view from a hotel window

We're at Levitation, the 2024 Eastercon, being held this year at the Telford International Centre (TIC). It's a new venue for Eastercon, and is nice and spacious (great for social distancing) and well laid out.  There are also nice gaps between items, so no need to teleport around the TIC.  So far, we've been to:

• a panel on SF and the Industrial Revolution -- a theme of the convention, given that Ironbridge is just down the road
• a talk by Kari on the history of the Welsh border -- also close by, and surprisingly ill-defined
• a talk about bones and forensics -- not all found bones are human: "the last time this bone was above ground, it was surrounded by cow"
• a panel on narrative point of view and tense -- which has moved from traditional 3rd person past tense to more 1st person present tense, especially in Young Adult fiction
• an enraging talk by Clute on the British Library's destruction of 100 years of dust jackets
• a panel on libraries, in the real world and in SF -- "getting my adult card which allowed 4 books a fortnight meant you were supposed to read 4 a fortnight!"
• a panel on Dr Who and the Industrial Revolution, including the 1985 story of The Mark of the Rani
• a panel on Educational Safeguarding in SF/F -- fictional schools seem very dangerous!
• a talk by Emma King on her unsuccessful applications to be an ESA astronaut, and the other successes that led from that 
• a panel on (fictional) Invertebrates in Space -- including interesting discussions of real invertebrates (on Earth), too

We're looking forward to more great stuff tomorrow and Monday.

We're staying at the hotel next door to the TIC, with the customary view over the car park:

at least we can keep an eye on our car...

We drove up to Telford yesterday, in our new electric car.  I still have a little range anxiety, so when we stopped for lunch, I did give it some juice, despite the prediction we'd have enough left when we arrived.  Note to self: when travelling on a Bank Holiday, charging points tend to be well-occupied.  The hotel has four of its own fast (22kW) charging points for guest use, that are not quite as eye-wateringly expensive (70p/kWh) as service station chargers (~79p/kWh), so I will fill up tonight, ready for the trip home.  A bit different from the 9p/kWh I can get at home on the overnight rate, though.

---

Later: for more notes on the convention, see my website

box woes, northern edition

We had an infestation of box-tree moths in our garden near Cambridge.  But they have moved even further north.  When I arrived in York this evening, here's what I saw on (the outside of) my window:

has the recent warm weather let them move into the not-so-frozen north?

box woes

We have quite a lot of box hedging in our garden, and are dreading the day box blight afflicts us.  Last week we noticed lots of bare patches, and thought it had finally arrived.  But on closer inspection it didn't look like blight.

That's not blight.  It's been munched!  Even closer inspection revealed caterpillars...

Some googling suggested these might be due to invasive box-tree moth caterpillars.  Further googling suggested a pheromone trap might help if that was the case.  Off to buy a pheromone trap...

After hanging it in the garden for only a couple of days, the diagnosis was confirmed:

my god, it's full of moths!

Hopefully that's stopped any further caterpillars this year.  If we hang it out next spring, we should be able to stop a recurrence.  And the box has grown back a bit.  So that's all good.  Until the box blight eventually hits...

Conversation 2023: Eastercon day 3

This morning I remembered to take the traditional "picture from a hotel window".

not a great view; not great weather

The first panel today was on Overshoots and Other Anthropocene Narratives.  This was a discussion of a literary style proposed to cope with novels set in the Anthropocene: that they should start in the past, move into the present, then move into a future where its differences are a necessary consequence of the present.

Next was an interview with Guest of Honour Adrian Tchaikovsky.  He had written about 10 novels before his first publication success.  He started in fantasy, with his Apt series, but the SF novel Children of Time is SF, and he's not sure why it was so successful. [Um, that's because it's brilliant!]  He world builds first, and plots rigorously, except for the finale, which emerges as a consequence of the rest of the plot (so he didn't know how Children of Time would end up).  Gaming skills help world building, and SFF is all about world building

The BSFA lecture this year was about Classical References in Dracula.  I learned a lot of fascinating things about classical references in Dracula!

