jenk

Going to Norwescon? Here's when the music panels & workshops are happening!!

Thursday
Home Recording I
Cascade 13
3–4 p.m.
Everybody wants to make a music demo, and many want to record podcasts or livestream a show. What can you do with what you’ve got? If that won’t do—and it probably won’t—what do you really need to create a good demo or show? How little can you get away with; or, if you have even a small budget, what can you do to turn a spare bedroom into decent recording space? Hardware and software solutions are discussed.
Dara Korra’ti (M), Alexander James Adams

What the Frak Is Filk?
Cascade 11
5–6 p.m.
The oldest form of geekmusic at SF conventions is a branch-off from folk called “filk.” It has an intentionally open and deeply participatory culture, and isn’t just folk-derived, despite the origins. This panel is your introduction to fandom’s oldest tradition of participatory geekmusic. Come on out and play!
Stephanie Weippert (M), Wednesday Phoenix

Not a music panel, but there will be Karaoke in Evergreen 3&4 starting at 8pm, and concerts in Grand 3 starting at 9pm!

Thursday Night Open Filk
Evergreen 3&4
11 p.m.–2 a.m.
This is where you can come sing or play whatever you want, alone or with friends; to the most supportive crowd you will ever run into ever, anywhere. Seriously, you have no idea. Bring your instrument, bring your voice, and put some of that participation into participatory culture!
(This will be in Evergreen for the one night *only*, after Karaoke.)


Friday
Mad Libs Filk
Evergreen 3&4
noon–1 p.m.
Filk in the blanks. Our pros will take words from the audience and plug them into existing filk songs. The results are sure to be as far flung as the imaginations of the participants.
Jen K (M)

Concerts will happen starting at 2pm in Grand 3!! Check it out!!

It’s All About You (Without It Being At All About You)
Cascade 7&8
5–6 p.m.
Independent musicians, writers, and artists can all now be their own labels, their own imprints, their own galleries. But in the modern era how do you, a tiny fish, get noticed in the sea of information and other stage-grabbing attention whores like yourself? What if you’re just really bad at that? Some of our independent musicians, writers, and artists talk about being heard on the internet stage.
Stephanie Weippert (M), Raven Oak, Alexander James Adams, Shubzilla

Friday Night Open Filk
Grand 2
11:30 p.m.–2 a.m.
Come celebrate the culmination of Friday Filkfest by filking the night away! This is where you can come sing or play whatever you want, alone or with friends, to the most supportive crowd you will ever run into ever anywhere. Seriously, you have no idea. Bring your instrument, bring your voice, and put some of that participation into participatory culture!

Saturday
Sea Shanties Sing-A-Long
Evergreen 3&4
noon–1 p.m.
We’re going out to C! Or sea? BOTH, when it’s sea shanties! Come fill your lungs like bellowing sails and sing along to some favorite songs used on ships for work and entertainment. Don’t know the difference between a capstan and a haul shanty? That’s okay; we’ll show you the ropes!
Jessica F. Hebert (M)

Concerts will also be happening Saturday afternoon! Check it out!

How Big a Fish Do You Need to Be?
Cascade 9
2–3 p.m.
You’re an independent writer. You’re an independent musician. You’re an independent artist. You make indie games. How big do you need to be to make a sustainable living? The traditional track to success has involved the large imprints and labels, but that’s not working so well anymore, particularly not for musicians. Is there a way forward? Come listen to our independent creatives talk about forging new paths in their industries.
Jonny Nero Action Hero (M), Stephanie Weippert, Dara Korra’ti, Alexander James Adams

Songwriting 101
Cascade 11
4–5 p.m.
Come one and all, and bring ideas! We’ll work on creating a song in the panel!
Jessica F. Hebert (M), Dara Korra’ti

Find Your Instrument
Evergreen 1&2
6–7 p.m.
Have you ever wondered how people figure out what kind of musical instrument they want to play? Several of our pros have volunteered to bring their instruments and introduce them to people. This is a hands-on workshop; after an introduction of the instruments, participants will be able to try out various instruments, and be given brief introductions on how to play them, by their owners. This panel is aimed at teens and adults; kids are welcome, but must be of an age and attitude appropriate to handle other peoples’ musical instruments!
Dara Korra’ti (M), Wednesday Phoenix, Norman K. Moss

Saturday Night Open Filk
Grand 3
midnight–3 a.m.
It’s the last open filk of Norwescon 40! After you’ve partied around a bit, and after the concerts are over, come sing or play whatever you want, alone or with friends, to the most supportive crowd you will ever run into ever, anywhere. Bring your instrument, bring your voice, and put some of that participation into participatory culture!

