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Conventional Thinking Write, Write, You Bloody Well Write

GlitchCon is THIS WEEKEND!

GlitchCon is this weekend! August 1st through 3rd at the Springdale Holiday Inn. A few notes ahead of the show…

  • Death panels! Well, okay, not really. I’m doing two panels Saturday night: at 7pm in panel room 2 (the Sci-Fi room), I’m doing “Doctor Who in the Off-Season”, which will begin with the somewhat off-putting question “What will you do the next time Doctor Who is cancelled?” (Don’t worry, I’ll offer a detailed justification for asking that question in the first place.) At 9pm in panel room 3 (the Steam room, which hopefully doesn’t obligate me to do a karaoke version of the Peter Gabriel song of the same name), it’s “Beyond the TARDIS”, a look at British sci-fi beyond Doctor Who.
  • D20: The Musical! Friday night between 8pm and 10pm in panel room 4 (the Anime room), the cast of D20: The Musical is doing a readthrough of their script. Quite a few of my friends are behind this show, so check it out, add +3 to your Wisdom score, and enjoy.
  • Star Trek ContinuesStar Trek Continues! Vic Mignogna of Star Trek Continues will be there all weekend, showing the latest episodes of the ridiculously-professionally-produced Trek fan series, signing autographs and answering questions. My one stipulation to the organizers of the show was “Please, for the love of whatever gods are applicable, don’t put me up against Vic Mignogna at the same time on the schedule, because I don’t want to speak to an empty room.” 😆 These episodes have to be seen to be believed.
  • Books! I will have a few copies of both VWORP!1 Second Edition and the brand-new, just-released VWORP!2 with me; hit me up at the end of either panel (or between panels) if you’re interested. Here’s where it gets funny: in order to have a chance in hell of having copies of VWORP!2 on hand, I had to “game the system” a bit and order a box full of proof copies from CreateSpace. These copies have a visible bounding box around a oopsparagraph of text and a photo at the back of the book; for the eBook and the “general availabiity” edition, the caption for the photo has since been rewritten slightly and the bounding box eliminated. I will sign and number these because in some weird way I suppose the error make them collectors’ items (look! proof that the author was pulling an all-nighter and fell asleep at the wheel!). Due to the delay in making that fix, the print edition of VWORP!2 won’t be available until after GlitchCon. 😳 The eBooks are available NOW, including a bundle of both volumes in eBook form. I will also have the last few copies of Phosphor Dot Fossils on DVD with me, even though the video game panel has been nixed for this year.
  • On the lack of the video game panel: shed no tears. While I enjoy doing the video game history panel Odyssey(I can tell you the story of Ralph Baer and his industry-spawning gizmo until I’m blue in the face), it requires that I lug around something on the order of three times the amount of stuff (consoles, controllers, monitors, cables, extension cords) than just talking about British TV would. I may still have an opportunity to do the video game panel in September at Konsplosion, and there is an event in the works in northwest Arkansas that’s not yet on the schedule, and that may interest fans of video game history as well. Fear not, the Magnavox Odyssey will get its annual workout.

I’ve also decided what my quirky-and-just-a-little-bit-cheap-and-cheesy “theme” for this year’s OVGE will be (aside from the ever-popular and absolutely-necessary “Buy My Books And DVDs!”): PDF Unplugged.

But more on that after GlitchCon. 😉… Read more

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Conventional Thinking Write, Write, You Bloody Well Write

GlitchCon 2014 panel schedule

A brief history of time (war)The whole schedule can be seen here, and it’s full of events that are smothered in awesomesauce and seasoned with a liberal sprinkling of amazeballs. For those curious, I thought I’d “zoom in” briefly on my marathon triple-threat panel-o-rama on Saturday night. 😆

So it’s like this: I’m going to be speaking for three hours straight. 😯 Here’s what I’ll be blithering and blathering about… … Read more

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Conventional Thinking Write, Write, You Bloody Well Write

Glitchcon 2013

Glitchcon has come and gone again, and for the second year running, I gotta say, man, is this ever a neat little show. Except that there’s nothing little about it. This year’s show moved to the Springdale Holiday Inn, which is a really nifty space – the artists’ area (where I had a table for theLogBook.com) was in the atrium, and there were several panel rooms, gaming rooms and a video room. It was a really classy space to be occupying. I’m totally cool if they want to stay with this venue for a while.

The first order of business, of course, was to haul in my somewhat modest setup and… well… set it up. … Read more

Categories
Gadgetology Gaming

Convention update: GlitchCon video game history panel

OdysseyI’m going to be at Glitchcon in Springdale next month, showing off the various fruit that falls off of the multifarious branches of theLogBook.com – the books, the DVDs, the podcast, the ‘zine, the site itself. Heck, you can probably talk me into letting you hear some Kasatochi. I’ll have a table in the vendors’ room – drop by and say howdy! (Fear not, there are faaaaaaar more interesting things than me to see, including Steve Downes, the voice actor behind the helmet of Master Chief in the Halo games, sneak-previewing something perhaps Halo-related at his panel.)

I’ll also be hosting a panel of my own, though it’ll be unconventional to say the least. I’m going to do an early-history-of-video-gaming panel, and allow everyone to get their butts out of their seats and try stuff out hands-on. … Read more

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Write, Write, You Bloody Well Write

Convention(al) wisdom

Dear diaryI did five shows in 2012, and had fun at each one to some degree. I’ve also learned a lot of stuff. Did you know that, prior to 2012, I’d never been to a sci-fi or comics convention… ever? Seems kind of odd when one’s as big a fan of nearly everything as I am, until you factor in my aversion to crowds, nervousness at awkward social situations (to me, just introducing myself to people I don’t know is awkward)… basically, typical introvert. And instead of being able to zip around and See All The Stuff, never staying in one place for long, I’m rooted to one spot, because this is work. … Read more