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I've released the 2012 FFANZ ballot.
Vote to send Edwina Harvey to the 2012 New Zealand Natcon! (or not, I guess)
The ballot form is attached below, or you can vote via email to dave@difference.com.au. Voting requires a minimum donation of $5.
PDF Ballot
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FFANZ
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Mar. 2nd, 2012 @ 07:34 am
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I've received precisely no contact from anyone interested in running for FFANZ. I'm extending the eligibility period for a week. |
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FFANZ 2012
Nominations are now open for the 2012 Fan Fund of Australia and New Zealand (FFANZ). FFANZ in 2012 will send one Australian science fiction fan from Australia to the 2012 New Zealand Natcon, unCONventional, in Auckland from 1-4 June.
Prospective candidates will have until March 1st 2012 to file the documents required to have one’s name placed in nomination and added to the ballot. The ballots will be published and distributed in early March, and voting will run from March 12-April 9th.
Candidates should file the following documents:
• A brief letter stating one’s intent to run for FFANZ 2012.
• A nominator and a seconder, preferably a nominator from Australia and a seconder from New Zealand.
• A 100 word or less platform statement specifying the candidate’s reasons for running and qualifications for becoming the 2012 FFANZ delegate.
Interested parties should contact the Australian administrator, David Cake, at dave@difference.com.au
The duties of the winning candidate will be as follows:
• Travel to New Zealand and attend unCONventional, the 33rd New Zealand Natcon, in Auckland from 1-4 June 2012 .
• Visit and get to know as many New Zealand Science Fiction fans as time will permit.
• Become the Australian FFANZ administrator until a replacement administrator is found, normally this happens when the administrator role is handed over to the succeeding eastbound delegate (in 2014 if a race is run every year).
• Raise funds and maintain an account to be used by the next eastbound delegate(s) in 2012.
• Promote connections between Australian and New Zealand fandom by a trip report or other means.
Please feel free to distribute this message to your fannish networks.
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Months ago, a few people where listing the 10 apps they usually had open. I finally got around to it.
BBEdit - every geek needs a great text editor, and exactly which one people use is a very personal choice, but that tends to display ones personal geek history. BBEdit pretty clearly marks me as 'old school Mac guy'. FWIW, I'm definitely a vi not an emacs guy, but have never felt inclined to use vi when I have the choice of an editor with a real GUI.
I find being able to edit files on remote servers directly via SFTP is something essential to my normal workflow.
iTerm - every geek needs terminal access. I prefer iTerm to the built in Terminal. Actually, iTerm 2.
Echofon - desktop twitter client of choice. I'm always surprised whenever I discover anyone that regularly uses twitter via the web interface. I've tried about half a dozen desktop twitter clients, and seem to have settled on Echofon for now. I use Tweetbot on the phone, I actually like that even more. I tweet from more than one account, so that is an important feature for me.
Google Chrome - Safari comes across as a bit bloated to me. I'm pretty bad at closing tabs, so Safari eats memory fast. I'll probably switch browsers back eventually, though, Safari has a few features I really like (like easily enabling me to open a PDF in a suitable other app). I also use Firefox.
Preview - I find myself looking at PDF docs all the time, for both work and hobbies. I seem to be using Skim - a PDF viewer designed for annotation etc - more and more, and it may well end up replacing Preview for most PDF docs.
Word - I've found working in Universities in which everyone uses Word makes it so much easier than alternatives, despite it not being my favourite word processor. So it is always open.
Scrivener - going to be my tool of choice for serious writing from now on, I think. This is an amazing tool for writing complicated documents, the sort of document I previously would have started in an outliner. Still a bit unsure about reference manager integration, but otherwise amazing.
Skype - I'm involved with at least a couple of groups that seem to have settled on Skype as a regular communications tool, particularly the Burning Man Australia crew and ICANN NCUC gang, plus some friends that use it as preferred IM, so I keep it open most of the time. I don't think I have used its video features ever, but I use both IM and voice chat regularly.
Mail - I finally made the big shift to Apple Mail. Now I've shifted, I'm unlikely to shift again for a really long time, unless someone designs a good IMAP mail client for people that receive massive amounts of mail on multiple mailing lists and multiple accounts and need to filter it all. At the moment, I'm also reading one email account through Sparrow as an experiment, but the rest are all through Mail. I'm experimenting with some add-ons, but not really satisfied.
Powerpoint - I lecture, and I like to lecture with slides, and that usually means Powerpoint. I prefer Keynote if I can, and I've used Prezi and think it is pretty cool, but Powerpoint is the bread and butter choice, because the machines I lecture on have Powerpoint installed, so it is just easier. |
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Places where I spent at least one night away from home in 2011:
San Francisco, California, USA (two different hotels)
Singapore (three different hotels)
Seattle, Washington, USA (Kent to be specific)
A highway rest stop in Oregon, USA
Reno, Nevada, USA (two different hotels, a couple of weeks apart)
Austin, Texas, USA
Black Rock City (Burning Man Festival), Nevada USA
Mountain View, California, USA
Toronto, Canada
Huntsvilla, Alabama, USA
Los Angeles, California
Dakkar, Senegal
Auckland, New Zealand (two different hotels)
Taupo, New Zealand
B&B near Koramandel, New Zealand
"Red Earth City" (Australian Burning Man/Burning Seed), Matong State Forest, New South Wales, Australia
Rutherglen, New South Wales, Australia
Melbourne, Australia (three different hotels at various times during the year)
Rottnest Island, Western Australia
Cervantes, Western Australia |
| » My Worldcon schedule |
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My Worldcon Schedule
Thu 11:00 (A04) 1 hr
The Psychogeography of Ideals
- a serious intellectual one to get things started. And I'm on it with Cory Doctorow and Ian McDonald. I might be a little bit intimidated by this one.
