Experiencing VCON from the programming side… isn’t all that much different to experiencing it from the attendee side. Which is good, since I love attending the convention and didn’t want to lose that part.

Anna and I drove to Vancouver – and yes, we did go to Vancouver, even if the hotel was in Richmond – which we never do. I vastly prefer to go by train, but with all the cargo we had this year? If you’re bringing me in to do panels and a show, I am coming prepared. Handouts, multiple costume changes, gear for the show, bits to show during howto panels, extra instruments to be extra lively at panels – I don’t screw around.

Programming front-loaded me pretty solidly, with three presentations and panels on Friday. From 6-8pm I was talking about building an audio kit on the cheap and, with the help of Joe Fulgham from The Caustic Soda Podcast, the Home Recording 101 panel. We had a funny moment when a few people showed up asking where the knitting panel was – they came back a couple of times until we all figured out what was going on.

Bloginhood gave some very positive feedback, and yeah, I did kind of go off briefly on condenser vs. magnetic-field-vibration microphone head technologies, but dammit, how are you going to do mad science if you don’t know how these things work? Still, I can probably save that for second quarter.

After that, I hopped over to the Kaiju Konfessions Monster Movie Sing-A-Long, which Stan Hyde runs most(?) years, with updates and new material. Stan is a monster kaiju fan (ar ar ar) and really, really knows his kaiju flicks; he’s a lot of fun to listen to. I also ran into Jax, who came as a late-80s Software Pirate, and who lugged a (working!) Commodore SX-64 around all weekend and set it up for games several times.

Did you know Commodore made a luggable?

Friday night’s “Collaborative Filk Creation” panel mostly just turned into a jam, but really, isn’t that kind of the point? I met Greg Cairns there, and we ended up hanging about some at music panels and jamming in the con suite on Sunday. He’s a guitarist and vocalist, and also does DJ work on the side.

My biggest worry on Saturday – the Songwriting Workshop – actually went really well. I’d never hosted one of these before, but had three people (of the four maximum allowed), so it took the form of a presentation followed by work on individual songs. Since it’s an F&SF kind of crowd, that meant I could talk wave physics, so I did. Also maths. I went in all I DO WHAT I WANT and fortunately the audience turned out to be quite receptive. XD

Also, Conflikt have asked me to rerun it at their convention in January, and I’ve said yes. You’d almost think I was getting a reputation for songwriting or something. ^_^

This has got awfully long, so I’m going to post the next part tomorrow.

Outside the lair right now? Lightning and heavy hail.

This has been a very successful experiment.

I’m writing up a VCON post-con report for tomorrow. This was also a very successful experiment.

Off to VCON! A reminder of my schedule:

That’s a big, big room they’ve given me on Saturday night. C’mon out and fill it!

Since I’ll be doing a couple of technical presentations today (scroll down to this post to get the handouts), here’s a nice presentation on digital audio processing, on the waveform level. There are other demonstrations I’d like him to include, but there are already many, and it’s quite interesting no matter how you look at it. Enjoy!

Hello, VCON attendees and members of the West Coast Science Fiction Association! Click here to download your very own copy of the Kitting Out Cheap handout, in convenient PDF form. You’ll also probably be interested in the Studio Buildout Series of blog posts, and maybe the the Home Recording 101 outline.

This post is going up before VCON even starts! If you see it before or during, my concert is Saturday at 10pm, in Sea Island Ballroom A. That sounds like a very large room. Please come fill it or I will be lonely and sad. Also, I have a fifteen tesla magnetic field generator, and I suspect many of you have vehicles. Don’t let me get bored. I’m just saying.

Regardless, enjoy our new free-download single, “Kaiju Meat”, and the Cracksman Betty bonus free download track, “The S-100 Bus.”

Welcome to the Lair! Oh, and, try not to die. (That’s supervillain for “I like you.”)

eta: And here’s songwriting workshop supplemental material version 0.1 alpha.

Seriously? Dinosaur romance porn (“Dinorotica”?) is an actual thing?

I thought Anna was joking when she mentioned Ravaged by the Triceratops, but apparently not.

Anna has a real post about the government shutdown, but me?

Cascadia Now

Quick, everybody – let’s all get out while they’re not looking!

It’s more fun to deal with DDOS attacks if you pretend it’s a kaiju.

<KLAXON>
“Motion in the rift: DDOS attack.”
“Got it. Looks like… 1128 unique IPs.”
“Category 2. Codename: CATBUTT. Dispatch IPTABLES.”

We have it contained at this point. If you can’t get to any of the murknet sites, including my site, then we accidentally tagged you in combat; let me know and I’ll fix it.

Here’s my VCON schedule for this coming weekend – they’ve got me pretty busy Friday evening, as you can see! Then the Saturday afternoon workshop, and the concert at 10pm.

VCON 38, October 5-7, Vancouver, BC

I’m not entirely sure why they have me moderating a “What Is Filk?” panel on Sunday, but I’ll do my best. ^_^

…for any travelling musician: the inflatable concert hall!

Unfortunate resemblance to the inside of a stomach
should be mitigated by different colouring agents

Now they just need it backpack sized and we’re good to go.

No?

Darn.

It’s new Inspector Spacetime! Yes, yes, thanks to NBC, it’s officially Untitled Web Series About etc nobody cares, it’s Inspector Spacetime. There’s an eight-minute prequel to Series 2 out, there’s a Kickstarter to fund the whole series, it is great. This prequel is everything I wanted in Series 1 but didn’t really entirely get. Don’t get me wrong; I liked Series 1, but it was a bit slow and kind of uneven. Now, though, now they have it going:

Here’s the Kickstarter. Hie thee and go fund!