Here’s that direct link to the Kaiju Meat download page I mentioned Saturday night, in case you’re having trouble finding it. I have a few other free download tracks as well, mostly more fannish songs. Enjoy!
Anglicon! The first in some time, which is why it’s Anglicon: The Regeneration. They wound down the previous version of Anglicon just in time for Doctor Who to return to the air – thus winning the Best Worst Timing Award for 2006 – and it’s taken ’till now to get it running again. Having contributed to the Kickstarter a couple of years ago, I had a membership!
First: very odd being at the Norwescon hotel for Not Norwescon, like it usually is. Lots of other non-fans around. Anglicon clocked in at around 950 members (would guess something like 2300 gate count, eyeballing it?), and at times a crowd that size in a space that large did feel a bit rattly. But despite that, this first Regeneration Anglicon was in fact larger than all previous editions, so that’s definitely a win out the gate for them.
I did indeed get to play, on Saturday night. The new-to-performance Doctor Who song seemed to go over really well. This also made my first go at performing with the giant cheap tablet I’ve talked about, and out the gate I’m very much in a WHY DIDN’T I DO THIS BEFORE?! mood. Having such a larger selection of material available was unmitigatedly awesome. Out of nowhere, I ran into Fae Wiedenhoeft, a musician I’d met when I was first starting out and hadn’t seen again since, attending her first convention; we ended up throwing selkie songs back and forth at each other, something which absolutely couldn’t’ve happened had I just brought a single gig book, or just my own material.
(Hi Fae! Loved your pieces. <3)
I have to talk about Katy Manning for a minute. She played Jo Grant, companion with the Third Doctor (Fop Doctor). As a result, yes, she’s up there – she’s nearing 70.
But you know how you’ll talk about older people being “spry” when they move around well, particularly for their age?
Katy is not spry. Katy is athletic. Katy moves like a 35 year old. Katy has a grip that will crush iron. I am totally serious here. When I went to get that autograph in the top picture, she ended up looking at that Second Doctor sonic I built, and when she handed it back to me, I grabbed it expecting a weak grip, and dropped it, because no.
She’s also a hugger, and hugged me, and Anna, and pretty much everybody, and I’m just sayin’, that’s not a Grandma Hug. I would not be surprised if she could lift me. It was kind of awesome.
Talking of sonics, I got a chance to analyse a Dalek, and the readings I got will definitely help build out the next model:
Pleasantly, two people recognised it for what it was – once I called it out, anyway – one each day. Everyone was surprised by how many different things it does – two kinds of noises, a blue light, and particularly the tactile feedback. I quickly figured out the trick was to hand it to someone and say “Try it” without warning them about the buzzy bit. You do that and people go, “Oh wow.”
A few people told me I should manufacture them, that I would make boatloads of money, but, yeah, no. I don’t fear much, but the BBC licensing bureau? I know when to pick my fights. (Talking of, I ran into Ernst Blofeld – he’s not Guild, obviously – but we had a short pleasant chat and he has my card. It goes without saying that I have no photograph.)
Colin Baker (the Sixth Doctor), it turns out, is an absolute hoot.
He’s been doing these for quite a while, of course, so he’s got loads of practice. But he does it well, and has interesting stories, some of which are of course quite recent. He made good fun of David Tennant (“Oooh, I’m young, I’m attractive, I’ve got pointy hair“) and got a lot of questions about his Big Finish Audio Productions work (loves working for them, is now acting across multiple ranges, will take pretty much any part they feel like offering), and the 50th Anniversary Fivish Doctors Reboot special.
I’d had no idea he’d been in their Dorian Grey series, but apparently he’s done a fair bit of work in that line, as well as another which eludes me at the moment. He’s also been keeping his hand in via small English films, and did a guest spot in “The White Iris,” the latest episode of Star Trek Continues, a fan production that’s been making waves lately. So that was all good fun.
For some reason they had a spot on Sophie Aldred while she was on stage:
It makes for a nice dramatic setup, I suppose, but it’s hard to get her face not washed out while keeping the backdrop. Since I failed, here’s the other exposure level for you.
She’s mostly been voice acting since her Ace days, and, like Colin, not just for Doctor Who-related work. But she spoke a good bit about all the problems with just trying to keep the show going in that late era, with BBC management wanting it gone, and the low-even-for-Doctor-Who budgets of the era.
She pretty much stepped away from stage/screen acting to raise her kids, and has only been taking voice-acting work for several years. But she did mention that she recently took on a screen agent again, now that the kids are growing up, so maybe we’ll see something out of her on that front soon.
