Haven't done one of these reports in years but it was a good con, so here I go.
Quick fire-
There was a panel on the game Mr. Mosquito by an entomologist. Great stuff! I learned about the game (weird game!) and mosquito science at the same time, and some politics involved in the job (some people want to cut mosquito research funding because they don't realize if you don't, you can't just spray and hope they'll die, they adapt).
Got some art (art books from the artists in question, mix of OCs and fanarts) and acrylic standees (of Darkstalkers characters, Morrigan and Lilith) at the art gallery. Also said 'hi' to the creator of Kill Six Billion Demons.
There was a panel on the history of game saves which I liked- they even handed out old program punchcards to those who asked questions. Fun fact- my mom used to do punchcard programming, she was that involved with early computing (also directly involved in ARPAnet development at MIT....).
Last month I did a trip to Boston to visit family, and I have a trip report!
Things ended up being busier than expected- normally I plan for 'first day arrive and get settled in, don't do a lot, last day get ready to leave and recover, don't do a lot,' on trips. Instead, the flight out was really early and the flight back was really late, so I did things all four days. First day! My dad took us to the MIT campus (he's an alum) via the T (local rail service) and we did the new MIT museum- which was interesting and well done, had cool and informative exhibits. Also tried hitting the MIT Coop which my dad talked up some but in it's current location it's more 'giftshop with a book section' than anything impressive, disappointing. Came back, went out to dinner with Dad, Aunt and Uncle and Sister-who-was-also-there (Italian place, kinda expensive, food was alrit, not great, but they loved it so hey).
Second day! Aquarium, as planned! Also in front on the Aquarium they had an area that had a lot of art stalls out- I got woven animals for my aunt and sister (bird and shark respectively), as well as a couple anime pins at a great price, all from a place that gave proceeds to refugees, which was nice, while there was an India (the country in Asian)-American parade/band going by. Went to the aquarium, ate at their cafe (fine, nothing special), went up and down the whole Aquarium- tons of cool fish, turtles, harbor seals, informative stuff, good times. Also there was a ray petting tank but the edge was all lined with people many of whom weren't even petting so c'mon people! On the way back there were issues with the T (one section was down, there was another train that was supposed to take us back one before we switched over to go on another route but they didn't move and it was hitting like 100f so we left) so we took a lyft to Newbery street which had comic shop (with surprisingly few comics, tons of funkpops) and two anime shops (good selection but overpriced so got nothing) and got on the T from there. Anyway really enjoyed that trip. Came back, Chinese takeout with Aunt and Uncle and Sister, I liked this meal more.
Third day! Science museum (other museums were dad and I, this time sis was there). At the suggestion of my dad we hit all the shows- 4D theater (think 3d theater except every 50-60s theater gimmick- seats shake, poke, spray water, bubbles, and smells. Animal kingdom show), Omnimax (space show), and Planetarium, as well as an electric show at the world's largest van de graaff generator, including playing a song on electricity at the end. As for the exhibits, there were some good ones, some not so good ones (robotics, yay, actually had a Boston Robotics dog running around! AI... boo, felt like an ad for generative stuff. Artic, boo, seemed mostly games for kids who wanted to spend time there. Dinosaurs and minerals, yay, perceptions/senses, yay, older ones, kinda neutral, just a buncha specimens). Dinner that night was pizza, also included my.... Aunt's nephew I think? He's definitely in the family but I forget the exact relation. Also a good meal. Also my uncle hates having leftovers around so for the next day he kept pressuring me to finish off the remaining slices even though I already finished my flavor the night before! (Did eat one of the remaining three slicing for breakfast, so I did my part)
Fourth day! Harvard Natural History + Peabody museum (which are in the same building). Like with the science museum, you could tell the difference between older style and newer exhibits, but even the older ones have more information posted and more information, and tended to be pretty dense (on the minus, lotta taxidermy and some of it was of iffy quality). Peabody had a Mezoamerican and Native North American section- the latter was full of a lot of separate tribes, tended to be focused on some aspect of them (like how the tribes in this region built boats, the history of pottery trade at that one, and so on), and had a good deal of items removed for review by the tribes in question. Unfortunately it was a half-mile from the T so my dad's legs were giving out near the end (he's old and it was 14 miles in one weekend!) so we walked as far as the nearest pizza place on Harvard square (Otto's- very good slice, I recommend! Small place), while he was sitting and recovering I went around the corner to the Harvard coop (which is by the same people as the MIT one but this one is both way larger and actually has stuff! I got the latest volume of Black Lagoon) except for a Harvard Business School hat my dad wanted (he was MIT but they have a deal where you can cross over? So he did some study there), but they did have it at the other coop around the corner from that. So hat acquired! Took a lyft back, stayed and rested for a bit, took a lyft to the airport, made it two blocks and turned around because my uncle found my dad's jacket which also had the bordering places, turned back around, got a traffic jam, made it, ate at the airport (legal sea food- good clam chowder!), took the flight back (actually left early since everyone was there and onboard 5 min ahead of schedule), made it home!
