Birthday Bits

So I turn 36 on Sunday. Pretty sure I can still claim “mid-30’s” at this point, though I’m getting perilously close to the “late-30’s.”

Upcoming or recent birthday-related bits include:

  1. Prairie and I getting bikes. This has been awesome. We’re both very glad that we decided to do this for my birthday, and that we went ahead and did it early, a few weeks ago.

  2. On Sunday, I’ll be losing the ponytail and sending it off to Locks of Love. This will mark six years since I decided that if I ever wanted to have long hair again, I better start growing it out now. I shaved my head one last time on my 30th birthday, then started letting it grow, and outside of a few trims to take care of split ends, have just let my hair grow since then. As the hairline goes and the forehead grows, though, it’s time to dodge the skullet bullet and shave it all back down again.

  3. Also on Sunday, we’ll be going to the zoo to see the brand-new penguin exhibit. H, P, and N will be joining us. Penguins yay!

  4. On Friday the 8th we’re going to the 7pm showing of the new Star Trek movie. Set phasers to ‘awesome’ (I hope…advance word is looking pretty good though).

  5. At some as-yet unspecified Saturday night in mid- to late-May, I’ll be heading down to Vogue Night. It won’t really be a birthday party as much as my monthly “gotta get out and bounce” night, but if someone were to say hello and perhaps spot me a drink, I doubt I’d complain.

  6. On July 3rd we’re going to Jason Webley‘s 11-year Extravaganza concert at Seattle’s Town Hall. This is very exciting for both of us. For a number of years, Jason did two big shows a year, one in fall and one in spring, which would always be very close to either my birthday or Prairie’s (which is Nov. 3rd, exactly six months after mine). It’s been a few years since we’ve been to any of his shows, though, as he’s been playing venues more suited to his younger, more energetic crowd, and as we’d prefer to sit in the back and enjoy the show rather than getting pushed about and stepped on (not intentionally or in a mean way, just the kind of thing that happens in a club show atmosphere) by rambunctious young’uns, we’ve been less inclined to head down to his more recent Seattle-area shows. Town Hall works very well for everyone, though — the kids get to bounce around in front of the stage, and us old fogies get to sit in the back and enjoy the music and show — so we’re looking forward to this.

And that’s everything I can think of.

And, of course, the annual bit of shameless greed*: on the off chance that someone should feel all birthday present-ish, feel free to poke around at my Amazon wishlists (helpfully categorized into photography, audiovisual, literary, gadgets, and other) or just hit the PayPal button on my about page and contribute to my Nikon D700 fund. ;)


* Disclaimer: this is mostly tongue-in-cheek, the economy sucks, and I expect nothing except perhaps some rolling of eyes and gentle mocking. Hugs and/or kind words are always acceptable birthday presents. Still, you never know what might happen, and it can’t hurt to toss the idea out there, right?

Links for April 23rd through April 27th

Sometime between April 23rd and April 27th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Gallery: Flickr Users Make Accidental Maps: "Billions of photos have now been uploaded to the internet, and many are tagged with text descriptions. Some are even geotagged — stamped with the latitude and longitude coordinates at which the image was taken. David Crandall and colleagues at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, analysed the data attached to 35 million photographs uploaded to the Flickr website to create accurate global and city maps and identify popular snapping sites." Neat stuff. If you dig into the actual report (.pdf link), you'll find that Seattle is the 8th most photographed city in the world, and the Space Needle is the 8th most photographed landmark in the world. Go Seattle — we're #8! ;)
  • Skin Deep Usability: On setting up a new Microsoft Surface touch-screen, "no keyboard or mouse" computer, and discovering (among other issues, like where the power cord goes, or what color 'rhodamine' is), that one 'undocumented feature' is that a keyboard and mouse are required to boot the thing: "The whole experience was probably best summed up by Amanda who, when asked why it was taking us so long to get the machine up and running, and why we all looked so unhappy, replied 'Oh, it's just so…Microsofty.'"
  • Locks of Love Helps Disadvantaged Children Suffering From Medical Hair Loss: "Locks of Love is a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in the United States and Canada under age 18 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis. We meet a unique need for children by using donated hair to create the highest quality hair prosthetics." I'm pretty sure I've got at least 10" of hair to chop, so this seems a lot nicer than just tossing it in the trash.
  • Get Great Gadgets. and Keep Them. – Last Year’s Model: "We love cool gadgets as much as anybody else. We just want to be thoughtful about the stuff we've bought. Even the most cutting-edge, tech-savvy geeks in the world are choosing to hang on to their phones or their iPods that still work just fine."
  • I Can Read Movies: I love, love, love the retro design of these film "novelizations". Beautiful work, and many are quite clever. Related, and also worth seeing: Harry Potter Redesign and Eight Films in Black and Red. Gorgeous work. This is the kind of stuff that makes me wish I was a graphic artist.

