Blog II – The experience of the 2012 Expo

This blog is going to be my personal highlights from the Calgary Entertainment expo, in no particular order.

First off, VIP is totally worth it.  We bought VIP early in the year before any big names were announced and I must say it is very much worth it and it completely changes the experience.  Normally you spend a lot of time in line at the Con, and because of this you really can’t do everything.  When you are a VIP though this is a lot less of an issue, the only time you miss things is when schedules of photo-ops and panels start to conflict.  Otherwise you really can see just about everything and if you are interested in doing that, it is worth the money.  On a personal note, even though I paid for it and was within full rights to move to the front of the lines, I would still apologize to people around me for cutting in.  I have been in the lines, I know how long the wait can be, but most of that guilt gets scrubbed away when you get your autograph.

A lot of people will dress up for the con, but this year you couldn’t see more than ten people or so without seeing someone in costume and when you think about how many people were at the show… 52,000. That is a lot of costumes and it was great to see.  There were a lot of creative ones, a lot that had a lot of hard work poured into their creation and most significantly a lot of team costumes.  X-men, all the power rangers, even a steam punk version of the Justice League.  There were an astonishing amount of sensational costumes, see the pics below for examples.  If you haven’t heard of the 501^st, they are a group that accepts members that have Star Wars costumes film grade or better.  These costumes are complicated too.  It can get so warm in the get ups that they have onboard fans, and coolers and power packs to make them all work in keeping the person comfortable.  So many of the works were really impressive

The vendors came from far and wide to sell there various wares.  I loved how many geeky/nerdy shirt vendors there were selling shirts, and more importantly how many people there were wearing them.  I saw a lot of shirts that I considered buying and a few that I own.  There were also a lot of Chivers wearing there KCCO shirts and Bill Fucking Murray shirts out there. The artist alley brought in known artists from all over the place.  I bought a few cool prints from some Manitobian vendors of Iron Man by ChaseJC and one of Wolverine by Raging Ape.  Got a couple prints from Zee Captain who does the Romantically Apocalyptic (http://romanticallyapocalyptic.com/) web comic with his lovely assistant.  These are works I am proud to put up in my house.  Some were lesser known artists, some were the artists that do the comics we love.  Got a few signatures on books I own from people like Arthur Suydam (Marvel Zombies) and Jacen Burrows (Crossed).  To make things a bit more concise, I am just going to quickly summarize some of the other vendors  that I want to highlight, Evil Dead the Musical, back in town in August, Lego vendors, table top areas and clubs set up, and an armorer that had fantasy weapons like Link’s sword and shield and Keyblades of all things.

In the second day morning panel I realized that Max Brooks isso awesome.  First thing he did when he got to the panel is counted out how many empty seats were at the head table of the panel, and then counted out seven people standing along the walls and got them to sit next to him at the panel.  He was very intelligent, very quick on his feet and really funny.  If you haven’t read them yet, read World War Z and the Zombie Survival Guide.  They are very well written and very serious books about the impending zombie apocalypse, and about the global scale of an outbreak.

The TNG panel was a lot of fun too.  There is so much that I can say about this but instead I will toss in some references from some of the participants.  But I will go to say it is a very classy show.  They hired a big band to play while everyone shuffled in, they put together a video with interviews from other Star Trek cast members and guests at the Emerald City Convention to kick the event off.  It was great seeing the cast, they were all very touchy feely and I have to say that Wil Wheaton stole the show.  He was prompted by a question his good friend Aaron Douglas asked him and well you can see it all here…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvb8HEO6Koo
Copy and paste the link

Speaking of Aaron Douglas he came too for the second year in a row.  His booth was a bit empty but I think he came to hang out with Wil and cause he enjoyed the Con last year, or at least I hope he did.  He was stuck wearing a LA Kings Jersey cause he lost a bet about Vancouver taking the Playoffs with Wil.  Aaron is a great guy.  So funny, so approachable, just a genuinely nice guy.  During the photo op with him Katee Sackoff and Richard Hatch he stopped everything to take a picture of my T shirt at the time.  This shirt…

