.:Wednesday, July 16:.

..:Just clearing out a few random links:..

Have been running through and sorting out some of the extra crap that seems to accumulate in my favourites folder, including the "blog this" folder, so here are a few random neat things found by trolling about the internet.

Okay, first off a really cool idea by some people out in Miami. Anyone who's been around me when my little sis is visiting has probably heard my vehement protests about non-cremation and the oddity that is a graveyard. But what about becoming a living reef? These people take cremated ashes, mix it into a concrete mix which you can have cast into anything you want, and then sink you into a man-made reef in the middle of the ocean. Now THAT is a cool way to be immortalized in stone. A little vis of the reef is here

This one I totally blame on Tiff, she told me about this. Aparently this is pretty much required learning for all starbucks employees. Ladies and Gents, introducing Will It Blend. A website of bored scientist putting pretty much anything they can think up in a blender to see what will happen

This one was for Beej: DNA Stuff. Jewellry and tack and loads of other useless stuff I have no doubt Beej will demand for her birthday. Either that of a set of these plushies

Another was an oline project with a goal to convert the first 10,000 digits of Pi into a musical sequence. The site is here and I happily geeked out for a bit listening to the strange notes spooling out of my computer.

The next, again a really amusing and REALLY geeky link: Dance your PHD. No, really. Some of the videos are pure, comic GOLD. I love nerds.

This one is an Eddie Izzard sketch done entirely in Leggo. Why you say? Because Leggo is awesome and fans have far too much free time and access to recording technology on their hands. Way too much.


And finally, just for my amusement as this is kinda dorky, a stop motion paper fight. No, really, it's actually really good.

Awesome Stop Motion Paper Fight - Watch more free videos

Labels: amusement, Beej, blender, Death, DNA, eddie izzard, geekiness, math, nerdom, science, star wars, tiff

Meru at 12:46 PM

.:Saturday, July 12:.

..:12 of 12 Project: Con Report Part 2:..

Okay, seeing as I spent all of today up at the con, this month's 12 of 12 is going to be yet another con report. (Note: I did actually write this entry on Saturday, I was waiting to get the photo's back from the day so I could post them)

So, the weekend was... kind of a bender of fandom really. A con, a fest, a movie and an art show coming up. Meredith has had very little sleep and it's looking like more sleep is not in my immediate future as I can't seem to turn off Stargate.

Okay, first things first. Hellboy? Was AWESOME. Absolutely loved it, I love it when a movie not only lives up to, but surpasses the hype and the anticipation the fans have built up. Waited in line for an hour or so, much of it spent with Jenn attatched to KT's leg like a leach and the people in line behind us killing themselves laughing at our conversations.



Guillermo del Toro's mind scares the living FUCK out of me however. He created small, winged creatures, really really cute, called tooth fairies. Why? Because while they do eat people whole, they tend to go for the teeth first, and while they're chewing they sounded enough like a dentist drill that I actually ended up cancelling my dentist appointment as I don't think I could stand to sit in the chair right now.

The beginning of the movie was absolutely incredible, there was an animated sequence giving the history of the golden army and the elves told as a bedtime story. But the animation style? Was amazingly well done, probably one of my favoirite parts.

As always, in any del Toro movie, the little details and subtle layering of all the aspects of the characters, both good and bad, was beautifully done. Interesting plot, really REALLY funny and some suprisingly good action sequences. And perhaps the biggest miracle of all? I actually didn't hate Liz in this one, maybe because she seemed less like a whiny little emo girl and more like an adult.

Now, onto the con! Got up at the crack o dawn, no, really, the sun was barely up. Went out to the traditional breakfast at Mels, goddamn I love bacon. Tramped back to the apartment and drove off to the double tree where Polaris is held every year. (I always feel kind of bad for the normies who accidently stay at a hotel during one of the cons)

Got into the hotel, rushed through registration, then ran upstairs to catch Gareth David-Lloyd doing the I&I, we were a few minutes late, but not too bad overall. He was still rather pissed from the night before and trying not to squint at us all too badly.

