I've been eagerly awaiting tltrent's book "The Unnaturalists", and it looks like it's finally been announced:



Steampunk and parazoology sound like a darn good combination to me, but then I've been a fan of her writing since the first Hallowmere book.

I can only assume that she feels as excited as I do when I've released a new slapstick video out into the wild :)

That's right, I'm not dead yet. I just haven't felt like journalling at all in months - my creativity and ability to string words together has been darn near zero.

But sometimes, going through my old work will inspire me a bit. To that end, here's a video walkthrough of the video game level I designed - an addon for Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge, a game still available for play on Mac, Windows, and Linux via the Aleph One game engine.

Designing game levels is fun... and doing something I haven't done in years may be just what I needed to stretch my muscles a bit!

Sometimes, I'll put on a song, and a little electric thrill will build inside me and shoot through my skin and scalp unexpectedly. ELO's "Twilight", Jeff Wayne's "Thunderchild", and Jarre's "Fourth Rendez-vous" are all repeat offenders. Today, the Eagles' "Journey of the Sorcerer" in its full-length incarnation grabbed my nervous system that way. I haven't really listened to it in years outside of a Hitchhiker's Guide context, and I'd forgotten how it can take me away from everything for just a few seconds.

I have a soul that was built for fantasy trips, it seems.

Okay, huge gap between the last SoDW and this one. This is mainly because I really didn't like this episode at all. The villains' main characteristics were that they farted and giggled constantly, and the plotline itself seemed silly and self-indulgent on the part of the writer. (Oh, had I only known.) But in no particular order, let's look at some of the scientific and technical details of the two-parter.

UNIT's website can order UK military submarines to launch missiles; and the password is "buffalo" - a seven-character word, one found in English computer spellcheck dictionaries. From an Internet security standpoint, this password is pretty much like leaving the keys to your house in your mailbox, hidden among ten or twelve other keys: it's not going to slow anyone down for long. Even "buff@l0" would be better, and "Buff@l0h3rds" better still; the latter is like hiding the key in your mailbox among several thousand other keys. Most burglars would quickly give up and move on. (Hope you remember which key's yours!) No wonder that the UNIT brass in the episode were so quickly neutralized, if their security is this sloppy.

The idea of a U.N. website being able to tell a UK submarine to launch a missile on seconds' notice is not any better. Imagine someone, upon gaining entry into your house with that mailbox key, being able to give your local police unquestioned orders to start arresting local citizens - without warrant - from your phone line. If you're the mayor, you might maybe be able to get away with that briefly; but the U.N. certainly isn't the mayor of the U.K. It has to go begging hat-in-hand to the British government just to get a few thousand troops at a time. Of course, in the 1970s, the world had trusted UNIT with the launch codes for its nuclear weapons as an insurance policy, so perhaps the world's militaries are still doing the same in 2005...

The Slitheen plan is, as happens so often in alien invasions, crap. Earth's nukes in 2005 could certainly make the planet uninhabitable, but wouldn't really convert the entire surface to a 'radioactive cinder'. The contaminated soil, rock, and water would make lousy spaceship fuel: we already understand well what materials make good fuel for reaction engines, and can make keen guesses at the needs of faster-than-light engines. Converting the planet to antimatter would make more sense if one's looking to power space battleships and cruise liners, but our nukes certainly wouldn't do that.

As it is, our nuclear reactors produce radioactive waste that isn't really of much use. Some of it goes into superdense armor and projectiles for our war machines (and that has its own problems), but there's no fueling problem this waste would solve that other material doesn't solve better. And how annoying for the Slitheen is it going to be to mine, process, and ship the radioactive soil from Earth? They sure won't be using us as slave labor: we're all dead.

The big problem with alien invasions is that almost anything the aliens could possibly want from us is just as easy, if not easier, to get elsewhere. It would be like flying to Paris and taking on a couple of squads of their police for the privilege of mugging a little old lady for a bag of hot dog buns. Someone (maybe the "Predators" of movie fame) might find that entertaining, I suppose, but it's just not necessary.

The Slitheen insist they'd become ridiculously rich from the sales - why not invest a little, and buy the lion's share of the Earth's nukes, then use them on some easy-to-harvest asteroids? I bet the Russians would gladly rid themselves of some of their useless warheads, especially in trade for high technology they could market to the rest of us or convert into more practical weapons for Earth conquest.

Moving on: late in the two-parter, the Doctor gives Mickey a CD-ROM that will erase all mention of him from the Internet. That's fine, except a virus that will work equally well on all the different operating systems currently composing the Internet would be a nice trick, and sure wouldn't do much to offline digital and hardcopy storage. Future episodes suggest that it didn't work anyway, so the Doctor may have overreached himself. It would almost have been more convincing if he had zapped Mickey's cable modem with his sonic screwdriver and declared, "I'm no longer recorded in Earth's computer network." (Well, no… not really.)

Lastly, something I've discussed elsewhere but care to repeat here. The fictional United Nations Intelligence Taskforce was introduced to Doctor Who in the 1970s, back when SF writers still seemed to think it would be more productive for the human race to work together on world-threatening issues. Writer Russell Davies killed its senior staff in this episode, potentially implying the end of the organization (to be replaced by Torchwood, perhaps). However, it later reappeared as the "Unified" Intelligence Taskforce, with Davies claiming the the real U.N. had written him and asked for the change.

