A Couple Random Things

This past weekend was the Wizard World Boston comic convention, held at the Hynes Convention Center in downtown Boston, something that the New England Garrison has been planning for almost a year now. This has been quite the year for conventions for the group. We were at the Boston and Granite City Comic Cons earlier this year, then Celebration 5, and now this one, with SupermegaFest coming up.

Generally, I'm not a fan of conventions. I don't like standing around, waiting for people to take pictures of me with them. I never really feel that it's a good use of my time and so forth, but this one had a bunch of options to allow us to really interact with the general public: A Jabba the Hutt puppet that people could pose next to, and a shooting gallery, where we raised around $840 for Autism Speaks, a charity that the NEG works with closely.

The weekend was also Megan's first time at a con, along with the added bonus of getting to see some of the people from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I'm not a huge fan, but she and some of her friends enjoyed it – We inducted James Marsters into the 501^st as an honorary member.) Adam West and Burt Ward (Batman and Robin - at $60, they were too expensive to really talk to), Doug Jones' Manager (Jones himself was talking to someone else when I was around) and Christopher Golden, who wrote the book Baltimore, or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire, which I coincidentally picked up at the same con.

The opportunity to take part in the shooting gallery was definitely the highlight, because I could act out a bit and be really ridiculous with it. Kids, somewhat unsurprisingly, are really good shots with dart guns, and I was hit in the face and head a lot. Something about a Storm Trooper falling flat on his face seems to get people laughing, so that made it worth it. I've got a couple of pictures here.

I've been doing a bit more reading lately, and I've got a stack of really good books stacked up next to my bed. Paolo Bacigalupi's Pump Six and Other Stories is the book that I'm carrying around at the moment, which is a fantastic collection from a fantastic author, while I'm also reading the aforementioned Baltimore, which is proving to be a really cool read (and with some awesome illustrations from Mike Mignola), Cherie Priest's Dreadnought, which is proving to be fun (but not quite as much fun as her prior book Boneshaker, but better than Clementine), Masked, edited by Lou Anders, which is a fun, but somewhat dense anthology of superhero stories, and Nights of Villjamur, by Mark Charan Newton, which is proving to be a slow read, and unfortunately, not as good as I was led to believe. (It's interesting thus far though). I've got a couple of other books on the horizon that I really want to read before the end of the year: Ian McDonald's The Dervish House and China Mieville's Kraken.

I’m thrilled at this pile of books, and some of the other ones that I’ve read already this year - The City and the City (China Mieville), Pattern Recognition (William Gibson), Stories (edited by Neil Gaiman), Spellbound (Blake Charleton), How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Charles Yu), Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (N.K. Jemisin, and the River of Gods (Ian McDonald, just to name a few, because I've fallen into company in person and online that have pointed me to some fantastic books and I feel that I've learned and grown as a reader and writer because of them. There's been some duds of reads this year, but overall? I've been pulled into fantastic world after fantastic world.

Still, reading is something that I enjoy, and I've been finding that I really don't enjoy the entire book-blogger environment that I discovered. Too much drama, complaints about how SF/F isn't perceived as a legitimate genre, sucking up to authors and so many reviews a week / month that I can't believe that people can read and retain the contents of dozens of books a year. It's not for me, and I've found that I've got little patience and interest in it. I'll stick with my moderate pace and go from there.

John Scalzi posted up a fascinating essay earlier today, Today I Don't Have To Think About..., which fully and utterly puts one into one's place. After being amongst and listening to a number of coworkers, family members and friends complain about how things are going in their lives and the drama that ensues, this is a really good thing to read, because there are people who are a helluva lot worse off than me in the world. It's hard to remember that sometimes, but it's worth remembering. I've taken the essay and printed it out. One copy went onto my desk’s wall. I’m not sure where the other nine will end up, but they should be read.

cute

History and Social Networking

Okay, this is just plain cool. Someone has started up a photo account that features pictures from the Normandy invasion. These seem to be period pictures, I'm guessing from press photographers who landed on the beaches and with the invasion force during Operation Overlord.

The entire photoset can be seen here, but be warned, there are some pretty graphic shots. The account has a number of other photosets, with thousands of pictures.

I find this interesting on a couple of levels. The first, as a history geek - these are pictures that seem to me to be pretty candid of the invasion - I'm guessing that most of these weren't staged - as some Civil War photographs have been - and show a side of the Normandy invasion that really looks past the invasion component. We see the civilians caught in the path of war here, a lot of the devastation that the war left behind, and some of the very brutal elements as well.

The second thing that makes me interested here is that this helps to illustrate how the internet is potentially changing things. I came across these pictures via random search, something that I might not have come across otherwise. Social Networking sites such as Flickr have the potential to really link up some historical content together. Imagine an interactive historical site that allows for uploads of various events, written historical content and user comments about the event. This could really bring about some interesting changes in the way that historical events are studied, researched and interpreted, especially with events that are currently happening.

I've posted pictures up on flickr as well - when I was working on my Normandy Project back in 2007, I uploaded my shots of the Norwich students who fought at Normandy. I've since taken them down because they were only up there because I had forgotten a thumb drive, but I can see the benefit of having content such as this online.

What would be facinating would be a way to look over the entire Iraq war from its beginning, and watching how opinions change over time, but also to get first hand comments from people who were there. First-hand accounts, from the moment, are extremely handy, especially without the use of hindsight and interpretation from people at the scene.

There are some obvious problems with something like this, and other user-generated content sources, such as Wikipedia, as items can be updated, but they can be updated incorrectly at the same time. At the Society for Military History conference that I attended earlier this year, this seems like it has become, and will be a very contentious issue. Thus, items such as this can only be trusted so far, as incorrect information is a really bad thing to have when doing research.

I suspect that as the internet gains even more prominance when it comes to research in the near future, this will become more of an issue, but we will also see more historical content being published via sites such as this. It should be very interesting.

Picture of the Day

This just caught my eye. It's an image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter:

Natural History Museum, Tower of London and Canterbury

Those are the three main places that I visited over Saturday, Sunday and Monday, which was a really fun bunch of locations to hit, all in a couple of days. Katie Bell, from Lexia, the program that I'm studying through, came by to visit while inspecting the program. She just left, on her way to Paris and then Rome. All three locations were amazing, lots of fun to go to.

Natural History Museum: Took me a little while to get to this place, because of some work on the Tube, but I ended up getting there on time for a couple of really cool images.

The museum is set in a really cool building, several stories. As the title suggests, there quite a bit to do with the natural sciences there- Most importantly, Dinosaurs and rocks, which is what I focused on while I was there. It was a mistake, however, to visit on a weekend, because all the parents brought their young kids to see the skeletons, and there were lines, which was a bit of a problem. However, the Mineral and Meteorite rooms were easy to get through, which were really cool to see.

Tower of London: Will and I met up with Katie on Sunday to see this, one of the old fortresses in the city, where a couple of monarchs ruled from, and was a military center. It's essentially a castle. Rooms have been restored, armor is on display and the crown jewels are stored there, which was very glittery, and with very heavy security.

Canterbury: Canterbury was out latest excursion out of the city. We got on a train and rode down to the town to see the Cathedral and learn a little of the history of the place. I'm not religous to any stretch, but the building is one of the most impressive buildings that I've been in yet. It's huge, although it looks much bigger from the interior, with high vaulted ceilings and incredible decorations and details. My pictures don't do the thing justice.

Picked up a book called The Constant Gardener, by John le Carre for the train ride, which is proving to be an outstanding novel so far. Highly recommended.

I've uploaded my most recent images here and here.