Sunday
Geekmusic in the Wild
Cascade 9
1–2 p.m.
Where do you find this stuff? How do you get there? Where is it being played, when you’re not at Norwescon? Want to see your kind of music, live, when you’re not here? Our panelists talk about the venues and events that support different kinds of geek-friendly music.
Hollyanna McCollom (M), Stephanie Weippert, Christian Lipski, Wednesday Phoenix

Home Recording II
Cascade 9
2–3 p.m.
Everybody wants to make a demo, and many want to record podcasts or livestream a show. Okay, you have some equipment. Now what do you do with it? How do you set it up; how do you use it to capture or create the best sounds you can? If you didn’t make the first hour; that’s okay, come anyway.
Dara Korra’ti (M), Alexander James Adams, Christian Lipski

Allergies: possibly calming down? Just Allegra yesterday.

Music to make a coworker double-take: Cello Wars by The Piano Guys.

Done today: Voted for Spokane in 2015 Worldcon site selection. Requires being a member of WorldCom 2013 and $40 for your 2015 supporting membership. Mail-in ballots need to arrive by Aug 18, so I'm not quite late but close.

Wonderful, good music, good fun. Yay for days off. *snore*

From a survey of Star Trek fandom

A whopping 79% responded that they participated because of the ideals of Star Trek and the bonding such ideals created with friends and within fandom overall, that they felt a stronger attraction to the messages of community and activism or to fandom culture over the Trek franchise.
[...]
“I think the world will always need Star Trek as an example of what a better world will be and what we can do as individuals to further the dream. I think there are very few humans who believe we are alone in the universe and we hope the First Contact will lead to that dream. I think the talents of the writers of science fiction from Isaac Assimov to Harlon Ellison, Ray Bradberry combined with the vision of Gene Rodenberry have opened our minds and hearts to individual responsibilty, cultural morality and technical achievements.”

It's about the dream.

We are a strange society. Grown men attend a football game in subzero temperatures, strip to the waist and paint themselves the colors of their chosen team, chanting and dancing in their seats, and we shrug and call them "fans." But a man dons chainmail for a weekend among fellow medieval-fantasy fans and we call him dysfunctional. Presumably intelligent women strip naked and irradiate themselves in a box to darken their skin, and we shrug. But a woman tightens herself into an authentic Victorian corset dress for a steampunk convention, and this is "abnormal." — TVGeek: SyFy Disses the American Geek

Thanks to dakiwiboid for the link. :)

The online registration page at http://conflikt.org/ now allows buying brunch tickets as well con memberships. If you pre-registered at Conflikt 1, brunch tickets weren't available then. Yes, there is a limit to the number of people they can serve, so if you want to do that now is a good time to buy your brunch ticket :)

If you haven't heard, Conflikt 2 features:

Guest of Honor: Seanan McGuire
Toastmaster: Frank Hayes
Interfilk Guest:Lawrence Dean

...plus other performances by various musical talents (I've heard good rumors, but read conflikt for official info).

You can also check whether you're registered at http://conflikt.org/members.php

• 11:57 Got to see the Heinlein Society copy of Heinlein's 1976 GoH speech. Nice end to my con.
• 12:35 Dealers' room has inflatable Dalek with con badge "A. Dalek". :)
• 13:25 Packed & waiting for the airport shuttle at the hyatt, with view of the other hyatt.
• 13:46 On the shuttle with a bunch of other fen.
• 13:51 Seven fen. Four Prius owners. Wonder if it's a typical ratio.
• 14:44 Restroom is also labeled a tornado shelter. Er, right.
• 15:48 Supposed to board in 1 minute & our plane is still circling.
• 16:19 Plane is at gate. Ground crew is busy. Supposed to delay Seattle arrival by 10 minutes.
• 20:20 Window seat on the way back. Saw a dam on the Columbia, my office building, etc.
• 20:24 The peaks of Adams & Rainier were poking up above the clouds. Passed right by Rainier. Gorgeous.

Automatically copied from http://www.twitter.com/jenk3 via LoudTwitter cause it's easy :)

Friday morning I was pleased that the new bag worked as I thought it would: I'd packed an outfit for Friday in one of the side compartments & put toiletries in the other. The vast majority of my clothes stayed folded in the center compartment. I even got the computer out from under the stack with no worries. Even having the separate CPAP bag didn't drive me nuts. It was kind of a bonus to be able to pull out the CPAP without digging through clothes. (CPAP's bag is padded, but when it's not in its bag, I pad it with clothes. This is fine if I'm unpacking anyway, but a pain if I'm not.)

