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rwrylsinWith so much else on my mind lately Eastercon sort of sneaked up on me, so I approached it with a complete lack of expectations, plans or anticipation. On the one hand this made it one of the most relaxing cons I've been to recently - missed a panel? No big deal. On the other hand it's now over and I barely feel like I was there at all. A general lack of sleep may be contributing to that as well, I really want a good 12 hour lie-in, but that will have to wait until next week now.
Friday.
The action didn't start until after midday so we got a little bit of extra sleep before sorting ourselves out and walking to the venue. The sun was shining, hosts of daffodils decorated the roadside, breeze was a little cool but it was essentially a lovely day for a walk.
Despite a generously late start we didn't make it in time for the first lot of panels, and spent a few more minutes trying to work out how to get my membership envelope out from under the large machine that it had slid under after being dropped. It was very reluctant to be recovered.
Proceeded to try and volunteer for gophering, but they weren't quite set up to handle us yet, so toured the dealers room first. The first of several such tours we began as we intended to go on and left with a couple of books and a Confounding Tales! membership for next year. I will not detail our subsequent visits, suffice to say that we now have more books, a supporting membership for Year of the Teledu, and sundry bits. We also eventually got someone to register us as gophers and agreed to come back on Saturday since they didn't seem to need us.
Actual items attended included "War of the Wells" and the fan fund auction. Aside from that we mostly sat or stood around catching up with various people. We may also have dropped by the Games room and watched some RoboRally being played.
Saturday.
Managed to arrive late to "Growing up in the Virtual Village". Note to programmers: any topic referencing LJ should be given plenty of seat space. As gophers we guarded a door for the next couple of hours, then toddled along to the M. John Harrison guest of honour bit. People seem to be fascinated by the vaguely split personality that some writers admit to, but as far as I can tell it seems to be par for the course. We followed this up with the Hay Memorial Lecture, a very interesting look at the early Victorian science scene and the "March of Mind" arguments.
Next was "Orbital Cleavage", another topic guaranteed to fill large rooms. We arrived a little late, possibly another dealers room tour, and had to settle in on the floor.
We went home for dinner and to watch Dr Who. While I'm generally good at suspending disbelief I'm afraid this one couldn't hide behind the pretty effects well enough to stop me wondering WTF? at irregular intervals.
We wandered back to the TAFF and Interaction party, drank the apple juice, played with a car set, watched combat-twister and an Interaction slide show. Probably more random talking in the bar as well, and played a game of Torches and Pitchforks in the games room. A Munchkin rip-off, and not as good as the real thing.
Sunday.
Failed to make the Bid Session, fortunately they didn't need our votes. Sat in on the "Battlestar Galactica: Civics 101 in Space?" even though it meant missing the corsetry fashion parade. Some interesting points brought up but a lot was comparisons to The West Wing which I haven't watched. Stayed put for a panel that was about literary criticism, but since I have little interest in that I was only occasionally paying attention. Discovered that the art show was now closed and not reopening after the auction as we had assumed - that it might end barely half way through the convention simply hadn't occurred to us.
Headed outside to watch "Beyond Cyberdrome", where pirate ships that were simply pushed across the pool regularly outperformed more sophisticated means of propulsion. Retreated back to the warmth of the bar shortly before it started to rain. Our efforts to be useful gophers continued to be largely unneeded, we did get the job of announcing that people should pick up their art purchases but since neither of us are at all loud we ended up mostly delegating that duty.
Went to "Won't get fooled again", where it was generally agreed that while it wasn't necessary to trash the whole SF genre, we could do with a few less shameless copies glutting the market. Another trip home for dinner, then back to spend some time chatting in the bar, giving stuff to the newsletter, squeezing briefly into the Teledu room party, and finishing the night playing Guillotine in the games room - quite a fun short game.
Monday.
So hard to get out of bed! Managed to make it in to be late for "Victim or Survivor?", another fascinating lecture on the psychology of how we deal with disasters. I was again struck by how well attended these academic lectures were, and thought it would be really neat to have a "March of Mind" convention that was entirely made up of educational lectures, demonstrations and workshops. Not just science but also the other ever-popular educational items like swordplay demos/workshops and How To's.