A couple general observations: Boston driving is bad. We went on one taxi and several lyfts, and the drivers almost universally were more aggressive and changed lanes more than DC, and we saw plenty of other people rushing, blocking the box at intersections, etc.. The drivers themselves were nice! One had water bottles in the back for passengers, two had phone chargers in back, they were all friendly. One took us down alleyways to get where we needed to go. Interesting experience, glad I don't drive there myself. On the T, we ended up going on like, 5 or 6 different cars? And they have a huge variety of designs, Some were modern and had videos with screens showing the inside. Some had seats in rows, some had more facing each other, must've been made in lots of eras. Which was a contrast to DC metro, which has like, two styles of cars.
So busy trip, loved visiting the fam, got a lot done!
10:16am: Terminator Dream
I had a fun dream last night. I was at a club and a Terminator came in (with some doc ock type extra limbs), and the bartender tried to control the situation by trying to rally people together, saying they didn't have enough guns to kill it but working together they could drive it off. One person said "screw that, it's not after me, I'm outa here and good luck with the terminator!"
Anyway turned out it was after them and left the club to pursue them after they ran off, leaving everyone else in peace.
5:33pm: Gold Digger reaches 300
It's been awhile since I've posted comic scans, hasn't it? Well I'm doing so again for a good reason-
Gold Digger 300! Now the longest-running creator owned book by a single creator (though if we count miniseries and specials it's probably already well in first place)! Oddly not talked about too much despite being such a long-time run by a black creator.
This was the comic that got me into reading comics, and I've followed it ever since!
And while I'm here, a reminder that the Gold Digger library exists with issues 1-199 available for all. Not miniseries, spinoffs, or specials, but still, that's a lot!
I did some stuff in preparing for the LARP, bought some stuff at a fantasy-oriented store, then went for lunch at a restaurant that overlooked the river next to the mall, and before eating could begin we looked out at the water where there were some boats going around and some planes in an airshow.
Then one of the planes broke and crashed, and then another. And a boat caught fire. There was some kind of attack going on.
So we were in disaster movie mode! We headed back into the mall- which began flooding- and first began trying to get to the cars in the garage. There was a lot of climbing on construction scaffolding and maintenance corridors, with maintenance people occasionally helping. Eventually giving up on cars due to concluding it was underwater and encountering them burned out, as well as running into a burned out trainyard that'd also been hit. We made our way to the foodcourt on the other side of the mall- I was still very hungry and hadn't eaten- and the noncombatants escaped to safety from that exit, but as half the court was flooded and the other was full of lines I still didn't get food.
I left the mall proper and went along the street side. By this point I'd been seen a lot of fictional-looking characters around the street near the mall (Samus in her zero suit, Fate servants, that kind of thing), and made my way back to the LARP center from the outside- where I finally got snacks- where people had, logically, largely given up on the game and were largely trying to figure out what to do, and I decided that the attack was a thematic equivalent to the Iliad- besieged place full of heroes- and that it was up to me to solve the problem.
I hooked up to the local net and announced I was Helen and that together we were going to Break the Siege of Troy! Then I got attacked by a cyber-dragon who declared my move a 'mistaken,' got a Bad End screen, and a reset to a few minutes before that happened.
So I decided the idea of organizing everyone to break the situation was still right but the attackers obviously had defenses against just announcing it from the top of the walls so to speak, and started going around recruiting people and around this point I drifted awake (which is probably why I was able to remember so much).
So yea, it was a big, epic, dramatic, heroic dream that I really enjoyed.
It starts out looking like a multiversal martial arts film akin to Jet Li's The One, and it kinda is but it's also so much more. The main focus is exploring different lives and choices and the effects on the main characters and Michelle Yeoh is fantastic and anyway it's great, go see it!
