Aussiecon 4: Day 1

aussiecon4_logo_webI’m attending the 68th World Science Fiction – Aussiecon 4 – that’s being held in Melbourne, Australia from 2-6 September. 

Today was the first day and, so far, it’s been awesome.

Choices, Choices…

The biggest problem with conventions like these are that there are multiple sessions running concurrently (in multiple rooms, of course) so you have to choose which one of those you want to attend.

The organizers do, however, try to make your life a little easier by dividing sessions into topic streams – such as kids, young adults, academic panels, academic papers, writers workshops, film programs, signings, talks from guests, and so on. That way, if you have any special overarching interest in one streams, it makes it a little easier for your to make your choices.

Sessions Attended on Day 1

Aussiecon 4 opening ceremonyToday, aside from the opening ceremony, I attended the following sessions during which I learnt the following things (though, of course, this is just a small sample of what was discussed there):

Breaking the fourth wall: Supernatural and its audience

  • There are two kinds of ‘fourth walls’:
    • one in which the show’s authors are influenced by the fans (e.g. the killing off of Bela in Supernatural season 3) and
    • the other in which the show’s characters interact with the audience during/through the show (e.g. the bit after the credits in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).
  • Fan influence can be both to the show’s benefit and detriment. In the case of Supernatural the consensus seems to be that the latter occurred.
  • It can sometimes be hard for a show’s authors to figure out whether the feedback they’re getting from their fans is:
    • just the loudest people trying to get them to write the show they really want to see (e.g. this must happen in the next season because I think that would be awesome!) or
    • a genuine fan pointing out a flaw or blind spot in their story or show choices (e.g. all the show’s characters happen to be Caucasian…wtf?).
  • American TV networks seem to be shifting the way in which they source and plan for serialized shows. The original model was, for example, a show that had a 5-year storyline with defined milestones for each season. The newer model seems to be the British one of shows being sold with 1-year plans and, if they do well in that first year, being picked up for subsequent seasons.

Perfectly packaged: designing and marketing science fiction

  • A book’s cover image should tell you what it feels like to be reading that book
  • Some manuscripts are really easy to pick covers for while for others (such as cross-genre one) it’s a much harder exercise
  • ‘Less is more’ in book covers and one of the most effective covers is one with big lettering for both the author’s name and book’s title and with only a small image/illustration
  • Publishers try to avoid people’s faces on book covers because it leaves more to the imagination
  • Black book covers with a single, coloured high-contrast image in the centre (i.e. the Twilight style) is very last year

Things to do in Melbourne when you’re geek

Sessions for Day 2

Tomorrow I’m planning to attend the following sessions:

  • When history becomes fantasy: artistic license and historical cinema
  • The Last Airbender: race and Hollywood cinema
  • Rethinking SETI: 50 years on – though this has been rescheduled so I’ll have to change my plans accordingly
  • The future of privacy or, if I’m one of the first ten to sign up, a kaffeeklatsch (i.e. small group discussion) with Gail Carriger
  • Shaun Tan Guest of Honour Speech
  • Eowyn and Sam: underappreciated heroes in The Lord of the Rings
  • To the stars: the never-ending history of Star Trek
  • Academic Panel: These are not the people you are looking for: race in SFF

I’ll also go check out the dealer’s room and go to the Friday Night Filking session (which should be lots of fun).

Quick Tour of Sydney

A couple of weeks ago I went to Sydney to attend a the ConnectNow Conference. That took place on Wednesday and Thursday so I took the Friday off to explore the city (as much as I could in one day).

The photos from that day are on my ‘Sydney April 2010’ Set on Flickr but here are some of my favourites.

Buildings at University of Sydney

The second day of the conference ended around sunset and the sunlight on that overcast day was quite delicious. This is the Law School building:

Buildings at University of Sydney - 8

Sydney Harbour Bridge

The Harbour Bridge is, of course, am imposing structure:

Sydney Harbour Bridge from Sydney Explorer Bus

Even when it’s in the background:

Sydney Harbour Bridge in the background at the Rocks

It was fun, also, to see people doing the bridge walk on it:

Sydney Harbour - Bridge walk as seen from the Manly Ferry

Sydney Tower

I also managed to get a good perspective shot of the Sydney Tower from within the Sydney Explorer tour bus.

Sydney Tower (Space Needle) from Sydney Explorer Bus

Sydney City

Finally, like my photo of Melbourne from Port Philip Bay, here's a photo of Sydney from its harbour:

Sydney Harbour - View of the city

All in all, I had a great day wandering around this gorgeous city. I would have liked more time to explore but that’s no fun without Nadia so we’ll check the city out properly when we go there for TAM! Australia 2010.

Oh, I also got to try out my new camera – the Canon IXUS 120 IS – which, as you can see from the photos I took, is quite awesome.

Quick reminder: You can see all the photos from this trip on my ‘Sydney April 2010’ Set on Flickr.

