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The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

Weekly Notes: April 14–20, 2025 (Norwescon 47 wrap-up edition)

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This week was all about Norwescon! Well, Monday and Tuesday were normal workdays, but from then on, it was all con, all the time.

Cat Valente, Wayne Barlowe, Tracy Drain, Jenny Jarzabski, Mike Kimmel, Isis Asare, and Lydia K. Valentine on the main stage in front of the Norwescon logo on the video wall. The Opening Ceremonies, with the guests of honor being introduced and briefly interviewed.

  • Wednesday: Day zero of con is load-in, setup, and generally getting things ready. I spent the morning at home packing up all my stuff, and at noon drove to pick up my wife from work, then she dropped me off at the hotel and headed home for a quiet weekend on her own. From there, it was a lot of wandering around and helping where I could help until I could check into my room, then more of the same.
  • Thursday: Day one of con starts with more helping with setup, plus a lot of general wandering around, saying hi to people, socializing with friends, and so on. I had two official duties for Thursday:
    • 8 p.m.: Introduction to Fandom Dancing was my first time paneling at a convention…though rather than the usual “sit at a table and talk”, this was “play music and help teach people how to do dance”. We concentrated on the Time Warp, the Rasputin, the Macarena, and Thriller, plus encouraging people to just have fun and get out and move and not worry about what you look like.
    • 9 p.m.: Immediately following that was the Thursday Night Dance: Star Trek vs. Star Wars. Unfortunately, I had some technical issues that made the first 20-30 minutes really dodgy, with a lot of starting and stopping and apologizing as I tried to figure out why my headphones weren’t working, making it impossible for me to pre-cue and mix upcoming tracks. Everyone there understood that these things happen, and once I figured out a solution (though I still need to go back and experiment to really nail down what was going on so it doesn’t happen again), I got a good three-hour set in, going until 12:30 a.m., which is pretty good for Thursday night. I was a little frazzled from the clumsy start, so many of my ideas for what I was going to do disappeared from my brain and I know I didn’t play a lot of the tracks I had planned, but people danced and had fun, which was the important part. I recorded the set, and will have it processed and uploaded to my MixCloud page as soon as I can get around to it.
  • Friday: Friday morning I had free to wander and socialize, but the afternoon and evening of day two of the con was all about the Philip K. Dick Award.
    • 3 p.m.: All About the Philip K. Dick Award is held on Fridays to give people a bit of a history of the award and introduce the attending PKD nominees and let them talk about their work for a bit. This year we had three attending nominees, Bora Chung, Tara Campbell, and Subodhana Wijeyeratne. Normally this panel is moderated by award administrator Gordon Van Gelder, but travel difficulties had him delayed, so I stepped up to moderate instead. I was a bit nervous, having only done one panel before (the prior night’s dance panel, where I mostly played DJ) and never having moderated, but I’d sat in on the panel enough to have a pretty good idea of what Gordon usually said. Between myself and a little assistance from audience members asking questions, we had a very nice conversation with the nominees.
    • 4 p.m.: The Philip K. Dick Award social is a private event for the nominees to spend some time meeting and chatting with each other. I got them set up in the room, hung around and chatted for about half an hour, and then left them on their own as I headed down to my room to change.
    • 5 p.m.: The Lifetime Member dinner is another private event for Norwescon’s lifetime members (a group I was inaugurated into two years ago) along with our guests of honor, PKD nominees, and charitable partner representatives. I had a table with all of the PKD nominees and their plus-ones, so we were able to continue the conversations from the prior couple hours as we ate. I left about 6:15 to head to the next room over to do some final setup, and then it was time for…
    • 7 p.m.: The Philip K. Dick Award Ceremony! This was my third year as ceremony coordinator, and after first-year jitters and second-year “we’re switching the room the ceremony is held in three hours before the ceremony” scrambling, this year went off smoothly and without a hitch. Our three attending nominees read selections from their nominated works, readers read for those nominees who were unable to attend, and it all went well. This year’s winners were Brenda Peynado for Time’s Agent and Adrian Tchaikovsky getting the special citation for Alien Clay, and though neither winner was in attendance, a good time was had by all.
    • At that point, I was done for the day, and spent the rest of the evening bouncing back and forth among the dance, room parties, and general socializing as I came across people.
  • Saturday: Day three of the con is normally a free day for me that I can spend doing whatever seems right in the moment. However, this year I was giving a presentation panel in the evening, and though I’d had “finish the presentation materials” on my to-do list for months…well, yeah. Sometimes procrastination bites us in the butt, and I ended up spending nearly my entire Saturday holed up in my room getting everything finished and ready to go. And so, finally, I emerged, got some socializing in, and then it was time for…
    • 7 p.m.: Basics of Accessible Documents and Websites. This is essentially an adaptation of the kind of thing I do for my day job all the time, and a variation on a panel I gave at last winter’s SMOFcon and will be giving at Seattle Worldcon 2025 in August. For SMOFcon and Worldcon I aim it more at “why/how your convention can make your materials more accessible”; for Norwescon, I tweaked it a bit to be aimed more at authors, especially if self-publishing or marketing, and publishers. While I only had five attendees, all of them were interested and engaged with good comments and questions, and as this was the first time trying this out, with a somewhat niche interest, and programmed at 7 p.m. on Saturday against the masquerade, I’m counting it as a success, and hopefully will be bringing it back next year as well.
    • After the panel, it was another evening of floating among the dance, parties, and chatting with whomever I came across as the evening rolled on.
  • Sunday: And finally, it was Sunday, day four and the final day, with nothing on my schedule except packing up and loading out. I took the day slow, got packed up, and headed home just after the closing ceremonies. With that, another con was done!