First off I went to San Diego for a week for my cousin's wedding. This is, obviously, my first trip since, y'know, and also less-obviously, my first time in California! (Outside of very brief layovers)
The wedding itself was fantastic- outside in the park. The groom's family was really fun from the interactions I had (which included the guy officiating it- though as he's the grooms cousin in law that's super-far from me ^^). Reception had good food, got to talk with cousins-in-laws, lotsa great speeches, and my cuz and her new husband really seemed to click, good time all around.
Second, I discovered Blerdcon, one of my fav cons, was on this year but I missed it back in July :\ So then I discovered there was another con, Station Unity a new SF con, nearby the weekend after my return. So THEN I discovered there's a bigger con in DC the same weekend! I debated doing each for a day but trip recovery made me decide to only do Saturday, and went with the big one, AwesomeCon.
All in all as a con, I rate it below focused cons like Blerdcon, Small Press Expo, and Escape Velocity (which I *think* might be dead... no word on if it's coming back post covid, which would be a shame), I had a smaller haul than I do at those, but for one day hitting and for being a year and a half since my last con? Fun times.
Oh, also the airplane *to* San Diego was horrible and uncomfortable (we got routed from our flight-with-stop to a non-stop... and yes we had to take an expensive taxi to DC's other airport), on the way back at least we got 'economy plus' which meant at least non-cramped legs but I remain a non-fan of long plane rides (the train ride that broke was better!), and Lyft makes getting around on a vacation *so* much easier.
Wore masks everywhere- both San Diego and here are big mask areas with high vaccination rates, and I feel lucky to do this stuff before Delta becomes too wide-spread. There's some risk of course especially with, like, the planerides, but a wedding's worth the risk when we're all vaxxed up, y'know?
Anyway, that's my recent doings, and probably my major outings for the year- any further cons will be reliant on both whether they happen and how bad delta gets. I didn't expect to do so much so close together (I literally had a limp from all the SD walking at one point! Got better pretty fast though, I know how to handle that situation), but it worked out that way and I had multiple blasts!
4:22pm: Pacific Rim: The Black
As you know I'm a big kaiju fan, and I'm especially a big Pacific Rim fan.
So what did I think of Netflix's new anime, Pacific Rim The Black?
Loved it. Binged the whole thing (7 episodes) in one sitting. The characters are strong and it builds on the worldbuilding of the movies. Solid action. Warning, it gets pretty dark at times! It had not one but a couple twists I did not see coming, which is great.
If you're a pacific rim fan (and maybe if not?) I quite recommend.
Also sidenote, I do hope/expect it'll also cause people to revise upwards their views of Uprising by viewing it in a wider context than comparing the cinematography to GDT's. I've already seen one fan who'd only seen the first, then the series, then Uprising, love Uprising.
10:26am: Kaiju Kaiju Kaiju
I watched a really well-made, beautiful short Kaiju film Howl from Beyond the Fog. It was done using puppetry and it's this really atmospheric, well-made piece.
As-of this point I've probably seen something like 90% of all kaiju movies, and it's fun to still run into gems
1:56am: Mini-updates!
Wow, I really haven't posted here in awhile? Quick stuff- I had good holidays, been staying covid free. Hope all of you are doing alright!
I can really see why others built on this to make the kaiju genre, but flipside, I can't recommend it too much aside from the historical value.
The monster, Rhedosaurus, is cool and has great Harryhousen effects.
The plot is very standard monster fair- I doubt it made the formula even, but you know the drill. 'See monster, deal with people doubting it's real, people admit it when evidence mounts up, fight monster.'
They had the poison blood gimmick, but introduced it way too late in, after the rampage and before only the final fight, so it didn't present a problem for very long before they had a solution. The setpieces, though? Very cool. Great NYC rampage, and 'final inside a burning rollercoaster' was a great visual- With the irony that lighting the rollercoaster on fire wasn't even part of the plan.
Some of the extras, especially the police officers/soldiers firing at the monster, seem insufficiently worried about the gigantic dinosaur rampaging around. I wonder how much of that was due to lack of knowing what a giant monster was like!- most of the extras were good though.
If you want to see a really good old monster movie, Kong or Godzilla are better. If you want to see the spark that lead to Godzilla, it's worth a look.
As a monster movie I only give it maybe a C-. There's a lot better there and the plot is very formula. It's better than a bad monster movie, it's well made enough, but there's not going to be anything you haven't seen before.
