Perhaps I should write questions down when I think of them. And/or find more opportunities to rant about fannish stuff in person outside of a panel context, get it out of my system.

I also think I might have to stop going to panels that are too straightforwardly celebratory of their subject. Even if I agree with 99% of the positive things people are saying, that 1% of disagreement and the vibe that only squeeful responses are expected niggle at me and I start feeling all contrary and cantankerous and being tempted to rant. I had to just leave the Doctor Who panel before I ended up ranting about the ways Russell T Davies is better than Stephen Moffat (Not that I think he's better overall! But he wasn't all bad) And I seem to be unable to make it through a panel about fanworks without muttering about the ways the community isn't quite as inclusive and supportive as all that.
( Some specific thoughts I had during the politics & fanworks panel about satire and criticism )

I'm pondering putting some art into the Swancon art show, but I'm having trouble deciding what people will like (if anything). It seems like a lot of bother if I'm not going to bother trying to sell it, and I'm not comfortable selling fanart of in-copyright works. So, some Pride and Prejudice and original stuff I don't entirely hate:

• Kitten vs Dragon


• Horse vs Griffon


• From a Great Height


• P and P Napoleonic AU Assuming nextian won't sue :)

So, which of those do you think I should put in, if any? Or do you have a different suggestion?

(Note to self: upload the ones on redbubble to deviantart and possibly vice versa)

A brief summary of the panels I went to this con, if only to remind myself of the thoughts I had about them and mean to expand on later. The time between these panels was spent either chatting or resting. Many very cool sounding panels were missed! I was feeling particularly tired this con which unfortunately made it harder to reign in my tendency towards grumpy ranting :/ Overall I had a fantastic time though.

( Read more... )

This laptop is a pain and a half to use but I had to force myself to leave the masqerade when my body got insistent that it needed warmth and comfort and quiet and rest, and thus I am bored. Having internet at all is still awesome though, if only to be reassurede that I'm not missing much :)

The con has been pretty fun. I am alas feeling very spoon deficient at the moemnt swo there has been a lot of hiding in my room resting or half-dozing through conversations, but not so much I haven't had fun. Disability in SF panel went great, pharoah_kat (real username too hard to look up right now. It's something like that) did a great job as moderator eg keeping track of questions and every now and then politely pointing out that maybe people who aren't me might like a chance to speak.

Safe spaces panel brought up some very good ideas I am pondering. I would have liked to get into the specifics of how this applies to panels an d other con specific stuff but perhaps another time.

Some GREAT costumes. Pictures forthcoming.

There was something esle but it's not coming to mind. Perhaps it is time for sleepy bobos...

So I have a presentation all written to do a panel at Swancon about Disability in sf, and I'm happy enough presenting it by myself. But thinking about it I am not sure I'm up to handling all the questions I'm likely to get. Does anyone want to offer to help out moderating and answering questions during and after? You could also pipe in with extra thoughts on the presentation while I'm doing it if you were interested.

(It struck me that some people are much happier answering questions than public speaking, I'm the reverse :))

Romance and Speculative fiction

So, rather than poking at the whole "Sff and romance" panel idea I mentioned on my panel ideas post, I thought it would be fun to just try and think of books which have good romance AND good science fiction or fantasy, so that a reader would be moderately satisfied if they were just reading it for the romance OR if they were just reading it for the sff. As greteldragon points out, it's going to be a challenge stopping people from ranting about BAD spec fic romance.

Divided roughly by the genre they're published in.

"Good" is of course subjective, so this list is just my taste.
I prefer cheerful funny romances so that's what most of these are, feel free to rec other types. For more ideas see the post greteldragon made inspired by my post.

( Read more... )

Because I'm an idiot I didn't get my camera until the last full day of the con so have almost not photos. But what I did get was Rob and Lise's awesome Molecular Gastronomy Hour. It reminded me a bit of Kitchen Chemistry.

The main star was Sodium Alginate. That post has the main gist, so briefly:
Sodium alginate is a flavourless gelling agent which forms a harder gel in contact with calcium.
We put a mix of cream and yogurt into unflavoured sodium alginate gel and got, well...a mushy mess. But in theory the gel covered milk balls sound cool :)

We then got a syringe of coke gel and dripped it into calcium chloride and made teeny little salty sweet balls. They needed more rinsing than we could manage so looked better than they tasted but again, the idea is cool :)

(The panel also included a comparison of banana smoothies with and without xanthum gum, but since I can't eat any of the ingredients but the banana and it just looked like banana smoothies didn't record that bit)

Very sleepy, though I actually don't feel much worse than I did on Thursday, I'm waiting for the crash to hit. Had an amazing time.

Anyway, am skimming flist, replying when I can think of something quick, my tabs are getting ridiculous. Let me know if I missed anything major, and I still have barely looked at my email.

Now to attack the filters that are just communities...