Stan Lee is someone you wish was your grandpa.  He is somewhat stuck in the sixties in terms of how it is he talks.  He talked a lot about the characters he created and about the thought that was put into it,which wasn’t about making a deeper meaning but done to make things more interesting.  He explained how the hulk was made green because of the ink available at the time.  They were originally thinking of a grey but it printed different time and on issue one you can see this.  Green printed good, and was a bit of a different color so green was the color they decided to go with for the Hulk.  It was a lot of fun.  This is what going to the cons is about, seeing your pop culture icons as people. 

Something that surprised me was a last minute addition to the media guests.  It looks like when at another comic expo in Seattle, the Calgary Crew was able to convince the Phelps twins to come to the Calgary con weeks later.  The Phelps’ are the two gingers that play the twin Weasley brothers in the Harry Potter films.  I never paid them much mind at the con, but something I found I did mind was the very long line of individuals looking for autographs.  The line of muggles clenching Harry Potter Hardcovers and Boxsets of the movies snaked around half of the media area getting in the way of a pretty main thorough fare.  In truth these muggles likely wouldn’t have come to the Calgary con otherwise, but hopefully after waiting in that long line they spent some time enjoying the explosive nerdiness all around.

One of the things that first brought me to the con was my buddy Big Mike a few years back.  Him and his wife Heather are good friends and in general enjoy having a couple to share their nerdy adventures with (Weird Al concert, the cons, Steve Martin Blue Grass), and they too were out there with us in force this year too.  Now Mike has a rather large bro crush on Wil Wheaton.  Loves the work he does in audio books and his books, his career on Star Trek, and even in the Secret of Nym.  Mike actually got three photo ops with Wil, and I can’t say as I blame him, Wil has carved out a career of being a nerd ambassador as it were, through promoting intelligent sci fi, roles  on Big Bang Theory and table top board games.  Two ops with the family, and one with him all to himself.  His wife, who is an amazing knitter got an idea with Mike to knit a particularly terrible sweater Wil used to wear on Star Trek, and that has since been immortalized in the internet character Sparks McGhee  http://sparksmcgeeadventures.tumblr.com/ , for their lil Elli.  When we first happened upon the two on Friday, Heather just started the sweater, when their op on Sunday came around the miniature sweater was done…

I have to give a shout out to Adam Baldwin, he was a real treat to have.  He loves cigars, so when I met him I made sure to give him a nice Cuban.  He talked to us about how he was looking forward to a good steak, which considering his large stature is no surprise.  I missed some of his panel due to the lock out (will talk about next time) but he is really an actor that is very physical, likes getting into the roles and enjoys the fans.  Very friendly, very respectful  and all around happy to be there. 

Part of the fun of the cons is listening to these successful people, hearing about their lives which are very different to the most of folk, and hearing about the things that have made them successful.  In a lot of instances the role that made them successful isn’t little more than a job they took, which is unfortunate to say, but at the very least they took this role and made the best of it and made something amazing.  The thing that I love to see, is the ones that love the work, love the roles and in a very real way become the characters themselves.  The ones that love their jobs as much as we love them in the roles, those people are what really make going to the con worth every damn penny.  It may seem absurd to some, paying for autographs, and pictures but that’s what brings them out and in truth they appreciate the support just as much as we appreciate seeing them.

Now I can really go on and on, and on… and on about the Con.  But I realize I have hit page three on this one so I must stop.  But my point is that at the comic con there is so much to see, do and experience that writing a blog in this fashion to share the complete experience I had is far too extensive to do.  I do hope this highlight reel and the very small amount of pictures(You could spend the whole day taking photos and not get everything!!!!) have helped you too enjoy my experience at the con.

Next up the upsides and downsides of this year’s con.

