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Darth Joker cosplay at Comic-Con 2011This year, we approached Comic-Con International a bit differently than usual. For the last seven years we’ve been staying in town for all four days. With the baby, we decided to do Comic-Con 2011 in just one day. So we left him with relatives and took the train down to San Diego for the day. We arrived in town about 9:00, walked down to the convention center, and had our badges just after the floor opened at 9:30.

(Full photo set on Flickr, Flash-related coverage on Speed Force.)

Jack Skellington Puppet/Costume at Comic-Con 2011Planning a trip to Comic-Con is always about trade-offs. It’s so big that you can’t see everything, and there are so many events going on that you can’t attend them all. With four days, there’s some wiggle room. With just one, it seemed like I was constantly thinking about those choices.

One of the first choices I made: No news panels. I could get that the next day online (and did). I wanted to focus only on what was unique to the con: exhibits, meeting people, the art show, etc. Basically, I wanted to experience as much of San Diego Comic Con as I could in one day.

Katie decided to pick two things and build her day around them: visiting The Field, an Irish pub our friend Sean introduced us to a few years ago, and seeing the new Thundercats screening. Continue reading →

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Some sites I’ve linked to on Twitter, Facebook & Google+ over the past few weeks.

Comic strip with two stick figures talking. 1: You should join Google+! 2: What is it? 1: Not Facebook! 2: What's it like? 1: Facebook! Pause Second figure clicks on a computer. 2: Oh, what the hell. I guess that's all I really wanted.

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Small view of the space shuttle against a blue sky.

When I was twelve, my family went to see the Space Shuttle land at Edwards Air Force Base. It was the first mission after the Challenger disaster, and the orbiter was Discovery.

I took a roll of slides using a manual SLR camera and (for the landing itself) a telephoto lens. With the last shuttle mission ending tomorrow, I decided to track down the slides and scan them. Continue reading →

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We caught the final Harry Potter movie on Sunday. It was an impressive finale to the series, and they clearly made the right decision in splitting the last book across two movies so they could actually put some weight behind the story instead of just running down the bullet points. That was one of the problems I had with the fifth and sixth films

Still, I’m most impressed that the movies finished, and didn’t stop partway through the series with dwindling budgets and audience interest. His Dark Materials couldn’t get past the first film, and based on the box office, it’s pretty clear that the current Narnia films aren’t going to continue beyond Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Eight movies over a decade, adapting a complete series, and going out with a bang? That’s an impressive feat right there!

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I’ve been an Amazon Associate for several years now. I figured if I was linking to them anyway, as I often was when I wrote about books or music, I might as well get something out of it. Though I did end up adding a few more ads over time, always trying to keep them relevant and unobtrusive.

I never pulled in a lot – maybe $10 to $15 a month on average, enough to buy an extra book or two (though recently it’s mainly been baby supplies), or counteract some of my hosting costs. That’s over now, though, because California just declared me (and other affiliates, of course) to be a local agent for Amazon, requiring them to pay local sales tax within the state. In response, Amazon has shut down the affiliate program within California so that they won’t fall under the new requirements.

I guess I’ll leave the inline links, since those are mostly the ones I would have included anyway, but there’s not much point in including those “Buy this thing I was writing about from Amazon!” ads anymore.