Now, the U.N. has been portrayed in fiction since its beginnings, often very unflatteringly. (In Rapture storytelling, it often becomes a tyrannical world dictatorship, for example.) The idea that after thirty-five years, someone at the U.N. suddenly objected to the organization's positive portrayal on a slightly cheesy SF series astounds me. I find it far, far more plausible that RTD just didn't like the idea of UNIT - wanting to switch to a more British organization - and for his own reasons chose this story to support the change. But I suppose we will never know for sure, and it's canon now… until the next retcon.

EDIT: Actually, I just had a thought about the change: perhaps there is some weird copyright on potential merchandising of UNIT emblems, toys, and such by the BBC. This still sounds shaky… the Japanese are still labeling Macross toys 'U.N. Spacy' (space army), and I'd not think I'd have to ask Germany's permission to market a "German Army Toy Soldier", but international copyright is a strange thing. I could imagine it would be just easier to market the Unified toys without having to give the U.N. a cut, or a preview, or whatever. I'd probably believe this story if they tried it on me.

Next time: a superior episode in every way. EX-TER-MIN-ATE!

Some of my fellow geeks seem surprised when they learn I'm happy that Android phones are doing so well. But even though I'm using an iPhone now, I'd prefer that it be a difficult choice; I may like Apple products, but I want there to always be someone out there that keeps them innovating, refining, and generally working hard to convince me that they should keep my business. There was a bad period in the nineties when Apple computers were beginning to... well, 'suck' is probably too strong a word, though plenty of folks used it. Now that the company's doing so well, I'd hate to see them get lazy again.

So if you have an Android phone, and you really like it, I think that's awesome and I won't try especially hard to evangelize you. Don't let them get lazy on you, either :)

Slice 1 lb. chicken breasts into slices 1/4 - 1/3 inch thick.

Place in a Ziploc bag with 1/2 cup of peanut sauce. Mix the contents well.

Seal the bag and marinade chicken in fridge for 20 minutes.

Place chicken slices on roasting pan and cook in a 375 degree oven for about six minutes or until chicken is cooked through but tender.

Serve over Thai noodles in more peanut sauce, or rice, or whatever.

Best part? I didn't get this recipe from anywhere. I made it up tonight off the top of my head; and Starr says it's *excellent*.

Start in 1993. Take some anime fans who've just found an awkward, stilted translation of the script for one of their favorite flicks. Add some expensive non-linear editing equipment that one of the fans was pretty good with. Throw in an evening's recording session in an echoey downstairs rec room, and I give you: The "Project: EDEN" Fandub! (Well, clips of it, anyway. And, SPOILER, they do give away the ending.)



Some of the fun stuff: none of the voice actors seemed to be able to pronounce "URDAS" (the Eastern Bloc-styled colony) the same way twice. In some of our early takes, David Arthur's redneck accent was so thick, we thought we might still have to subtitle him. I spent days trying to figure out that the script we'd obtained kept saying "three-level bug" when it meant "trilobite". Professor Wattsman's squeaky voice nearly wiped out my throat for the evening.

Honestly, the best voice actors that night had to be Jerry Conner, Beth Lipes, and Cindy Arthur (now Jenkins). Good thing we made them our leads. Jerry did an incredible job editing together what he had to work with, and I think we all gained new respect for those eighties anime dubbers who were just trying to end up with something intelligible on a limited budget.

My enforced vacation from work brings some good news: some personal projects have moved much farther forward in the last month. I finally repaired Thunderchild, made progress on a video project, reorganized bookshelves in the bedroom and living room, and now I've finished a pair of games sitting in my collection since 2004: "Star Trek: Elite Force 2" and "Star Wars: Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast". (Yeah, I really burn through the games, huh? This is why, despite my love for a good computer game, I don't buy them very often.)



"Elite Force 2" is the second game where you take on the role of leader of Voyager's Hazard Team, a group of highly-trained survival and combat specialists. I love this concept in Trek, as it suggests that Starfleet knows you need folks like these sometimes, without suggesting that the fleet has an entire militaristic arm waiting for warfare. Had the idea existed when I was on Pathfinder or Yeager, I'd have lobbied for this to be added to our roleplay.

Unfortunately, while the game is prettier than the previous one, and contains more play time, the writing is weak compared to the first game. "Star Trek: Voyager: Elite Force" had a script and plot superior to many televised episodes of Voyager (faint praise, eh?), but this sequel consists mainly of grinding one's way through waves and waves of "Alien" clones. I was particularly offended by the redemption of an alien scientist who causes the gruesome deaths of thousands (including many of your crewmates and often almost you) through vain dreams of power and the affection of a girl, but eventually says he's sorry and all is forgiven. Ever notice how, in post-DS9 Trek, the heroes are always punished for poor choices or bad luck, but the antagonists generally aren't?



