Been spending the last few days recovering from DragonCon and working up to re-inserting myself into normal (non-cosplaying) society.
The 2012 DragonCon was a pretty awesome event as usual. The crowds and lines were definitely a lot bigger and longer this year, and I heard a lot of people comment about that. In the past, people get in on Thursday, and Friday the DC action starts happening. This year it was like DC was in full swing by the time we rolled in Thursday evening, and I heard a lot of people had arrived Wednesday and were already partying. Thursday is the new Friday it seems.
Almost all of the sessions I went to were standing room only. Only made it to two celebrity panels this year, one with John Barrowman (Torchwood) and one of the Gillian Anderson (X-Files) panels. The lines for all the other ones were just too insanely long for me to want to stand in. Even most of the EFF, Science and Space track sessions I went to were jammed.
This year’s DragonCon was a little different in a couple of areas. First, I got to walk in the parade this year (thanks to Erika for organizing things!). Rick, Mark and I marched in our robes and carried pipes, while Erika and her daughters were Star Trek “Bunnies”. It was a pretty awesome time seeing the parade from the inside.
I also got to help out with a few ham radio related sessions in the Science track (thanks to Jim for letting me play). Helped out with the scanner radio scavenger hunt Saturday night. Although we didn’t get too many people coming out to play, it was still a fun time listening on the radio and tuning around to find things on the list. Then Sunday I helped with setting up and showing some ham radio stuff at the Evil Geniuses panel where we got to demonstrate a few radio things.
I didn’t get nearly as many pictures this year as I have in previous years. I opted to carry around the little Sony camera I have rather than my DSLR. Takes fairly decent pictures, but I found the battery would run down fairly quickly, especially if I was using the flash a lot. Still managed to get some decent shots of some of the more interesting costumes I saw.
One of the first things I saw as we walked over to registration was this van sitting in one of the parking lots
Check out the rest of my pictures.
Already have my membership for next year’s DragonCon and made the hotel reservation. Start the countdown.
Dragon*Con lineup
Only a couple of days left until I head out for another DragonCon! As usual there are way more sessions and panels that I want to go to than there are of me to go see, and a good bit of my DC “schedule” is triple or quad-booked.
I tend to spend most of my time at sessions in the Science and Space tracks. There are a few celebrity panels I’d like to see, but the lines for them are generally really long and most of the time I don’t feel like standing in them.
There are a few “Have to go” sessions on the list though. Here are some of the sessions/panels with the highest probability of me being at.
Thursday
1730: DC Pre/Post Con Support Council meetup – Marriott Pulse Bar
1830: Girls of the Con Calendar Release Party – Marriott Pulse Bar
1900: Buckets o’ Rum meetup – Hyatt
Friday
1300: Famous Unsolved Codes – Hilton 201
1900: Up and Down the Dial – Hilton 202
Saturday
1000: DragonCon Parade
1300: Between the Candle and the Star (Babylon 5) – Hyatt International North
1730: Advanced Space Propulsion 101 – Hilton 203
1900: Higgs Boson – Hilton 202
2030: More Higgs Boson – Hilton 202
2200: Up and Down the Dial Scavenger Hunt – Hilton 202 (I’m helping with this one)
Sunday
1000: Adam West and Burt Ward (Batman/Robin) – Hyatt Centennial I
1130: Next Generation (Star Trek) – Sheraton Grand Ballroom A-F
1430: Astronomy Cast – Hilton 204
1730: Cryptography 101 – Hilton 201
1900: Katherine Kurtz – Hyatt Fairlie
There are other sessions and panels on the list that are on the “Would be nice to see” list, which means “If the line isn’t horribly long or I manage to get a good spot in line, I’ll go”. The rest of the time I’ll be wandering around, checking out all the people and the costumes, in the vendor rooms and hanging out in the various bars (usually at the Hyatt).
If you’re going to Dragon*Con, look for me and say hi. I’ll probably be wearing my blue Star Trek robe.
Cicadas are big
Leaving work one day, I heard a really loud buzzing sound coming from one of the (relatively) newly planted trees by the bus stop. Walking closer to find the source, I came across this monster of a bug, which I later learned was a cicada.
I hear them quite a bit around the house and the ponds, but this is the first time I’ve seen one up close and in person.
It was pretty large, about the size of the palm of my hand. Had no idea they got this large. It’s pretty intimidating looking, with the camo colouring. I’m sure I wouldn’t want one flying at me or landing on me.
Bring on Dragon*Con!
Heading out to on the annual pilgrimage to DragonCon in a few days.
This will be my 4th DC, and this year I’ll be marching in the parade with a few other friends. Excited about that. It will be fun seeing the parade from the other side.
DRAGON*CON!
Learning about digital ham radio
Yesterday was one of ARRL‘s Rookie Roundup contests, so some of the CARS members organized a rookie radio day to show off some of the digital amateur radio modes.
The idea is pretty simple. Instead of piping the audio output of the radio signal to speakers, it’s sent to a computer (with some intervening hardware) where the digital signals are decoded and displayed by software. The computer’s sound card generates audio tones that are sent to the radio for broadcasting and for other computers to decode. Everything is handled through the computer and software (fldigi in this case) using pre-programmed F-key macros (manual typing works too) except for changing radio frequencies (with the right set-up, even that can be done on the computer). Pretty neat stuff.
There were three of us rookies around and we all got to play digital RTTY (radio teletype) radio, sending out calls, responding to other operators and learning how to use the software. I think we made a total of 6 contacts, which isn’t huge but there might have been some power and/or antenna problems. It was still a good learning experience.
Another member set up a battery powered radio with a 40m dipole antenna and demonstrated sending emails over the radio via Winlink, another pretty cool amateur radio service. Find a reachable Winlink server to broadcast to, compose your message and the software sends the appropriate signals to the radio (via intervening modem) to the listening server, which in turn sends out the emails over the Internet. You can also download any received emails stored up for you. Using this method, even if you’re out of power, have no other form of internet access, or are in some other kind of emergency communication mode, you can still send out emails to other people as long as you can reach a server with your radio. Pretty awesome stuff. The data rate is pretty slow, but you can still get communications out.
It was a fun three hours we spent playing radio, and a good introduction to digital radio. Makes me want to do more