delta_november

11:42 pm - % It's been five years since third age began %

This evening jo_etal and I finished watching Babylon 5. It's taken us about a year to plug through a total of 110 episodes. It's not perfect, but I'm very glad that we did it. I much prefer this sort of thing to trying to watch a series in realtime as it comes out.

I'm not sure what might be next. I have a crazy desire to watch Lexx from beginning to end, but I know that you can never go back...

[A wonderful quote from the Lexx Wikipedia page:
Not originally produced for a US network, the series features more sexual innuendo and nudity than audiences in the United States are generally accustomed to seeing in non-premium programming.]

12:20 pm

 I'm very tempted to drop by WindyCon this year.  If I fly in on Saturday morning and back on Monday morning (not ideal times, but acceptable) I can get flights for $79 each way.

I believe that netmouse and ctrlalttabby may be coming.  Anybody else I know who will be there? 

08:32 am - Free morning in Vancouver

 It's 0530 local, and I'm awake and dressed.  My flight back to Toronto leaves at 1330, which doesn't leave much time to do anything civilized.  And so I'm off to climb Grouse Mountain instead.  I'm not optimally prepared.  My only footwear is a pair of worn-out Doc Martin shoes.  Could be better, but I'm sure it could be much worse.  If I survive I'll post my time :-).

Edit: Now at YVR, using their terribly slow free WiFi.  My Grouse Grind time is 70 minutes.  Not wonderful, but not terrible either.  If I did it more I'd get the pacing better.  I did a lot of sprint-and-rest, and I think slow-and-steady is a better route.

I still have 2 hours before my flight.  Time to find some lunch!

01:48 pm - Books I have read

 I have just finished reading an interesting series of novels:

• The Cornelius Quartet by Michael Moorcock, purchased used.  This consists of:
  • The Final Programme
  • A Cure for Cancer (which I had read last summer, and did not re-read)
  • The English Assassin
  • The Condition of Muzak
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, a gift from KD
• Anathem by Neal Stephenson, courtesy of leftofcool 's gift
• Transition by Iain M. Banks, thanks again to leftofcool

12:11 am - Happy news

It's been a bit of a day, with subcontractor cost overruns suddenly destroying my vacation budget.  This makes me sad.  But there is happy news.  For those of you who know her: JMN is now Dr. JMN!  Her thesis defense was this morning,  and it was accepted with zero corrections.  So hooray!

06:34 pm

 I have to say, Phobos-Grunt wins my best spacecraft name award for the decade.

08:57 pm - Nuit Blanche

Nuit Blanche is Saturday, October 3.  Who's with me? 

10:15 pm

Today I'm reading Stephenson's Anathem.  This passage spoke to me:

"An Atlanian Liaison."  Named after a Decenarian fraa of the Seventeenth Century A.R. who saw his true love for ten days every ten years and spent the rest of the time writing poems to her and sneaking them out of the math.  They were really fine poems, carved in stone some places.

-- Anathem, p. 69 of the paperback edition.

In many ways this is an excellent metaphor for my life.  So many of the people that I care about are far away, or are close but difficult to meet.  And so I see them for a few days each year, and in the meantime write a whole lot of (not very poetic) emails.  I carve no stone, but I will often machine shiny metal for these people.

05:22 pm

 They made a movie of this?  I must see it!

I recently finished reading the Cornelius Quartet.  It's quite a trip.  I would acuse it of ripping off Gravity's Rainbow, except that it was written first...

01:30 am - Where did it all go wrong?

It is 1:30 AM, and I am at work.  I expect to be here for another hour.

 This is ridiculous.  I'd be well within my means to go sit on a beach and not work another day in my life.  So why am I here?

11:01 pm - Iron Ring

Last winter I lost my engineer's iron ring.  My fingers shrink in the cold, and I believe it fell off as I removed a pair of gloves.  I could have gone back to the university for a replacement, but I felt it more fitting that I make my own.  After many months of delay, here is the result.  I machined it from a 1" bar of steel, first by turning on a lathe and then by milling with a precision rotary table.  This is as shiny as it will ever look -- the rust will come soon, as is right and proper.

( Picture behind cut )

07:21 pm - Heavy weather

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/08/20/tornado-durham.html

Going on outside right now. Fun!

03:49 pm

I went to hang a picture today and cound not find a hammer in either of my toolboxes.  I own at least three.  I suspect that some have migrated to the lab, and others may be hiding in the Land Rover.

I ended up whacking the nail into the wall using a length of 1" diameter titanium rod.  Which I have in my basement.  Instead of having hammers.  Odd.

11:14 am

 For Canadians with surplus money:

Right now Scotiabank is offering a 4 year GIC at 3.1%.  That beats the best that ING is offering right now by almost 1%.  Of course, ING does have more favourable early redeption terms.

11:46 am

I arrived home at midnight last night, after WorldCon and then SmallSat.  They were both wonderful, in their own way.  At WorldCon I'm a nobody: a fan who consumes media but creates nothing.  At SmallSat I'm well on my way to becoming a Big Damn Hero and everybody knows my name.  Both involved a lot of waving my arms and yelling in loud spaces.  Between the two I have spent all of my limited store of extroversion.  On Wednesday evening I spent a wonderful half-hour playing with gravel with a 16 month-old.  I think I may go pre-verbal for a while :).

