I finished processing and uploading my pictures from Dragon*con and set about notifying people the people in those photos. At the event, if someone in costume liked their picture, I’d get their email address and contact them when it was posted. Normally, there was a 1-to-1 relationship between a given costume and a wearer except for Thor. I photographed four Thors, all of which wanted their pictures. I wasn’t sure which was which but a bit of Googling helped me identifying two of them. What to do with the remaining two?

There I found myself with the strangest email salutation I’ve ever written: “Dear Thors,”.

I had slept well, had a good breakfast and remembered to bring an umbrella. Why such synchrony? Today, registration for the Hyatt hotel at Dragon*con opened at 10am and I intended to get a room. I got to work around 7:30am, loaded my browser to the registration page and saw the “registration is not yet available, you will be processed in the order you visited.” screen. This wasn’t the “this registration page is unavailable” error that happens when a page is swamped so I had a good chance of actually getting a room when registration opened in a little over two hours.

My heart began to race as 10am approached when at 9:58am the fire alarm went off. I dutifully went to the assembly area and waited. At 10:15 the drill was over and I returned to my desk to see two things:

*A grayed out browser window saying “please make a room selection”
*A pop-up on top of it saying my session had timed out after 15 minutes.

I reloaded the page to see the display showing “no rooms available” and frowned a bit. Had I been more prescient, I would have tried this operation on my phone, but working in a skyscraper leads to dubious connections so I’m not sure how this would have worked.

My backup was to use Airbnb and I found a place located next to the Hyatt where the convention happens listed for $650 a week. This would prove to be about 1/2 the price of the Hyatt for an equivalent stay so I attempted to book it. Later I received a rejection email with a comment from the renter saying that a number of people had contacted him for the room. I indicated it was probably due to Dragon*con and he replied that he’d probably want more. I offered what the hotel charged after fees and he replied with “we’re not sure who we’re going to go with but we’ll consider you when we choose.” I replied with “if you accept my bid I will bring to you a bounty of baked goods the likes of which you’ve never seen”. Later that evening I received a contract offer from him. Not only do I now have a reserved space for Dragon*con but the car will probably smell wonderful on the drive down.

Dragon*Con was interesting and in some capacity I’d like to return in 2013. A four day badge is only $65.00 when purchased far ahead of time and the convenience of this seems like a good benefit versus the possibility of not attending next year.

I spoke with a number of photographers about their craft and next year I’m going to bring a flash come hell or high water and preferably a soft box.

My two favorite photos are characters out of character where someone breaks costume to eat something or talk to someone and cross-over ideas like Steampunk Rorshoche. A lot of people in costume would instinctively pose when I pointed the camera at them and I’d have to ask them to unpose so I could get Leia taking a call or Q smoking.

While Dragon*Con was full of nerds, I considered few people there to be “my people”. I don’t participate in any sort of Fandom. There is no nerd culture item about which I maintain encyclopedic knowledge nor are there any figures where I’d spend more than an hour in line waiting to shake their hand. Costuming seems interesting but I much more enjoy capturing others’ work. On reflection I feel a guilty irony to my dislike of arts that are ultimately imitative yet very much enjoy photography. Maybe this is why I so much more enjoy costume variants than people who go for spot on recreation.

I didn’t feel well at the start of the day and slept until noon. I dropped off Reuben and Suzie at the registration area and immediately found parking, registered for the day and disappeared into sessions.

Sessions

Mad Scientist Lab – I learned what cattle prod feels like. Usually my willingness to raise my hand when someone calls for audience volunteers nets me something cool, usually. Here, it net me being hit by a cattle prod. Anyway, I now know what a cattle prod feels like.

Presenter: Please stop asking us to cattle prod your children. I think that counts as child abuse even if you say it’s ok.
Audience Member: But I thought you were evil?
Presenter: Yes, but at scale. It’s hard to be evil when you’re locked up in prison.

They also had made a Jolly Rancher railgun but decided against it because the acceleration caused the wrappers to come off and that’s just not sanitary.

The next few hours were passed walking around and much enhanced by simply popping in on panels that looked interesting and out on ones that weren’t.

Walking Around

If I thought a shot turned out particularly well, I’ll show the costumed person the LCD on my camera for approval and often they’d ask for a card from me. I had four or five on me, I should have brought several dozen more.

Saturday night at the Hyatt’s many lobbies proved to be a massive party. I met up with Suzie around 3 AM to leave and things had just gone from 11 to 10.

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Today was the first full day of Dragon*Con and Suzie dropped out of attending to do other things. Reuben and I met up with Grant who is a fine fellow but with whom there is a storied meeting history. He has no car at college and the last few times we met with him had to pick him up and work around the narrow windows of his schedule.

Reuben and I dashed to Con after a short lunch, made our way through registration, and darted to our first session. My schedule was stacked with science, space, and skepticism bits and Reuben wanted to see some segments on voice acting.