Introducing my Photoblog

I think the time has come to formally introduce my latest endeavor to the world: Photography by Michael Hanscom.

My new photoblog.

As anyone who’s been paying any amount of attention to my ramblings for long knows, I occasionally pick up a camera, snap off a few shots, and hope that I’ve got something worth showing off. While I have the usual overdeveloped sense of criticism for my own work, enough people seem to think that I’ve got a worthwhile eye that I’ve finally decided to move forward on a project that’s been rattling around in the back of my head for a while, and I’m going to see if I might actually be able to sell the occasional print.

To that end, the photoblog. I’m opening things up with a small selection of some of my favorite shots from the past few years, though more shots will be added as I take the time to dig back through my archives to find more possibilities. Right now I don’t have much in the way of people, as I want to do a little research to make sure I’m on the right side of any legal considerations (that is, making sure I can sell photos taken at public events or festivals if there are identifiable people but no model releases — I think I’m in the clear, as I’m selling prints as art and not as product, promotional, or stock photography, but it’s good to be clear on things like this), but I’m hoping to get a broader range of photos up as time goes by.

In the meantime, please feel free to stop by the new site, poke around, and — should the spirit move you — pick up a print or two. If you’ve got any constructive criticism, questions, comments or words of wisdom regarding the site, let me know. And of course, as some of you have been watching my Flickr stream, if there are any particular shots you think should be featured, or that you’d like a print of, feel free to let me know…suggestions are always appreciated!

Lastly…wish me luck! I have no idea if this little project will be worthwhile in the long run, or just a fun distraction that won’t go anywhere, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. We’ll see what happens!

Dreamhost Does Good

Since I’ve occasionally groused about the hosting service I get with Dreamhost, I wanted to be sure to mention when things go right, instead of only when things go wrong.

For a few months, the server that my account was set up on, and which hosts all three domains under my control, was being tweaky, resulting in sporadic downtime. I’d been building up a small library of downtime reports in my support page with Dreamhost, when last month, things took a turn for the worse…and then, soon afterward, for the better. Of course, I didn’t really know about the “for the worse” part until I got the news of the “for the better” side of things.

The last time my site went down, when I submitted the support request notifying Dreamhost of the downtime, they replied relatively quickly, letting me know that the server I was on had become “unresponsive,” and they were working on getting this back up and running. About half an hour later, my sites came back up, and I didn’t think much more of it. Until the next day, when I got the following…

This is just a note to let you know that we’ve moved your account to a new server! We apologize for the lack of notice, but this was an emergency move as a perfomance and stability measure.

Apparently the server I’d been on had gone seriously downhill, and had to be replaced, necessitating moving my account to new hardware (and hopefully all the other occasional downtime I’d had was due to the developing hardware issues, and I won’t get those again). Most of the rest of the message was covering anything I might need to do to ensure that everything worked as it should, and as it turns out, I didn’t really need to do much of anything, as the transition was seamless. Then, at the end of the note…

…again, we really apologize for the abrupt nature of this move! To try and make up for it a bit, we’ve also set your account to now have unlimited disk and bandwidth, forever!

Ooooh. See those last few words? That’s nice to see. “Unlimited disk and bandwidth, forever!” No worries about storing large files (not that I tend to do that), no worries about surcharges on the (very) off chance that I get Slashdotted or Dugg. Just keep paying my yearly bill, and I’m set.

Dreamhost, I’ve had issues with you from time to time, but this? This is good. Thanks!