Cosplay focused on the modern doctors. I did see a very good Rose, and a pretty good Sarah Jane Smith, but wasn’t in a photo-friendly environment at the time. Dalek Clara made an appearance, as did many, many modern Doctors (and two of my Shemp Doctor! I was surprised), and, of course a whole patrol of Daleks.
Plus K-9, who was, as always, a good dog.
Large copies of these photos are at my photostream like usual, of course.
There’s a fair lot of discontent over the most recent series in the modern Capaldi doctor – lots of unhappiness with the scriptwriting, and I’m not the only one who bailed on last year midway through. Thank goodness for Big Finish is all I can say to that. But I hope Peter Capaldi gets some better scripts – I’d like to see his take on things when the writing’s not such rubbish and not have to wait for years like, well, Colin Baker did.
Anna will no doubt write up her own report, and I’ll probably eta this to add a link. And here’s Anna’s report. Were you there? If so, what’d you think?
eta: I wrote up a bit of a build report on the sonic screwdriver, too. Lots of photos.
Anybody else going to Anglicon? I’ve never been to a Doctor Who convention before. I’ve been working up a new song, I’m planning on doing it Saturday.
It’s not a concert, I’m just going as an attendee. But there’s programming space for playing, so I’m takin’ them up on it. 😀
eta: I got my second doctor-style sonic screwdriver working! Video on Tumblr. It was a near thing, too, I’ve never made a sonic before. More difficult than I thought!
The fun part is that it’s all modular inside, little AA-battery-shaped-but-shorter subelements that stack on each other. I could in theory make more elements and even swap them out live and actually have that change behaviours. I probably need to do that. 😀
We’ve lost another giant. Christopher Lee is dead.
He played so very many characters. I’m not sure where I encountered him first, just chronologically, and recognised him as who he was – Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man? Zantor, on Space: 1999? Professor Stone on The Avengers? I’ve no idea. He’s just been such a fixture for so long – sometimes goofy, sometimes brilliant, but always a force.
Dammit.
What’s your favourite Christopher Lee role? I’m going to skip the easy answer and say Lord Haggard, The Last Unicorn. It’s a fantastic voice performance, and his use of voice was one of his best talents. What about you?
More insane puppy-related, but not just puppy-related, bullshit is going on this week.
First, let’s co-sign this commentary from Kameron Hurley about Tor Books’s decision to publicly reprimand one of their editors, Irene Gallo, for saying actual true things on her personal Facebook page about the Sad/Rabid puppies debacle. I repeat: true things, on her personal Facebook page.
But I particularly want to call out this quote:
I read once that the real cost of racism was in keeping folks affected by same from doing their work. This works for stuff like feminism and homophobia, too. Instead of doing the work we were meant to do, bigots want to keep people spinning in circles, spending all their time writing endless think pieces that refute their insistence that we can’t and have never done anything. Yes, ::yawn:: we exist, yes we can do these jobs, yes we are human, and yes we matter. It keeps us defending simple bullshit truths that – if some dude said them – would go unchallenged. And those unchallenged dudes get to go off wanking about life, saying whatever fucking thing they want, doing whatever work they want, because they don’t have to sit around defending their right to exist and speak the truth.
But everybody else is constantly challenged and bullied with the threat of erasure, and most of our work is just fucking digging out from under that bullshit.
I have raged about this so many times. When I was a software developer, I literally sidetracked my career so that I could spend quite literally another full-time job’s worth of time fighting against groups trying to make me illegal. And by illegal, I mean fucking illegal, as in direct threat to my life and freedom, by design. That was the intent and goal, so it’s not like I had any sort of goddamn options.
When I talk about spending “blood and treasure” on this, the blood comes from the street assaults, the treasure comes, in part, from this. All that lost time and money, fighting off people who not only enjoyed but actively made a living from trying to make my existence illegal.
And just as much, the people trying to make me and people like me at best into sub-citizens and at worst into dead people? They enjoyed their work, and made money at it.
Just like the Puppies enjoy their bullshit. They’re having a great time.
(See also Angela Highland in this post about “the endless cycle of having to defend oneself over and over and over and over again, to seemingly no avail.”)
Let’s also co-sign this post by Chuck Wendig at Terrible Minds:
If you’re an employer faced with a mob of bigots because a female employee said a true thing in public, maybe take a step back and ask how you’d have responded (if at all) if they came after one of your top dudes for saying the exact same thing. You may not even have to think very long because they probably already have.