📸 Photos

Me outside the hotel, standing next to a hotel luggage cart with all my stuff on it, smiling and wearing a black kilt and black t-shirt. The now-traditional photo my wife takes as she drops me off for “nerd summer camp”.

Me wearing a black kilt and black shirt with the vulcan salute on it, standing next to a trio of women in Star Trek: The Next Generation themed 50s style poodle skirts. Star Trek poodle skirts!

Me standing next to a woman in Vulcan ceremonial robes, both of us giving the Vulcan salute. With T’Resik, who was stoically bemused by the shenanigans of the humans around her.

Me wearing a t-shirt with that says Star Trek but is written in the style of the Star Wars logo, in front of a video wall showing my DJ graphics, including turntables and waveforms for the currently playing tracks, the Norwescon logo, a cartoon version of me, and a video loop of Star Trek and Star Wars spaceship shots, here showing the Enterprise in drydock from The Motion Picture. I may have the smallest dance, since it’s on Thursday night, but in my not-at-all humble opinion, I have the best looking dance graphics!

The three attending PKD award nominees and myself at the About the PKD Award panel. Philip K. Dick Award nominees Bora Chung, Tara Campbell, and Subodhana Widjeyeratne and myself at the All About the Philip K. Dick Award panel.

Me on stage wearing a black kilt and black suit jacket, holding a microphone and gesturing as I speak. Opening and welcoming the audience to the Philip K. Dick Award ceremony.

A few more photos are available in this Flickr album.

🔗 Linking

  • Radek Sienkiewicz: Why do AI company logos look like buttholes?: “The fluidity and warmth of human-centered thinking through the use of circles is perhaps the most elegant way anyone has ever described making a logo that resembles an anus.”
  • Jeremy Reimer at Ars Technica: An Ars Technica history of the Internet, part 1: “In our new 3-part series, we remember the people and ideas that made the Internet.” I actually haven’t read this one yet, but want to remember to do so and continue on through the series.

Myth Conceptions by Robert Asprin

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Book 22 of 2025: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Like the first, it’s cute, but that’s about it. I really think I’d have enjoyed it more if I’d read it when we were both much younger. Not that it’s bad or juvenile, just that it’s, well, lightly humorous fantasy from 1980, and its not going to appeal to me as a 51 year old in 2025 the same way it might have as a tween/teen in the ‘80s.

Me holding Myth Conceptions

Weekly Notes: April 7-13, 2025

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  • 🚀 Almost to Norwescon! So, lots of that when I’m not doing other things.
  • 🥚 While we’re not terribly religious, we do like the cuteness and spring celebration of Easter, so since Norwescon takes place over Easter weekend, we continued our annual tradition of celebrating spring a week early. It was a gorgeous day, so we took a nice walk in the morning, and then dyed eggs in the afternoon.

📸 Photos

Eighteen eggs dyed bright colors sitting in an egg carton in the sun.

Colors and speckles and eggs, oh my!

📚 Reading

📺 Watching

We got sucked into the reality tripe of Million Dollar Secret. It’s ridiculous, many of these people are horrible, and it’s keeping us entertained.