Archie vs. Pulp: Common People (Again)

Slightly over a year ago, I found an inspired bit of silliness which replaced the text from an old Archie comic with lyrics from Pulp’s “Common People.” Deciding to continue the silliness, I used iMovie to put the audio of Pulp’s song under some simple ‘animation’ of the altered comic panels, and uploaded the end result to YouTube. At the time I did this, YouTube’s draconian audio scrubber that the music groups use to try to assure that we only listen to and enjoy music in ways that they approve of told me this:

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that your video Archie vs. Pulp: Common People has been identified as containing content that may be owned by someone else. The material identified in your video, the person claiming ownership of the material, and the policy they have designated for its use on YouTube are detailed below.

Material Copyright Holder Policy Countries
Audio from PULP-COMMON PEOPLE UMG Allow Everywhere

If the policy listed is “Allow,” you do not need to take action.

All seemed fine — though the song had been recognized and flagged, UMG had an ‘allow everywhere’ policy, so the video was fine. I thought that was nice, and thanked them in my blog post and on the YouTube page.

Apparently something has changed at UMG, and they’ve decided that graciously allowing fans to use bits of their artist’s music in projects like this isn’t kosher, because this morning I got a somewhat innocuous sounding email from YouTube…

Your video, Archie vs. Pulp: Common People, may have content that is owned or licensed by WMG.

No action is required on your part; however, if you are interested in learning how this affects your video, please visit the Content ID Matches section of your account for more information.

…which didn’t sound too horrid. My video “may have content” they own, “no action is required,” if I want to know how this affects my video, etc. Well, sure I wanted to know how this affected my video, so I went to YouTube, and found out that this affected my video quite a lot: it doesn’t exist anymore.

Your video, Archie vs. Pulp: Common People, may have audio content from COMMON PEOPLE by PULP that is owned or licensed by UMG.

As a result, your video is blocked worldwide.

What should I do?

Use AudioSwap to replace the audio in your video with a track from our library of prelicensed songs. After you swap, your video will be available globally.

Under certain circumstances, you may dispute the copyright claim from UMG. These may be any of the following:

  1. the content is mistakenly identified and is actually completely your original creation;
  2. you believe your use does not infringe copyright (e.g. it is fair use under US law);
  3. you are actually licensed by the owner to use this content.

Great. So I can replace the audio with different music — which wouldn’t exactly make sense — or I can enter the dispute process and try to convince someone that my use is Fair Use. I believe it is, but I’m guessing I’d probably end up on the losing end of that conversation.

And, of course, I don’t have the original iMovie file, so I can’t re-export the video to find some other way of hosting it.

However…

When I loaded my blog post, it seems that the block wasn’t totally implemented yet, as the embedded version of the video was still active (though I don’t expect this to last very long). After switching the video to High Quality to make sure the best possible version was downloaded to my computer for playback, a little bit of digging into Safari 4’s Web Inspector gave me the Google Cache URL of the video.mp4 file. A quick copy-and-paste of that URL into Safari’s URL bar, and a few moments later, the video file was sitting in my Downloads folder.

So, once again, after an upload to my webserver and through the magic of self-hosting, the video lives!

[flashvideo file=files/2009/04/archiepulp.mp4 /]

As before, credit where credit is due:

Links for April 18th through April 22nd

Sometime between April 18th and April 22nd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Sports fans are weird!: The strangest sports tradition I've heard of leads to probably the best lead in of any article I'll read today: "Throwing the octopus is easy. More difficult is concealing the eight-legged creature until the toss is at hand, a skill that requires determination, luck and the ability to walk normally with 4 pounds of slimy cephalopod stuffed down your pants."
  • When Worlds Collide: Spock Confronts the Ultimate Challenge: A six-page mini-comic prequel to the new Star Trek film, from May's Wired magazine (guest-edited by J.J. Abrams).
  • Talk Like Shakespeare Day: "In recognition of Shakespeare's 445th Birthday, this Thursday, April 23, 2009, will be Talk Like Shakespeare Day. Shakespeare is a part of our everyday lives. He coined more than 1,700 words still in use in modern English and his plays influence the way we think about the world we live in. Get in on the act!"
  • Doe v. Fortuny: Seattle’s Jason Fortuny (aka RFJason) ordered to pay nearly $75,000 for Craigslist sex ad prank: For the background, see Waxy's summary of the incident originally posted in 2006 when the actual incident happened, with multiple updates since then. The main link and Waxy's summary are both SFW, but many of the links from Waxy's post are NSFW. This was one of the most disgusting things I've seen someone do online, and I'm happy to see this judgement come down. Of course, this was only one person's suit against Jason — now that a precedent has been set, will more victims come forward?
  • It Was a Dark and Silly Night: Gahan Wilson Meets Neil Gaiman: "…we have some new work by Gahan Wilson: he illustrated this short animated adaptation (directed by Steven-Charles Jaffe) of 'It Was a Dark and Silly Night,' a story by Neil Gaiman, the author of (among many, many other works) 'Coraline.'"

