BigDog

BigDog grabs, lifts, and throws cinder blocks with its new arm

For any of you familiar with Big Dog, it now has an arm. Of course it only has one arm and it's where either its head or its butt should be but it's still really cool. The article shows it throwing cinder blocks across the length of the warehouse.

If you haven't seen this robot perform you should. In the original footage they have it walking through a forest, up and down hill. It has a better ability to navigate terrain than most people. In one scene, to show stability, one of the engineers kicks it to knock it off balance. That created a flurry of emails  with people feeling sorry for the robot. Humans, they anthropomorphize everything.
DARPA LS3 quadruped plays follow the leader through mud puddles and more

I think I would luv to have one of these at Dragon*Con to pick up the really annoying patrons (like Firefly fans) and throw them out of my way. I can dream can't I?

So I'm Crying in My Beer

I guess I should back up a little.

Earlier today I received a call from Darkchild. Not unusual, whenever the weather turns squirrelly down here he always calls to see how it's going (seeing as it's 72 degrees in January right now). And true to character, the first words out of his mouth are "Hear you're getting some unusual weather". The other reason he calls is to inform me of updates to Dragon*Con. Last call was about the new updated web page. And again, true to form, "...so about Dragon*Con this year....."

Then the thunderbolt hits....."I'm going to have to cancel." I know he was still talking but all I hear is the reverberation of cancel cancel cancel

Not only do we lose Darkchild but his evil spawn, The Boy, who was to attend his very first Dragon*Con.  On the bright side, Kevin will still be attending so I will still have one cook left (because with me it's all about food).

And that, my friends, is why I'm crying in my beer.

Zombie Road Warrior

In case you were wondering...

"What IS the safest city to be in when the Zombie Apocalypse comes?" 

I think I have your answer.

This picture was taken outside an Atlanta area restaurant

We apparently have our own roaming response team. Who knew?

I know I feel safer, don't you?

Safe, Safer Safest

I decided that this year I might try and be an adult. Well I do go to bars, take vacations...all the fun adult things but this is a boring adult thing. I thought it was about time I pulled together all my important documents in one place and what better place than a safe.

I get this really heavy duty safe off Amazon ( and now my UPS guy hates me ) and go 'a hunting around the house to find any of the things I should put in there. After a quick perusal... no luck( and for those of you who have seen my house you know why ). But wait, low and behold what shows up in the mail...my Dragon*Con passes for 2013.

So for all my attempt at doing something adult I now have this really nice, fire proof, water proof safe containing only my Dragon*Con passes and lanyards. Let it never be said I don't know what's important.

Sunday

Jim Henson: Not Da Muppets
A discussion of Henson's other works for film & television. These aren't your cute & cuddly Muppets. From Dark Crystal to Farscape and beyond.

Artists Alley

Freemasonry and The Lost Symbol
Elonka Dunin, namesake for “Nola Kaye” in Dan Brown's “The Lost Symbol”, talks about mysteries behind the novel and the link to Freemasonry. E. Dunin

Borderlands 2: Return to Pandora

Those Weird Extra Solar Planets!
Kepler has found over 2300 exo-planets & doing so has completely changed theories regarding planet formation! There's some strange planets out there!

Curious About Curiosity & Opportunity at 3000 Sols

Masquerade

Parade Day

Man mornings come early....why why why why.....*sigh*

We're skipping the parade today. Since last year the parade was already too crowded and this year there were more 4 day tickets sold and Saturday is the biggest one day ticket sale and then add all the people who just come down for the parade...well you get the picture. Of course that doesn't mean we get to sleep in either. Because we're driving, you still have to be there bright eye-d and bushy tailed or you won't get into the parking garage. Oh yeah, and we thought it might be nice to actually bring some food this time.

Eureka: Global Dynamics Exit Interview
J. Paglia, C. Ferguson, F. Day, N. Matter, T. Locke, D. Farentino
Nice to see the the Global Dynamics crew had been partying and having a rough morning too.   :-)   (No GD hangover pills?)   Much discussion about the sadness of striking the sets,   future projects,  and some thanks to the major prankster (Colin) on the sets, for making shooting sometimes take days longer than originally scheduled.