Sessions

Curiosity and Skepticism – The presenter for this session ran The College of Curiosity which runs field trips in major cities. The presenter had some interesting objects like tektite, trinitite, and a styrofoam cup crushed by 2100 feet of oceanic pressure. I don’t think the session had much of a message so much as a parade of neat stuff.

James Randi and Alice Cooper – James Randi, the patron saint of skeptics, was the magician behind the effects on Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Baby tour. Alice is witty and cogent and told wonderful stories.

*Alice: Everyone in the 70s wanted to be a hero in Rock n’ Roll. I had no problem being the bad guy.
*Alice: One city wanted to present us with the key to the city and he had to work as hard as we could to find a reason to not get it.
*Alice: During one of our shows a live chicken appeared on stage so I picked it up and threw it into the audience. It came back a few minutes later torn apart and I was known as “Alice Cooper, Chicken Killer”. The thing was, the first four rows, and that’s the farthest I could have thrown it, were all people in wheelchairs.
*Randi: Alice called the magic shop I was in and owner said there was an Alice Cooper on the phone. I said I wanted $100 just to talk to him. Alice agreed, and I ran down the stairs so fast they may have burn marks on them.

Blood Drive – I gave blood and was told by a pregnant nurse that I looked like Ethan Hawke, I’ll take it. Later at the snack booth:

Me: Do you have any low carb snacks?
Nurse: You need sugar, honey.
Me: I’m on a ketosis diet.
Nurse: How low carb is that?
Me: 20 net grams a day.
Nurse: If you can, you want to make an exception if you want your red count to rebound in any reasonable amount of time and not have fainting spells.

I took her advice and had the tastiest Nutter Butter that I can remember.

Stealth Skepticism – The panelists talked about skepticism in popular media. Each panelist was interesting but the unified theme was “ask smart people questions” and I was fine with this. Rebecca Watson gave her commandment of “a good question is identifiable for being short, having a point, and ending in a question mark”, advice that everyone followed. One person asked: “my brother is a physics major and believes he can perform faith healing, what can I do to sway him?” to which Michael Stackpole replied “Waterboard him”.

Cryptographic Engineering – I attended this panel because it was done by Bruce Schneier and Randal Shwartz, the security expert and programmer, respectively and just kind of sat in awe as they were smart for an hour or so. I took their pictures a lot and they politely posed.

Evening Photos

I walked around and took photos. In the process, I lost track of Reuben frequently.

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Early we left Oklahoma City into a day of long miles bouncing north and south to wind our way East to Atlanta. The south slept and we slipped through the silence a little faster than we normally do but there is an energy that comes from driving head long into dawn. Suzie bit a 550-mile chunk out of the day which probably included more distance that she’s driven in every other car combined and I batted at sleep. We arrived around 7 PM and Suzie set to making herself presentable for an evening outing and I chose what pieces of camera equipment would join me. The 24-70 won and we shot south into Atlanta and the convention incubating in its downtown.

Atlanta is entirely unexplored to me, subject to a history club trip when I was in 11th grade and revisited later to see Reuben. The city has a history but exudes little sense of it as the downtown was revamped over the last 20 years. The city is going through a demographic shift and economic boom which are rewriting its character and this transition has a feeling of blandness over excitement. Think of the crystalis period of a moth vs. having a teenager.

Dragon*Con on the other hand had an energy all its own and after parking I walked to the registration building passing pockets of oddity. The event is overwhelmingly a volunteer effort with three paid staff and hundreds of primary volunteers with a thousand ancillary ones. I wanted to know if I could register other people for an event day and the answer was always a variant of “I think so”, a phrase I appreciate for its eagerness but loathe for its truth. I asked my way up until I met with the head of registration services. We chatted.

Me: So why do you do this?
Her: Volunteer?
Me: Yes.
Her: The stories. Earlier a man reported to the police that someone had tried to mug him with a small knife. The cop asked him if he was harmed, and he replied by pulling back his cape to reveal his chain mail and claymore. He replied “no, just wanted you to know”.
Me: Interesting.
Her: Why do you ask?
Me: Curiosity. Reasons for volunteering tend to be varied albeit not as much as the volunteers.
Her: You should talk to our media department. They’re always looking for people with good equipment. Do you volunteer for other things?
Me: You could say that.

I did a few laps of the Hyatt taking pictures, re-united with Suzie and retired to Reuben’s.

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I’ve worn my tiny hat a lot over the past few days and the charm is starting to wear off.  Joe and I hope to go to DragonCon in Atlanta in the late summer and I may try to create Tiny Hats for Reason.  I think if I offered notable Skeptics a $20 donation in their name to the Richard Dawkins foundation in exchange for them getting their picture taken wearing a Tiny Hat while holding a sign saying “I wear tiny hats AND I support reason” we can make the world a better place.