The Narcissism Epidemic

Continuing on the theme I started babbling about in The End of Empathy comes this Newsweek article asking, Are We In a Narcissism Epidemic?:

Perhaps, one day, we will say that the recession saved us from a parenting ethos that churns out ego-addled spoiled brats. And though it is too soon to tell if our economic free fall will cure America of its sense of economic privilege, it has made it much harder to get the money together to give our kids six-figure sweet-16 parties and plastic surgery for graduation presents, all in the name of “self esteem.” And that’s a good thing, because as Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell point out in their excellent book “The Narcissism Epidemic,” released last week, we’ve built up the confidence of our kids, but in that process, we’ve created a generation of hot-house flowers puffed with a disproportionate sense of self-worth (the definition of narcissism) and without the resiliency skills they need when Mommy and Daddy can’t fix something.

[…]

But no matter how you were raised, the handiest cure for narcissism used to be life. Whether through fate, circumstances or moral imperative, our culture kept hubris in check. Now, we encourage it. […] Well, you may need a supersize ego to win “America’s Next Top Model” or to justify your multimillion dollar bonus. But last I checked, most of our lives don’t require all that attitude. Treating the whole world as if it works for you doesn’t suggest you’re special, it means you’re an ass.

Ranking the Star Trek Films

After having spent much of the past few weeks working my way through the Star Trek film series, this is how I rank them, best to worst. Obviously, this is my personal ranking. Feel free to disagree.

  1. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
  2. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
  3. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
  4. Star Trek: First Contact
  5. Star Trek: The Motion Picture
  6. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
  7. Star Trek: Generations
  8. Star Trek: Nemesis
  9. Star Trek: Insurrection
  10. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

The #1 and #2 spots are tough, very nearly a tie — and probably where I’ll get the most disagreement — but for me, that’s how they stack up. As good as TWoK is, the combination of the underlying theme of recognizing and overcoming racism and prejudice, and Christopher Plummer’s gleeful scenery chewing, Shakespeare-quoting, bolted-in-eyepatch General Chang (“Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!”) make TUD work for me. Some of this may be that I saw TUD in theaters, which I was too young to do with TWoK, and I have very fond memories of the theater erupting in cheers watching the Enterprise and Excelsior hammer Chang’s Bird of Prey into oblivion — that scene still gets my blood pumping when I watch it.

(Plus, while I know he’s done something like six million other things, I love that General Chang and Captain Von Trapp from The Sound of Music are the same actor.)

Read more

The End of Empathy

This may be a little rambling and disjointed, but hey, that’s one of the benefits of a personal blog with a relatively light readership, right? A few loosely connected threads have been running through my brain, and while I’m not likely to be able to weave them into anything resembling a gorgeous tapestry, I might be able to produce something akin to a kindergarten “my first cross stitch” project.

How’s that for a tortured metaphor?

Item 1: Neighbors

As much as Prairie and I like where we live — we’ve got a nice apartment, in a nice complex, in a fairly pretty area of Washington, in the Kent Valley right next to the Green River and lots of farmland, with easy access to the Green River Trail and frequently gorgeous views of Mt. Rainier — we have neighbors who drive us up the wall with noise. We’ve made a number of attempts to find a solution (first personally, then through the rental office, and occasionally with the assistance of the local police), but the issues continue.

