Okay, first off I feel the obligation to say a few words on the nature of a sci-fi convention. YES, it is an incredibly geeky endeavor, many of the stereotypes are pretty much entirely accurate. But still it isn't necessarily what you picture when you hear the term "science fiction convention". There are many types, the "world con" style is the type that's probably most well known. I'm not really into that style, I've never been to one and wouldn't really go out of my way to see one. Too much blatant commercialism for my liking, although the idea of the spectacle does intrigue me. I guess I might as well provide a link, it's a local event that's been happening in a hotel close to where I live for quite a while, but I'd never gone before this year. It's called Duckon, the name is derived from the county it takes place in, Dupage. Events like this are more like a weekend long party that takes over a hotel with science fiction overtones. Yes, there are some costumes, but not as many as you might expect. The guests of honor aren't so much famous actors as literary figures and artists. It's a much less formal affair, you can hang out with your fellow geeks, they had two different rooms rigged up to show movies, one handled basic science fiction and the other handled Japanese animation, and there was a lot of other activities, mostly presentations or discussions known as panels. It kind of felt like my time on the Disney cruise line, because of the way that I had a list of the scheduled activities and had to figure out which ones I wanted to catch. I had a great time. I didn't get to do near as much as I wanted, there was too much going on at once and I basically completely missed out on the last day due to unpleasant after effects of the previous night's partying combined with a rather nasty and lingering virus that I picked up at some point, the partying probably weakened my system enough that the virus had free reign to do a little partying of its own. But anyway, pictures. I didn't exactly plan this, but most of the pictures I took are of things you either can or used to be able to see at Disney World. I mean beyond things like obsessive fans wearing novelty t-shirts that declare their genre loyalty of choice. A lot of the convention wasn't exactly photogenic, a bunch of people sitting in a room listening to a guy tell odd and sometimes disturbing stories about his scientific career doesn't make for great pictures. There are really two main things I shot, and I'll start things off with a "can you guess what you're looking at" sort of thing. Unless you've not only seen this sort of thing in person but also photographed it you're not likely to recognize it though, it's a rather particular phenomenon. [attachment=1] [attachment=2] So, any guesses? It's a closeup of the electricity arcing off of a Tesla coil. One of a pair of units designed with the unusual ability to play music. They're known as the singing Tesla coils, and can be seen on youtube. one from last year a song from this year I'm fascinated by the repeating pattern effect you get when you take a picture of them. It's kind of like my experience shooting auroras, what you see on the image looks very different from what you experience in person. Unless you use a very short exposure, then you see what is basically happening in real time. The reason for the pattern is based on how the coils operate. The make the musical tones by pulsing, sending a short burst of electricity and then cutting off the juice and then sending another burst out, I think they basically send as many pulses as the frequency of the sound they want to create. So 1,000 pulses per second for a 1 kilohertz tone, and so on. But that's a guess, I'm not entirely clear how they do it. So what happens is, to start off the pattern you get a single zap that creates a pathway of ionized air. The next zap will want to follow that same path because it offers less resistance than the surrounding air. But the air is moving, this is outdoors and the wind was blowing. So what happens is you get one arc that creates a pathway, then the pathway moves and the next zap still follows the pathway, now displaced by the wind. Eventually the pathway has moved too far and the electricity makes a new path instead and the process starts over. A long exposure creates a complex web-like pattern composed of multiple sets of paths, some terminating in the air, some reaching the ground. It may be that the air is also heated, so even if the air were still the pathways might at least rise from convection. However the long exposures make the image look rather messy, somehow the effect is lost. So here's a more moderate exposure: [attachment=3] I really like the guys that put on this show. They're showmen. They start off with some music (which doesn't sound great, let's just be honest, it's a cool effect but the waveform created by the electricity is fairly crude and harsh) and keep the audience entertained with that for a while, and then once we'd been warmed up this crazy guy in what is referred to as a personal Faraday cage (a Faraday cage is a metal enclosure designed to protect the area inside the cage from radio waves, Tesla coils are said to emit RF frequency electricity