Ok, everyone else seems to be doing it, so, my first attempt at a con report.

Thursday

After following the rather easy route *to* Coventry, was surprised by the complexity *within* Coventry. After two loops of the same block we managed to escape and find the hotel. Then to find the car park only took one more loop clockwise, and a final one anti-clockwise to locate the entrance. Eventually arrived in the main hall at midday to help with the setup.

My name is Mark and I'm a Tech volunteer... I somehow managed to persuade Lindsey (whose new name I can now almost remember in time to use it) to get an LS-9 digital mixer (drool) for the con, as I used one at DiscWorld and loved it. She quickly looked at me playing with it, decided I looked like I knew what I was doing and left me to it. Gulp. With apologies to everyone else who got me an awesome haul of presents this birthday, 3 days playing with a £7k mixer made it just the best birthday possible.

Friday

After staying up rather late setting and re-setting up the main hall, a short sleep and breakfast, and back to it. With about an hour to go, we also realised that some other rooms were about to be in use, and maybe some set up there could be in order. Rush, rush, and all done, just in time to switch on and level the mics for the first panel. 

The opening ceremony went off well. Hello committee, hello guests. hello Drazi, hello Universe master hopefuls. 

Saturday

As anyone who has taken part in the prep for any Con event will know, you don't get a lot else done that day. Saturday is Masquerade and Cabaret day. I did actually manage to make it to another panel, although I really don't remember what it was. Still as my second Masquerade in charge of sound... Did I screw up? Yes, a couple of times. Anyway which mattered? Not really. Was it a success? Yes!

Sunday

Ahh, Sunday. The day I took part in the *rest* of the Con. Got a couple of panels in, even got some lunch.

The highlight of the day had to be the Master of the Universe. I was helping out one of my overcommitted, lunatic (sure I can lead some panels, do a heap of a/v, and run a campaign at the same time), fellow tech volunteers in his MotU campaign for Big Brother. The posters were everywhere, the arm bands were fantastic, and the hustings was a lot of fun. With a few moments to spare before the close we found out to prepare for 3 possible results, win, lose, or DRAW! And draw it was! Still between an idea, some quick scripting and an agreeable opponent we managed to pull off a brilliant ending which even made it look as if it was planned all along. After all, who rules the Universe controls the past, or something like that. :) And so Big Master was born.

And then the tragic task, which is teardown. After 3-4 days of utter delight, it's always a bit sad. However the tech team taking a break for an actual dinner halfway, to eat, drink, and wind down helped soften the blow. And apart from the stage, we even finished around midnight. Even including a quarter hour hunt for 13amp plug to IEC 10amp socket cables. Also known as kettle leads. Grrr!

Monday

Sleep, food, and goodbyes.

Thanks again for everyone who organised, ran panels, volunteered, or even just showed up. It's wonderful fun, and I can't wait for Redemption '13.

Tags: con, red11

I have been hearing for many months now, that format shifting (like coping a CD to your ipod) is not allowed under the fair use clauses of British copyright. Well last night I went for a bit of a look and determined that these statements are highly misleading.

Firstly, I will admit that format shifting is not explicitly stated as a possible fair use, by name. However that is not conclusive. No country's laws list all of your rights, any attempt to do so would make laws even more cumbersome than they are today. It seems to me that it is a commonly held fallacy that if some actions are explicitly enumerated in a law as allowed, that this implicitly disallows all others. This is generally just FUD spread to enhance someone's agenda or pocket, and the rest of society loses when too many people accept this misinformed view.

There are two points in British law which support my view.

One is that it has been held up in many trials and is now set in precedent that to infringe copyright, you must under most circumstances be causing financial harm to the copyright holder by your actions. Buying a CD and then listening to in via ipod rather than my car stereo, or even via ipod through my car stereo is causing no-one any financial harm. It is just causing me less inconvenience. Now many record reps have argued that this is doing something originally unexpected when CDs were first distributed, and so I should be expected to pay extra for this ability. By the same argument using my pop-up toaster as a mini clay pigeon hurler should be considered a copyright infringement, and that idea is just as ludicrous.

The other point is that the fair use statutes do state that I am allowed to make copies for "private study". Listening to one of my favorite pieces of music in the surroundings of my choosing is a private study of the song in question. If you believe that study only means disecting for the purpose of writing an academic paper on it, then you need to go study a dictionary.