As we’ve discussed it, we keep coming back to the conclusion that on a very real level, the people around us simply don’t care about anything outside of themselves. Where we recognize that we live in an apartment complex and, out of common courtesy, take steps to live quietly and not impact on our neighbors any more than can be reasonably expected when living in an apartment complex, they act as if they have no idea that there’s anyone around them. Rock Band parties, loud music, shouting and yelling, little to no consideration for what time of night it is, etc.

It’s not that they don’t know that what they do might be (and often is) annoying to the people around them, it’s just that they don’t think about it at all. There’s no point when they realize that they might be getting a little loud and perhaps they should tone it down. There’s no concept of how they might be impacting their neighbors. Back when we used to think that being good neighbors and politely talking to them might make a difference, I’d get (privately) frustrated how they’d all wide-eyed and innocently tell us that they were not trying to bother us…but it never clicked that it would be good if they tried not to bother other people.

In short: no empathy, no acknowledgement of other people around them.

(And this little rant doesn’t even go into the number of “boom cars” that cruise through the parking lot at all hours of the day and night….)

Item 2: Jason Fortuny and Troll Culture

I’m not sure if the following is so much a lack of empathy as it is a near psychopathic anti-empathy, but the rise of modern ‘trolling‘ found a poster child in 2006 in Jason Fortuny, a local prankster and troll who conceived and executed the notorious Craigslist Sex Prank, in which he posted a fake sex ad on Craigslist, collected the hundreds of responses he got, and proceeded to post them publicly and in their entirety, complete with any identifying information (e-mail addresses, names, numbers, pictures, etc.) that had been included. I just found out a couple hours ago that one of the pranks victims sued Fortuny, and last week was awarded a nearly $75,000 judgement. This (the judgement) is a good thing.

Item 3: We Live in Public (and the End of Empathy)

Yesterday, Cygnoir linked to this article by Jason Calacanis from January, where he dives headlong into this lack of empathy and links it to our ever-increasing dependence on the digital world, and how a generation that has grown up with most of their contact with other people being through the digital medium are failing to develop that empathic sense of the actual person on the other end of the bitstream. It’s a long post, and well worth reading, but I’m going to pull out a couple of excerpts here.

From “Godwin’s Law Meets Harris’ Law”:

Digital communications is a wonderful thing–at least at the start. Everyone participating in digital communities is eventually introduced to Godwin’s Law: At some point, a participant, or more typically his or her thinking, will be compared to the Nazis. But that’s only part of the breakdown. Eventually, you see the effect of what I’ll call Harris’ Law: At some point, all humanity in an online community is lost, and the goal becomes to inflict as much psychological suffering as possible on another person.

Harris’ Law took effect last year when Abraham Biggs killed himself in front of a live webcam audience on life-streaming service JustinTV. The audience’s role? They encouraged him to do it.

Harris’ law took effect in October of 2006, when Lori Drew, a grown woman, created a fake alias on MySpace (”Josh Evans”) in order to psychologically torture 14-year-old Megan Meier. Drew started a online love affair with Megan as “Evans” before pulling the rug out and viciously turning on her victim. This “cyber-bullying,” as the press likes to call it, resulted in Megan killing herself.

Harris’ Law took effect in October of last year when Choi Jin-sil killed herself, reportedly over the fallout from Internet rumors. The bullying in Korea has become so intense that you’re now required to use your Social Security Number to sign up for a social network. This lack of anonymity is one of the most enlightened things I’ve heard of from one of the most advanced–if not the most advanced–Internet communities in the world.

Ownership of one’s behavior? Who knew?!?!?

I’m sure some of the wacky Internet contingents will flame me for saying that anonymity is a bad thing, but the fact is that anonymous environments create the environments in which Godwin’s and Harris’ Laws apply. What’s the point of starting these communities if they eventually end in pain and suffering? Anonymity is overrated in my book.

From “Internet Asperger’s Syndrome (IAS)”:

I’ve come to recognize a new disorder, the underlying cause of Harris’ Law. This disease affects people when their communication moves to digital, and the emotional cues of face-to-face interaction–including tone, facial expression and the so called “blush response”–are lost (More: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FxwHfoWdS8 ).

In this syndrome, the afflicted stops seeing the humanity in other people. They view individuals as objects, not individuals. The focus on repetitive behaviors–checking email, blogging, twittering and retiring andys–combines with an inability to feel empathy and connect with people.

