Archive for June, 2010»
Life of a Bounder, Part XIX
For those interested in the adventures of Maedhroc Thornhollow, there’s a new “Life of a Bounder” post on my LotRO blog. Enjoy!
-The Gneech
First off: happy birthday to anybody out there who might have a birthday today, but I’m not naming names.
Second off: Another AnthroCon has come and gone, and it was fun; not a big winner moneywise, alas, but as we were basically doing a clearance sale of old material, that was expected. Until I have a good, solid new project, I am coasting a bit, and the sales reflected that. The new buttons were a hit, which pleased me. I was deliberately going with something more generic than Suburban Jungle-specific buttons with this batch, and I think it paid off.
I am always amused at “other fandoms” crashing the furry cons, which is becoming more and more pronounced at every one I attend. For those who don’t know, “furry” as a fandom started as a subculture at fantasy/SF cons and was essentially kicked out of those for not being cool enough. (Yes, even f/sf nerds have people they look down on.) But something strange happened on the way to the dealer room: Xydexx’s Axiom of Fandom Enjoyability kicked in to force, and word has started to get around: furries are more fun than grognards! And thus, people who want to have fun, even if they are not particularly interested in “furry” as a genre, go to the furry cons because furries are generally made of awesome.
The Klingons appear to be the first to have noticed this — Klingons are always looking for a good party, and like furries have a tendency to be greeted with rolled eyes in certain corners. But at AC this year I counted at least two Doctors, a few Fairies, lots of Dragons (who have long been “furry” even without fur), Power Rangers and Halo Guys, and of course it isn’t a con until Captain Jack Sparrow shows up.
This is why I created the “Proud to be a Furry” buttons in the first place: as long as we hold true to the idea that furries are awesome, happy people and that being furry is a fine thing, instead of hiding and letting the dickweeds define us with distortions and outright lies, the people whose company are worth the time will come to us.
So keep on being awesome, furries. :) The other fandoms are starting to get it.
-The Gneech
Hello from the Zoo!
Hangin’ out in the AnthroCon zoo … the masquerade is going on over in the Convention Center, so it’s still fairly quiet here. FrostDemn, Exatron, and PunkTiger are all here (although Frosty is packing up), and we’re all just shootin’ the breeze. Did a little sketching, which I’ll post later, and I’m kinda hoping some other artists I know will show up and we can do some art-jamming.
Slow day, I hope it will pick up some tomorrow. But even if it doesn’t, I’ve had fun, so I win! ;)
-The Gneech
iPadCon
Late-night posting from my room at AC via the iPad. Been a fun, nicely laid-back con so far, and except for dinner at “Big Mama’s” (that was a mistake), everything has been very pleasant and enjoyable. I was expecting a fairly depressed (economy-wise) con, but today business was brisk and I got a nice number of sketchbooks. No badges, which surprised me … FC it was all badges, all the time.
The iPad has served admirably for my on-the-road computing needs; I used it in the dealer room to look up art reference, handed it around to a few other artists for the same, and now of course I’m using it to write a mini con-report.
I’ve also had lots of people going, “Ooooh, is that an iPad? Can I play with it?” … which has the added benefit of brining people to the table.
-The Gneech
Life of a Bounder, Part XVIII
For those interested in the tale of Maedhroc of the Shire, there’s a new post on my LotRO blog. Enjoy!
-The Gneech
Just finished up teaching what was intended to be a three half-day course on beginner HTML for co-workers. Although it was modeled on the methods of various other professional training programs, I created the curriculum and exercises, with an eye towards keeping the pupils engaged and hopefully entertained on what is at its heart a pretty dull subject. It’s not the first time I’ve taught somebody how to do something, but it is the first time I’ve been at the front of several people acting in the official capacity as teach. It went quite well and I received a lot of nice comments, so in all I’m pretty pleased.
I say intended, because we actually finished up a day and a half early. Since other than a dry run for some of the other folks in the IT department the material was largely untested, I wasn’t sure how long it would take. Future sessions (currently planned for “sometime in the fall”) will probably be one-day affairs. Some of the students expressed interest in similar courses on other topics, although at this point nobody’s quite sure what those other topics would be.
Now my throat is all sore. :P But still, it was fun. :)
-The Gneech