Capt. William Shepherd: The 1st ISS Commander
Our first NASA Astronaut will talk about his time on board the nascent International Space Station & share his 'home' movies! 
Besides Barrowman (come ooon Barrowman), this turned out to be my favorite panel.
Very informative,  Capt Shepherd (No relation to Capt Shepherd of Mass Effect Series :-)  was one of the folks who set up the ISS, and was the first international commander of the Space Station.   His movies showed something that we all believed:  "Duct Tape can be used to fix almost everything".  (Every tool belt in sight had a roll firmly attached!)  We got to see some of the soviet training and launching facilities as well,   and saw the handing over of Command to the Russians when he returned to Earth.  

Star Wars: The Old Republic—Meet & Greet
*finger wiggle* This is the MMO you are looking for. We promise to keep the jokes about "Deep Sith" to a minimum
This was a Master Johnathan panel. The MMO had put a free version out for people to try and John was interested in hearing from some of the developers. Problem is PAX is at the same time as Dragon*Con so the developers were still in Seattle. The panel ended up devolving into a discussion among the crowd about how to play certain characters.
(Master Johnathan:   Sorry for dragging you to this panel... At least we snuck out early and got some lunch!)

Heaven, Hell and Purgatory— Supernatural & XFiles vs Literature
Thought this was going to be how Supernatural and XFiles compare with the actual religious documentation and history found there,  but one of the presenters, who was a pastor,  hadn't watched much of the show, and seemed irritated that the leads were two good looking guys. I tried getting him to stay on topic but to no avail....so out we went, along with half the room. Such a bummer, I think it could have been a good panel.

The Higgs Boson—So did we actually find it? If so, what's the big deal?
What is a Higgs boson? How does its discovery fit into our physics theories? And have we reached the end-of-physics upon finding this "God particle"?



I'm noticing about now that Dragon*Con fatigue is setting in...we're already looking at the schedule and nixing anything in the Westin and the Sheraton hotels because they are two blocks off the main three. Sorry, no more Trek or Whedon Universe track panels for us.

Dragon After Dark Contest
Our adult-oriented costume contest, providing an opportunity to showcase naughtier or grotesque costumes in a safe and controlled environment
Well the first issue with any evening Dragon*Con event is that you have 40k people downtown looking for stuff to do and limited events going on. Our second issue with this event is that the line didn't start at the door but somewhere else and by the time we realized that we ended up very far back in line. Add to that it started an hour late. I think in all we ended up waiting 2 1/2 hours for a 40 minute costume show. And most of the costumes we had seen already because the people were wandering around. I wouldn't recommend this event. Not enough bang for the buck so to speak.

Survival

As you know we skipped the parade to do a little shopping. I just had to share with you my new favorite T-shirt.

For those of you who know me.....you know I will.

Feeling the luv?

Moon Over Dragon*Con

Torchwood: Inside the Actor's Gaff with Barrowman, and Owen

Hey...for once we made it to the first Friday panel early enough to get in. And what a better way to start off a morning than watching John Barrowman!!!! It started off with Barrowman coming on stage and mooning the audience with his Dragon*Con underwear. I don't think I can really say anything more about this panel. That says it all. There are five other parts to this panel on YouTube if you're interested.

You'll have to forgive the lack of tweets. As Dragon*Con get's moving the cellular network  is a bit saturated and my phone randomly works depending on the hotel...*sigh*..I really was trying this time.

SG: Atlantis and SG:U—Supergate I
R. Picardo, J. Flanigan, C. Trinneer, P. Kelamis
I'm actually not familiar with either of these shows. I just got around to watching SG-1 this year. But I like the actors themselves from other shows One of the interesting questions was: What Sci-Fi type programs do YOU (the actors) watch? Most didn't watch much television, but Richard Picardo, said that he was VERY concerned about the lack of "good" Sci-Fi on television these days, and that cheap "reality TV" shows were a sign of the apocalypse. :-)

Stellar Consciousness
Stars are amazing! They have mass & energy flows that dwarf anything on a planet. They live for billions of years. Could they possess consciousness?
Mmmm about the only thing I can think to say aboout this panel is that I was sitting next to  an outlet and was able to  charge my phone.  I thought it was about the plasma flows between stars and how they form structures similar to a double helix. It ended up being some tree hugger hippie nonsense about stars really having consciousness. Unexpected on the Science track. Sorry Master Johnathan for dragging you.

