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So, I found a bus stop. Too bad the buses that run to that bus stop don't run in the summertime. ARGH.

Still, it is kind of adorable that the bus stops have instructions for using the bus on them. They're along the lines of "Wait here. Get on bus when it arrives. Pay fare. Sit down." I need to take a photo of one, it's classic.

I decided yesterday that I was footsore, but also kind of gross from walking around for hours, so I went back to my room and collapsed. Sadly I have no internet in my room, which is why you're getting this nattering today instead of last night. I thought about going out yesterday evening to the opening do, but then I decided that I had done enough socialising, and that I would rather stay in, put on my pyjamas, and have a pizza and Classic Who night.

My feet hurt so much that I filled up my ice bucket and made pads out of ice and plastic bags for my feet, and sat there at the desk with each foot propped on a little ball of ice. It's awesome, you guys gotta try it.

Anyway, it started to rain around six, so I was glad I hadn't gone out, since a long walk back in the pouring warm rain wasn't really on my to do list for the weekend. Instead I had a nap, a nice dinner, and watched The Three Doctors, which is quite possibly the best Brigadier episode ever, but kind of an ineffective episode on the whole to watch without having previously seen at least some of the second and third Doctor already. Still, the Brigadier is almost uncontainably awesome in it. <3 him. <3 him and his stupidly big crush on the Doctor.

And now, for some breakfast and then GRATE ACADEEMYA.

(no subject)

Those of you who follow Ouija_Sam on Twitter may have seen cryptic, unusual activity this morning :D I just got out of the conference's first Town Hall; you'll probably see a lot of LJ posts like this so if you're bored, feel free to scroll...

The Town Hall made me feel a bit like a punk, but in a good way. The basic concept was that they showed a piece of media and had the audience discuss it on twitter -- once the media was over, they put the tweetstream up so you could see our comments. My comment about Brecht sat up there for a good long while.

To be honest I think I was the only person who was totally nonplussed by the video; I found the video's commentary surface-interesting but the whole thing rather pretentious. I have more notes I'll write up later, because I'm waiting for a new session to start, but I was much more fascinated by the structure of the discussion -- microphone commentary and twitter combined -- than I was about the subject, which devolved into Is Poetry Scholarship and Is Scholarship Performance.

God, that Town Hall made me glad I got out of academia.

If you'd like to see the film for yourself, it's apparently up at http://iamdananderson.net/screencasts/cccc2010. Try not to get as wanky in comments as the academics did on Twitter. :D

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There is so much to talk about that I don't even have time to talk about it :D

On a slightly sad note, the first panel I attended had more panelists than it did attendees, which I suspect wasn't uncommon for the first session, but was a shame all the same. My panelists were very personable so it was really a nice conversation, but nothing cuts the slight awkwardness of something like that, really.

The second panel was more well-attended, and was the reason I heard about the Computers & Writing conference in the first place -- Finn Brunton was presenting at the panel on "Unbooks", a category under which Extribulum falls. He didn't discuss Extribulum directly, which made me lol a little since it's in the title of his presentation, but it was incredibly, mind-blowingly informative, so I totally don't care. All of this is grist for my mill, this conference, both the good and the bad. There was also a fantastic presentation on how digital archiving opens access and restructures how we think about research, which I'll need to mull on more in a bit. I took a crapton of notes.

It's kind of neat to be in a place where if you don't have your laptop out, you're the weird one.

There is a slight wiff of indulgent academia about some of the stuff I've encountered, but that's actually helpful too in establishing, for me, where I stand. More on that later too.

Right now it's LUNCHTIEMZ. :D

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I am eating a lot of onions at this conference. Like, way more than I normally do. Not that I'm complaining, there just seems to be a confluence of onions in my life. Consequently, I am eating a lot of mints.

Hey, wanna hear about what I did today?

( It's like a con report, only nobody dropped trou or got drunk. )

Ironically, when I came to this conference I gave myself permission to be a loner, to stay away from the presenters and not to talk to anyone if I didn't feel like it -- and I find myself meeting tons of people. Just to talk, not to network or anything like it. It's...I hesitate to say pleasant, because I still am not good at talking to people, but it's way less stressful than my usual interactions with strangers.

There is a lot of information to process and a lot of notes to read, so I decided to skip the fourth session of the day; there weren't that many presentations I felt interested in seeing, and it gives me a chance to wind down a little bit.

I am constantly mistaken for a summer student at Purdue, which makes me feel really good, because I discovered last night that dyeing my hair black ended up really highlighting the grey hair I'm starting to get...