Blog I - Why the Calgary Entertainment Expo is Worth Going to

Like last year I figured it would be a great idea to write a debrief about what was experienced at the Calgary Entertainment Expo for 2012. I have decided to do it again this year but in three distinct parts with a lot more pictures in it.

Blog I - Why Calgary Entertainment Expo is worth going to
Blog II – The experience of the 2012 Expo
Blog III – The Good and the Bad

In all honesty, this is a blog I should of wrote and published before the con itself but I didn’t so lets call it a retrospective, in past tense. So the first question is why should you care about the Calgary Entertainment Expo? Isn’t it a collection of a bunch on DnD nerds and social outcasts? Well yes, but it is this and a lot more. As much as people will refer to it as a Comic Con, as I so often do, it isn’t just about comics. The expo brings in mainstream movie actors from sci-fi, horror, and fantasy genres. Artists from across North America that do print comics, web comics and art for the sake of art. This also includes jewelers, armorers, body artist and costumers. There are booths for War Hammer, Magic, Dnd and even just regular board games like Settlers, and Ticket to Ride. And then yeah there is a lot of comic stands, artists and even some writers that make it out This expo is the largest that Calgary has ever seen of its nature. There is a good reason for that. Our amazing organizers, who are all volunteers, managed to bring out some pretty big names.

First, a whole plethora of media guests…
• Adam West of the original Batman series
• Robert Englund of Nightmare on Elm Street
• Adam Baldwin of Serenity, Chuck and many block busters
• Amanda Tapping of Stargate and Sanctuary
• Katee Sackoff, Aaron Douglas, and Richard Hatch of BSG
• James Marsters of Buffy
• Prominent voice actors

Then, more significantly Stan Lee. Even if you don’t think this one is significant, it is. Being the creator of Marvel Comics and a lot of its most significant characters, Stan Lee’s studio in the form of comics, movies, and television shows has blasted the mainstream nowadays. To add a cherry on top, the Avengers movie is released the week after the con. The reason you should see Stan Lee apart from his work is because he is 90 years old. He is getting up there and there may be less and less of an opportunity to ever see him again, and from what I have seen of him in documentaries and interviews he seems like a really cool guy.

Most significantly is the 9 principle members of the Star Trek The Next Generation cast. This is the first time this has happened ever… Since Wil Wheaton left the show. It is the 25th anniversary of the show itself making this the perfect staging for such an immense event. Even though I am not a fan of TNG this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Through their work they made significant contributions to making the science fiction genre more accessible. And the cast has some amazing talent. Patrick Stewart, the captain is a knighted Shakespearian theatre actor. Wil Wheaton is a nerd messiah who leads people to great science fiction and has helped make things that are nerdy more accessible to everyone. For the event they have a hefty priced photo op available as well as a special evening panel.

This year the expo had the largest footprint of any year. First year I went they occupied BMO Centre Halls D and E and the Palomino for panels. In 2011 the expo grew and took over the main area, BMO Centre Halls A,B and C, and the Corral and the Boyce theatre because last year they had Shatner. This year with all the guests, they had all of the above. The Corral, the Palomino and all five halls of the BMO centre.

This year the organizers have also taken strides to make nerdem more accessible year-round by once every month screening a piece of pop culture nostalgia at the Plaza theatre. Movies like...
• The original Batman film (1960s)
• Serenity
• Star Trek First Contact
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Once More with Feeling episode and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog
• A Nightmare on Elm Street

 These events help bring the crowds by raising awareness and the staff make talking about the even that much easier by offering Q &A periods. To chat them up a bit more, after the last con, they would ask on their site, who people wanted to see? What could be improved? Having them start the conversation like goes to show how much they want to make an event that is for us the audience. Emily Expo’s facebook made asking questions about the event in advance an easy and personable experience. We talked and they listened. I noticed this blog is getting a bit long so I will close. VIP. This year Nicole talked me into getting VIP tickets back in December before any big names were even announced. The con experience for VIP is a drastically different one, and one I am very excited to try. All of this promises to make a Great Con for the Calgary entertainment expo.