Gareth was doing a bit of Q and A and storytelling when we walked in. Firstly? That man's accent is absolutely lush, god I love the Wlsh. Secondly? He was wearing a shirt (see photo below) with a punk sheep on it, and that made me happy.

He was also extremely witty and has an absolutely filthy mouth, lovely suprise that. Panders to the fans wonderfully, nice to see an actor young enough and new enough that he's still in love with the energy and enthusiasm that all the fans have for a show, and an actor, they love. And the fans did ask some rather.... well, in a show where we get sex scenes between the two male characters, what kind of questions do you think they'd ask? He has a pretty good sense of humour about it though, and warned all fans off ever touching any shaft shaped prop as aparently John Barrowman has a habit of sticking his genitals in them as a prank.

I love the brits.

Right after Gareth was Cliff Simon, a Johanessburg actor who plays Ba'al. He is hands down our little circle's favourite bad guy on Stargate as he is A) Gorgeous, B)Has the best clothes of anyone on the show, C)Is a complete and utter bastard and damn good at it and D)Has a voice that could charm the knickers off a nun. Damn.



He was a bit upset when he got onto stage as Don S. Davies had died last week and he requested that they not question him about it. So, of course, one asshole an gets up and asks for his opinion on Don's death. Tosser. Way to make the guest stars upset.

It was interesting though, as with any Stargate guest he told stories of Chris Judge and pranking the new cast (by Saran wrapping all their toilets, aparently this is now a tradition on set) and about Richard Dean Anderson and his love of tripping other actors up by throwing out his lines, coming up with something on the fly and then expecting them to follow along. I can totally see him doing that, I love actors.

So, right after Cliff Simon's Q&A let out I headed over to get my photo taken with Gareth whilst KT went out to hunt down some caffeine. And on the way I ran across a litte troup of fans outside doing a photo shoot.



There was a group of 11: All 10 of the Doctors as well as a Season 4 Rose. There was a Who Hug, a massive massive amount of photo's and alot of rather lewd jokes about screwdrivers and celery. The costumes were all REALLY REALLY good though. Usually in a large troup half the novelty is the fact that it's a group, but these people could easily have gone on their own and still had a million pictures take of them as the costumes were brilliant.

So, after snapping a million photo's and fangirling wildly at a few of the doctors got in line to see Gareth and get a photo taken with him. I was wearing my contacts today, you know the ones:



And was stopping foot traffic in the hall as people kept pulling me aside to take photo's with me or freak out and start backing away.

I made a small child cry, that alone was worth the contacts.

So finally got in to the atrium where they were snapping the photo's, and when I got to the front of the line Gareth jumped back when he saw me and started gushing a bit about how creepy those contacts are and how he hated it when Burn Gorman had to wear them for the show. Snapped a couple of photo's as he asked for a copy (squee) thanked him and proceeded to oooze my fangirlishly melted self out the door and resisted the urge to pinch him on the bum on my way out (barely).

Got a rather nice photo out of it though:



Was walking back from the photo, trying not to giggle as black eyed demon girl giggling like a maniac tends to make people back away and start talking about padded rooms, and a troup of armed military guys held me at gunpoint and pointed a scanner in my face.

No, really.

Aparently the con had hired on an Alien troupe for the year, and they were scanning the hotel for someone infected. What made this awesome was that just down the hallway where KT and Beej were, a man fell down on the ground, started convulsing, and this happened:



I love the fans, and old fashioned cons, the little alien moved and everything.

Stopped laughing long enough to stumble our way into the dealers rooms and do a bit of shopping, bought a few books and plushies, as well as an iteresting necklace, but no huge purchase this year. (Unlike Beej, but that will be explained later). What really did steal the show however was the fan cration contest. The ever present hand built figurines and toys, along with a few really fun ones this year.

