Eastercon, Part One of Two

This morning's goal was to write up Eastercon, but it got long and I want to swim and shop ... so, FRIDAY AND SATURDAY.

This is a rag-bag of a review, as much (if not more) for my memory as for your entertainment ... Feel free to comment and correct anything that's blatantly wrong, incomplete etc. No, I am not using LJ tags, just in case anyone doesn't want to be outed.
☼ indicates a photograph
Friday
( Woolsthorpe )

I fizzled out fairly early on Friday (long drive, diving straight into convention -- though I wasn't ready for actual programme apart from Art Show Launch [☼] which is a shame) and took the opportunity to marvel at the fresh, vividly lime-green paint in my hotel room. [☼]

Saturday
Morning in the bar, catching up with friends and talking to new people. Also, chocolate. [☼, ☼]
( Music of the Spheres )

( Not the Clarke Award )

( The BSFA Awards )

Doctor Who (6:45pm) was cheerful prime-time SF TV with actual science (Faraday cages!) and the patent TBO (Total Bollocks Overdrive).

Photographic evidence [☼] would suggest that I spent Saturday night in the bar -- missing the concert, I suspect because I needed food. (Note to self: next con, try to get out of the hotel for at least one meal ... con food didn't distress me as much as it did some people, but I did miss out on the social side of dining!) Am now kicking myself because all reports of concert were positive (though a few people were unimpressed by the Wagner, as is only right).

PirateBay Verdict

There is one question very conspicuously missing from the BBC's online coverage so far:

So, is everything on PirateBay an illegal download?

That'd be a big fat NO, then.

My last three PirateBay downloads, all of which seem to me no more illegal than taping off the radio*:
- Primeval S03E03 (UK television, first broadcast Saturday: ITV, if that makes a difference)
- SF Library's Tepper section (attempting to grab e-text of a book I own 2 copies of -- one was on loan, one's in storage)
- Haydn - Nelson Mass (I have a CD somewhere but could not locate it)

edit to add
I was not intending the above as a list of legal downloads -- hence the phrase 'no more illegal than taping off the radio', which, yes, is illegal -- but as grey areas. Here are some less-grey areas:
- Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture (PDF)
- complete works of Shakespeare as text files
- Rachmaninoff playing his own Piano Concerto #2 (1931)



There's definitely a great deal of pirated material available online, and there are many grey areas: I think it's disingenuous to report the matter as though everything downloaded is pirated content, robbing artistes of their rightful reward.

*for my younger readers: 'radio' is what we had before streaming music on the interweb; 'taping' is a means by which sound could be recorded onto magnetic tape. Kind of like ripping an MP3 but slower and less robust. Retro chic!

EASTERCON, PART TWO OF TWO

Continued from here.

Sunday
( music in SF&F )

After which I located Gary Lloyd in the bar [☼] and persuaded him to play me some of his music. I liked it a lot and am very much looking forward to the release of his next project. You can hear samples of Gary Lloyd's work at his MySpace site, including extracts from works based on Banks' The Bridge (T: "that reminds me of Debussy". GL: "whole tones!") and on the works of Alan Moore. Fun Fact: Mr Lloyd believes fervently that Led Zeppelin's music is the Best Thing Ever. This prompted me to listen to Led Zep on the second half of my Monday drive, and he is so very very right.

But I knew this already.

( Composers who write music for SF&F )

And so to the bar, the pool and some dinner.

( Why Fans Love Cats )

Hence to bar [☼] and cava [☼]

Monday
( How to Plot a Novel (Tim Powers) )

( Figures from History )

Closing Ceremony (3:30pm) -- including classic Bugs Bunny The Rabbit of Seville, and finally la_marquise_de_ receiving the Doc Weir Award for unsung services to fandom. [☼]

And so home: Bradford -> ☼ -> Cambridge -> Tonbridge -> ☼ -> Cambridge -> CAT.

Overall, fabulous convention, just the way conventions should be. (Tho' I wasn't in the mood to dress up much, and hadn't got my act together.)

Gripes: the overflow hotel was much too far for short breaks away from the convention (and yes, I did book early). There was nowhere obvious at the con to get some peace and quiet and recharge: that would really have helped.
- a plethora of programme. Yess, yes, this is the sort of problem that many con-goers wish for: but I missed Guest of Honour items because I was on items programmed against them; I missed items in the music stream because I was on other items in the music stream; at one point there were four different items I wanted to go to, and couldn't because I was on a fifth. I loved the programme -- it was full of new and innovative ideas -- but there was just too much, and I did occasionally get stressed about what I was missing!

Thought: perhaps this is the first convention programmed with time travel in mind: perhaps we will all be zipping back from the future to Bradford, April 2009, to catch those items we missed ...

bonus links:
- Ken MacLeod's write-up with the bit of the Powers talk that I missed out
- Inversion Layer on the making of the BSFA Awards