Moby, Live in Melbourne

So earlier this month I was fortunate enough to see one of my favourite musicians, Moby, live in concert (with opening acts Kelli Scarr and Tim & Jean) at the Palace Theatre in Melbourne.

This was probably the best concert I have ever attended. Yes, it was even better than watching The Police live at the MCG on Australia Day a couple of years ago. I guess it helps that I own almost every Moby album and that I knew all of the songs he played :)

Instead of writing much about it, I’m just going to share some of the photos and video snippets that I took.

Photos

Opening number:

Opening number

Joy Malcolm and Moby:

Joy Malcom and Moby

Kelli Scarr and Moby:

Kelli Scarr and Moby

The whole band at the end of a song:

The whole band at the end of a song

Joy Malcom and crowd participation:

Joy Malcom and crown partcipation

Videos

‘Bodyrock’

 

‘Porcelain’

 

‘Disco Lies’

 

‘Feeling so Real’ and concert end

 

It was awesome.

Melbourne Photo Blogs

I’ve recently started following Michael Blamey’s Today in Melbourne photo blog and it’s really quite good.

Christmas eve in the rain

Since then I’ve gone and looked for other Melbourne photo blogs and here are the ones I found so far:

Let me know if you find any others.

Recent Life Recap

My blogging has been sporadic of late (I’ve been very busy at work) so here’s a quick catch-up on all the exciting things that have been happening in my life recently. This works quickest as a Q&A.

Q: How’s life?

A: It’s going well:

  • We’ve moved apartments so we’re closer to the city. Nadia can now walk to university and my daily commute to work is shorter by 20 minutes each way.
  • We now have high speed, large bandwidth broadband Internet (ADSL2+) at home thanks to awesome iiNet. This also means we have a land line telephone, which is nice.
  • We have a bigger TV (inherited from my sister) and Foxtel have added new channels to their line-up. I’m particularly enjoying SciFi+2 (which is the SciFi Channel time-shifted by two hours) because I can now watch shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: The Next Generation at more convenient times. I’m also watching a lot of Inside the Actor’s Studio, which I’m really enjoying.
  • Work is going really well. Melbourne Water is an awesome place to work and I love my job (I’m the Websites Manager there). Importantly, I’m having lots of fun.
  • Over the last six months I’ve had much dental work done from the excellent dentists at East Melbourne Dental. And, though this had hit my wallet quite hard, it has made me a much more pain-free (and, therefore, a much happier!) person.

Q: What have you been up to?

A: Plenty!

Last month Nadia and I visited the Gold Coast for the first time.

Beach at Surfers Paradise

We stayed at the excellent Watermark Hotel & Spa in Surfers Paradise and, though were only there for three days, we had lots of fun. Our trip to Sea World was particularly enjoyable.

Polar bear at Sea World Underwater life at Sea World

 

I’ll upload a photo gallery from that trip to my PicasaWeb account some time soon. We hope to go back for a longer trip in the future.

Right after the Gold Coast trip we attended the Australian Skeptics National Convention in Brisbane (hosted by the Queensland Skeptics) which was both exciting and hugely inspiring. More on this in a later blog post.

We also saw the fabulous Tim Minchin (official site) perform at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda. In a few days’ time (3 Jan), I’ll be going to see Moby (official site) perform at the Palace Theatre on Bourke Street! :)

Q: What else is happening in your life?

A: Well, starting with the geeky side of life, I’ve made a few excellent purchases.

For backup and media storage, I bought Western Digital’s My Book World Edition external hard drive:

WD MyBook World Edition Home NAS

This gives us 1TB of storage and lets us do daily backups over the network. It’s a fantastic network attached storage solution for the home.

I bought a 7” digital photo frame (via the brilliant Catch of the Day website) which we’ve placed in our living room.

I downloaded and installed Amazon’s Kindle for PC software, though I’ve only bought one book for it so far (‘Groundswell’ by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li). I’ll probably buy more once I get myself an actual Kindle device (which I hope to do some time in the near future).

Finally, I went ahead and bought two pieces of software I’ve been meaning to get for a long time: WinAmp Professional (my favourite media player) and Webcam Saver (my favourite screen saver).

On the music side of life, I joined the Melbourne Water Choir (which was lots of fun) and I bought myself a drum kit. That drum kit is the really basic Roland HD-1 V-Drums Lite:

Roland HD-1 V-Drums Lite

I bought an electronic kit because an acoustic one, no matter how muffled, would be too loud for the apartment. I bought this particular one because it’s the quietest, most acoustic-like in its price range. It’s also one of the cheapest electronic kits available :)

I have discovered since that not playing the drums for about a year makes you a little rusty!

Q: What else?

A: That’s about it, I think (though I will probably remember more later). Well, other than the fact that we’ve been watching lots of movies, listening to lots of music, hanging out with lots of friends (including one who was here from overseas), and generally doing stuff we enjoy.

All in all, life is really busy (mostly because of work) but it’s going well and we’re having fun.

