Tag: con

Live from Anime North: Day 1

I took the day off work today. That let me sleep in, try out some Wii Fit yoga and slalom games and take my time getting into Anime North.

I picked up Jeremy and stopped in Kitchener to get gas when I realized I had left my wallet at home. So I went home, got my wallet, got gas, got some cash at a bank machine and end up helping a nice if confused lady in a wheelchair navigate the parking lot to Conestoga Mall. So I was about an hour late getting out of Kitchener. Traffic sucked and we went into Mississauga to get some card readers for the photo scunt (more on that tomorrow). We took city streets the rest of the way to the hotel to avoid traffic jams. All in all, I made it to the con about 4 hours later than I was expecting.

We didn’t do much today besides poke around the dealer’s room and try to find people. Since we’re staying at the Doubletree (note to self: never again), we had a bunch of annoying key issues. All sorted out now, though. Jeremy and I had dinner at Kelsey’s, and I think I’m regretting it a little.

I saw a bunch of inspiring photo scunt additions, but as I was going to write them up in an email to amend the official list, I seem to have forgotten all the good ones. Or at least what I thought were the good ones. It doesn’t seem worth the effort now.

John shows up tomorrow, whereupon the show really begins.

Convention schedule 2008

I’m off to [Ad Astra](http://www.ad-astra.org/) tonight. I’m mostly going to hang out with people. I like Ad Astra, though. I’ll probably drop in on a few readings and things. Also, it’s nice they have [a webcomic guest](http://www.ad-astra.org/gohHowardTayler.php), although I’ve never really read [Schlock Mercenary](http://www.schlockmercenary.com/).

I’ve been meaning to write down my con schedule for ’08, for my benefit as well as anyone else who might be reading…

* Mar 28-30: [Ad Astra](http://www.ad-astra.org/)
* May 23-25: [Anime North](http://www.animenorth.com/)
* Jul 12: [Polaris](http://www.tcon.ca/polaris/modules/tconguests/) (The con formerly known as Toronto Trek) (Saturday only, probably).
* October?: [Ontario Linux Fest](http://onlinux.ca/)

Polaris is a bit iffy. I can’t honestly see myself bothering with CNAnime/whatever the hell they’re calling it this year.

I want to do the Ontario Linux Fest because I only heard about it this year after it was over, and it sounds like it would’ve been cool. I don’t even know if they’re going to do another one. Apparently the first one lost money.

That’s pretty much it. No exciting US cons this year. I think we’re all a bit busy.

Next year, though, I’m definitely planning on going to [Worldcon in Montreal](http://www.anticipationsf.ca/English/Home) with Ellen.

Anime North 2k7 Halftime Show

Anime North is a bit painful this year. I mean literally. My back kinda hurts. I don’t have my recliner to resort to.

I complain, but I actually think things are getting better. I can actually stand and walk around most of the day and end up tolerating it. More or less.

Anyway…

We spent most of the day sitting in the fountain in the basement of the Toronto Doubletree airport hotel running a photo scavenger hunt. That actually turned out to be pretty awesome. I don’t think we’ve managed to convey the true spirit of the photo scavenger hunt concept to our participants, but we’ve got a year to think about it before we try again. They did an okay job, though. I only fear they didn’t quite grasp how much you could get ahead with a little creativity and an eye for the less well-traveled paths of fandom. They will learn.

Maybe tomorrow…

The roads out there are stupid. There’s no way I’m going to risk trying to get to Ad Astra tonight.

So I miss the party again this year. And I can’t deliver xio’s stuff. But this way both I and my car both survive to con another day.

Seriously. I was crawling at 30kph all the way along my normally five minute drive home. I had to do the pumping brake thing to stop at the only red light. Lord knows what the 401 is like right now. It’s just not worth it.

Ad Astra, and not much else.

I had a bunch of highly pontificational (spell check says that isn’t a word, but I’m using it anyway) things I was thinking about writing a post about today. I was saving it all up till after work when I had time to dedicate to the writing process. They were good too. I had some really good arguments I wanted to make. It would’ve been interesting, challenging and informative.

Too bad I forgot all about all of them.

I should probably write these things down. Oh well.

I’ll leave you to dream about what the world might have been like if those posts had been posted. It would be a different place, you mark my words.

Ad Astra’s this weekend. I was only planning on going the Saturday, but for one happy reason or another, it looks like I’ll be there all weekend. Which is fine. If I get bored, I can probably find a Cory Doctorow thing to drop in on, which should be neat. I might even ninja. Seeing as I never really do anything useful during masqs, this is probably a good idea.

I was looking over the pre-schedule schedule… Along with pretty much all the Cory Doctorow stuff which is probably interesting on their own, there’s also some Julie Czerneda things which are usually fun… And there’s a NaNoWriMo panel, but it’s very early some morning. And, of course, there’s all the stuff friends are doing. So I think I should be able to find enough things to fill the weekend.

I’ll bring the laptop. I might even liveblog the con. ‘Cuz, you know, I can…

(Seriously… those would’ve been some awesome posts…)