I was amused to find that Serenity, a restaurant first spotted in 2012 during the Firefly 10th Anniversary, is now known as Strider’s. Different verse, but still matches a well known SF/F name.
Five years ago:
Tag: Firefly
Comic-Con 2012: Back With a Vengeance
Comic-Con International was a lot more fun and a lot less overwhelming than usual this year.
Maybe it’s because we skipped the busiest day to go the San Diego Zoo. Maybe it’s because we picked our battles on what we tried to do. Maybe it’s because last year we crammed the whole experience into a single day, and having three days felt like a luxury in comparison. Or the fact that the logistics of getting to and from the con were so ridiculously complicated (more about that later) that they made the convention seem relaxing.
Whatever the reason, the floor did seem a bit less crowded this year. Both of us remarked on the fact that we never felt trapped as we usually feel on the busiest days.
(Skip to the photos if that’s what you want.)
Thursday was the day I spent mostly on the floor, exploring. I hit the usual haunts: DC Comics, Sideshow Collectibles, Studio Foglio. DC was really plugging their upcoming fighting game, Injustice: Gods Among Us.
Sideshow seems to be displaying more figurines (and a wider variety) every year. Their Lord of the Rings figurines are absolutely incredible. Though I’m not sure what the target audience is for the life-sized Han Solo in Carbonite or Boba Fett. I can’t see putting one of those in my living room. They also had a very cheesecaky Poison Ivy statue. I overheard someone saying they couldn’t see themselves buying it because it would be like having that lamp in A Christmas Story. At another booth I discovered that you actually can buy that lamp.
Just One Day at San Diego Comic-Con 2011
This year, we approached Comic-Con International a bit differently than usual. For the last seven years we’ve been staying in town for all four days. With the baby, we decided to do Comic-Con 2011 in just one day. So we left him with relatives and took the train down to San Diego for the day. We arrived in town about 9:00, walked down to the convention center, and had our badges just after the floor opened at 9:30.
(Full photo set on Flickr, Flash-related coverage on Speed Force.)
Planning a trip to Comic-Con is always about trade-offs. It’s so big that you can’t see everything, and there are so many events going on that you can’t attend them all. With four days, there’s some wiggle room. With just one, it seemed like I was constantly thinking about those choices.
One of the first choices I made: No news panels. I could get that the next day online (and did). I wanted to focus only on what was unique to the con: exhibits, meeting people, the art show, etc. Basically, I wanted to experience as much of San Diego Comic Con as I could in one day.
Katie decided to pick two things and build her day around them: visiting The Field, an Irish pub our friend Sean introduced us to a few years ago, and seeing the new Thundercats screening. Continue reading
Links! Alarms, Ghosts of History, Firefly Trek, WW2 Star Wars & More
Serious stuff (news, usability, history, etc.):
- Too many alarms can be as bad as none, if people learn to ignore them. Aesop knew it, but modern society keeps forgetting. (NY Times via NN Group)
- Then and now: Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov blends World War II photos with images of the same locations today. I’m a member of a Flickr group that does this with more general timeframes, Looking Into the Past, though I’ve only contributed one myself. It blends the 1997 and 2007 views of the UCI Student Center.
- The Internet Storm Center offers tips on protecting computers from lightning.
- CNN asks: Why are food allergies on the rise? Short answer: we still don’t know. (To preserve your sanity, don’t read the comments.)
And not so serious:
- Fantastic image: Firefly crew as the Enterprise crew. Classic Star Trek, of course. One thing that really struck me was the reminder that there’s really only one woman among the regular classic Trek cast: Uhura. Nurse Chapel and Yeoman Rand are there, but neither of them would really have had the kind of focus that Kaylee, Zoe, Inara and River have here.
- Incredible custom action figure maker Sillof collaborated with Glorbes on a Star Wars in World War II series.
- The webcomic SMBC presents: The Logogeneplex! I’m pretty sure I’ve read stuff that this was used on. (Warning: archives are NSFW.)
Vampire Castle
Castle as a “space cowboy” – “Didn’t you wear that, like, 5 years ago?”
They so should have called this episode “Castle-vania!”