We were on the road around 9 or 10ish with native guide skydancer at the wheel. Found the hotel with little trouble and got checked in. The lobby, bar, and restaurant were all standard "hotel", but the hallways upstairs were ... well, see photo at right. My first impression was the twisty maze of passages in the department store basement where Rose first met the Doctor. But no, it wasn't concrete, it was light blue and sandy-striped wallpaper that somehow looked dingy and concrete-like. Strange. This picture at the right is of the party floor, but every floor I saw was like that.

vixyish compared the rooms to Ikea, and yes, there was birch and laminate. It also had a bit of a Japanese feel to it, especially the sinks. (No, I didn't take my camera. Flickr is my friend.) The picture at left is the same layout as the one I shared with jw1776 & skydancer, but it's actually zyxwvut's room during the eric_in_elevatr party. (I'm the one twittering on the bed in purple tie-dye and shorts.)

For me was mostly a music and socializing con. jw1776 was doing the "Let's Make A Movie" track. skydancer did a lot of music too and was also an extra in the movie.

Some of my con highlights:

• Dinner and catching up with Aahz
• Dinner with skydancer's brother
• Jeff & Maya Bonhoff's concert (I have CDs now, yay!)
• Tres Gique's concert
• Vixy & Tony's concert
• Avalon Rising's concert (I have another CD now). Kristoph sang "Wild Thing" with Cat doing the "da duh da duhhhh" guitar part on violin. I die happy now.
• Seanan's concert. gaaneden was drawn into the concert (I guess she walked by at a lucky time?) and afterward told me to get runnerwolf to bring Seanan up for norwescon next year. I replied "I don't know if she's coming for Norwes, but she's GOH at next year's Conflikt".
• Eric in the Elevator party. I hadn't seen most of elphie's bits before, including the Kum-Bah-Yah fun.
• Listening in the filk circles
• Watching the debut of "Cult of the Giant Brain"
• Chatting (briefly) with lenniersd

There was also a fire alarm, which turned out to be a false alarm, around 1AM Friday night / Saturday morning. We were most definitely NOT pleased. Fortunately it was only one false alarm with only one apology. It would also have been nice if the hotel had communicated (say, at check-in?) that wifi and wired access would be removed from our hotel bill before checkout. Fortunately I discovered that through word-of-mouth.

Finally, I am compelled by ZOMG TEH CUTE! to link to these costumes: Little Pink Vader & Cyberboy Enjoy!

The Stranger's book column talks Norwescon this week. (For non-locals, The Stranger is the free weekly that originated Savage Love.)

Seattle has had a prominent book festival for over three decades, and for the last quarter century it's also hosted a world-famous, prestigious awards ceremony. If you consider yourself a reader and you didn't know about this festival already, it's probably due to your narrow tastes: it's devoted to science fiction and fantasy.

I like his description of the Philip K. Dick awards:

[A]n annual ceremony dedicated to celebrating a "distinguished original science-fiction paperback published for the first time during the award year in the USA." Unlike most book awards, the PKD Awards almost always single out an excellent book.

I'm not sure how having Norwescon on Easter Weekend is "sacrilegious" (or what's all that odd about a Joss Whedon sing-a-long or Hobbit Country Dancing) but hey, there *IS* a full moon tonight... ;)

( From con to mundane )

Yes, I went to my first filk con this weekend, largely to be support person for skydancer. Determined I need to learn more sound tech to be really helpful - I was fine for general setup and teardown, but didn't know, say, which mikes are better for which voice or instrument or how to position them, or how to run the board. Which meant Friday was a very long day for skydancer as editing and mixing for brunch bonus CD followed dinner followed concerts followed recording for brunch bonus CD. I was able to convince him to let me take over duplicating the CDs on Saturday during & right after brunch. He'd found a nifty solution for labels - CD blanks that are coated with an ink-absorbing substance so that we could print the labels right onto the CDs. The printing was pretty fast too - 80-some CDs in less than 3 hours of 1 printer printing, two laptops burning, and me shoveling CDs into cases.

I also danced, laughed, sang along, crocheted, and managed to bring home 10 CDs, despite somehow not grabbing a brunch CD ... shaddup ....

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Monday I didn't do much; I avoided snow silliness & caught up on laundry by working from home. Yay VPN. Also have been reading con reports in conflikt.

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jw1776 is not feeling well and will likely be working OT later this week...poor darlin'.

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Unlike her namesake, Rosie the roomba can slip right under the bed. Not just any bed, mind you, but the very heavy king-size cabinet-headboard bed of God custom-designed by sar_anon. Previously I had to move the mattress and box springs to vacuum under the thing. Hail Rosie, long may she putter along picking up particles.

I also figured out how to clean Rosie's innards, which is useful.

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I am waaay behind in the LordPeter mailing list discussion of Gaudy Night. Pooh.

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Several people I met at Conflikt added me recently. Hope you enjoy what I post - if not, no worries :)