The Dark Forces franchise has held up a little better. While Mac users had to skip the second game in the series due to a lack of interest in a port, both "Dark Forces" and "Jedi Outcast" take the player back to the days of "A New Hope" and "Empire" far better than anything George Lucas has written in the last decade. The developers produce expert recreations of both specific locations and places hinted at by the movies, the sound effects and music cues immediately evoke the original experience, and even the short romance subplot in the more recent game is handled far better than the prequel movies do. I won't lie - I found "Outcast" to be quite difficult, but worth my patience.

Instead of space bugs, you'll face Stormtroopers of the Imperial Remnant left over after the death of Emperor Palpatine. A fallen Jedi has tired of the Light Side, and has allied with the Remnant to produce - well, let's just say you'll need to learn those lightsaber skills. Much fun.

Now, I need only finish "No One Lives Forever" and "Tron 2.0". Probably won't be soon, because I do have several more interesting things on my plate than shooter games...

One day years ago, I was listening to Jeff Wayne's excellent musical version of "The War of the Worlds": specifically, the stirring sequence where the ironclad Thunderchild manages to destroy one two Martian War Machines before being sunk. Suddenly, my brain cross-linked it with the premise of the "Space Cruiser Yamato" series, where humanity builds a gifted spacefold drive into the hulk of the World War II battleship, and thus was born the idea for the ether flyer Thunderchild.

Miraculously, I found the rare model kit of the ironclad featured on Wayne's album cover, and combined that with unused interior detail pieces from a Yamato kit. Plane, helicopter, and mecha bits from the parts box joined the fray, and I even added lights from a craft store set. The result won a couple awards, and praise from modelmaker David Merriman, but repeated changes of domicile took their toll on that poor creation. Soon, the ship the Martians couldn't keep down was in pieces in my closet, and only grainy scans of lost photos remained to show all the hard work.

Well, Commodore Professor Coalsack's creation has risen again, like an unstoppable movie franchise. A good friend will soon be taking some high-quality photos for me, but who can wait? I give you the mostly repaired Thunderchild! The pictures are clickable for a closer view...

Kitbashed Thunderchild model, profile Until recently in pieces as a result of too many changes of residence, this is the repaired ether flyer Thunderchild. Several of the small guns visible at this angle have lost their barrels and still need replacements. For some reason, the large solar accumulator sail always looks bigger in photos than it does in real life.

( Click for more steampunk goodness )

I'm trying to decide whether or not to post my Alice costume up on cosplay.com. I've been looking around the site, and it looks like crossplaying *without* making any attempt to pass is pretty damn rare. Like, I can't find anyone else.

Why is it that even when I'm being weird, I have to be different?

For the first time in the new series, the TARDIS heads into the viewers' past. Because of this, there are only two science-fiction concepts in the story: a "space-time rift" and energy beings who can inhabit gas clouds and dead human bodies.

The Cardiff Rift has been described as a wormhole, a gateway, a place where disparate parts of space and time meet, allowing beings and objects to travel from one part to another. While wormholes are solid scientific theory and not seriously challenged, they are also transient, unstable, and not big enough to send a water molecule through - much less a complex construct such as a mind or a body. On the other hand, these are certainly staples of science fiction; there would be no DS9 without them, just to name one example. So it's realistically bad science, but like FTL drives, we can probably wave that issue away.

The energy beings are another common SF trope, but one where I have trouble suspending belief. Setting aside any question of souls, here on Earth, a person's mind needs a brain and a body to inhabit. Computer software needs hardware on which to run. A radio signal needs a transmitter to generate it, and a receiver to play it back; none of these 'information patterns' interface with our world without using something physical. Otherwise, it's like trying to pull spaghetti out of the pot using the beam of a keychain laser pointer.

And a cloud of gas makes a poor carrier for information. Gas is random, disorganized, subject to disruption by currents and slight temperature variation. Try to use a gas cloud to store your financial spreadsheets, and you probably won't be happy with the results for long. But the other option in the episode isn't much better…

At first glimpse, the idea of the loose minds taking over corpses seems an obvious one - the original owner isn't using it, right? But centuries of embalming technology has blinded modern humans to one fact: bodes decay. Shortly after death, various chemical processes in a body are no longer inhibited or controlled; it doesn't take long at all before eyes are useless for seeing, internal organs are useless for digesting food, brain tissue cannot carry electrical charges, and muscles will no longer flex and pull. And embalming only disguises these processes, or sometimes makes them worse! A loose mind somehow settling into a corpse's body would find itself extremely frustrated in short order, unable to use it for any of the most basic functions.

(Yes, this means that all zombie movies are complete BS. But no one watching a zombie flick cares, so we're good.)

Now, it could be some sort of telekinetic puppetry, such as the Nestene Consciousness used two episodes ago. But specially designed plastic mannequins still seem to make better vehicles than decaying bodies. And again, what are the Gelth aliens using to generate the telekinetic forces? The Nestene at least had a giant organo-plastic brain to work with.

In summary, we've got two almost certain impossibilities. Both of them are common in SF, so not many folks are probably going to get hung up on either, but they are bad science nevertheless. And in an unrelated note, why can't the aliens ever just ask for help? The Doctor would bend time and space to help out if they just asked nicely. Stupid aliens.

