Today we'll be walking up the river or canal to the pub and probably playing cards or dominos to boot.
I'm with my parents. It was lovely to see them again. We met at the station and went to the pub for an hour or so and I felt happy.
I found the official train route planner thing, of which I was previously unaware, and it okayed my glasgow->edinburgh->birmingham->cambridge journey, though I was disturbed to see the top hit on google was not it, but someone complaining that it was ambiguous. But I was going through node stations only, so I think I was ok.
I met mair and katie in edinburgh, though didn't have time to get to any show or anything, but I saw [sic] the something gallery, the someone memorial and the castle, and we had lunch in a nice park from which I aforementionedly saw, and then got coffee, coffe including a few glasses of tapwater, which it never before occured to me to prevail on a coffee shop to provide. I'm glad I got a chance to see people I rarely do get to see, especially if they rarely see cambrigde people much atm and need the fix :) And got hugged.
Last night the con finished in the afternoon, and we had a nice lazy time on the grass with real ale afterward. And I got hugged by people including strangers :) Many people I'm seeing in a couple of days.
On Sunday the Hugos were awarded, with much amusing references to their supposed originator, Victor Hugo :) Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel won the best novel, and I discovered that Susannah Clarke, amongst others, knew CUSFS people from way back. It's a small world. There was a meeting of dozens of ex-reeves (ie. old cusfs members) including amusing anecdotes about history of the society, and amazement at what we still do, and what we don't do. Apparently the omnipotence is a relatively recent invention.
And I bought lots of books from the dealers' room, mostly old stuff, but some 'just because' stuff and some new american paperbacks. It made my bags only just managable on the way back :) I looked at art and tat, but didn't buy any.
The masquerade was interesting but not amazingly inspiring, but there were some lovely costumes wandering the halls (see quotes); some low res pictures from camera phone may appear.
There was a condensed starwars play which was very amusing, if flat in a couple of places. But there was some lovely touches. Like there were several amusing costumes, they call to Lando, you wonder how they'll portray him, and a foppish centauri enters. And the entire audience had spaceship-shaped kazoos for the purposes of playing the vader theme tune whenever he appears.
Quotes:
* Please don't smoke inside the Armadillo.
* There was a Klingon in a kilt there. You don't often see that. Even in glasgow.
* The Singularity is this enormous turd that Vernor Vinge crapped into the punchbowl of SF writing, and now nobody wanting to take a drink can ignore it ... There are some turds so big you either have to ignore them entirely, or spread them around and use them as fertiliser.
Sorry for the length. Responses to some of the actual talks to follow later. Maybe.