so the same principle seems to apply) but which is basically looks like a chain mail suit plus a chicken wire helmet. [attachment=4] He is holding fluorescent tubes, which can be illuminated by the Tesla coils even if no electricity directly strikes them. Notice the colored tubes sticking out of the ground? There's no direct strikes in that image, they glow whenever the coils are energized. That was the big excitement about Tesla coils, the ability to transmit high frequency electricity through the air, wireless power distribution. Next notice this guy's feet. The suit includes stilt-like arrangements attached to the bottom of rubber boots. It emphasizes that the current is really running through (or more accurately over, high frequency electricity follows the surface of a conductor) his suit, it's not just protecting him, it's a conductor that the electricity uses to make its way to the ground. While you can't see it running across the metal you can sure see it when it jumps from his soles to the ground. This guy is walking around intentionally getting the electricity to strike his suit (including the helmet) and looking like some sort of comic book super villain as the electricity arcs off his feet onto the ground. Video of the suit in action, not taken at the convention The three people behind this display, the two that built it and the one that wears the suit, gave a talk during the day of the convention that I attended. I wish I could remember how much power they said it consumed, it was a lot. They specified that they powered it using two independent 240 volt high current power lines intended to be used for stage lighting in the hotel. Even with that much power they still have to control how much power it consumes, the higher frequency sounds tend to consume more because they require more pulses. But their control system is fancy enough that they can control how much power each pulse gets, they throttle back the power available to the high frequency stuff to keep the power usage in check. From the talk I know that, despite that kind of power being directed onto the suit, it never even warms up. I guess it must be an efficient enough conductor that it doesn't generate too much resistance. I also know that, curiously enough, the control mechanism that allows them to control the individual pulses (something traditional Tesla coils lack, they use a spark gap that lets the coil build up to a certain voltage and then discharge) uses hardware made to run electric locomotives. It's a special type of transistor that can handle extremely high loads. To keep costs in check they buy these things second hand, after they've already been used in locomotives. A laptop controls the whole arrangement and sends control signals over fiber optic wire (presumably to avoid using a long stretch of metal wire that could have an electric current induced in it from the magnetic field being put out by the Tesla coils) which is covered in metal mesh shielding that protects it from direct strikes. To demonstrate the destructive potential of the electricity, Terry (chain mail suit guy) held up a number of CDs to the output from one of the coils. This didn't photograph well, but the electricity basically ate away at the CD. Either it would end up disintegrating in his hands or after a while he'd walk to the edge of the safety barrier and hand the remnant of the disc to someone in the crowd. He had been using what looked like a glass shield to demonstrate the insulating properties of glass, but it didn't work right and the entire shield shattered. After a few more antics they shut down the show to have people go in and sweep up the mess. Yes, that's right, after demonstrating that the coils could shatter a glass shield they walked in and swept up. I noticed that the control hardware for the coils included a safety key, after they discharged the coils (they accumulate and store power, you have to discharge them to really make them safe) the key would be pulled and presumably the whole thing was safe. Now then, I said that this has something to do with Disney World. I don't know if anyone remembers or even saw this, but one year when I was at The World they had a night show at Epcot, it took place in a stage south of the big fountain. It was Tesla coil oriented, the people on stage with the coils called themselves the "shock jocks" and they did some things to demonstrate the unique nature of Tesla coils, including of course the ability to transmit electricity through the air to power things wirelessly. It was a pretty slick show, my only complaint was that, as is too often the case, the PA system they used to broadcast their voices was LOUD and the woman leading the whole thing had a kind of shrill voice that just bored straight into my skull. I remember the intense pain that accompanied her declaring "we're the shock jocks!". Still it was a fun show, a nice blending of science based education and entertainment, the sort of thing that is theoretically the domain of Epcot. The singing Tesla coils weren't exactly quiet, but I'd known to expect that from the comments on the youtube videos. I brought earplugs to the show at Duckon and listened in comparative comfort. I'll end my tales for now, I tried but completely failed to keep the size of this post in check. I can't help it, the whole Tesla coil thing is geek overload for me. The other main comparison between the convention and Disney World involves a certain species of animal, other than human, that can be found at both places. And I'm talking about a real animal, not something like a Wookie (although I did see one of those too). I've got to edit down those pictures first though. [This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]