Then we went to a panel on Non-European Middle Ages.  Not only is there no agreed definition of when the Middle Ages were (roughly the fall of the Western Roman Empire [376-476CE-ish] to Columbus [1451-1506CE] / Copernicus [1473-1543CE] / Gutenberg [c1400-1468CE] ), the rest of the world does not have any such cognate period.  In particular, during this period, the Near East thought that Europe was stupid, rude, and didn't wash.

The panel on Alien Ecology started off by reviewing their favourite terrestrial ecologies: sulphur based deep sea vents, trees communicating via fungi, the interior of ant nests that provide niches for multiple species, and the importance of elephants.  There was also discussion of whether we would even recognise alien life, and if we would ever know enough to know if we were damaging an alien ecology.

Next we went to a panel discussing Adaptable Arthur, why the Arthur legends are such a rich resource.  There is zero historical evidence for Arthur: everyone has made up stories, added characters, and changed the plots, so there is no canon, and therefore no appropriation.  One important distinction: one can write Arthur, or one can write Arthurian (with no Arthur present).

And so to bed.

Conversation 2023: Eastercon Day 1

We drove to the Birmingham Metropole for this year's Eastercon, arriving around lunchtime, and dove straight in to going to panels.  (Hotel checkin wasn't open until later.)

First was Where does history end and fantasy begin?  The discussion was mainly about history, and how things happen, then history is a narrative we use to explain what happened.  We get to pick and choose events to narrate, and different people at different times pick different things, while still telling a valid history.  Although things can get exaggerated or omitted for political reasons.  A few snippets: Wolf Hall is interesting, because it flips who was originally the good guy (More) and the bad guy (Cromwell).  Early accounts of Dick Turpin had him as a thug, but the stories gradually softened over time.  There are three separate iterations of the story of St Patrick, told at different times for different political purposes.

Next up, The Adaptable Gaiman, on how Neil Gaiman stories adapt to film or TV.  Apparently American Gods season 1 is great, then goes downhill.  Season one of the Sandman is also great, and the panellists are waiting to see if this continues.

We went to a couple of panels on Beyond Human Intelligence and Conlangs and You (constructed languages), and finished the day with Fearlessly Spineless: Invertebrates in SFFH, where we learned that Western cultures are more afraid of insects and invertebrates than other cultures despite having the fewest poisonous ones, and that there is a type of chordate where members can combine into a group organism (I didn't catch the name of it, unfortunately).

And so to bed.

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CXXII

 The latest batch:

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CXIX

 The latest batch:

well, at least we shouldn't get a lot of aphids!

 

one of the several swarms of ladybirds in the garden today

ant chains

Amazing cooperative ant behavior, from the article Scientists Cannot Explain This Crazy Ant Behavior, but They Love It

---

For all my social networking posts, see my Google+ page

removed the insect using a pair of forceps

quote of the week:

When you first realize you have a tick up your nose, it takes a lot of willpower not to claw your face off

(via BoingBoing)

---

For all my social networking posts, see my Google+ page

waspish caterpillar

I read recently, in the "Last Word" section of New Scientist, a piece asking for help to identify an Italian butterfly-like creature.  The questioner couldn't identify it because "it doesn't seem like any butterfly I've seen, nor is it in any of my insect books".  What caught my eye was the implication of ownership of at least three insect books.  We have only the one insect book.  And two butterfly books.  Oh, and a dragonfly book.

Yet none of our books could help us to identify this splendid caterpillar we found in the garden today.

at least it's on a weed

The reason I know that none could have helped is that I looked it up in them, after I had identified it using the web.  To identify it in the first place, I googled "caterpillar black yellow stripes", and got

it seems there are rather a lot of caterpillars using a yellow and black colour palette

Looking through the results identified several promising candidates.  The respective source pages all identified it as the caterpillar of the Cinnabar moth.  The wikipedia page has more details, confirming the identification.  But our insect book doesn't have it.  Neither do our butterfly books (well, it is a moth, I suppose).

Back in the garden, the spiders (which will obviously not be in our insect book) have been busy wrapping up the plants in a dense web.

And the patio roses we bought back in early May are now blooming their hearts out.

The labels must have lied about the colours.  I think we are going to have to separate these!

The weeds are growing apace, but it's way too hot at the moment (28°C) to garden.  So I'm blogging about the garden instead.