I've also heard people say the Tristar '98 Godzilla resembles a remake of Beast more than a G movie, and that's definitely true. Some differences but in both appearance and story structure (including both somehow losing the monsters inside NYC at one point) there's strong similarities. Rethink G98 as a modern take on Beast and it helps G98 come off better.
I found it pretty fun, so I thought I'd share and asked him to send it to me, so here it is!
Intro: Colleagues, Attached below is a short story entitled "2020 Dispatching", a fictional account written in the year 2000 predicting what train dispatching might have, could have been like twenty years later. It was published as a sidebar in the Federal Railroad Administration's Five-Year Strategic Plan for Railroad Research, Development, and Demonstrations, March 2002. The authors of the short story were, in retrospect, excessively optimistic about how train dispatching would change over two decades. Perhaps the title of the story should be changed to "2050 Dispatching".
8:02pm: The most important single page in Legion history!
Preparing for the new Legion boot (Fiveboot?), I was reading through some Reboot Legion comics, Legionnaires #65 to be specific, and I came across the most important page in Legion of Superheroes history!
10:15am: Ramen Fire
Approximately 12 days ago, a new Ramen restaurant opened at the local shopping center. As in legit 'buncha ingredients, a full meal, with a variety of styles,' ramen, not the instant kind.
Approximately 3 days ago, there was a fire in the shopping center, a number of stores suffered smoke/water damage, and the powers still out. The ramen store and the laundry next to it are the two most likely starting points.
9:09am: DIY
In the vein of the last post, I did another DIY project, filling up something else.
"Hm, this one says I shouldn't get it on my skin..." Dad: "We have some rubber gloves." Me: (Knowing they're kitchen, not disposable, gloves) "I don't want to mess up any good ones..." Dad: "These are on the way out anyway." Me: "Alright."
*Does DIY project*
*Pulls off gloves at finish- two fingers break off*
Me: "These really were on the way out!"
I have no idea how they got that way but the rubber just snapped off ^^
10:54pm: I have successfully sealed my shower!
I have successfully sealed the edge of my shower because the old sealant chaulk stuff was getting grody!
... and now I'm thinking of redoing it because I did a really sloppy job ^^;
12:37am: Back from Vermont!
I came back from a week-long vacay to Vermont, where I stayed with my Aunt C, who's great. Went up with my dad and sister, though sis only for half the trip. Also for part of it, Aunt B and her husband were there too, which was cool! (Last time I went up to the area was their wedding)
We swung over to New Hampshire and went up Mount Washington on the Cog Railroad- if you ever want to go up a famous mountain without hiking, this is the one to do, and being on a specially-designed railway doesn't diminish the experience (the seats and engine are both tilted!). We love trains, and Mt. Wash is awesome. Got there on one of the first trains so it wasn't too busy when we did. Weather was good when we did- the mountain has famously some of the worst weather on earth (they had a wind gauge there that once clocked 231 mph- which held the record for something like 90 years), but we got a mix of clear and literally being inside some clouds, which was nice.
To my disappointment, Montpelier's best bookstore, Rivendale, closed! It was suuuch a good used/new bookstore, alas, I was heartbroken. We did hit a number of other places of interest. Up in Burlington their Church street had a lot of good bookstores, restaurants, and various other places, reminds me some of Old Town around here, plus they had some stands out for a market day with artists and such. Word of warning- the comic there has tricky steps coming in *and* going out, so I twisted my foot on the exit ^^ Last day, so it didn't really affect the trip much, only started hurting once we got to the airport. Plus we got to look over the lake- no Champ sightings, alas.
We also hit the Dog Chapel on the way to the mountain. Lotta dog stuff- and they had some event going on so a lot of dogs too!
Went over to the cousin's place (literally next door from my aunt's). Played Ticket to Ride with the whole family, and we had a pretty good time. I got second place ^^ My dad didn't do well because even though he's big into trains he's not great at games, so got too focused on the routes he couldn't make. I played fairly safe and managed to do pretty well.
Shortly before going I got a nintendo 3ds, to give stuff to do on the travel segments of the trip. So far only have mighty gunvolt burst (a really great Mega Man style game), Monster Hunter 4, and Radiant Historia (a time travel fantasy RPG). It took me off guard that portables not only have 3d, but just plumb good graphics and an RPG can have full voice acting, that's better than my last home console (PS2). Anyway, that was fun on the trainride up/planeride back.
