rallamajoop

Hey everyone! How's things? Been having a bit of a month over here.

Since my last post I have attended a con, moved house and been separated from the Internet for nearly two full weeks. Granted though,, even if I had had Internet connection, I would probably not have had time to write this post.

( Swancon )

( The move )

( Quick snapshot of some of the more impressive cosplay props that made moving more difficult. )

Probably going to be having some kind of combined housewarming/birthday party in a couple of weeks time. Depending on how long it takes to get ourselves organised, and all that.

...another post-Swancon wrap-up post. (For those who might be reading this who don't have a clue what I'm on about, Swancon is our main annual sci-fi con in this city - runs over Easter every year.) In short - it was a great con, and a good time was had by all. In not-so-short - I must have been to a few too many good Swancons by now, because I went to so many panels and found myself vaguely thinking "well, this is interesting, but not as interesting as such-and-such a panel I went to two years ago... I wonder if there's something better on somewhere that I'm missing?" etc. There was no video stream this year and not much in the way of interesting writing panels either. Of course, going into something as tiring as a con already sleep deprived doesn't help any, but mostly I think I'm just becoming a bit jaded and picky. Possibly a bit bored with the same venue they've had for the last three years running too - must be past time for a change.

However! All that said, this was not a con without its share of highlights. Screw what they might have tried to tell us about this being a general-purpose fandom con, I think everyone who was actually there would have to agree it was in fact a Doctor Who con that just happened to have a few extra activities provided on the side. *g* They had a replica rent-a-TARDIS in the foyer, complete with flashing lights and speakers to play the theme music off a CD (for those who are wondering, the replica version is quite distinctly not larger on the inside. Cue endless strings of photos of people playing the 'how many of us can we fit in TARDIS game'). There was a replica Dalek (also complete with flashing eyes and voice synthesizer) that appeared at the Masquerade and later hung around in the foyer for the rest of the con. There was a whole room of photos from a collection from series shown on the BBC since way back in the dark ages of the black and white era, which naturally meant an awful lot of pictures of a lot of different doctors. cescat, k_chan009, velithya and jaseroque all came dressed as characters from the latest series for the occasion too (cue many, many more photos) - and all did a damn good job with those costumes. Possibly a little too much success getting into character in certain cases too, for that matter... XD

But best of all was one of the guests of honour this year was Rob Shearman - one of the writers from the new series, who I can say with only minimal bias is one of the best value guests they've ever had. He's basically an old Doctor Who fan who actually got to live the dream of being able to write for his favourite show, but still had this great self-deprecating sense of humour about how the experience compared to expectations, whether he'd buggered it up in practice and how well he and the other writers all survived the gauntlet of fan opinion; and listening to him talk about it remained engrossing through every panel I saw him on throughout the con. We even got to talk to him a fair bit (well, mostly jaseroque did, because she's like that) and he was all around a pretty cool guy who sounded genuinely disappointed to have to go home again at the end of the con. Only wish I could've gotten to talk to him a bit more. This was a very good con to be a Doctor Who fan.

And no Swancon report is ever complete without a mention of the Masquerade - and I swear, the quality of the costumes there has been getting better every year. pinneagig and I just wound up recycling our Firefly costumes from last year this time, but what the hell, that giant layer-cake hoop skirt of hers deserved a bit more wear. The big highlight from this one was cescat and jaseroque's Labyrinth costumes - barely were we getting over the realisation that cescat is in fact David Tennant, when we had to deal with the knowledge that she is David Bowie as well (and jaseroque may very well be Jennifer Connolly too). XD The dance skit they put together to Dance Magic Dance came out great on the day too - I sure hope I can get hold of a video. =3 Seriously, I have got to get hold of some photos to link to - the resemblance is uncanny.

Came home tired but thoroughly convinced it was all worth it. A good four days spent pretty much entirely in the company of other fans is always going to be an Easter well spent.

*insert sounds of medium to large mammal coming up for air*

Ye gods it's nice to have some free time again. It has been a hectic month.

In a roundabout sort of way, I'm back at uni again.

As of sometime soon, when they get all those pesky forms sorted out, I will officially be working two part time jobs. This is not at all a bad thing as the one job I was previously working full time (at a small engineering consulting firm, for anyone who hasn't heard yet) is, despite muffiny perks, rapidly getting rather tedious. The new job involves expanding on my final year thesis topic back at the university, and even though I've only been away a few months, damn if it isn't weird to be back. Like, I walk into the CWR computer lab now, and there's no-one I know madly working on their thesis. That's just wrong, yo. Any of those of you still at uni interested in catching up at lunch some time? The class I went through my last couple of years with were a fantastic bunch of people, but have now virtually all deserted me on account of that little graduation thing, and possibly the desire to get as far away from that lab and as quickly as possible.

In other news, last weekend we all went to Swancon.

( Swancon + cosplay photos )

On a final note, yesterday we finally got around to seeing Brokeback Mountain, about which I will say only this: it lives up to nearly all the hype about it. Wow. Also: ow. That is all.