We had a nice day today: were up at eight, and off at 8:30, and had the breakfast buffet again. The hotel restaurant steadily improves. The service is still spotty, but is mostly responsive and at least they open on time. Maybe by 2015 they may have it perfect.

Went to the podcasting panel at ten. This was about producing podcasts, with Jana Oliver, and a gentleman named Bruce who does a podcast about a Stargate role-playing game. They mostly talked about the mechanics and did so in such a lively manner that we never really talked about podcasting hosts until just as we had to leave. I've always had this unspoken ambition to do a Remember WENN podcast, which is absurd since I tend to trip over my tongue...but there it is.

There is a family reunion using some of the other rooms left at the hotel (they are remodeling; the 4th floor is closed down and the entire atrium area is unusable, although they have set up seats near the restaurant for patrons) and halfway during the panel they started holding a church service. You could hear the minister through the walls—and we had the Dealer's Room between us and the room they were using!

James was nursing a headache, so he took something for it and went into the only dark area, the video room, where they were running "The End of Time." I sat with him, intending to leave at eleven for the Doctor Who music panel with Dominic Glynn (composer of music for the series in the 1980s), but I couldn't resist seeing it through the end. Oh, it was all histrionic, but I still sniffled and loved Bernard Cribbins all over again.

Did attend the end of the Glynn panel. Since I'm not musical, didn't understand some of the language, but they were talking about arrangements of the Who theme and their individual parts, and it was neat to see how the different parts, like the bass line and the melody and the other elements went together.

James and I were both getting peckish and were holding 40 percent off Borders coupons, so we nipped out for an hour to go to the Borders at Perimeter Mall. James got a sandwich at the cafè and I had a bagel, and I bought Roy Blount's Alphabet Juice, which was recommended in some linguistics reviews.

We were back in time to see the "toys" panel, which was mostly about the new Who figurines.

Next came the panel I was waiting for, Louis Robinson and Jana Oliver were doing a panel on Jack the Ripper. I'm not particularly interested in the Ripper, but I will listen to both panelists talk about almost anything. This was super: talking both about the crime itself and whether the crime was actually done by one person, and about the influence it has had on society and even on stories. One really odd thing was that Louis said he became interested in the Ripper by Googling his own name. It turns out Catherine Eddowes was arrested by a PC Louis Robinson and taken to "the drunk tank" the night before she was murdered.

This was followed by two panels about general media: media-tie ins (mostly books) and "reimaginings." The media-tie in panel featured Diana Dru Botsford who has written original and media novels and has been commissioned to do a Stargate novel. She has been allowed to go to Antarctica next winter to do reseach for a novel! Talked about different tie-in series (Trek, Who, Stargate, etc. and some that worked and some that didn't. The "reimagining" panel prompted a lot of conversations about what worked and what didn't, and there was a lively discussion, especially between the moderators!

We always attend the wrap-up panel, so that was last at six, and finally we were on the way home. We picked up a newspaper and some chicken wings for James' supper. I had a Lean Cuisine and we settled down with our fids for a relaxing night.

I think I'm just going to break down and buy new RAM and a new hard disk. I use the computer for work; I can't afford to mess with it.

Labels: computers, conventions

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:50:00 PM

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