"But I was wearing my wedding ring!"...

... is just never EVER a good way to start a conversation.

The Readercon stuff about whether or not you can misread signals did remind me of a situation recently where we were at a friend's Kentucky Derby Party.  I'd been chatting to some people and suddenly found myself chatting to a woman alone.  We were having a good conversation, I really wasn't paying full attention until M turned up and said, "we're about to leave."

The woman I was chatting to turned and said, "oh, you're leaving, goodbye." Then turned back to chat with me,

I said, "ok, be right there."

I remember the look of understanding followed by, "oh, YOU'RE leaving?"

I was wearing a wedding ring, I hadn't, as far as I could tell, given off any signs, but I had completely missed being in a situation where apparently we were having a conversation which may have gone somewhere.

I wish I'd discovered this secret power when I was actually single :)

Still, it's a great thing for M to hold over me.

Cultural Appropriation

As this has been the cause of some problem, I have been wondering what sitting in a basement bar in Taipei, drinking Scotch Whiskey, playing a Roman Dice game while signing Beatles songs on Karaoke is?

PSA: Beta Testers Wanted

Sometime in the next 7 days (I hope) we should have the Beta of the ChiCon 7 app for iPhone and Android.  It's based on the Renovation app although, fingers crossed we'll have added the following:

- Offline storage so it'll work when disconnected from the network
- Cloud based Favourites storage, so you don't lose your favourites when you update/restart
- Custom event creation...  (NOTE: not sure about this yet, it's trickier than it sounds)
- Fix the annoying 'back' button bug in the Reno app

If you're interested in a few days of hammering the app let me know.  iPhone users I'll need your UUID so we can send you a build.

We're going to be clear here, if you're running on an old iPhone 3G the performance will suck, and we will not be doing anything for Android versions earlier than 2.3 - sorry about that...

Let me know and I'll get in touch when we've the app done.

When a cigar is not a cigar... (sorry, more thinking on Racefail)

Many, MANY, years ago when I was at University I was running the SF club.  Due to one thing and another, I ended up as Chair of the University Societies Council.  The Student's Union was organized with a President and a couple of VPs, these were paid roles usually taken by students planning to hang around for another year.

That year the VP Ents was into music in a big way and had grand plans. Conventional wisdom for the Ents role was to run low cost events in Fresher's Fortnight which would get lots of students with their grants in hand to attend and then later in the year get more expensive bands and so on as you run down your surplus.  It was a good system, it had meant that you could run up cash in the first few weeks and then run loss making events later in the year.

This VP Ents ran a slightly different model by getting a bunch of really expensive and big bands during Freshers Fortnight and consequently running a bit of a loss during the time that you'd traditionally build up a reserve.  Now, some of the acts he booked were great.  I had a really good time at several of them... but things didn't get better.  Actually he booked a few more events which lost money and at that point rumours started to circulate about the impact of the Ents loss on the operating budget of the Students Union, which included my Societies Council and the Sports Council.  It was quickly established that as there was no mechanism to bail out the SU, shortfalls would have to be made up internally and the most likely place to get money from would be an emergency appropriation from the Sports and Societies budget.

Needless to say that this alarmed some of the more capital intensive sports clubs who spent a lot of time and effort managing their budgets.  By last October my counterpart in the Sports Council, let's call him Bob, had had enough and called an Emergency General Meeting of the Students Union to call for a vote of no-confidence in the VP Ents.

I concurred with the decision, and went to vote too.

There was no vote.

About an hour before the meeting Bob was called to a meeting at the Vice Chancellors office where he was informed if he pursued his motion of no-confidence he would be suspended from the University under suspicion of racism subject to a formal investigation by the Racial Equality Commission.

Did I not mention?  The VP Ents was a guy called Tjinder Nurpuri. I've had something of a bad taste in my mouth about the events ever since.  It was an impressive political move and the person who pulled it went on to be the President of the SU the next year.  Of course, they quit during the second term when a nice job came up in the local council...

Bob was cleared in the investigation and later Jinder survived a non-confidence vote but basically we had 2 terms of no entertainments as there was no budget - he didn't go after the Sports or Societies budget either.

Fairly Confident I'll be there now...

So I think the trip to ChiCon is coming together.  

I'm on a couple of panels, annoyingly not on one of the ones I suggested that I wanted to be on, but I will survive.

Sat Sep 1 12:00:pm	Sat Sep 1 1:30:pm	Democracy is a terrible form of Government, Can't we do better?
McCormick		The title is from the Churchill quote "democracy is a terrible form of government, except for all the others." But it is still a poor form of government, except for all the others. Science Fiction seems like the ideal forum for exploration of alternative forms of government better than all the others and perhaps better than democracy. So how are we doing?

Sat Sep 1 4:30:pm	Sat Sep 1 6:00:pm	Technology That Improves Our Society
Crystal C		A look at technology that not only makes our lives easier, but actually improves society as a whole.

I'll also be almost certainly on bar duty at the London in 2014 bid parties on Friday and Saturday night and at the Convention party on the Sunday night.  

For practice I've just made a nice big jug of Pimms.