🔗 Linking

  • Online Markdown is a pretty impressive web-based Markdown editor. I’m starting to find some annoyances with Markdown (it focuses on presentational markup rather than structured markup — for example, _using underscores_ to add italics adds italics as <em> tags rather than <i> tags, but since I’m often marking up book titles, <em> is the incorrect tag to be using), but until/unless I decide to go another way, this looks like a good tool to know about.
  • Daniel Hunter at Waging Nonviolence: What to do if the Insurrection Act is invoked: “With the Insurrection Act looming, now is the time to learn how it might unfold and the strategic ways to respond — including the power of ridicule.” I’m hoping this is just paranoia, but afraid it isn’t.
  • Nicholas Barber at the BBC: ‘It was a magical chemical balance’: How Monty Python and the Holy Grail became a comedy legend: “An independent British comedy made on a shoestring by a television sketch troupe? It sounds like a film destined to be forgotten within weeks of leaving cinemas – assuming it reaches cinemas in the first place. But Monty Python and the Holy Grail is still revered as one of the greatest ever big-screen comedies, 50 years on from its release in April 1975.”
  • Nancy Friedman at Strong Language: “Smut”: “Although the lyrics reflected a set of social and legal circumstances specific to mid-1960s America, their sentiment has proved to be timeless. In honor of its 60th anniversary and Tom Lehrer’s long, remarkable life, here’s our salute to ‘Smut.'”
  • Ex Astris Scientia: Design Issues of the Original Enterprise: “The article discusses problems or uncertainties about the design of the original Enterprise by Matt Jefferies, as it appeared in TOS.”
  • Tim Hardiwck at MacRumors: How to Adjust Mac Volume and Brightness More Precisely: “Before you press the volume or brightness controls, hold down the Option and Shift keys together on your keyboard. Now go ahead and make your adjustments, and you should see the onscreen indicator move forwards and backwards in smaller increments (four over each segment).” I’ve been using macOS since it was Mac OS, and I never knew this trick.
  • Bauhaus Clock: “A Bauhaus clock screensaver for Mac, designed to be present even when you’re not.” Pretty! But apparently I should have downloaded it sooner; the page is now saying “currently unavailable”. Oh dear….

Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer

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Book 21 of 2025: ⭐️⭐️ 2003 Hugo Best Novel

A portal is accidentally opened between our Earth and a parallel Earth, where Neanderthals became the dominant human species, bringing one Neanderthal scientist over to our world. Some amusing moments as the scientist comes to grips with the oddities of our world when compared to his. However, I was quite thrown off by the introductions of the two primary female characters: one, in order to dive into water for a rescue attempt, strips down to her underwear, pausing to reflect that she wished she hadn’t donned such a lacy pair that morning; the other is raped at knifepoint. After finishing the book, I have only the vaguest ideas of what either character looked like; one is blonde and beautiful, the other more average. That got the book off on poor footing, and I never really warmed up to it after that. Not what I’ve come to expect from these more recent Hugo winners, and I won’t be continuing on with this series.

Me holding Hominids.

Weekly Notes: March 31–April 6, 2025

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  • 🚀 This weekend was a little bit of convention conflict, as Saturday we had the final Norwescon 47 planning meeting before the con, and Sunday was Seattle Worldcon‘s announcement of this year’s Hugo finalists. Got everything done, but it did make me glad there aren’t many weekends where I’m trying to do stuff for two conventions at the same time.

📸 Photos

Single-panel comic of two men sitting on a park bench, one is about eight inches tall. The small one is saying, "You think you've got problems! Not only am I the incredible shrinking man, but I've also been bitten by a werewolf so every full moon I turn into a gerbil!"

From a conversation with a friend, one of my all-time favorite Bizarro comics, clipped and saved back when I was in high school.

📝 Writing

📚 Reading

🔗 Linking

  • Guillaume Lethuillier: The Myst Graph: A New Perspective on Myst: “Upon reflection, Myst has long been more analogous to a graph than a traditional linear game, owing to the relative freedom it affords players. This is particularly evident in its first release (Macintosh, 1993), which was composed of interconnected HyperCard cards. It is now literally one. Here is Myst as a graph.”

