Nerdfest 2008 Photos

Here's our lovely accommodation. It really was perfect for getting away from the craziness of the convention at the end of the day. Mmm... Jacuuzi tubs.



Indianapolis is a beautiful town. It had some interesting buildings, and it was clean and well laid-out. The conference center was right smack dab in the midst of everything. The older building is a playhouse. Maybe we can see a play next year when we go.




Tomas the Lapidary was milling away on various lovely pieces of jewelry. He was good fun to talk to, and I always love watching craft like that. He does historical pieces. This was a copper headpiece for a bride-to-be.



Ed, Alex and some aviator dude talk to Andy K. about Japanese/English translation. Andy and company's book is the first Japanese RPG to be published in English.



Rebecca Guay makes really neat Wyeth-inspired paintings. She also did a couple lectures.



A lot of the fun was not of the type you take photos of--lectures and interesting chats with people from around the world, etc. One definitely photoable and fun part about Gen Con was the cosplayers. Sure, there were a few people in outfits that they reaaally shouldn't have left the house in, but for the most part, it was good fun, and there were some really well done ones. Star Wars seemed to dominate a bit, probably because Peter Mayhew was there. There were also at least three Captain Jack Sparrows walking around.

Boba Fett and Obi Wan totally hang out when they're off-duty. They're best buds. Seriously.



Darth Vader spent the whole time complaining about convention center food. "I find your lack of cheesy pretzels disturbing." Fun fact: Vader looks about ten feet tall only because the storm trooper was about five foot one. Also, YES. This is a storm trooper in a kilt behind them. Heh!



Speaking of costumes, this lady has maybe the most perfect original series Star Trek costume ever. Simple, but perfect. As for the gentleman--the costume was great, but I'm not sure where it was from. The bag says Torchwood, but isn't that a sci-fi series? He looks rather steampunk, or old west. Huh. Does anyone know?



The Empire is recruiting them young---This adorable storm trooper almost made my head explode. He took off his helmet because he was drinking a juice box. Hey-that's not against regulations!



This girl is cosplaying a character from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. It's a pretty decent costume, but I don't think she put all that much work into it.

...Hello?

I love my window feeder.

Happy Fourth of July, American pals! I hope there's are lots of fun BBQs and fireworks for everyone. It's a little rainy here, but hopefully it will clear up by tonight.

Mariemont is set to celebrate its second year with "big-time" professional fireworks, so assuming it isn't pushed back to tomorrow, we'll walk over to the park for the carillon concert and "ooo" and "ahh" along with everyone. Or if we're super-lazy, then we'll just sit on the patio and watch them like we did last year.

Add one to the pile...

Having folk from out of town visiting got me in the frame of mind to explore Cincinnati once again. It was a busy winter, and we'd stopped going on adventures as often as we were. It was downright lovely to explore with some of my sisters and their tiny ones this week. (Thanks so much for the visit, you guys!)

Here's a nifty blog someone did that not only gives some fun ideas of interesting things and places in Cincinnati, it has beautiful photography as well. It just recently stopped updating, but the archives are well worth sifting through.

Intermezzo

(Top) Surprisingly, both the nasturtium and the clover on my windowsill have burst into flower.

(Bottom) Boo adores his clunky stuffed "Hamster Baby."

I need a tripod. Stat!

I've been poking at some of the multiple exposure photos I took in the Autumn with the intention of making HDR pictures from them. I did a few then, but I finally got around to compiling more the other day, so here are a couple. There are a few schools of thought re: HDR photos. Some people see them as a way to create hyper-realistic images, and scorn those that are a bit over the top, some people figure if they're doing a type of digital photo manipulation anyway, they may was well go crazy with the curves and levels, and some people (like me) especially like images that are just on the edge of realistic and fantastical. Some of the uber-crazy images, though fun to look at, are just a bit over the top, though I do really like things that look like they just might be from another world that's reeeeally similar to ours.