Of course, I say "every day or two" and immediately, life keeps me from paying much attention to any writing for a while. That, and I needed to find my archive copy of the episode to check out a few details.

This go-round, the main science-fiction idea is that the Doctor has taken Rose forward five billion years or thereabouts to watch the Sun engulf Earth. (It's a little morbid, but then the death of homeworlds is weighing on the Doctor's mind these days.)

The timing's about right, and Rose shows off some basic science knowledge when she points out that a) this should be a slow event over epochs, not an afternoon's happening, and b) the Earth's continents should be wholly unrecognizable now due to plate tectonics. Good for Rose! The Doctor glibly responds that gravity satellites have been holding back the sun today, and -

Wait. Wow. The technological civilizations of five billion years from now have the ability to keep dead stars from expanding. I mean, sure, no problem, five billion years; but an understanding of physics at that level implies they can do almost anything with energy and matter that they want, to the point where the space station and shuttles displayed would have to be utterly rustic and quaint. Maybe the whole ceremony is a bit of a LARP, like visiting Colonial Williamsburg is for today's Americans.

- and that the "Trust" put the continents back as they were five billion years ago, for some sort of aesthetic reasons. Again, I guess since those are basically the continental shapes upon which Humanity evolved and reached the stars, perhaps it's some kind of nostalgia thing. On the other hand, Earth's continents aren't a sliding tile puzzle. Much of the familiar coastlines, mountain ranges, and other geographic features would have been erased by time, and the Trust would have had to reconstruct them from scratch. (But hey, they can keep dead stars from expanding, they can do that too.)

This is not really a scientific observation, but comments of the Doctor's and Cassandra's later imply that the economy of the galaxy is still capitalist. I can hardly say that's impossible, but with the galaxy's suns pumping out free energy to anyone with a solar collector, and uncounted myriads of lumps of ice and rock and mineral wealth scattered throughout the arms for the taking, and the aforementioned technology levels: well, their version of capitalism must be fairly interesting.

Back to the science. Lady Cassandra. Yeah.

It's kind of interesting how Cassandra moves her eyes and lips without any muscle tissue. Also, it's interesting how her eyes pass information to her brain with no detectable optic nerve. (Our optic nerves are thick, obvious things not unlike organic coaxial cable.) Also, her mouth would be useless as a speaking device, since there is no jaw, tongue or vocal cords for making sounds, and there are no lungs to move air through her mouth so those sounds would be audible. Also… also… also… yeah. Lady Cassandra is, at best, a Disney robot puppet being manipulated by the brain tissue beneath. Too bad no one thought to put an automatic misting system on the frame from which the puppet's hung. Oh, I guess it's possible that she has nanotech implants for all this - again, the tech levels of this episode are rightly the tech of miracles - but it wouldn't do anything for her already shaky claim of being 'pure human'.

That's a pretty ridiculous claim, anyway. The episode never says how old Cassandra is and the later "New Earth" doesn't help, but we know from "The Empty Child" that humans began eagerly copulating with the rest of the galaxy's sentients at least by the year 5,000. From the genetic viewpoint of the year 5,000,000,000, it's a moot difference. She'd have be 'pure human' by some overly-specific and arbitrary definition she made up for the purpose.

Side note: it's mentioned in one of her two appearances that she transitioned from male to female. By the year 5,000,000,000, one would expect that procedure to be so effortless and routine that people could change bodies like designer clothes if that was their thing. In fact, you'd really expect Cassandra in this episode to look completely like a prime specimen of 21st-century humanity; such a body could be re-spun from her DNA pattern (with desired tweaks) whenever the old one wore out… or just got boring.

So, the upshot is that I find the artificial compression of a star more convincing than Lady Cassandra. In science fiction and fantasy, sometimes the high concepts work far better than the baser ones.

Next time: an episode with, really, not a lot of science in it.

In 2005, Russell T. Davies brought Doctor Who back to television screens, and he did a wonderful job. The show's ratings reached unprecedented heights, and our favorite Time Lord gained fans he'd never have been able to reach in the old days. Whovians never had it so good.

But one thing hadn't changed in the years since the old show went off the air. Back then, most of the science in this classic work of British science fiction came from the magazine articles and the uncommon TV special on new discoveries in astrophysics. And that was okay, really. But this is the 21st century: there are science cable channels, science blogs, science celebrities, and the fairly accurate and up-to-date Wikipedia. Anyone writing for TV should be able to get at least the freshman science right, if only to give it lip service before violating it.

So here, I'm going to look at the science of individual episodes of the new Doctor Who. I'll not spend a great deal of time on character or plot concepts in an episode unless, you know, I feel like it. And I may not worry too much about core concepts of the show like the TARDIS: like warp drive in Star Trek, if it's BS, it's BS upon which the series is built, so it gets a pass. And just because some science may be dubious doesn't mean it's a bad episode… unless the plot depends on the science in question…

So, "Rose". The main science-fictional concept here is that a giant plastic alien brain is animating shop-window mannequins to terrorize the shopping malls of London. The episode doesn't make this clear, but the Nestene Intelligence has been to Earth twice before in older episodes. In those attempts, it uses a 'realistic' puppet (like Mickey this time) to take over a plastics factory (Auto Plastics the first time), which it uses to make the dummies and ship them around the city; we have no reason to assume the M.O. is different this time.