Anyway, the lecture had me wondering how well fencing prepared one mentally for such things. Apparently only 10% or so of the population will react in a useful self-preserving manner in an emergency, this can be improved by training and preparation which help counteract the mental problems that get in the way like working memory and recall problems, falling back into old inappropriate behaviour patterns etc. (Now the fire drills at work make more sense - they're trying to develop behaviour patterns). Beginner fencers have enormous trouble to start with - you have trouble following the bout that you're currently fighting, and trouble remembering afterward what just happened and how you got hit. Makes it very hard to learn from your mistakes. Part of learning to fence also involves learning to keep thinking, observing and planning while running around under pressure, selecting an appropriate reaction quickly, and learning to remember what just happened so that you can learn from it. While perhaps not as good as specific training it would seem a good general mental preparation to address the issues brought up.
Next was the sword fighting workshop, but we were only signed up for the second half and they had no room for spectators so we lurked about the bar for a while. Eventually got bored and sneaked through the door to watch, found out we could now do so provided we stayed on the stage out of the way. Was quite interesting both to watch and participate in - they were teaching Backsword basics. Some things are universal, others quite different from what we're used to and our 10+ years of fencing reflexes kind of got in the way. By the end, if we concentrated hard, we could string about three actions each together while circling appropriately, then we'd revert to our old linear habits. Basically linear movement requires no real thought any more so when we run out of pre-planned move it's the obvious safe thing to do while we try to form the new plan. Poor David got bopped on the head once as sabreur instincts took over... Familiar patterns, action and reaction. Perhaps we're not as mentally well-prepared for disasters as I thought.
More failed attempts to be useful gophers, closing ceremony, yet more failed attempts to be useful gophers (this convention just seemed to be self-organising), then a bit more wandering before now, finally, being home once more for dinner. May or may not make it back for the Dead Dog Party.
Friday.
The action didn't start until after midday so we got a little bit of extra sleep before sorting ourselves out and walking to the venue. The sun was shining, hosts of daffodils decorated the roadside, breeze was a little cool but it was essentially a lovely day for a walk.
Despite a generously late start we didn't make it in time for the first lot of panels, and spent a few more minutes trying to work out how to get my membership envelope out from under the large machine that it had slid under after being dropped. It was very reluctant to be recovered.
Proceeded to try and volunteer for gophering, but they weren't quite set up to handle us yet, so toured the dealers room first. The first of several such tours we began as we intended to go on and left with a couple of books and a Confounding Tales! membership for next year. I will not detail our subsequent visits, suffice to say that we now have more books, a supporting membership for Year of the Teledu, and sundry bits. We also eventually got someone to register us as gophers and agreed to come back on Saturday since they didn't seem to need us.
Actual items attended included "War of the Wells" and the fan fund auction. Aside from that we mostly sat or stood around catching up with various people. We may also have dropped by the Games room and watched some RoboRally being played.
Saturday.
Managed to arrive late to "Growing up in the Virtual Village". Note to programmers: any topic referencing LJ should be given plenty of seat space. As gophers we guarded a door for the next couple of hours, then toddled along to the M. John Harrison guest of honour bit. People seem to be fascinated by the vaguely split personality that some writers admit to, but as far as I can tell it seems to be par for the course. We followed this up with the Hay Memorial Lecture, a very interesting look at the early Victorian science scene and the "March of Mind" arguments.
Next was "Orbital Cleavage", another topic guaranteed to fill large rooms. We arrived a little late, possibly another dealers room tour, and had to settle in on the floor.
We went home for dinner and to watch Dr Who. While I'm generally good at suspending disbelief I'm afraid this one couldn't hide behind the pretty effects well enough to stop me wondering WTF? at irregular intervals.
We wandered back to the TAFF and Interaction party, drank the apple juice, played with a car set, watched combat-twister and an Interaction slide show. Probably more random talking in the bar as well, and played a game of Torches and Pitchforks in the games room. A Munchkin rip-off, and not as good as the real thing.
Sunday.
Failed to make the Bid Session, fortunately they didn't need our votes. Sat in on the "Battlestar Galactica: Civics 101 in Space?" even though it meant missing the corsetry fashion parade. Some interesting points brought up but a lot was comparisons to The West Wing which I haven't watched. Stayed put for a panel that was about literary criticism, but since I have little interest in that I was only occasionally paying attention. Discovered that the art show was now closed and not reopening after the auction as we had assumed - that it might end barely half way through the convention simply hadn't occurred to us.