A Woman Leading Change!
Nichols, R. Lehnen
Master Johnathan and I split here. He wanted to see Gearbox speak (Borderlands! Borderlands!) I keep missing original Star Trek speakers and, let's face it, they  aren't getting any younger, so I went to see Lt. Uhura. . I can pretty much say that Star Trek fans ask the worst questions. All those skits and jokes you see "Remeber in episode X when whatever happened..." or "In 1995, when you were at insert random function and I was  at your table....Do you remember..." Seriously? She very graciously answered every question but then I guess after all these Cons she's a pro and still looks damn good btw as well.

Big Damn Heroes!
A. Baldwin, J. Staite, S. Maher
So one thingI dislike about anything related to FireFly are their fans. They are fanatical but not in a good way. Master Johnathan's  panel was full so he was able to get in line crazy early. By an hour till the line had already reached the rooms capacity. We hadn't seen Adam Baldwin in a panel yet which is the only reason we even considered going. Firefly Crew is always amusing.   This time, a fan offered them a sealed bottle of  "FireFly"  Bourbon+Tea,  which was recently marketed,  and Jewel said "Let's break this puppy open!!!"  (There's alwasy alcohol. Last time it was champagne.)  Lot's of discussion about the other actors, and the running gags on the sets, and how much fun it was to work together...And as always Nathan Fillion called in to try and upstage the show.

Friday Night Costuming Contest
One of the issues with costume contests is that he audience is more interested in being amused than seeing a well designed costume. This contest is is specifically for costume designers. Sorry there aren't any pictures. I really need a better camera (insert where is Kevin when I need him). I liked it, of course it also reminds me I have no artistic talent but we all knew that anyway.

No Lines, No Lines, No Lines

Brunch was a little late today. I was thinking maybe eat around 10:30 or so and get downtown around noon. That way if getting badges took a while we would have slack in our schedule. Twitter feeds are showing badge pickup taking about an hour. That is the same as last year without the computer issue we had. But maybe we didn't make it to brunch until noon. I think I counted on that actually. We always seem to run late for Dragon*Con.

We parked in our favorite garage around 1-1:30, which is about a block from the Sheraton. From where we are we can tell the line isn't wrapped around the building....good sign. As we reached the light to cross we couldn't actually tell where the line was. There didn't seem to be anyone outside..very confusing.  As we approached the building we were waived inside...what? No one waiting outside? So we keep walking to the "labyrinth"  it looked like this:

No line, No line, No line. Whatever they changed this year....keep it up.

So we were in and out so fast we didn't quite know what to do with ourselves. We walked around for a while but nothing was set up yet so we left to just go start drinking at the Highlander. We've decide this will be tradition for now on.

And in following in the footsteps of last year...there was much beer to be had...maybe too much..ok maybe  just too much for me.   Our first waitress:

Nice sleeve huh? Her husband runs a tattoo parlor can't cha tell. But to avoid a repeat of last year we hightailed it out of there before going through a second waitress.

Here's hoping for a less chaotic start to Dragon*Con this year.

Cause I've Got a Golden Ticket...

Ok maybe not gold, maybe it's blue, but it still get's me into the most wonderful playground.

"Come with me
And you'll be
In a world of
Pure imagination
Take a look
And you'll see
Into your imagination"

Twitter feeds have picked up (my phone is chiming at me every couple of minutes). A lot of people in airports are playing the "Guess whose going to Dragon*Con game" by what people are wearing. Looks like people have been arriving since Wednesday night. Chatter lately has said Thursday is the new Friday. Wouldn't that be fun, add one more day to Dragon*Con.

We're tempting fate today.  Last year we arrived to badge pickup early and the lines were longer than later in the afternoon. It didn't help the computers went down either. This year we're going to finish up some last minute errands, grab brunch at Java Jive and then brave the lines downtown. Last year pre-ticket sales were 46K and this year they are saying 55k so maybe this isn't such a smart idea. We'll see. 

Our schedules are up. Crazy as always and way over booked. Let's us know if you have any votes for one thing vs. another. If you want to look at them in a larger format so you can actually see:

Mistress Dawn

Master Johnathan

Oh and yesterday I got a delivery in the mail.....I got my Caffeinated Nixie Tubes (as they are actually called).  Think Geek had a new shipment arrive late last week so I snatched them. 

Lock and Load People....It's Dragon*Con