This explains how a mannequin would have a gun hidden in its hand: the Autons have them built in when they are made in the factory. But the dummies seem to be otherwise just like ones used today, perhaps with different plastics that make them easier to animate. Based on the antics of the loose arm in "Rose", we gather that the dummies don't need any other sort of special organs - brain, individual muscles, consumption/storage - to do their jobs.

This suggests that the main Nestene consciousness is doing all the work remotely, controlling them telepathically and physically moving them with transmitted telekinetic force, like a child playing with hundreds of action figures at once. This fits in perfectly with the episode's plot: the Nestene needed an amplifier array to blanket the city, and once it was defeated, the entire army collapsed like abandoned fashion dolls. Plastic's a good choice, by the way, for animated puppets. Since plastic is composed of long chains of molecules, called polymers, one can imagine the chains coiling and relaxing like animal muscle to move the puppet around.

Telekinesis is a great science-fiction tool: since we have no evidence of anything like it existing in reality, a writer can have it function however convenient. We can use the laws of physics and biology to say a few things about telekinesis and telepathy: no one has yet suggested a method for such forces to be generated and received that has held up to experiment. Also, animals do not evolve the ability to generate directed radiation in the forms we do understand, since it's always more energy-efficient to do your work in other ways: for example, communication by sound waves, or by color and motion, takes far far less energy than producing radio waves. There isn't an organism on Earth that doesn't have a limited energy budget. On the other hand, an advanced organism may find a way to add those abilities artificially to itself, so we'll let the Nestenes have that one.

Finally, I do want to touch on a new attribute of the TARDIS: the outside doors. In the past, it was often implied that the TARDIS had inner and outer doors, with a mysterious discontinuity between them - mainly due to limitations on television effects technology. And the interior doors were generally portrayed as comfortingly massive. Now, the TARDIS appears to have a simple set of flimsy wooden doors between the console room and the universe, which would concern me quite a lot as a traveler. I think we must assume, based on the Doctor's assurance that they'd resist "the hordes of Genghis Khan", that either those doors are far more solid than they look, or that there's plenty of super-science reinforcing and protecting them - or both. It's fun to now be able to look into and out of the TARDIS whenever we want, so that's good enough.

Next time: blah blah blah... and I feel fine.

This is NOT from the upcoming movie, but from a Japanese tie-in game. It rules anyway. If possible, click through and watch the HD version instead of the embedded one!



Starr, who's currently unfamiliar with the Yamato franchise, said that the ship looked like the ether flyer Thunderchild to her. I took that as quite the compliment :)

To those who've attended RavenCon before:

I'm in the mood to wear the Alice costume again to RavenCon, since the movie's still out, and hey, it's comfortable. I've never been to RC before, though, and I don't know the atmosphere there. Am I likely to have staff and attendees dropping apoplectically to the floor at the sight of a boy in a dress, or will it provoke the smiles and chuckles I usually get?

Input would be useful!

Oh, and this is the hall costume that went over so well. After what I thought would be my grand exit from TCon costuming last year, I could hardly disappoint my audience this year! The choice seemed appropriate with the Tim Burton movie's release this season. I got picture requests all day, and some folks actually expressed disappointment that I changed back into street clothes after Keith's concert!



One thing I learned: college seating is not designed for petticoats. Well, another: some ladies take vengeful glee in seeing a guy rub his sore feet after spending the day in heels. It was fun to wear through the day, though. Only problem is that I just don't know how I'll follow this next year.

Technicon 27 started with our water heater cracking open.

Okay, so the two weren't causally linked. The situation remained damn frustrating, though: Starr had been scheduled to work her 7am-7pm shift, but we both really wanted her to come to the con, which meant we would probably get there around 2 or 3 Saturday morning. So be it: such is life. Then her work called in the wee hours of Friday to say she'd actually been scheduled 3am-3pm, which wouldn't be any easier on her, but meant we'd show up in Blacksburg at a decent hour!

Then we both came home to work to find our driveway awash. For once, there was nothing both vital and water-soluble in the garage, and the heater is all we lost. But one of us had to stay to get it fixed, and I was the one with the Guest badge and panel commitment, so off I went.

I have learned to despise that drive. I love the con, and I love seeing friends and family; I'm so glad I didn't have to miss out on my twenty-fourth straight Technicon. But that drive is beginning to get on my nerves. At least I caught the tail end of the Meet Our Guests social, and enjoyed meeting artist T Campbell (with whom I shared a hotel room).

Technicon was small this year; that's not a criticism, just an observation. They chose not to run a dealer's room this year, though they had most of the other trappings: a video room, anime, card and tabletop gaming, and various panels and presentations. I participated in the Amateur Film panel with rubinpdf and other members of Galtham Films, who made up about 90% of the attendance; I had a good time, and hope that impink will post images of his revised TSE Mirage design.

