First day of Worldcon
Sep. 3rd, 2004 01:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasBack from the first day. Did lots of stuff. Posting in sentence fragments because sleepy.
We got to the con at around noonish, got our badges, and wandered through the dealer room. Lis had three things she wanted to get signed. We stopped by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elisem's table in the dealer room, where John M. Ford was hanging out, so Lis got the first thing she wanted to get signed signed (The Scholars of Night).
We chatted for a bit, then wandered off, and Terry Pratchett walked by, and we shanghaied him and got the second thing we wanted to get signed signed. Total elapsed time since we'd gotten through registration, maybe twenty minutes.
At 1:00, Lis and I split up and I wandered off to the opening ceremonies. Actually, I was just wandering randomly, and I saw one of my friends, and started chatting with him, and he was ushing at the opening ceremonies, so I was sort of there, so I watched them. At two, I went to a panel on "Alternate Ecologies," which was okay, but nothing really fantastic. It's one of those program items that would have been great if Dr. Jack Cohen and the late Hal Clement was on the panel. As it was, it was good but nothing amazing. At three, there was a panel on "Fantasy Forensics", which had a few fantasy/mystery authors on it, talking about how they deal with police work in fantasy worlds. That was pretty nifty. At four, I went to Michael F. Flynn's perennial favorite "How to Lie with Statistics."
Technically, the panel started at 3:30, not 4 -- they gave him an extra half an hour because he always runs over. So, when I got there at 4, he was just starting up. He started, as he always does, with some demonstrations of how measurement is basically useless unless you have a pre-defined, and WELL defined explanation of EXACTLY what you're measuring.
Then he showed the "Basketball Video," which can be found here.
In that video, two teams of three students are bouncing basketballs, weaving among each other, and passing the ball.
We were to watch the team in the WHITE shirts, and count the number of passes the team did to each other. A "pass" was when ONE team member threw the ball to another team member, and the other team member caught it. If one team member just bounced the ball and caught it, that did NOT count.
So, go try it now. Seriously, go watch it now, and count. And then come back and keep reading.
Don't read ahead until you've watched it, and counted.
Okay, back?
Two questions:
1. How many completed passes did the white team make?
2. Did you see the gorilla?
If you didn't, go watch it again. About fifty percent of people will NOT see the gorilla. And about fifty percent of the people in the audience didn't see the gorilla.
At five, we met again, and went to "Rocket Talk, with Fizz and Fuze, the Reactor Brothers." In it, audience members asked their questions about rocket repair, or whatever else they wanted, of Bill Higgins and Jordin Kare.
Some of the questions they were asked were things like, "I just got this used Death Star, but it's missing a power source. What can I put in there to power it?" and "I've got a large family, but a small garage. I've been considering a TARDIS -- is this a good choice?" (The answer to that one was, "A better idea is to get the large spaceship you were looking at, AND the TARDIS. And park the big ship inside the TARDIS.") I asked a question about which was better, physical solar sails or magnetic ones ("Well, the problem with the magnetic ones is that it's hard to see you -- the places set up to service solar sail ships are used to looking for gigantic reflective or gigantic dark circles. However, if you go for the magnetic one, it will be good for your reputation, because you'll be a man out standing in your field. . . ")
At six, we wandered down to the ConCourse, which is basically a big open area with neat stuff in it -- a display by NASA, a model of Robert Goddard's rocket, the Mended Drum, and nifty stuff like that.
At seven, we went to "Ask Dr. Mike", which is where you can ask Dr. Mike, fandom's own mad scientist, your important questions about anything you want.
I realized that I had a wonderful chance here to gather useful information for my sister. "Dr. Mike," I asked, "my sister is in college now, and is trying to decide between a career as a mad scientist, or as an evil genius. Which way do you think is better?"
Because, see, I realized that Dr. Mike would be the perfect person to ask about that. He's a mad scientist, AND he's an evil genius. I mean, he's one of the founders of "Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow." He's ON the INWO card, after all.
He said that it depends on what you want your career trajectory to be like. Being a mad scientist is easier to start with -- you just need to get a grant, and you can start right then. But as an evil genius, well, you need to get your own private island, build up an army of minions -- there's a lot more to it. And, well, all it takes is one Sean Connery, and all your hard work is just wasted. But, on the other hand, the rewards are much greater, too.
From eightish to nineish, we wandered around the ConCourse area, looking at stuff, 'cause there was a sort of party going on. Then we went upstairs to the LiveJournal party on the seventh floor, which was fun. We wandered back down at about quarter past ten, and watched a round of "Win Tom Galloway's Money", then went back up to the LiveJournal party for another hour or so, where I sawchanaleh who I'd not seen for weeks, and saw trinker for the first time in my life, even though we've known each other online for years. We party-hopped a bit, and then came home.
At home, we have cats. And one of them -- I suspect Boopsie -- puked on the bed while we were out, so we changed the blankets. Then Violet saw the new blanket and got in a fight with it, and lost badly.
And now I should sleep.
We got to the con at around noonish, got our badges, and wandered through the dealer room. Lis had three things she wanted to get signed. We stopped by
elisem's table in the dealer room, where John M. Ford was hanging out, so Lis got the first thing she wanted to get signed signed (The Scholars of Night).We chatted for a bit, then wandered off, and Terry Pratchett walked by, and we shanghaied him and got the second thing we wanted to get signed signed. Total elapsed time since we'd gotten through registration, maybe twenty minutes.