Another thing this reminded me of is the fact that I need to find a tripod of some sort--it was a challenge, balancing the camera on various things to try to get the identical picture multiple times. I've tried using the same photo, and changing the exposures in Photoshop, but it never gives quite the effect I wanted.

Recent Adventures #3

More exploration this weekend: It was a day of various mounts - Mount Lookout, Mount Washington, and Mount Adams.

Sunday was gorgeous, so we finally went to Ault Park, which is supposed to have one of the best views in Cincinnati. I can't really argue with that assertion. I think Mount Lookout is the hill the park is on, and you can see across the valley to Kentucky pretty much. The trees have finally burst into color, so seeing them from above was really neat.

After that, we checked out a comic shop in Mount Washington. It had that classic dusty smell, and was full of old school issues in long-boxes and plastic. The clerk/owner looked kind of defeated, and it made me a bit sad. It can't be a very profitable business to be in these days. The store had mostly the big name Marvel/DC/Dark Horse fare that's easy to find anywhere, though there was a hardcover Firefly/Serenity book I would have liked. I wish there were a store in the area to find smaller independent comics, and printings of webcomics. I suppose if you're going to be cutting edge in the comic business these days, you have to first of all be doing business online, and also with print-on-demand places like Lulu and such for special orders and small online comics. Even then, I imagine there's not an awful lot of money to be made in the business these days.

After Mount Washington, we made our way back up to Mount Adams, which we finally discovered on Friday. I'm still kind of giddily excited about that neighborhood. It reminds me so much of a small east coast town--maybe old-school Vermont or Maine, with narrow hilly streets, and pretty, ivy-covered old buildings all nestled together. We ate at the place that used to be the Rookwood Pottery Factory. It still has the giant brick kilns and chimneys in place. In fact, there are tables within each of the three huge kilns--they're pretty much private rooms now.

It's blurry, but it was a nice view!

I was glad to get the chance to take some pictures, since I've been wanting to try my hand at putting together some HDR photos. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and I guess the simplest description is that it's a compilation of several identical photos of different exposures, which uses the best exposed bits of the image to create one more like what the human eye sees. At the same time as being more like what we actually see, they're also a bit bizarre because they can be ultra vivid, and crisp in ways we don't often see photos. HDR photos can also be tweaked into utterly surreal, gorgeous images. Er... I'm still getting the hang of the whole "gorgeous" part here. Here are a a couple attempts at HDR images. I'm not using RAW files like I should be for these, so they're pretty grainy and "noisy" at times. Ah well. Fun all the same. This one is from out front of the uber art deco Union Terminal Museum Center. It's a bit on the surreal side, but I think it's interesting to look at, and it's not so boring a photo as it was.


Here's the pavilion at the top of Ault Park. A little more realistic. The sky was actually that blue.


These are a couple from a bridge up on Mount Adams. The city view was pretty fantastic. We could see all the way to Union Terminal on the other side of town.


Anyway, after a bunch of rain last week, we're being rewarded with some days of gorgeousness. It's Halloween today, and although we don't bother celebrating it, it's fun to see how excited the kids walking home from school are. It was chilly yesterday, but today I stepped out onto the patio to find it was sunny, in the high sixties, and our entire neighborhood smelled of freshly made waffle cones. Huh? I have no idea. I did hear the school marching band in the distance not too long ago, so perhaps there's a festival-type function happening? Anyway, I've opened all the windows (mmmm....wafflecones....) and I'm expecting small people in costumes to come seeking sugar any minute now, so I'd better go.

At Long Last...

Another stinkin' blog post. It's been a busy month, clearly, what with Christmas, friends, family, New Years, The Boy being home for more than three consecutive days, etc etc.

A quick catch up -

The majority of my vast family arrived a week before Christmas, and I trucked the half hour over to Rochester to spend time with them. It was really nice to see and hang with people, but it was also a bit tiring being gone from a little while after I woke up until a little while before I went to sleep. Our two cats got right pissy with me and tore up several innocent pieces of junk mail in protest.