And now for the other curious coincidence. I'm not sure exactly how the association came about, but among the guests lined up for the event were a collection of birds, accompanied by their handlers from the world bird sanctuary. See what I mean about this thing not looking like what you expect from a science fiction convention? They put on a brief show during the opening ceremonies an then had another longer show the next day where they showed off many birds, having several fly over the audience. [attachment=1] This is a Eurasian Eagle Owl, the largest species of owl in the world. It is also an animal you can regularly see in the Animal Kingdom, in the Flights of Wonder show. The picture is not a perspective trick, the bird was bigger than the head of its handler. According to the info on their web page, a fully grown adult Eagle Owl weighing about 6 to 8 pounds can take a deer weighing around 30 pounds. On the other end of the size spectrum they had this animal: [attachment=2] An Eastern Screech Owl. I framed the picture for detail, not for size comparison, but it's a small bird, perching on a single finger instead of resting on the handler's entire hand. Outside of the show the people from the sanctuary had set up a table in the main entrance to the convention, they had this owl sitting on a small perch near a donation bin. [attachment=3] Here we have a Peregrine Falcon, described in the presentation as the fastest animal in the world, able to dive to speeds over 200 mph. They didn't mention this in the show, but their web site mentions a program that they worked with the Air Force to implement at an Illinois Air Force base. The program was designed to address the problems of bird strikes, the issue of aircraft colliding with flying birds when flying near the ground, particularly near take off and landing. Apparently they used Peregrine Falcons to convince other birds that the area is not a safe place to live. The presentation described Falcons as the anti air specialists of the bird kingdom, able to snatch smaller birds out of the air and using a rather dangerous sounding ramming procedure to knock larger birds out of the sky. [attachment=4] This is a Harris' Hawk, an animal from the Southwest. This is the bird that I referenced in another post, mentioning the behavior where they'll stack one on top of another on top of a vantage point. [attachment=5] I apologize for the awkward angle, but I wanted to show the fantastic shape of the wing in flight. I don't know what it is, but I'm fascinated by the way the feathers on the wingtips curl up. It bears an uncanny resemblance to some types of winglets which are used on some aircraft. In the case of aircraft they're used to make the wing more efficient, possibly also to improve low speed performance. This is a White Naped Raven, one of the animals they had flying over the audience. They developed a routine for the bird to perform specially for the convention, it was kind of cute. They picked volunteers from the audience and had them hold one of three items that were meant to represent science fiction and fantasy fandom. One item was supposed to be a Tribble, the creature from the original Star Trek series, another was a dice bag, representative of pen and paper RPG gaming, and the last was a stuffed duck, for Duckon. The cool thing was that the raven (named Mischief, in reference to her species' reputation for being intelligent) flew right up to the people and landed on their arms before taking the item. The point was that while you wouldn't want one of the raptors to land on your unprotected arm because of the talons, the raven doesn't have those predatory feet and can safely perch on an arm without goring it. I didn't see this in action, but after the show they were collecting donations and selling WBS merchandise. Mischief was out collecting the money. I'm fascinated by the intelligence of the birds in the Corvus genus, like ravens and crows. For starters they use tools. The truth is there are a number of animals that use tools, humans are not unique in that aspect. But the extent that they can use tools is sometimes amazing. There's an example of a crow that learned to use cars to crack nuts. It would drop them on a road to let the cars do the hard work. In order to deal with the danger of getting the food back off the road when cars are speeding by, it learned to drop the seeds onto crosswalks. When the traffic light turned red it would then walk out onto the crosswalk to collect the food. They also learned how to safely kill and eat Cane Toads, the large toads that are causing such a problem in Australia. The toads have poison glands on the top of their bodies, the poison is strong enough to kill an animal like a dog that