The Mandelbear's Musings

I've already mentioned the concesrt, which I think (after listening to the recording this morning) nwent fairly well -- only two or three major flubs. Moving on to the panels.

I misremembered on Saturday -- I only had three panels. They originally had me down for moderating all of them, but I insisted on no more than one per day. Next tine I'll also remember to make sure I don't have anything that starts after 4pm. It's hard enough squeezing in dinner.

Saturday's panels were, in order, "Open Source" [unremarkable], "Are You Secure?" [which I moderated -- tips on securing your PC; also unremarkable], and "Blogging" [Yeah, I do that. The latest LJ kerfuffle got a mention].

The really fun one was yesterday's panel on DRM [which I moderated]. I also proved to be the panel's resident expert on DRM technology, which I guess isn't too surprising considering what I've been working on recently. [No, not DRM, but secure docunent transmission.] The discussion quickly shifted into the economics of free media distribution, since everybody in the room agreed that the proponents of DRM are fighting a rearguard action against the inevitable. Some interesting input from Scott Sigler, a panelist who's making a living off Creative Commons licensed books, and AJA in the audience.

The most interesting thing to me was the fact that many people who download free copies of a book or song go on to order everything by that artist/author. Shouldn't have been surprising -- I've done it myself. AJA is now thinking about selling boxed sets of Heather Alexander's CDs. I think my idea about selling unmixed Audacity projects as "super singles" interested him as well. That one panel was worth the whole con for me.

The other panel yesterday was the one on History of Filk. Unremarkable, and rather thinly attended.

I wasn't on any panels today, but enjoyed the one on songwriting. And I've been enjoying the concerts, of course. Kat and Kendra's was particularly impressive -- these are kids I've known since they were little; they've become young women with excellent voices. I'm looking forward to hearing more from them.

I missed the final concert yesterday, and will probably miss the last one tonight -- I have to take the Y.D. home at 10:30 so I can get her out of bed in time for summer school. Grumf. And then there's that little matter of our new garbage collection service, which requires us to have the bins out on the curb by 6am in the goddamn morning on Monday! What corrupt political appointee had that brilliant idea?

...waiting for my next panel to start. It's on blogging, so I figured this way I'd be the first panel member to blog about it. The fact that it's during what I would normally consider to be dinner time is particularly annoying, especially when concerts start at 7:00.

With luck I'll have time for a bowl of chili and a quick rehearsal. I have only about half an hour's worth of Tres Gique pieces lined up; if I can run for an hour i'm prepared to wing it...

After yet another test drive, decided that the shaker part needed to be drastically reduced on "I Wanna Be a Webmaster" and "TEOTW". Also adjusted levels on "Programmer's Alphabet", "Stuck Here" and "Demon Lover". Still pending: minor pitch and sync problems in "Little Computing Machine", E's part in "Daddy's World", drum parts for "Guilty Pleasures" and maybe "TEOTW", and the trainwreck that is "Someplace in the Net".

Side note: I need to practice every night between now and Westercon (our concert is Saturday 10pm), and train chaoswolf on the recording rig. It's simple enough; mostly just a matter of knowing what needs tweaking and what to leave the heck alone. And come up with the rest of the set list by Wednesday night.