Toronto remains in one piece.  I have sifted through the big stack of envelopes that have accumulated on my desk, and the incoming cheques almost balance the incoming invoices.  I can't really ask for more.

01:52 pm - Worldcon

(Finally updated on August 15 with proper links)

I write from the airplane that is taking me from Montreal to Denver, en route to Salt Lake City. Before I forget it all, I shall attempt to capture the joy that was three days of WorldCon.

The programming was very strong. I chose largely on the strength of the panelists, not the topic. The panel on "The World is Very Strange", which I had picked based on its Henry Spencer quotient, introduced me to Ada Palmer. I subsequently went to a couple of her other panels. She is a historian, just finished a post-doc and beginning teaching, with a wide knowledge and a spirited and entertaining delivery. If you see her, ask about ancient Corinth. You will be educated.

Peter Watts was amusingly grim as ever, reading from his story "Rosencrants and Gildenstern are Thing." It was a pleasure to finally meet Charles Stross. Had I been better prepared I would have asked him to sign my 1st edition AD&D Fiend Folio. Cory Doctorow and Neil Gaiman were themselves, and did not disapoint. Cory kindly signed a copy of Eastern Standard Tribe which I am bringing to KD. Kyle Cassidy (kylecassidy ) is an infectiously good humoured person. I had wanted to have him sign a copy of Who Killed Amanda Palmer for leftofcool , but the logistics just didn't work out.

Early Friday morning I sat in the hotel lobby catching up with the net. Reading Gaiman's blog I see a photo of him with his conference assistant Anne Murphy (aka netmouse ). Looking up from the computer, I see her sitting across from me checking her email. We had a pleasant conversation: we are both engineers and had roughly parallel schooling.

The dealer's area was disappointing. There were books aplenty, of course, but little else. I came out empty-handed. This, on the tail of a Ren Faire at which I also acquired nothing but gave much. There's a message in there somewhere.

Many LJ folks were finally met in the flesh: gridlore , kshandra , fearsclave and mousme . Old friends from previous fandom were greeted, and some new friends were made. My only regret is that I wasn't able to make as many goodbyes as I would have liked. I'm sure that I will see some of these people again over the years, but most are gone forever.

My very best wishes to those who have two more days of Con to go. May all the right people win Hugos, may the winning and losing parties be truly epic, and may everybody come safe home happier than when they left.

07:27 am - WorldCon!

So here we are, and the first day of WorldCon has been survived.  Random first impressions:
- Conference center food options are better than average
- All of the tales of hotel elevators at Cons that I have heard are true.  Last night I party-hopped via the stairs.  I'm not sure what those who are not young and fit are supposed to do.
- This Con is so big that even the small panels are very well attended.  So far we haven't had the problem of a bigger panel than audience.
- I have obtained a Cory Doctorow autograph at KD's request.  I have been within a meter of Charles Stross and Neil Gaiman and sundry other luminaries.  The inner squealing fanboy is under control.
- Fans here back away from their idols as if they were Louis XIV.  It's amusing.

More news as it happens.

10:45 pm - All packed up and ready to go

 Tomorrow morning I fly off to WorldCon on Montreal.  Sunday morning I then fly down to Logan Utah for a work conference.  I return home the next Thursday.

I am now successfully packed, into a single gate-check bag.  The need to combine Con and Utah wardrobe into one space will somewhat cramp my WorldCon style, but such are the perils of being a responsible grownup.

Looking forward to seeing many of you tomorrow!

10:14 pm

A random thought, triggered by today's museum  visit:

The Jewish and Muslim faiths have injunctions against eating pork.  I have heard many non-expert commentators speculate that this is because these religions originated in desert areas where it is hot, causing pork to spoil quickly and be dangerous to eat.

If this is so, why have pigs been the staple food animal in Polynesia for thousands of years?  I'm sure there are islands with typical temperatures much greater than those in the Abrahamic Holy Land.

08:36 pm - Easy come, easy go

A client paid me on Friday, which was nice.  Not a huge amount, maybe 10% of my current accounts receivable, but it still justified a little shopping trip.  I now have:
- A Lenovo S10e Ideapad computer.  This is a little 10" netbook which I can use to avoid having to carry around my 17" mobile workstation.  People, brand-name computers are now under $500.  When did this happen?  Why was I not told?  
- A 12" x 9" x 3" precision ground block of granite.  This is flat to 3 micro-meters, and is the standard by which I shall judge the flatness of other things.  No, you may not use if for baking.
- A boring head for my milling machine (exciting!).

Today I lost my glasses while out walking (I was wearing my sunglasses, and lost the regular glasses).  One re-trace on bike and a second on foot failed to find them, and so they're gone.  Tomorrow I shall have to have more made.  Add that on to last Wednesday's dentist visit, and the discretionary spending is complete :(.