At 1:00, Lis and I split up and I wandered off to the opening ceremonies. Actually, I was just wandering randomly, and I saw one of my friends, and started chatting with him, and he was ushing at the opening ceremonies, so I was sort of there, so I watched them. At two, I went to a panel on "Alternate Ecologies," which was okay, but nothing really fantastic. It's one of those program items that would have been great if Dr. Jack Cohen and the late Hal Clement was on the panel. As it was, it was good but nothing amazing. At three, there was a panel on "Fantasy Forensics", which had a few fantasy/mystery authors on it, talking about how they deal with police work in fantasy worlds. That was pretty nifty. At four, I went to Michael F. Flynn's perennial favorite "How to Lie with Statistics."
Technically, the panel started at 3:30, not 4 -- they gave him an extra half an hour because he always runs over. So, when I got there at 4, he was just starting up. He started, as he always does, with some demonstrations of how measurement is basically useless unless you have a pre-defined, and WELL defined explanation of EXACTLY what you're measuring.
Then he showed the "Basketball Video," which can be found here.
In that video, two teams of three students are bouncing basketballs, weaving among each other, and passing the ball.
We were to watch the team in the WHITE shirts, and count the number of passes the team did to each other. A "pass" was when ONE team member threw the ball to another team member, and the other team member caught it. If one team member just bounced the ball and caught it, that did NOT count.
So, go try it now. Seriously, go watch it now, and count. And then come back and keep reading.
Don't read ahead until you've watched it, and counted.
Okay, back?
Two questions:
1. How many completed passes did the white team make?
2. Did you see the gorilla?
If you didn't, go watch it again. About fifty percent of people will NOT see the gorilla. And about fifty percent of the people in the audience didn't see the gorilla.
At five, we met again, and went to "Rocket Talk, with Fizz and Fuze, the Reactor Brothers." In it, audience members asked their questions about rocket repair, or whatever else they wanted, of Bill Higgins and Jordin Kare.
Some of the questions they were asked were things like, "I just got this used Death Star, but it's missing a power source. What can I put in there to power it?" and "I've got a large family, but a small garage. I've been considering a TARDIS -- is this a good choice?" (The answer to that one was, "A better idea is to get the large spaceship you were looking at, AND the TARDIS. And park the big ship inside the TARDIS.") I asked a question about which was better, physical solar sails or magnetic ones ("Well, the problem with the magnetic ones is that it's hard to see you -- the places set up to service solar sail ships are used to looking for gigantic reflective or gigantic dark circles. However, if you go for the magnetic one, it will be good for your reputation, because you'll be a man out standing in your field. . . ")
At six, we wandered down to the ConCourse, which is basically a big open area with neat stuff in it -- a display by NASA, a model of Robert Goddard's rocket, the Mended Drum, and nifty stuff like that.
At seven, we went to "Ask Dr. Mike", which is where you can ask Dr. Mike, fandom's own mad scientist, your important questions about anything you want.
I realized that I had a wonderful chance here to gather useful information for my sister. "Dr. Mike," I asked, "my sister is in college now, and is trying to decide between a career as a mad scientist, or as an evil genius. Which way do you think is better?"
Because, see, I realized that Dr. Mike would be the perfect person to ask about that. He's a mad scientist, AND he's an evil genius. I mean, he's one of the founders of "Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow." He's ON the INWO card, after all.
He said that it depends on what you want your career trajectory to be like. Being a mad scientist is easier to start with -- you just need to get a grant, and you can start right then. But as an evil genius, well, you need to get your own private island, build up an army of minions -- there's a lot more to it. And, well, all it takes is one Sean Connery, and all your hard work is just wasted. But, on the other hand, the rewards are much greater, too.
From eightish to nineish, we wandered around the ConCourse area, looking at stuff, 'cause there was a sort of party going on. Then we went upstairs to the LiveJournal party on the seventh floor, which was fun. We wandered back down at about quarter past ten, and watched a round of "Win Tom Galloway's Money", then went back up to the LiveJournal party for another hour or so, where I saw
chanaleh who I'd not seen for weeks, and saw trinker for the first time in my life, even though we've known each other online for years. We party-hopped a bit, and then came home.At home, we have cats. And one of them -- I suspect Boopsie -- puked on the bed while we were out, so we changed the blankets. Then Violet saw the new blanket and got in a fight with it, and lost badly.
And now I should sleep.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-02 11:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-03 05:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-03 05:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-03 06:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-03 06:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-03 05:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-03 06:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-03 02:52 pm (UTC)I think you're right about the black/black, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-03 06:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-03 09:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-03 11:23 am (UTC)If you only count when one white shirted person throws to another white shirted person, I get 10. (There are a couple of "bounce passes" which I didn't count, and of course a couple of times when a white shirted person gets the ball from a black shirted one.) If I'm concentrating on this, I still don't see the gorilla.
Actually, looking at it more than I ought to, there are two passes which I can't really tell if they count or not. It's when the gorilla is in the middle of everyone, which probably doesn't help. So I get 10 or 12. Not 14, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-03 11:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-03 01:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-03 05:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-03 11:39 pm (UTC)