First was the Adipose Cake:



The adipose are the little fat monsters from doctor who, they are ridiculously cute and happy looking, and someone made a cake out of it. The little caption on it says: "a moment on the lips, forever on the hips". I thought KT was going to kill herself with Squee over it, she was so amused. I really want someone to make a plushie of this, cause if they don't I may have to, just so I can squish it and scare Beej.

Another one of the really cool ones was that someone created the control room and lab complex of Stargate Atlantis out of Leggo.

No, really.

No, REALLY, look:





It was amazingly detailed and must have taken him an obscene amount of time, but it really was quite cool. I am currently really tempted to drag all my lego out of storage and see if I can reproduce some of it (the stargate and the puddle jumper) and put them in the fish tank as decoration (and yes, it is safe for fish, it's just a bitch to clean). He had even MADE little leggo wraith and everything, perfectly done.

After that we tooled about the art room for a while, a few nice prints that I may have bought if they were a little less pricey, some gorgeous molded leather masquerade masks and alot of really cool Steampunk jewelry. Steampunk usually consists of alot of mechanized, semi-futuristic stuff. In this case, neckalces and rings make of reclaimed pieces of old broken fob watches. I bid on a few, but it ended up going a little too pricey for my wallet, so I shall fall on the old standby of just damn well making it myself, (and probably adding in matching earrings while I'm at it). KT ended up buying a really nice piece of jewellry, looked v. nice, and could be worn 2 ways on top of it.

Came out of the art auction to this sight:



And yes, yes that is a TIE pilot playing guitar hero. The best part? He was playing a LOVE BALLAD. Awesome. I have no idea how he could actually see anything or even work the keys in that outfit, but he actually managed to get a decent high score.

Went upstairs to wander about for a bit, then I got this call from my baby sister:

"Mere?"
"Yes, where are you Beej?"
"I'm in the dealers room, can you come down and unlock your car so I can put this away?"
"Oh dear gods, what the hell did you buy?"
"One of the big remote control Daleks."
"....."
"WHAT?!?"
(Reason I was flipping out, I had seen some Daleks in the dealers room that were $300 and were MASSIVE)



It turned out she had actually bought one of the smaller models, so it was a hell of alot cheaper and smaller, but no less amusing of course. KT Spent a good 10 minutes poking it to make it scream "EXTER-MINATE!" at her. It may or may not be the most awesome thing ever. She's still all a-squee cause she got all the autographs and such she wanted as well as some really fun stuff.

So went off to go pick up the photo I had taken with Gareth, was told to come back in an hour, then another hour, then another hour.... after the third time I was pretty depressed as I had kinda wanted to get a photo with Cliff Simon as well, but if it takes them 7 hours to process it we didn't really have time. So guess who we bumped into just as I said this?



He was just standing about waiting for them to call him in to do photos and was really nice about getting a photo done. At least he was after he stopped being scared by my contacts.

One of the best days of my life, I made Ba'al, the best bad guy that Stargate has ever seen, yelp and leap away.

Cons are awesome.

We sat about for a couple more hours, kinda wrapping things up and putting off leaving, picked up the photo's and a few more fun things from the dealers room. (The Canadian Browncoats were selling juggling goslings, I really really wanted them!) I bought another teddy:



It's a mini-gloomy bear. I've never seen one of the little ones of these that have the blood on them, and he was dirt cheap. Am taking votes however, what do you say his name should be? Dexter or Jekyll....

Have happily spent the last hour scaring the living fuck out of my cat by chasing him around the living room with the remote control Dalek. He absolutely HATES that thing, and it actually says a bunch of different things ( all very vintage) and then does the gun sound. But the best bit? The eye-stalk has a motion sensor in it so it follows any movement you make. Le awesome.



Now, as I have been watching Stargate in search of Ba'al for about (checks time) 3 hours now, I need to sleep.

Art show is tomorrow, this is gonna be a good weekend.

Labels: 12 of 12 Project, art stuff, cliff simon, contacts, conventions, dalek, doctor who, gareth david-lloyd, hellboy, leggo, Movies, Nyx, polaris, star wars

Meru at 11:20 PM