  • Jessica Bennett at The Cut: If Hetero Relationships Are So Bad, Why Do Women Go Back for More? A new straight-studies course treats male-female partnerships as the real deviance.: “‘In this class, we’re going to flip the script,’ she went on. ‘It’s going to be a place where we worry about straight people. Where we feel sympathy for straight people. We are going to be allies to straight people.'”

  • Nilay Patel at The Verge: Best printer 2025: just buy a Brother laser printer, the winner is clear, middle finger in the air: “This is the third year in a row that I’ve published a story recommending you just stop thinking about printers and buy whatever random Brother laser printer is on sale, and nothing has happened in the miserably user-hostile printer industry to change my recommendation in that time.”

  • Sarah Jones at the Intelligencer: Then They Came for People With Disabilities The right-wing effort to roll back civil rights finds a new target.: “Though the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act had bipartisan support and were signed by Republican presidents, it’s hard to imagine Trump signing either piece of legislation. A more ruthless strain of conservatism always percolated within the party, and now it dominates and threatens the protections that Cone, and Lomax, and so many others once fought to win. At risk is the concept of civil rights itself.”

  • Shelly Brisbin at Six Colors: Twenty Thousand Hertz Dives Deep Into Apple Accessibility History: “The latest episode of the Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast takes a stab at telling Apple’s accessibility story through sound—not only the sound of a host and his interview subjects, but the way Macs and iPhones sound when they speak to people who use their accessibility features.”

  • Watts Martin: What makes an app feel “right” on the Mac?: “So it’s possible that the right question—at least for me—isn’t ‘is this app using a native UI toolkit,’ it’s ‘is this app a good Mac citizen.’ In other words, does it embrace long-standing Mac conventions?”

  • Seattle Worldcon 2025: 2025 Hugo Award Finalists: “Seattle Worldcon 2025, the 83rd World Science Fiction Convention, is delighted to announce the finalists for the 2025 Hugo Awards, Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and Astounding Award for Best New Writer.”

Diplomatic Immunity by Lois McMaster Bujold

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Book 19 of 2025: Diplomatic Immunity by Lois McMaster Bujold: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Miles heads out to solve a diplomatic crisis that quickly becomes more of a crisis than expected (which, well, of course, that’s how it works, right?). Ties together a lot of threads and brings in long unseen characters from prior books in the series. I continue to be impressed with how consistently enjoyable this series is. Only a few books left before I’m done!

Me holding Diplomatic Immunity

Weekly Notes: March 24–30, 2025

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  • 😎 Best part of this week was a nice little mid-week mini-break for the spring break lull. We drove up and spent a couple nights at the Tulalip Resort Casino. We’re not casino or gambling people, but very much enjoyed some time away in a nice hotel room!
  • 🚀 Very busy on both the Norwescon and Seattle Worldcon 2025 front, with the first just a couple weeks away, and the other further out but with behind-the-scenes stuff helping with digital accessibility matters. Feeling a little behind on everything, but I don’t think i’m actually as behind as it feels.
  • 🔄 Once again, this is being posted on Monday but backdated to Sunday. Starting to wonder if I should just admit that Sunday evenings aren’t the best time for me to try to post these, but we’ll see….

📸 Photos

Life-size sculptures of an orca pod, with three showing fins and one leaping, in the fountain in front the Tulalip resort hotel, visible through light fog in the background.

A foggy morning walk to explore the grounds of the resort was really nice.

📚 Reading

📺 Watching

Just the usual mindless evening stuff: NCIS: Origins, Drag Race All Stars, and Scrubs. Scrubs “My Musical” is still an excellent episode.

🎧 Listening

  • Mostly just continuing to listen through the new stuff picked up over the past few weeks for Norwescon.
  • Was happy to see that VNV Nation’s new album Construct is coming out soon, and they just released the first song. Have to admit, I’m not a big fan of the cover art, but the song is good!

🔗 Linking

No links this week; too much of what I’ve read has been about the political idiocy, and, well, you can find those stories absolutely everywhere.

Polostan by Neal Stephenson

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Book 18 of 2025: Polostan by Neal Stephenson: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

On the one hand, it’s basically all setup — it very much feels like Stephenson wrote another 1,000-plus page opus and the publisher cut it down into more manageable pieces. On the other, if you’re the type who enjoys Stephenson’s 1,000-page plus opuses, it’s captivating and engrossing setup, as he sets the stage with events in 1930s America and the Soviet Union, with his usual digressions and fixations on whatever minutiae have captured his fancy. Hopefully it won’t be too long between volumes, as it’s a minor pity that I can’t just read the full story in one go.