might try to eat them. Crows learned that if they flip the toads over they can kill them by striking at the underside, where there are no poison glands. [attachment=6] For the grand finale I offer up a barn owl picture. Another of the birds that flew over the audience, this individual apparently is known for flying quite low over people's heads. The story was that it started out flying over Girl Scout groups, and the girls would always duck when it flew overhead so it learned it could fly a little lower still. I was waiting for this, they made a point that owls have special feathers that make them unusually quiet in the air. I'd already been listening when the other birds flew overhead, they made audible noise but certainly not much. Just a whisper of motion. When they had this barn owl flying overhead they suggested that we in the audience close our eyes, I did when it flew directly over my head. I could hear no sound coming off the bird, although I could barely pick out the way the body altered the ambient sound levels of the room. It blocked the reflections coming off the ceiling above my head. [This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]
Those coils are cool and totally geek! I'm not sure how the birds got hooked up with a SF convention. Probably one of the people at the sanctuary likes SF and found a way to get paid to be there. LOL I doubt SF people have embrassed Harry Potter which might be a connection. Neat how the birds flew in a confinded space. That's impressive. I've been to a few SF cons around Syracuse. Small affairs like yours. Meet some great people, authors (Issac Asimov for one) and a few Star Trek actors like Johnathan "Riker" Frakes, James "Scotty" Doohan, John "Q" de Lancie and a few others. You got the "get a life" die hards around but mostly had a lot of fun and good conversation with intelligent people.
DUDE! Issac Asimov at a small con? We're getting a somewhat largish name for guest author next year.. it's Jim Butcher, known for writing the Dresden Files series about a wizard who lives in modern day Chicago and solves crime. I haven't read any of it, it doesn't sound like something that would appeal to me. It sounds kind of like Harry Potter, private eye, but perhaps a bit darker and grittier. I think he'll get my sister to cross the Cheddar Curtain (she lives in Wisconsin) to come to next year's event, as soon as she found out he'd be there (it's early though, I suppose it's possible that plans might change) she started talking about planning to sign up for a bunch of the writer's track panels and getting a room or a couple of rooms at the hotel for her and a group of friends who are all Jim Butcher fans. I'm just excited that that would mean I get to play the role of guide for them. Not that I'm exactly a Duckon expert yet, but I learned enough last time to pass on a few nuggets of wisdom. Among them.. don't drink the blue stuff AND the green stuff. It's not exactly on the level of "don't eat the brown acid", but... those were drinks being offered at the "mad scientist party", a party room done up with loads of blacklight and Christmas lights for added festiveness. The drinks were offered with some dry ice in the bottom which was both cold enough to cause frost to form on the bottom of the plastic cup (even as I held it) and also caused the trademark dry ice fog to bubble out of the top of the drink as you drank it, a very neat effect. Apparently the ingredients in those two different cocktails do not play well when combined, perhaps that explains my unpleasant physical state the next day. The really odd thing about the party floor, though, was that it had a party dog. I don't know exactly how it got there or who it belonged to, but this very mellow dog (I don't remember the breed, perhaps something like a Labrador) was sitting out in the hallway outside the mad scientist party, wearing a glowing, blinking collar that fit right in with the blinking decorations other people were wearing. This is what I'm talking about: http://www.2dkits.com/zencart/ That's what people were wearing, the cool thing is you can build them there at the convention, they have a room set up with soldering irons and you can buy the kit and go in there and put it all together. Anyway, the dog was just out there in the hallway, greeting people and soaking up the attention of those who chose to assemble in the hallway rather than in the room.
This was back in the late 70's just before SF took off with Star Wars, Close Encounters and the Star Trek franchise being brought back from the dead. I've read a couple of Jim Butcher novels. I like them but they are very different than Harry Potter. I liked the SciFi Channel series even better.
I was being flippant about "Harry Potter Private Eye". Okay, in the 70s I can see it. Actually, at my first convention a while ago someone briefed me on the early history of sci-fi, a history that I was rather ignorant about really, despite considering myself a fan. I didn't really know how it had started out roughly and only hit the big time after Star Wars, etc. Anyway, very cool. I'm not very widely read in the sci-fi world, I've read a few of the classic masters and that's about it. But I know Issac Asimov. Of course.