Headed outside to watch "Beyond Cyberdrome", where pirate ships that were simply pushed across the pool regularly outperformed more sophisticated means of propulsion. Retreated back to the warmth of the bar shortly before it started to rain. Our efforts to be useful gophers continued to be largely unneeded, we did get the job of announcing that people should pick up their art purchases but since neither of us are at all loud we ended up mostly delegating that duty.
Went to "Won't get fooled again", where it was generally agreed that while it wasn't necessary to trash the whole SF genre, we could do with a few less shameless copies glutting the market. Another trip home for dinner, then back to spend some time chatting in the bar, giving stuff to the newsletter, squeezing briefly into the Teledu room party, and finishing the night playing Guillotine in the games room - quite a fun short game.
Monday.
So hard to get out of bed! Managed to make it in to be late for "Victim or Survivor?", another fascinating lecture on the psychology of how we deal with disasters. I was again struck by how well attended these academic lectures were, and thought it would be really neat to have a "March of Mind" convention that was entirely made up of educational lectures, demonstrations and workshops. Not just science but also the other ever-popular educational items like swordplay demos/workshops and How To's.
Anyway, the lecture had me wondering how well fencing prepared one mentally for such things. Apparently only 10% or so of the population will react in a useful self-preserving manner in an emergency, this can be improved by training and preparation which help counteract the mental problems that get in the way like working memory and recall problems, falling back into old inappropriate behaviour patterns etc. (Now the fire drills at work make more sense - they're trying to develop behaviour patterns). Beginner fencers have enormous trouble to start with - you have trouble following the bout that you're currently fighting, and trouble remembering afterward what just happened and how you got hit. Makes it very hard to learn from your mistakes. Part of learning to fence also involves learning to keep thinking, observing and planning while running around under pressure, selecting an appropriate reaction quickly, and learning to remember what just happened so that you can learn from it. While perhaps not as good as specific training it would seem a good general mental preparation to address the issues brought up.
Next was the sword fighting workshop, but we were only signed up for the second half and they had no room for spectators so we lurked about the bar for a while. Eventually got bored and sneaked through the door to watch, found out we could now do so provided we stayed on the stage out of the way. Was quite interesting both to watch and participate in - they were teaching Backsword basics. Some things are universal, others quite different from what we're used to and our 10+ years of fencing reflexes kind of got in the way. By the end, if we concentrated hard, we could string about three actions each together while circling appropriately, then we'd revert to our old linear habits. Basically linear movement requires no real thought any more so when we run out of pre-planned move it's the obvious safe thing to do while we try to form the new plan. Poor David got bopped on the head once as sabreur instincts took over... Familiar patterns, action and reaction. Perhaps we're not as mentally well-prepared for disasters as I thought.
More failed attempts to be useful gophers, closing ceremony, yet more failed attempts to be useful gophers (this convention just seemed to be self-organising), then a bit more wandering before now, finally, being home once more for dinner. May or may not make it back for the Dead Dog Party.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-18 10:16 am (UTC)Can you tell me more? Sounds interesting.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-18 04:36 pm (UTC)From what I remember, sorry for the lack of names;
She was looking at the period that ended with the Great Exhibition, when various developments made mass printing and distribution relatively cheap and easy.
The March of Mind described a... ideology I guess, based on education as self-improvement leading to the improvement of society as a whole. So you get Mechanics Institutes springing up, cheap encyclopedias being sold in installments, and even the Penny Dreadfuls could be seen as a first step to encourage people to educate themselves.
Opposing the March of Mind advocates you get people who are unimpressed by the idea of educating people above their station, fellow called Peacock apparently liked to write fictional dialogues poking fun at the idea.
Science at this time was accessible (and getting along fairly well with religion), so people could get involved - with the down side that people might also get the idea that they had something worthwhile to contribute to something they didn't really understand. The growth of specialisation in the sciences being partly a reaction to keep folk like the clergy at arms length, and then you get the rise of the popular science press acting as an intermediary between the newly named scientists and the plebs, and later on the more well known pseudo-sciences. Apparently most of the installment-encyclopedias never finished their run.