Late in the evening, southernsinger performed what was almost a White Plectrum sing-along rather than a concert: the fraction of new attendees in the audience may well have felt slightly left-out. I helped judge the six-entry Costume Call - though the event was small, the costumes were wonderful, and we had a heck of a time picking the ones we liked best. trenn won "Best in Show" with a great Seventh Doctor, but ypawtows did score a mention for "Best Use of an Undead Smurf in a Short Subject".

I ran my late-night panels as usual. This year, I just wasn't in the mood for complex presentations, and aimed more for a "friendly discussion circle" atmosphere. At least a few folks told me they enjoyed them, so it must not have been a terrible idea. After closing out the room, I had just enough battery power left to swing by jlfranklin's room party, which was nearly shut down itself. Back up to the room and sweet unconsciousness.

Sunday, it felt surreal to have no closing programming, no chances to say goodbye to folks. I just got on the road as soon as possible, spent a nice lunch in Roanoke with my Mom, and then did that cursed drive again. I was so tired and strung-out when I got to Chesapeake that Starr and her dad managed to get a glass of wine in me at Olive Garden, and now I'm not sure whether my vagueness around the edges today is exhaustion, the effects of drink, early con-crud setting in, or Monday.

Anyway. For me, Technicon 27 was a great success. It's the only time I get to see lots of people who mean a great deal to me, and I had much fun. My hall costume got remarks such as, "Okay, you are now officially my favorite person ever." I have another Guest badge for my collection. Furthermore, I got to continue a TCon attendance streak beaten only by an elite few.

Was it a success from the con's point of view? I don't know. I heard a rumor of around 150 badges, staff and guests included. The venue wasn't the best, though I know the staff's choices were limited this year. I suppose we'll see - I wouldn't mind attending a full three-day Technicon 28 if they can pull it off.

Thanks to the con for the invite! While I don't know at the moment where or when it may happen, I can't wait to see everyone again...

Steve Jobs has little use for computer games. Inconveniently, his customers are quite interested, and that's been a problem since 1984.

I can't source most of this, so you'll have to assume that my memory isn't too fuzzy, and I wouldn't lie to you. But while plenty of Apple engineers have been happy to help out game developers here and there, Steve's seen bigger things for his Macintosh; leaps and bounds of creativity, imagination, and the simplification of daily tasks. Not bad, but we want to shoot the undead too, and Mr. Jobs doesn't really seem to get that.

So thanks to that, and years of management confusion at Apple, Mac gaming has never had the market share of Windows gaming. That didn't mean no one was playing, though. The company that created Halo made its first fortune off a Mac game. The company behind Doom and Quake always found it worthwhile to publish Mac releases of their titles. But there was one game, a classic among Windows gamers, one that always stood separate. When people tested me for rabid Apple fandom, there was always one fact I'd easily admit to: you couldn't play Half-Life on the thing.

And there's some odd history behind that. According to rumor, Half-Life for the Mac was nearly done: in late beta-testing, at worst. Then Gabe Newell of Valve went to Apple and asked Steve Jobs to make some changes to the Mac OS so it would run his games better. (I suspect it was either DRM hooks in the OS, or more likely, licensing DirectX from Microsoft… both of which had a snowflake's chance in Molten Core of happening.) Steve probably explained in his winning way where he figured Newell's head was stuck, and Mac HL was immediately cancelled.

But, you know, other guys kept making money, small though they might be. And did I mention "Molten Core"? Yeah, see, that's a place in a little game called World of Warcraft… a game with around 11 million subscribers, available in parallel for the PC and the Mac. So, maybe Mac gamers are only 1% of the PC gaming market. That meant that Blizzard was collecting subscription money from 100,000 gamers every month. Obviously, that's the kind of money than any successfully game company can totally ignore...

Oh. Hm. Well. And, you say, Macs all run on Intel motherboards, now? Well. Perhaps we can do this without trying uselessly to twist Steve's arm after all…

So, now we'll have Steam on the Mac, and I can play HL and Portal without dual-booting, and not have to roll my eyes when a friend tells me about this awesome little $5 game download they found there the other day. I'm happy. Gabe will get my money. He's happy. And it only took him over a decade to figure out how to reach into my wallet!* Well, we all just need a little time, sometimes.

*I confess, he already has some of it. I bought HL for the PlayStation 2, and Portal for Windows, playing the latter by dual-booting my Intel Mac. But Valve says that I'll get a copy of Portal for Mac for free just because I registered the original through Steam… and suddenly, I'm even more well-disposed to the company. (I previously expressed concerns about the Steam service, and they still exist, but the company seems to be going out of their way to make the utility worth more than the hassle. That seems good business.)

Though I didn't realize it at the time, I first became an anime fan probably around the age of six, when I saw a single episode of "Speed Racer". I didn't know what was going on in the story, but that car was awesome. Later on, I unwittingly fed the growing otaku inside me when I became addicted to "Battle of the Planets". The show seemed oddly edited, and the plots a bit repetitive, but that plane/spaceship* was awesome. My final step came with my introduction by rattrap to "Robotech: Macross". True, I cringed every time Minmei appeared on screen**, but those transforming fighter planes were awesome.