So before you go campaigning to have format shift wording added to British copyright, just remember that you are weakening the fair use provisions, not strengthening them. Every extra explicit action allowed, adds weight to those who would say that they are the only allowances. And this means a new fight every time we find a new way to undertake "private study" of a favored piece of art.

Tags: copyright, uk
Current Music: Whatever I like, wherever I like it.

Eight little buffalo all in a row,
Syntacticly correct, yes I know.
Where oh where will this all end?
Mother tongue it doth offend.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo

Tags: buffalo
Current Mood: contemplative

When did some idiot come to the conclusion that explict is synonymous with obscene or offensive?

Does the fact that my new American HiFi CD contains explicit content mean that there is swearing in some of the songs or that the booklet has detailed instruction on how to hold the disc without leaving fingerprints? Never has my vocabulary more needed the word cretin, and fortunately there it is. Cretins!

Some ratings I want to see:
    PA - Parental Absence Suggested - Some material may make your brian drip out your ears
    PG-13 - Parents Strongly Cautioned - Low level politics
    NC-16½ - No one 16½ and under admitted - Vague sexual content

Current Music: American HiFi

 I'm very quick to slate companies when they give me bad service (yes Home Delivery Network, I'm talking about you), so I figured as a complete change of tack for this blog, I'd post an upbeat, happy message.

The story of www.onlinememory.co.uk

On Tuesday I ordered a 2GB memory card from online memory, it was a good price, and when factoring in the free delivery, it's a pretty great price really. I went for one of the more obscure items in that I got a Sandisk Ultra II. I like Sandisk for reasons I can't explain, and I like the ultra II range, cause slow transfers bug me. I figured this was no problem as the sales page listed it as in stock.

So a couple of days later I am less impressed when their order tracking system shows me that it still hasn't shipped, and in fact is out of stock.

However, I just used their live chat to talk to customer service, and as the item is going to be out of stock for a couple of weeks they are now shipping me an Extreme III (even faster) card today, for the same price. So despite a dubious stock tracking system, I'm now very happy with their very good customer service centre.

Tags: service good
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Buzz out loud

In order to lower their censor rating TV scriptwriters have used a variety of "imaginative" curses. The well used frick. The more obsecure frack (thank you BSG). I'm guessing fruck was a letter not far enough. Now we all know what they mean, I didn't even need my trusty decoder ring to work that out. But what I'm wondering is why does noone use frock?

Or is calling a guy a frocking idiot, tanamount to accusing him of being a stupid crossdresser?

Right the time has come to split. I'm no longer going to use LiveJournal exclusively as I rarely have enough to say to justify a full blog entry. I'm now going to embrace several "new" web phenomena and see which ones stick. From now on you can find me at:

    LiveJournal - for the odd occasion when I have an actual blog to write.
    ( http://lladnaar.livejournal.com/ )

    Digg - for when I think you might be interested in something I've seen.
    ( http://www.digg.com/users/lladnaar/news/dugg )

    Jaiku - for when I have a random comment to make
    ( http://lladnaar.jaiku.com/ )

    Or for my latest from any of the above, my Yahoo! Pipes agregator is at...
    ( http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=tjVselkj3BG0WpR1qGIyXQ&_render=rss )

If anyone decides to join me on any of these (especially digg, cause I'm fed up with missing interesting articles and then failing to follow conversations latter) please let me know so I can add you to my friends list.

Tags: digg, jaiku, split
Current Mood: curious

If not maybe you need to order one of these.

http://www.necdirect.jp/psp/PA121/DIRECT1K/ENTPND/h/?tab=N1K_Z_NPL_02&catalogid=N1K_Z_NPL_02

After last weeks episode I felt I should keep quiet no longer, and wrote a couple of letters to the BBC praising the last three episodes of Who, especially the writers Cornell and Moffat. Based on the personalised responses I got back, the BBC read them, and apparently they have a log of comments they pass on to the production team.
Given my theory that people are more likely to read and act on praise than criticism, I have the following to ask. Whenever you see a good episode of a BBC show (Who or otherwise), write and tell them. When they give us the oh so frequent mediocrity or rubbish, drown them in silence. Who knows, they may get the idea.

Current Mood: optimistic

Well following on from my post last week - I'm pleased to see that at least one Judge in California was as outraged as most of the rest of us, and figured a jail sentence is supposed to be spent in jail. This time it appears to have stuck - touch wood.