Engineering Solutions to Problems that shouldn't exist

My dad and I installed a new dryer exhaust vent in my house a little while ago. When we did we also installed a inline lint catcher that we purchased from ECCO in Calgary. It is a simple device, all sheet metal box with a hole in the top and a hole in the bottom. The lid comes out the side and has attached to it a diagonal screen. We thought it would be great. It turns out, it wasn't.

The flaw of this simple design was that the pressure of the exhaust air is enough to actually blow the door open with the result being a lot of warm air in the room, and more importantly... LINT!!!! Lint on the walls, lint on the floor jousts, lint on the pipes, and a fine layer of lint bloody everywhere. This is a pretty big design flaw. There is no mechanism to hold the door to the lint catcher in place whatsoever. Later after use, the hot air of the exhaust wrapped the little non functional plastic window and lint would blow out of there. That is where the duct tape is on the center of mass.

The temporary fix for the longest while was to have a series of rubber bands tied together wrapped around the door and the pipe to hold it tight-ish. It leaked air and LINT but it was meant to be temporary. So recently a year and a half later I have finally fixed it!

I tried to find a new one to replace it and either couldn't find anything, or only found the same one. In a fit of rage at my ineffectual search I went to the hardware store with a small sembelence of plan in mind. I bought four M4 bolts, with matching washers and nylock nuts. A double magnet door latch for cabinets, and lastly some weather striping. All this material came out to about $8.00.

As per the above picture I bolted the magnets on either side of the box so when the lid is on it is held in place by science!!!! tested it with the dryer on and wouldn't you know it, it didn't move.

As per this picture I put the weather stripping all around the outer edge of the inside of the lid. It should be noted that the lid is oversized relative to the box, so the stripping sits a few mils from the box. This is a redundancy really but now there is only a slight feeling of a small amount of warm air coming from a few of the corners of the lid, but no LINT.

The part that bugs me is that the materials are cheap and easy to get. The build process isn't that much harder, a few holes, tighten some bolts, cut some stripping. It annoys me that the company I bought the product from couldn't take the time to make the product work, instead of making one that is really good at dispersing LINT!!!!!

Airforces in Sci Fi

I just started playing Mass Effect 3. It is a game that has the tag line "Take Earth Back" so I am not spoiling anything by saying that yes Earth gets invaded by aliens. Of course the forces of Earth fight back but as human forces tried to subdue the onslaught of invading forces I noticed something that you see a lot in scifi properties. A genuine lack of airforces. I know what your thinking but entertain me for a moment. Sure they had ships in the air fighting, but these were spaceships in atmosphere, not aircraft. And this makes a huge difference.

Now we have to get into some ideas about propulsion before we can explore this any further so to start I want to focus on scifi that uses conventional thrust for flight/space travel. So no matter how advanced the tech is in the story, I am talking about craft that travel using thrust. No weird anti gravity drives where the craft can travel like a flying carpet, in any direction at any moment.

So now that we have that established, my big concern is in regards to airplane design versus space ship design. Most space ships in scifi that can enter and travel in the atmosphere are not the most aerodynamic vehicles and they don't have to be. Flight in space without the presence of air allows vehicles to travel without resistance. Space craft, properly designed can 180 on a dime travel backwards on the same vector, because the physics of space allows it.

Now a lot of scifi vehicles that can go into the atmosphere would be the equivalent of falling bricks because they aren't designed aerodynamically. For space they don't need to and with differences in atmospheres between planets, an aerodynamic design that works on one world could be torn apart on another so the idea of explaining the flight into a planet's atmosphere and reentry using advanced tech is reasonable. But would these ships be the best option for defense? I think not. Most spaceships in an atmosphere would have to travel slowish compared to jet fighter planes, else wise the lack of aerodynamics would make flying fast an incredible danger. This is why I think an advanced airforce that can travel at tremendous speeds, would be a really effective defense and something that should be in more scifi. Sure they probably couldn't reasonably travel in space, but a scifi jet, accelerating forward at impossible Gs, crossing whole continents to deliver a payload of bombs to a target that can't react fast enough to even see it coming. Just a thought.