(What pattern? Yes, I'm a SF hardware nerd, so what?)

But my first "hey, this is in Japanese" anime told the story of a comedy alien invasion led by a green-haired, tiger-stripe-bikini-clad princess named Lum. I saw a single episode before leaving for a con, and began learning the fan technique of "supplying one's own storyline to go with the untranslated video". Still confusing, but the princess was adorable, and the love interest was clearly a complete dork: a character I could relate to!

Oh, I still might have escaped anime fandom. Pretty unlikely: I still had the "Dirty Pair", "Captain Harlock", and "BubbleGum Crisis" ahead of me, and all those wonderful, wonderful, animated spaceships and giant robots. But no, I was doomed: at the next con I attended, a local fan delectably costumed herself as Lum.*** That was pretty much it for me. I've been con-going, costuming, and performing ever since. And now that Starr's picked out a couple of characters to try, and I've hooked up with Luna-C, I don't see this changing anytime soon.**** As was said at Farpoint, I'll stop by reality long enough to get the bills paid, but I've got the next con marked on my calendar…


*The Phoenix was only supposed to be a plane, but American translator/editors turned it into a spaceship. I have no grounds to criticize, as I did that often enough with my toys when little.

**In the Japanese original, Minmay does sing better… but she's not really much less annoying.

***Longtime members of southwest Virginia fandom may well remember the lady in question. Especially if they're straight males or gay females.

****Fear not; I have enough respect for your collective eyeballs to never wear a Lum costume. Besides, it's drafty.

Saturday night, I got to fuel an old addiction. Like many other addictions, the experience was thrilling and draining. It also cost a few bucks, but at least this addiction doesn't do any physical damage. Really, I don't remember when I was first bitten by the acting bug, but I know I was quite young. I understood even back then that some people got to share their games of make-believe with the entire world, and that sounded to me like incredible fun.

Some years later, 1986 or '87 I think, I attended Stellarcon with a crowd of new friends from a club named VTSFFC. We learned that their Saturday afternoon masquerade was desperately short of entries, and I remembered seeing at RoVaCon a group called "Doctors In the House" that performed costumed science-fiction comedy skits. Inspired, I grabbed what little I'd brought for hall costuming, and created the "Starfleet Vice" troupe. We had a great deal of fun over the next few years, but after many performances at RoVaCon, Technicon, and SciCon, we moved on to other things, and Starfleet Vice faded away.

"Starfleet Vice" - RoVaCon 1987 From left: Heather McLaughlin as "Kei" from the Dirty Pair, Paul Danielsen as officer "Crock", Sonoko Konishi as "Yuri" from the Dirty Pair, and me as officer "Stubble". I don't even remember what the skit was that year.		Starfleet Vice t-shirt graphic From the left, the characters are "Ruth" (Beth Lipes), "Dr. Whizbang" (Mark Haymaker), "Cmdr. Paisley" (Tom Monaghan), "Stubble" (me), "Crock" (Paul Danielsen), and "Herald Harold" (Mike Layne). Eventually, Tom acquired a paisley "Next Generation" Starfleet uniform. Audience members were driven blind.

Further years later, I learned that my VTSFFC friend Helen Madden had become involved with "Luna-C", a group that I later learned had evolved from the old "Doctors". I enjoyed Luna-C's performances at many cons over the next several years, and often felt twinges of nostalgia for the stage - by then, I'd done "You Can't Take it With You", "Arsenic and Old Lace", "Gentleman's Agreement", and "Space Rogues". But I had plenty else on my plate and never seriously concerned myself with those old memories.

Well, at this year's MarsCon, I was socializing with Luna-C members after the performance, and I jokingly suggested that with the hall costume I was wearing I could have substituted for one of the players. A little further into the conversation, and it wasn't a joke. So, this weekend I attended a convention I hadn't planned to hit in 2010. I had an amazing time, and had my first hit of serious memorized-lines-and-costumes acting in ages. It felt goooood.

They gave me six skits to do: an AFLAC parody (I wasn't the duck), a "Fringe" skit where I played Peter, an SG:Universe scene where I played Dr. Rush, a James Bond / Austin Powers back-and-forth (guess who I played, baby), and two final skits in which I fulfilled a longtime ambition to play the Fourth Doctor. (I tried for days to get a Tom Baker voice going, and I failed; but Deb told me during the show that she thought I had the cadences of his voice nailed. Ego-boost +30!) I didn't have as much rehearsal time as I'd hoped, and I know I mised some lines, but they covered for me wonderfully. I don't think I did a bad job at all!

Now RavenCon is coming up, and both Starr and I will be joining Luna-C there if all goes as planned. Yep. Won't be kicking this addiction any time soon.

I headed off to this year's MarsCon with a single objective: to get drunk. I'll be the first to admit that classier goals exist, but with one thing or another, 2010's started off rough for me, and I needed some release. Besides, I drink so little that half a glass of dessert wine once a year is enough to make me pretty loopy.