[…] In IAS, screen names and avatars shift from representing people to representing characters in a video game. Our 2600’s and 64’s have trained us to pound these characters into submission in order to level up. We look at bloggers, people on Twitter andpodcasters not as individuals, but as challenges–in some cases, “bosses”–that we must crush to make it to the next phase.

From “What’s at Stake?”:

Today, we’re destroying each other with words, but teaching ourselves to objectify individuals and to identify with aggressors will result in more than psychological violence. This behavior will find its way into the real world, like it did when Wayne Forrester murdered his wife Emma over a change in herFacebook status, from married to single.

It’s only a matter of time, sadly, until this loss of empathy will hit the real world. We’re training ourselves to destroy other people, and there’s a generation growing up with this in their DNA. They don’t remember a world when communications were primarily in the real world.

So what?

So what’s the point of all this? Well, aside from the obvious conclusion of Jason’s piece — “In summary, how we treat each other does matter. It matters because, without empathy, our lives are shallow, self-centered and meaningless.” — I’m really not sure.

I do believe, though, that this is a real problem. I see too much evidence of this lack of empathy and consideration for others, too many instances of “it’s all about me,” both online and off. From internet trolls like Jason to people on a bike path who will continue to ride side by side, forcing other people off the trail, because it’s more important to continue their conversation than to share the space. From neighbors who feel Rock Band isn’t any good unless it’s played at the volume of a rock concert to people who hide behind anonymous handles to post hateful messages attacking others.

People sometimes wonder why I don’t try to be more anonymous online, why I blog under my real name, especially as it’s something that has caused me problems in the past. Some of the reasoning goes back to my “Own Yourself” post (itself triggered by Anil Dash’s “Privacy Through Identity Control” post), but some of it is this very issue.

I don’t want to hide, or be perceived as hiding, what I think, say, and believe, through an online pseudonym. This is what and who I am, this is what I believe. Sometimes I’ve believed some stupid things that I’ve later changed my mind on, sometimes I’ve done some stupid things that I’ve had to take my lumps for, but it’s all me. Perhaps, in some small (and quite possibly futile) way, I’m hoping that being open and honest about myself will, in some cases and for some people, humanize me more than would be the case if I stuck to ‘djwudi’.

I think, perhaps, that anonymity hurts those who practice it as much as it protects them. Hiding behind a pseudonym with no real view of who the real person is dehumanizes yourself, encouraging others to see you as something less than a real person, and leading you open to attack. Perhaps for some that’s an acceptable risk — I can see a whole long debate about whether the dehumanization of anonymity is more or less dangerous than the openness of a real identity, and I’m certainly something of a poster child for the risks of blogging under a real name (though I’d still argue that my case is more one of blogging foolishly under my real name) — but for me, it’s not. To quote one of the great philosophers of our time, “I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam,” and I’m standing by that.

The End (Such As It Is)

And now that I’ve gone completely off the rails (hey, what ever happened to that thread/sewing metaphor?)…yeah, empathy. Have some. Please? Think about the people around you, both in the real world and in this online bitbucket. I don’t care how cheezy it sounds, or what you might think of the source document, but the Golden Rule of “do unto others as you’d have done unto you” really isn’t such a bad thing, now is it?

Now if we can just convince our neighbors of this….

Norwescon 32 Wrapup

It took roughly a week to get here, but really, I don’t figure that’s too bad, given my usual photowhoreish ways. Trust me, if I’d been employed (i can haz job now, plz? kthkxbye) it would have taken a lot longer than a week.

Still and all, just a few minutes ago, the last of my shots from Norwescon made it up to Flickr. There are three sets, one each for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and, of course, there are many more pictures from other attendees in the Norwescon Flickr group.

Thursday

Weapon Policy, Norwescon 32

Thursday was a nice, low-key start. I hadn’t actually figured on going at all on Thursday this year, but seeing as how I have a lot more free time than usual right now, I figured I might as well swing by. I dropped Prairie off at work in the morning so I could have the car, and headed over to the hotel about noon. Thursday definitely feels like the “slow day” of the ‘con, and I didn’t end up taking very many pictures. Mostly just wandered around, checked things out, poked my head into a panel or two, and that was it. Five o’clock rolled around and I bailed out to go get Prairie from work and head home.