Surviving Fort Mac - Paid Prison

With the position that I am in up here, I hear a lot of complaints. One of my tasks is to attend camp committee meetings which are several hour bitch sessions. A lot of complaints from craft also work their ways up through their foreman to their supers, to me. I am in a project controls position, particularly interface coordination. This means that any problem people have that relates to camp, busing, other contractors, I get to hear about it.

For the most part a lot of these complaints are due to an over-inflated sense of entitlement people have. Seriously some of the things that people complain about are without any thought for the greater good, or reason or perspective. An example of this is people swap shower heads to get better showers. This is a 5000 person camp that requires all it's water to be trucked in, so the reason for the low flow heads is simple resource management. More to the point I hear about everything. The bus was a minute late, the steak is crappy. Now this isn't to say that all the items that are raised aren't genuine concerns, some are.

I was thinking about this though and the things that appear to bug a lot of people, are things that I never even think about. It just never registers to me. I was thinking about why this is and the conclusion that I have come to is that I have no sense of entitlement when I am up here. I essentially think of this place as a paid prison. Don't get me wrong, I like my job, I do but my mentality is this...
If the food is shitty, happy to be eating and that I didn't have to cook it, or clean it.
If the bus is late, I am happy there is another one that comes later that gets us to camp
The bed sucks, I at least have a bed to sleep in
The shower sucks, the water was hot enough and I am clean
The laundry machines are full often, at least I can do my laundry
The gym is busy, at least there is a gym
The flight is sitting in Edmonton for a few hours, at least I am going home.

Hell I am allowed to be in a supervisor's room, but I request a craft room because I don't care if my prison room has a slightly larger bed and better walls. Some people care immensely so let them have it instead.

Anyway back to work, but that is my thought on the manner.

Peeling Pomegranates

There are few things that I enjoy as much as when it is pomegranate season. This last crop I must have enjoyed over 25 of them and like my pumpkin carving with that much practice I have become really good at peeling pomegranates. I have then decided to do a blog on how I treat each one. Every pomegranate I peel is with the goal of tapping out every single seed without slicing into any of them. My technique is to peel as much of it as possible without cutting a seed, breaking it into chunks and then stripping those chunks of the glorious fruit.

1.
Start by cutting into the top. My weapon of choice is a small curved parring knife. When you cut in, start high, go about half to three quarters and then pull up. This is the important part of the technique, you slice in some, and then pull the knife up to rip the rest.

2.
After you slice the top off, work all around the edges. Don't worry about going all the way down the sides, but try to pull it back as much to the seeds as possible.

3.
The next step is to hollow out the top. Take the point of the knife and cut a small cone out of the center to get that hard bud out.

4.
Proceed onward to stick the knife in the edges of the middle, shallowly and peel back until the top middle is all clear.

5.
The next step is to attack the bottom. Slice in and pull up. Start shallow and go deeper until you pull back to the seeds. Work the sides a but remember it doesn't have to go the whole way up the sides

6.
Next you want to make shallow cut lines, just deep enough to almost break the skin along the seperation points of each of the chunks. The chunks will have a small skin inbetween each one that run up and down the fruit. Make cut lines in there

7.
Now you can take it and delicately split it apart. Seeds will shake loose when you do this and you should have a dish or container to catch them when they fall.

8.
After it is separated you can pull smaller pieces off in the same fashion.

9.
Use your hands to peel back skin and peel to make klumps of seeds.

10.
Now you can easily use your hands to apply gentle pressure to the seeds to loosen them from the rind and roll them off and into a container

11.
Or you may notice that the chunks are in triangular clumps, making it easy to peel the seeds off with your mouth in a few bits lie eatting little pieces of corn.

Where I am from pomegranate season is over, but when they are back I hope these techniques help you enjoy pomegranates more.