Me holding Polostan

Weekly Notes: March 17–23, 2025

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  • ♿️ Busy week at work. The biggest success there was launching an “Accessibility Liaisons” initiative, looking for volunteers across campus to learn more about digital accessibility to assist others in their area. Sent out a campus-wide email about it, and got the first four volunteers within an hour, and were up to twelve by the end of the day. Promising start!
  • 🚀 This weekend was the all-staff meeting weekend for Seattle Worldcon 2025. Friday afternoon I joined in person and got to put a few faces to names I’d only seen online until now; Saturday I stayed home and Zoomed in, since there was less that day that I needed to be present for, and then Sunday I joined the group for a tour of the Seattle Convention Center Summit building where the majority of the convention will be happening. The new convention center building is huge, and really nice. Going to be a great location for Worldcon!
  • 🎻 After the tour, my wife and I went to the Seattle Symphony’s performance of selections from the Fantasia movies, played live as the film clips were projected on a screen. Really enjoyed the performance, and it was fun to see how they synced the performance to the video.
  • 🚀♿️ Had a nice bit of success in crossing the streams between my paid and volunteer work. One of the pages we’d just set up for the Seattle Worldcon site (page not linked, because it’s not fully public) included a drop-down menu that revealed more information on the page, changing depending on which item in the menu was chosen. While working my way through the Trusted Tester training materials, I realized that the current implementation would fail the testing process because those page changes weren’t being announced to assistive technology. A bit of digging, experimentation, and testing, and I figured out how to properly implement an ARIA live region so that the page passes testing.

📸 Photos

A red Chevy Sonic being strapped onto a flatbed tow truck.

Not the best start to Tuesday morning. And it didn’t get much better from there; a failed water pump had led to the car dumping its coolant and cracking the radiator and coolant reservoir. A lot of money and a few days wait for repairs, that turned into a few more days when the wrong part got shipped to the service shop. Hoping we’ll have it back on Monday.

A wide-angle shot of a huge convention center ballroom, with maroonish side walls and a high ceilig with a pattern that's formed by hanging planks of wood.

The main ballroom of the convention center Summit building is huge. I mean, I know these spaces are big, but standing in it while it’s completely empty was impressive. I spent a couple moments trying to estimate how many times I could fit my entire house in there (stacked vertically as well as arranged horizontally) before just going with “lots” and giving up.

A concert hall filled with people; on the stage are seats for an orchestra below a large screen showing the logo for Disney's Fantasia.

It was good to be back in Benaroya Hall for the Seattle Symphony. The last time we were here was one of the last Messiah performances before the pandemic kicked in and shut everything down.

📚 Reading

  • Read Requiem by Kevin Ryan and Michael Jan Friedman.
  • Started Polostan by Neal Stephenson.

📺 Watching

Started NCIS: Origins. It’s pretty standard NCIS, but the ’90s setting makes for some entertaining music choices, and we’re being pretty impressed by the casting for younger versions of known characters. Also been doing a lot of Antiques Roadshow, because it’s soothing.

🎧 Listening

A few months ago I’d pre-ordered Ministry’s latest album, The Squirrely Years Revisited, where they update a bunch of those early synth pop tracks that Jourgensen has practically disowned for decades. So far, first impressions are good. While a lot of recent Ministry hasn’t done much for me, as they’ve moved more towards straightforward metal over industrial, they’ve done a really good job of blending the original synth pop tracks with their modern sound, landing in a place that works well for me. Glad Al decided to admit that these tracks are part of his history!

🔗 Linking

  • Assuming the old plugin (last updated in 2008) I found still works, this site will be participating in CSS Naked Day on April 9.
  • Robert Alexander, RSS blogrolls are a federated social network: Something for me to dig more into when I have time.
  • Chris Dalla Riva, The Greatest Two-Hit Wonders: “But if one hit is a miracle, then two hits is a near impossibility. Two-hit artists sit in a weird space, though. Pop stars a remembered because they are very famous. One-hit wonders are remembered for the opposite.”
  • Anand Giridharadas, The opposite of fascism: “The best revenge against these grifters and bigots and billionaires and bullies is to live well, richly, together. The best revenge is to refuse their values. To embody the kind of living — free, colorful, open — they want to snuff out.”