I never got that drink, but I never needed to. A weekend of friends, costuming, laughs, and even a little gaming turned out to be just the prescription; by the end of the weekend, my body hurt, my head was spinning, my legs wouldn't hold me up, and life looked so much better than it had a few days ago. In the short time since NekoCon, I'd forgotten why I devote so many resources to con-going.

I've avoided gaming at cons since I burned out on MechWarrior: Dark Age. Con gamers can be so angrily competitive that even winning leaves a sour taste. (And let me tell you, I'll never play Button Men again.) This weekend, I got to game the way I enjoy it: Jesse Braxton brought a cards-and-custom-dice game called "Inn-fighting", which was fun, fast, arbitrary, and not worth getting angry over. I've missed that kind of convention gaming so much.

Tom Monaghan and I began rebuilding our friendship this weekend. He's not the same man he was a few years ago, but he's more like the friend I remember from high school, older and wiser. He rediscovered BattleTech this weekend, and wants to get me into a game soon; we even discussed resurrecting Artificial Intelligence, or a descendant, as a webcomic. Do I have the time and resources for that? I don't know. Am I fascinated by the idea? Yes, though I'm not sure who should draw: Tom is a better artist than I am, but a regular drawing gig would likely refine my skills a great deal.

I really do have some relatively traditional fan costuming planned for the future - I made contact this weekend with someone who could help me with some old-school anime outfitting I've always wanted. But from various (positive) comments I received this weekend, I'm developing a reputation at MarsCon for my over-the-top outfits, and I'd be lying if I said I'm not enjoying the rep.

The capper for the weekend? A casual enquiry about a costume commission led to a possible acting gig. Nothing's set in stone, but I'm really stoked: I love the stage and screen, and I haven't done any serious acting since Space Rogues. (Yes, I took it seriously. No matter how comedic or surreal the material, it's not the actor's job to laugh at it - only the audience's. That's often forgotten in low-budget work.) This is thrilling news!

Don't know how long I can hang on to it, but I found my center again this weekend. Thank you MarsCon, for the opportunity.

The Tenth Doctor was the Crown Prince of emo.

This was a man who has saved the lives of friends, family, cities, civilizations, planets, and once the existence of the universe. He owns a machine that lets him travel to almost anywhere in time and space, seeing sights and having adventures no one else can match. On top of that, he enjoyed a fulfilling if unconsummated romantic relationship with a woman 880 years his junior, as well as brief flings with the likes of Madame de Pompadour and Queen Elizabeth I.

But, we're expected to believe that his life sucks, and that somehow he didn't get properly rewarded for his efforts.

My point here, is not a lengthy rant about how David Tennant's Doctor was written. He had moments of charm and brilliance, and I'd watch him before Colin Baker most any day. No, his last episode led me to look at my own regeneration. We all do it, you know; though for most of us, the process is far less dramatic. Still, I don't look, act, or think much like I did when I was sixteen.

Oh, there's continuity there: I have plenty of memories from that time, and some of my quirks and mannerisms from back then remain in my personality. I certainly look more like I did at the time than Christopher Eccleston looks like Jon Pertwee. But like the Doctor or the Master, I'm simultaneously the same person and not.

Honestly, I'm pleased with the majority of the changes in myself, though I sometimes with I still had my teenage body. (Perhaps a little less scrawny, though.) I prefer being more experienced with life, and perhaps having a touch more wisdom. Being older is the price I have to pay, and since the only other offered option is being six feet under, I'll take it gladly. Someone should have pointed out to the Tenth Doctor that getting to live a life of daring adventure, plus not having to die when all the rest of us do, doesn't suck as much as he insisted it did.

Starr thinks I should totally cosplay the new Yamato uniform. I like the looks of it, but the leather might be a little difficult for me to work.



I love that little fanfare that starts the theme song. Makes me want to go out and save civilizations.

Back when I did a lot of Trek roleplay with the Starfleet crowd, we established space fighter squadrons on our ships, and decided eventually that we needed flight jackets. So we all bought dark-colored jackets in various materials and put Trek emblems on them in configurations that looked more-or-less authentic. Mine's always been black denim, though it's gone through different versions as the jackets each wore out. This one has a Next Gen combadge, a USS Yeager patch on one shoulder, a UFP emblem on the other, and a "Team Banzai" graphic on the back. (Why not mix my fictions?)

I've worn it a lot, in weather suitable for a light jacket and in practically any social situation that doesn't require formal wear. I wore it to my Decipher interview, figuring it might help get me a job at a game company that made Star Trek cards. (Seemed to work...) Wearing it always felt like a bit of passive geek defiance: a declaration that yes, I was weird, but not unapproachably so.

Well, I wore it around during the unseasonably warm weekend, and if I needed further evidence that I live in a different world than I did in 1982, I got it. Twice, random strangers highly complimented my 'flight' jacket, both times following up with a brief conversation about the latest movie. I'm just not used to this. Eyerolls and smart remarks were once par for the course, but "wasn't Uhura hot?" is a comment I'm not used to from the gentleman at the auto shop.

Whatever we old-schoolers might have to say about the recent film, it looks like interest in the franchise is back. Combine this with Obama's public use of the Vulcan hand salute, and I'd say that the 21st century's brought a different world for Trek geeks. I approve.