Then ask yourself how awesome you really are now that you’ve publicly named and shamed her and basically threw her out to the Gamergate/Puppy wolves to be harassed online and in the comment sections of your own post. Ask yourself how awesome and fair-handed you are to do that.
And back to Kameron:
This shit is going to change, but it’s going to hurt.
If you’re an ally, I’d like to remind you it’s not you it’s going to hurt. You’ll come out of it just fine with your fucking career intact.
It’s us. Every time. Always us. It’s us they will come after. We pay the price.
One of the driving points in Jupiter Ascending – a post that I still, yes, intend to make – is that the most fundamental limit on resource is time – how much time you have, or do not have, in your life. The Entitled of that universe steal lives from others to gain more time for themselves. These cretins can’t achieve that, so they steal the time of others to gain enjoyment. For sport.
Sendhil Mullainathan said recently that poverty is a tax on cognition. He’s right, of course, and his assertion comes down, in no small part, to a tax on time. Computational time of the brain, existence time of life, they’re both the same thing. This, too is a tax on time, one assessed by ressentiment-driven self-proclaimed “alpha”-master wannabes, one that’s assessed intentionally, driven mostly by the pleasure of seeing others in oppression, by the love for Orwell’s aphrodisiac of power. And it is contemptible. It is anti-thought, it is anti-achievement, it is anti-creation, it is a vile sadism, and it is no accident that the most fervent supporters of torture drink from this same well.
You want to talk about where the “rage” part comes from in my music? There are a few sources. This is a big one.
eta: See also Jessica Price’s post on Tumblr. It’s worth reading.
eta2: See also Vox Day (the oberpuppyführer that Tom just threw Irene Gallo to, linked via We Hunted the Mammoth), see also Tim Hunt (as a published research scientist, may I just say to blow it out your ass, you fucking douchebag). It’s just a continuous hail of this kind of rampant horseshittery.
eta3: flake_sake’s commentary on Livejournal is of relevant interest, including the first direct appearance of Jim Butcher in this mess.
eta4: Can Tor let Ms. Gallo take back her apology yet? No? How about now?
This is one of a continuing series of posts on sexism and racism in geek culture.
Raptor emergency supplies compartment is all sorted:
Tho’ honestly, it’s good to have an emergency kit if you’re going out on long trips – for me, road trips for shows – and this vehicle has a place for a rather substantial one in back, as long as you don’t mind many shallow boxes. It’s hard to see in this photo but all this is in recessed divided sections, underneath the cargo floor, which is really nice. Nothing slides around or gets in the way.
The red box is a basic first aid kit, to which I’ve added a few extra supplies; the other boxes are as labelled. Under this layer there’s another separate compartment, with a toolkit, basic repair supplies (fuses, tubing, etc), spare tire and tire repair kit, as well as flashlight, things like that.
If you like putting things away in neat little boxes (even if the supplier changed their labels mid-stock and you ended up with two different labels, aheh), this is a pretty good vehicle to have. XD
Paypal has a new trick that makes me want to punch faces with extreme force. I was logging in today to pay for an Orycon membership (because that’s the only payment they take online), and I got this stop dialogue:
Now, this is a load of donkey dung, because I have a laptop I’ve been using for exactly this stuff for four years. Same laptop. Never even reformatted. But I’m all, ‘okay, fine, whatever.’
They give you two options. One is to receive a phone call at a predetermined number. Another is to verify data. Or let me put that more specifically, like they did: verify public data. That’s an important difference, and they think they’re being oh-so-very-clever, and I almost fell for it.
See, I didn’t want to deal with a telephone, so I chose verify data, thinking this would be some sort of account information validation. WRONG. They’re trolling public records and (presumably) credit report information to tie together a more complete – meaning more saleable – identity profile, and asking me to “verify” data I’ve never given them, ever. That’s when I realised what was up.
In short, you’re not “verifying” anything. You’re drawing them a comprehensive historical map of your life, connecting all the little dots they think they might have for you, on their behalf, all under the guise of some sort of security check.
You get: inconvenience and data mining! They get: A far more saleable and more complete historical profile of you, under false pretences.
Just to see what happens, I tried my other Paypal account, after verifying my computer on this one. OH LOOK, said Paypal, WE DON’T RECOGNISE THIS COMPUTER!
And the same set of options. So, yeah. If – or more likely, when – you get this dialogue, pick a disposable number and have them call you and enter a pin. Because this? This is horseshit.
Paypal is just awful.
eta: IT GETS WORSE: In comments, check this:
Michael Hanscom: Did you see the recent story about their new TOS’s authorizing robocalls from them or their associates for basically whatever reason they want? It was enough for me to just flat out close my account.