Thu 13:00 (D04) 1 hr
The Moral Aesthetics of Steampunk
- slightly less intimidated by this one, should cover similar territory to the panel I did at Continuum.
Thu 17:00 (A03) 1 hr
The Works of Tim Powers
- I love Tim and his works.
Sat 14:00 (Hall 2 Fan Lounge) 1 hr
TAFF/DUFF Delegates Reception
- come and be sociable! John Coxon (TAFF) is a charming and funny guy, this should be fun.
Sat 15:00 (Hall 2 Stage) 2 hrs
Fan Fund Auction
- I have brought a bunch of stuff to auction.
Sat Night - I'm presenting a Hugo!
And then I'm going to the Hugo Losers party!
I'll be at the Pre-Hugo reception at 6pm
Sun 12:00 (A18) 1 hr
Whatever Happened to Cyberpunk? (Oh Wait, it is Still with Us...)
- one of my favourite topics
Sun 13:00 (A03) 1 hr
Computer War and Cyber Forensics: Stuxnet: Cyberwar and Cyber Terrorism?
- there are some good people on this. I'll be bringing my experience from Electronic Frontiers Australia, and my experience from the ICANN Security, Stability and Resiliency Review Team.
Sun 14:00 (A18) 1 hr
Off to Burning Man
- we'll be enthusing about that thing in the desert that often clashes with Worldcon (but not this one). I'll also be talking a bit about the Burning Man regional network, and the Australian Burn.
Still hoping if a room opens up, I'd like to do my crazy Real Occultists Using Fictional Magic talk, as previously seen at Aussiecon, but it needs a room and a projector, and these are apparently in short supply.
Aug. 15th, 2011 @ 12:59 pm
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Last couple of days to vote for DUFF, the Down Under Fan Fund. I am a candidate. Voting closes on the 31st. Send in a ballot right now!
Am I a good candidate? Don't take my word for it, ask my nominators!
May. 29th, 2011 @ 05:10 pm
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| » So... |
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It has been way too long since I posted here.
It hasn't been because I abandoned LJ, rather that I've been too busy to post anything longer than a twitter message or so.
So, important points of the last few months.
I started a PhD, currently part time, at Curtin. I'm studying Internet governance issues, mostly to do with ICANN. I also teach at Curtin a fair bit, which is keeping me busy.
Also, I went to San Francisco for ICANN. I was there for a week and a half, but spent most of it arguing about the Internet or watching other people arguing about the Internet. I did see a speech from Bill Clinton.
I am really pretty busy. But mostly in a good way.
Apr. 7th, 2011 @ 08:42 pm
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| » strange aeons |
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Yesterday would have been H.P. Lovecrafts 120th birthday. He would have been astonished at the influence his horror stories have had. And even more astonished, and probably deeply disturbed, at the few people who take his work seriously (I'll be covering the influence of Lovecraft in the modern occult world in my 'Sorcerers and Storytellers' presentation at Worldcon, and truth be told I find of it pretty alarming too).
It is tempting to consider how he would react to the internet and fandom. He spent a lot of time writing to his various horror writer friends especially, and a lot of seemed to be a forerunner early fandom, which in turn seemed to be an early experiment with the social mechanisms that have exploded with the internet.
Of course, he was also an insane racist, a crazy racist even by the standards of his own era, so a black president would probably make his head explode. So he'd probably be a Tea Partier today or something. Probably for the best we are spared the spectacle.
Hmmm... now I want to write a story in which a crazy racist blogger inciting racist violence turns out to be H.P. Lovecrafts head in a Mi-Go brain jar.....
Which just goes to show how wonderfully inspiring mad old Howards stories can still be. I think the trick is that his unique brand of horror was based not just on dark fantasy and myth (ghosts, vampires and such) but features so many idea that are much more science fictional, aliens and other dimensions and the cold horror of a universe that is both vast and uncaring and often incomprehensible. Lovecraft's version of horror was not just about our irrational past, but taught us that science has plenty of its own horrors to reveal. He caught on the fundamental, and frightening, idea that just because something is theoretically explainable by some future science does not mean that it is comprehensible, or palatable, to the limited human mind. And for showing us that screaming horror is fully compatible with a scientific worldview, we must thank him.
Plus he taught me words like squamous, glabrous, and rugose. Long may he continue to inspire.
Aug. 22nd, 2010 @ 11:08 pm
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