The Boy arrived home the Sat. before Christmas and we traversed the grey and snowless landscape over to where my family was staying. Another couple members of the family had come into town, so there were more greetings and chattings and in general, many warm and genial sentiment as well as delicious and caloric treats were had. It was really Christmassy, which was absolutely lovely. Up until that point, the short doses of Christmas I'd had were from public decorations or the beautiful getup at my sister's house, which was resplendent with white lights and evergreens. I didn't have a tree this year because I've been the only one here, and the hassle and risk of cat attacks didn't seem worth it. However, I did hang a few ornaments from the chandeliers in the living room and dining room. While whimsical, it wasn't exactly Christmassy. In any case, in a continuing explosion of wrapping paper, exclamations, and laughter, lots and lots of gifts for lots and lots of family members were opened the night before Christmas eve, and it was heartwarming and makes me happy to think of. I like those times. I wish so much that every single one of us could have been there. Even so, our family is so vast that little pockets of conversation, card games, grazing, pool games, etc. form around the house, and it's enough to drift from one to the next in a happy daze. Best part of Christmas.

This year, Christmas itself was claimed by the Boy's side of the family, so on Christmas Eve, we packed up the rest of the unopened gifts, and bundled off to Vitosha Guest Haus in Ann Arbor to celebrate on a much smaller scale with the Boy, his mother, and me. The place was empty except for us, which was wonderful. The buildings on the grounds were very cool--built a hundred years ago of stone and thick wood in a neo-gothic style.

Behold, The Boy stands at the door of the parsonage and knocks! Or acutally, he has the key, so... behold! He lets himself (and us) in!

In the drawing room of the parsonage, the seven deadly sins were mounted around the ceiling on Pewabic pottery tiles. I took a picture of sloth to remind us why we were there. He seems to approve. "Yes, my children--laze about! Mwahhahah!"

This bed makes the Boy look tiny. At 6'4'', the Boy is not tiny. It was just a hella big bed, covered in down comforters and more down comforters.

The feel of the place reminded me a lot of some places we stayed in Bavaria in Germany. It was the kind of solid place that tells you it's been there a while, but that there's nothing frail about it. It was full of wonderful antiques and books and tapestries. I'm not talking about fragile victorian antiques with thin spindles--I'm talking about hearty, hand carved pieces made of dark wood. The downstairs rooms have heated slate floors, and most of the rooms have big fireplaces. The Boy and I piled the gifts near the hearth in our room, and from our massive cabinet bed (we needed STEPS to get in) we watched the flames flicker in the dark, and the light dancing on the gifts, and we knew it was Christmas.

Meet the very incarnation of my favorite lamp ever. This was over in the church building, which was more 1957 modern (prairie?) architecture. Very neat to look at.

The sancuary of the old church is still santuary shaped, but it's now used as a venue, and what a sweet venue it would be, with the light diffusing through the ivy on one side, massive windows on the other, and a pipe organ just like this:

The Tea Haus at the back of the property was called "The Three Bears Haus," though I think it could have aptly been named "Dove Cottage." I thought I saw one of the Lake Poets peering through the curtains, or perhaps Beatrix Potter.

Christmas morning was a flurry of opened gifts, oohs and ahs, and an amazing breakfast of fresh made streudel, a fruit salad with lychee, kiwi, and all sorts of beautiful, delicious things, a plate of assorted wonderful cheeses (thanks Kei!) and a quiet Christmas Day mostly spend wandering around the place, chatting with the owner patting the massive great dane, George, on his broad, sleepy head, and following seemingly endless winding corridors to other parts of the house for yet another neat little corner to settle into for a little while.

Behold, the sad and crumbly remains of our delectable breakfast.

I highly recommend it as an amazing, simple getaway. Be sure to order the breakfast! I'm going to keep an eye on cultural happenings there to see if there's anything those of us in the area would like to see. Wheee!

Thus concludes my report of what happened over Christmas. It was a nice Christmas this year. Not filled with the wonder and excitedment of some other years, but it was quiet and lovely and had some wonderful moments.