Really. No, I missed that. So either way, you’re screwed. You give them a legit number they can phonespam or you let them datamine you. Awesome. Fuck, I wish I could close my accounts. But I have business need. Goddammit.
eta2: And here we go – the first spam call has already arrived.
I haven’t posted about the Sad/Rabid Puppies lately, mostly because I just haven’t had anything to say that I haven’t already said. I’m just not good at re-chewing old material – it’s not like all the previous posts I wrote aren’t still around. (Do remember to vote NO AWARD above any slate candidates, tho’.)
But if you miss that whole mess and want something new, here’s a post from Jim Hines called Puppies in their Own Words. It’s mostly extensive quotes from Sad leadership, and leaves white supremacist Rabid leader Vox Day out. I’m not sure that’s fair, given how much of the the Sad success depended upon Vox’s pack of Rabids – while simultaneously trying to distance themselves from him after he became to embarrassing – but there y’go.
The best thing Jim’s post is for is again detailing how this was in fact a purely political exercise, despite Puppy denials. It’s hard to deny when you’re extensively talking about how you need to show it to those liberals.
eta: Oh, Agrumer has a very good post on Livejournal about notorious homophobic Korrasami-hater and Rabid Puppy John C. Wright and his tired claim that He’s Not Homophobic, He Loves the Queers, He Just Hates “Perversion” – something he attributes to his Catholic faith. But as Agrumer shows, his anti-queer hate predates his Catholicism by some time. Also with original references and links! Apparently, John’s faith-sourced moral beliefs don’t include objections to straight-up lies.
eta2: George R. R. Martin pointed at Eric Flint’s takedown, point by point, of the Puppy arguments, such as they are. It’s quite thorough.
eta3: There’s a follow-up post, here, which is actually quite a bit longer and about Tor Books and Irene Gallo.
Anybody got experience with those little 12V electrical in-vehicle 12V coolers? I can get this one with credit union rewards points. The maker has a smaller model (really tiny) which has a small number of reviews that are highly mixed, and a larger model (substantially larger)which has a large number of reviews and is thought well of overall.
This model, though, lacks reviews. It’s 14L (a little over 3.5 gallons?) and… um… well, it looks like this:
I don’t expect miracles, but it’d be nice to keep things cool in the Raptor without hauling around ice and/or burning uselessly through cold-packs. Mostly because let’s face it, after day one, all of those things are dead, while this thing would in theory keep going.
Working on a couple of new songs – one that I’ve been sitting on unfinished for a long time, another that’s brand new, a third that’s an adaptation of another song but which I have to take apart and re-engineer because the original is guitar and I don’t play that. Also, it’s written in DADGAD and then partially-capoed two stops (so.. EBEABE?) and yeah, no.
So I’m playing with a drop-E powerchord open tuning that looks something like this:
E2 E3 / E3 E4 / B3 B3 / E5 E5
I don’t want to take it all the way down to D-like and then capo up because it gets kind of flabby down at that D.
This isn’t a tuning I would use for lots of things, but I’ve played with it (well, a variant of it – E2 E3 / D3 D4/ B3 B3 / E5 E5, Edrop3sus2) some before and it’s got a nice heavy sound. Which is not really where the original song I’m modifying goes, but kind of is where my version goes, so I think that’s okay.
I’m hoping I can get it playable for this weekend at Anglicon. That’d be cool.
A second one that’s completely new has a chorus that’s pretty much together and which is made pretty much completely of pop hook and I regret nothing. SO MANY POWER CHORDS. So many.
But the the verses are not happy yet. I seem to have written the ending of the song and getting back to the beginning is problematic.
The third one is complicated as hell and was supposed to be on Dick Tracy Must Die but there ware big swaths of it I never could actually make work. Turns out the solution was hidden in a rhythm change, so that’s kind of a huge surprise.
I wanted to write today about how Jupiter Ascending is basically the Cronenberg Dune with the “Chosen One” arc swapped out in favour of “Hidden Princess” – an arc that fell out of favour in Hollywood live-action several decades ago – but I don’t quite have my head wrapped around it yet. It’s still percolating, I guess.
But that gets back to the songwriting, funnily enough. I don’t seem to swap back and forth between “songwriting” and “blog writing” writing very well. So if blog posts lately seem a little hinky? That’s what’s up.
but I know that
when I see you
that it’s true even so
that the future has a place for me
that the future has a place for all of us now
THE NEW SINGLE
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