Speaking of the planeride, it was delayed a few hours, but the gate had a 'Skinny Pancake' place that served crepes, and they stayed open longer to help take care of us. So I ate some very good crepes and honestly the delay was a bonus ^^ On the way back we went over some great city lights. Arrived home, all is well!
Oh, and not long after getting back I cleared a buncha books from my shelves and took 'em to a used bookstore and got a few new ones. Yay! And my foot healed.
Grand Central Arena one of my favs, I absolutely love the Arena as a setting, and the Hyperion backstory with the transhuman characters made to be real versions of fictional heroes. In brief, the first FTL ship takes a crew to a giant construct, where everyone shows up- all FTL goes to one place, the 'Arena,' so there's a vast number of aliens and factions, mingling and competing in this fantastic place. And the crew themselves are quite interesting, coming from an advanced solar system where AI companions are ubiquitous and genmods are common- and one of them specifically comes from the results of a project to make real versions of fictional heroes and it's so cool.
Spoor's love of EE Doc Smith's stuff (and a number of other things) really shows.
For those who haven't gotten into it, the first book is on the Baen Free Library. And if you're curious about the series and have questions, ask, because I am totally down for answering them.
If you have read some of the series, I highly recommend chipping in for the new one at kickstarter!
3:13am: My dad didn't like the new Godzilla, but....
On opening night I decided to check out Godzilla: King of the Monsters, sight unseen and without much in the way of reviews/no feedback from friends yet, and invited my dad along with. I basically liked it, but thought it had some issues (I enjoyed half the human cast but they made a 'dad plot' central again, just like the first. The monster part was good, the world setting was interesting, and Mothra was awesome). Flipside, my dad didn't, finding it too dark- visually as much as anything.
Buuut seeing it did get him interested to revisit some of the old Godzilla movies with me! He's almost certainly seen some in the past but when I was super-young so he didn't remember much besides the names of the major monsters.
So over the weekend I watched both Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster and Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla with him, curated to pick the ones with good human plots.
Best part? I managed to hide the title with Mechagodzilla, so the twist got him by surprise ^^
Both got thumbs up from him, with Mechagodzilla getting the small nod as his fav of the two.
For my rankings of G:KotM, I find I like the other recent Kaiju movies I've watched more (Pacific Rim Uprising, Rampage), but it is a lot more memorable than the first one. C+, out of kaiju movies. It's better than a number I can think of, but doesn't go in the upper ranks to me. Could go up or down with time- and I am looking forward to Godzilla vs Kong, so there's that.
Ghidorah and Mechagodzilla are A and A+ respectively, being two of the best Showa Godzillas ^^
10:09am: Endgame
Like nigh everyone on Earth I went to see Avengers Endgame- and really liked it!
I went to see it at 2:15AM on the opening weekend Friday... and the theater was still packed.
Won't spoil anything, but I felt I was definitely an A+ movie. There really hasn't been something like it, built up off so much.
Then yesterday I saw it again, because my dad wanted to see it. Despite not having seen IW and only having vague memories of the MCU movies he saw 7 and 5 years ago (Avengers 1, GotG), he thought it was terrific!
Considering there's almost no feedback on what non-fans think, that was interesting.
5:16am: So what's everyone up to?
I've gotten into Light Novels and Webnovels recently (probably post more on them soon), but on the whole things have been going good, not much to report.
And it occurs to me I haven't checked on some of you recently! So what's up?
1:19am: Plants!
Specifically succulents! I brought a new batch home with me the other day:
This pot used to have a few more (not counting the new ones), but when we took over water the plants of the house they were forgotten for a bit (it was a really busy time and they're the least-obvious plants in the house), so by the time we realized some were dying and regular watering resumed, it was too late and we were down to the skinny one in the corner. It's been on it's own for some time, alive but lonely.
Fast forward a bit and we had a reason to get a new birdbath bowl (we thought it had cracked and had some exterior damage. Turned out the whole inner and outer layer of the ceramic bowl separated and when we picked it up the exterior of the bottom was off!) and went to this really good garden store which also had a room full of succulents which I beelined for and spent ten minutes picking out the best ones- or at least the selection I thought was best ^^ More than the pot originally had, but I think they look good, right?
Oh yea, and when my sister visited she pointed out this big fern that we got from our old neighbors (who moved about a year ago) was pretty sickly and pointed out it had some white stuff on it. I had kinda noticed those things but didn't really think to check, looked it up- they're a sign of bugs! So also got some plant spray for those to help the fern out.
So yay, plant doctored, and lone survivor has company!