Conroy Wants Australia to be a Nanny State

In case you don't keep up with the news, there are two major Internet-related issues being considered in Australia right now. The first is the National Broadband Network (which I'm not going to talk about here) and the second is mandatory national Internet filter that Senator Stephen Conroy wants to introduce.

So what are people saying about the filter?

It's Not Going to Work

Nina Funnell, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald (and quoting Kathryn Small), makes a very good point'. She says the proposed filter will not be censoring the Internet, it'll be censoring the people who don't know much about the Internet (i.e. the people who won't know how circumvent the filter):
Small says anyone with a vested interest who knows enough about software design will be able to circumvent the system. "The real problem is Conroy will create a two-tiered system [with] a massive disparity between the 'haves' and 'have nots' of computer literacy."

The irony is that it is children and young people who will be most likely to get around the blocks.

Children are more computer-savvy and literate than any other generation, precisely because they have grown up with computers. This was demonstrated in 2007 when a 16-year-old, Tom Wood, took just 30 minutes to crack the Government's super-filter that cost a whopping $84 million to develop.

What a shame the Government hasn't learnt from that embarrassing bungle.

Funnell's whole article is really good, by the way, and I suggest you read it.

It's Politics, Not Child Protection

Another good article to read is Stilgherrian's 'Evidence-based policy? Not on this filter!' on the ABC's The Drum Unleashed website:
Politicians use the term "evidence-based" quite differently from police detectives or scientists.

Senator Stephen Conroy provided a glorious example earlier in the week when announcing that Australia will indeed get mandatory ISP-level internet filtering some time in...well, maybe in 2011.

For politicians, "evidence" isn't something to be gathered with forensic precision and preserved through a documented chain of custody. Nor it is something to be compiled transparently, justified through meticulous research and refined in the purifying fire of peer review.

No. For politicians, "evidence" is something to be plucked from wherever it can be found and sprinkled to justify a previously-chosen policy like so much magic fairy dust.

The Rudd government's internet censorship proposal is not about protecting the children. It's about politics.

If the plan were really about protecting the children, and if it were really evidence-based, the government would have first have figured out what risks children actually face - online and everywhere else. They'd then figure out the best methods of countering those risks. Then they'd figure out the most cost-effective ways of implementing those solutions.

If we did that, we'd probably find that the risks are the very same ones that child protection experts keep banging on about. Bullying by their peers. Abuse from within their own homes and families. Poverty and its associated health risks. Obesity.

But this is politics, not child protection.

Google & Kirby Weigh In

Finally, two more opinions worth reading are:

What Next?


Well, Conroy has released a discussion paper on the topic so, hopefully, people will submit in response to that excellent, well reasoned reasons for not using the filter (of which there are many). Ideally, our policymakers will then look at those arguments, realize the filter is useless (indeed, it's a case of minimal effect for maximal cost), and will stop wasting our time and money on it. More likely, though, they will forge ahead for a while longer. That's politics for you.

And if, despite all reasonable counterarguments, the filter does get implemented then two things will happen. The first is the broader "epic fail" of not, for example, making any difference to the sharing of child pornography. The second is the creation of whole new industry devoted to providing filter-circumvention services to people living in Australia. Certainly the latter is a service I'd pay for and I'm sure many others will as well.

So, basically, we'll be back to where we are now...though with a few key differences:

  • ISP costs will be higher (to pay for the filter)

  • Internet connection costs for most of us will be a little higher (to pay for getting around the filter)

  • Some third party service providers will be a little richer (for providing filter circumvention services)

  • The Internet will be slower (since we'll be going through a filter and, most likely, a proxy)

  • The country will be about $40 billion poorer (to pay for the filter)


All so a bunch of politicians and self-appointed keepers-of-our-morals feel better about themselves and all the "good work" that they're doing to "PROTECT THE CHILDREN!!!".

Further Reading

Using my Flickr Account

I’ve finally found a good use for my Flickr account: I’m going to use it to post photos that I probably won’t be adding to one of my albums on Picasa.

Waiting for a train at a lonely railway station in Melbourne 
Waiting for a train at a lonely railway station in Melbourne

A Little Background

I have a Flickr account and a Picasa account. I publish my photographs online to Picasa because my free Flickr account has an upload limit (100 MB per month) and a limit to the number of sets I can create (3). Picasa doesn’t have such limits. However the photos that I do upload to Picasa all belong to specific albums, even if that’s the broadly defined ‘Life in Melbourne’ album that I update every now and again.

What happens then to the photos that I like but either don’t belong to a specific album or are good, but not good enough to be included in any album? Well, nothing really. They just sit around on my hard drive…

Waiting at a tram stop on Lygon Street 
Waiting at a tram stop on Lygon Street

…until now.

Flickr to the Rescue

The plan, then, is to use Flickr to publish non-album, non-event, or simply good-but-not-great photos that I have taken and would like to share. I won’t be doing this with any regularity, though, so don’t hold your breath.

Path Running Through Princes Park
Path running through Princes Park in Melbourne, connecting the Princes Hill and Parkville suburbs

Doing this should be fun, though. It might even encourage me to take more random photographs.