Friday

Group Shot, Steampunk Fashion Show, Norwescon 32

Friday I arrived just in time for my one planned ‘event’ of the day, the Steampunk Fashion Show, hosted by the devious minds behind the upcoming Steamcon. Lots of great outfits! Unfortunately, I felt like I was struggling a bit with the photos, as the lighting in the ballroom was horrid. I still managed to at least get decent shots of nearly everyone who made it onstage, so it’s not a failure at all…I’m just my own harshest critic, as always.

After the fashion show it was back to wandering, grabbing a few shots of hall costumes, and sitting in on a couple of panels. I jokingly tweeted that the “What is Goth?” panel turned into “Hey, we’re not at the clubs and can hear each other without yelling!”…which wasn’t entirely untrue, as there was much amusement that nearly everyone in the room already knew each other to some degree from the scene. We did manage to turn it into more of a discussion about how people found the goth scene, how it’s changed over the years, and where it may be going as the ‘elder goths’ give way to a new generation.

Seven o’clock was my self-imposed curfew that night, so out the door I went to rest at home and ensure that I’d have as much energy as possible for the next day.

Saturday

Jack and Lilly, Norwescon 32

This was the big day: rolling in around noon, rolling out whenever I was exhausted and had to disappear before I fell over. No panels for me today, Saturday is all about the costumes — and as always, such incredible costumes!

Featured above is one of my three favorites from this year. I’ve long blamed thanked Ridley Scott’s 1985 fantasy movie Legend, and specifically the scene where Darkness tempts Lilly with food, dance, and that incredible dress, for being one of my first proto-goth influences. I have absolutely no compunctions at admitting that as soon as I saw Jack and Lilly wandering around, I got a total con-crush on her!

My other two favorite outfits: Firefly/Senrenity’s Wash, impaled on the ship support beam and sporting a “Screw You, Whedon” sign; and the bounty hunter sporting Jar-Jar Binks’ head on a pike.

Screw You, Whedon, Norwescon 32 Jar Jar Hunter, Norwescon 32

Since I’ve been running the @norwescon Twitter account, at the suggestion of @empsfm, I’d kinda-sorta-not-very-competently organized a joint ‘tweetup’ for @norwescon, @empsfm, and @seattlegeekly. Since I hadn’t even thought ahead enough to have some sort of sign announcing our presence, a few people couldn’t find us, and it ended up being kind of sparsely attended, but I still had a good time chatting with Shannon and Matt from Seattle Geekly, @ghouligan (Barry), and @jacinda. Sorry to anyone who missed us, I’ll do better at this whole “organizing” thing next year!

After the tweetup and another few hours of hall costume hunting, it came time to stake out my spot for the post-Masquerade photo area. There’s always a limited amount of space and a lot of people who want to take pictures, so I’ve found that it’s best to start hovering in the lobby area around 6pm-ish. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before the t-shirt vendor started packing up and the official photography team started setting things up. My (not-so-)nefarious plan worked, and I was able to get a choice spot just left of the centerline behind the official photographers’ line of chairs.

And there I stood for the next three hours, as costume after costume paraded in front of us. So much great work on them all, from the hall costumes that were shanghai’d into posing to the Masquerade entrants posing for us after their time on stage. Of course, three hours is a long time to stand in one place and hold a camera up, so once the final Masquerade costume made it through, I stumbled away to sit and recover for a bit.

After some time to regain feeling in my arm, I started wandering, and spent some time running around with artvixn, helix90, and their friend Nell, who were on a quest to visit some of the hall parties. We made a swing through the Merchants of Deva party, then they all went off to find a rumored scotch tasting while I went down to the Saturday Night Hoedown, as I knew I had to drive home in a bit (oh, and I’m a total wuss drinker) and didn’t have much interest in the scotch.

The Hoedown kicked off (a little late, but I believe that’s par for the course), the floor filled pretty quickly, and I spent a good hour or so making laps around the outside of the dance floor with my camera. It wasn’t terribly long, though, before I really started to realize just how tired I was, and decided it was time to head home. Not long after midnight, then, I packed up, took one last look at the revelers, and bade another Norwescon goodnight.