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Professor Elemental and me

Part of the Saturday night entertainment was Professor Elemental a purveyor of chap hop and general awesomeness.

I was drunk enough to volunteer to join him on stage.

And my boyfriend had the presence of mind to capture this for prosperity.

Without further ado I present Professor Elemental featuring Dalek Jane.

Sci-Fi Weekender 4

Well we're home, I've been recharging my batteries literally and figuratively. Sci Fi Weekender has been a blast and I've enjoyed 95% percent of what has gone on. This event evolved from last year's SFX weekender my blog about that can be found here.

This event was a vast improvement in almost every way from last year and I'm going to reflect on my experience of the event.

We arrived Thursday afternoon and check in took forty minutes from joining the queue to getting out again having organised which signings we wanted to go to having bought VIP tickets.

The caravan chalet was modern spacious but cold, it took us a while to work out the best way to heat it up - I'll come back to that.  We also decided to mainly self cater and heartily recommend to those who drive to the venue to bring your own slow cooker and throw things in it works a treat.

Thursday evening was spent in the Mash and Barrel, meeting up with old friends and meeting new ones. Hello @geekcampgirls. The atmosphere was great, relaxed and happy great hugs a gossip with Sam Stone and all was well with the world.

I kept quite a busy schedule, I went to Here come the Girls which despite the hopeless title was actually a wonderful discussion of the issues that writers who happen to be women face. On the panel were Emma Newman, Amanda Rutter, Sam Stone, Raven Dane, Stacia Kane, Kim Curren and Frances Knight.  Lots of interesting points especially about genre and horror and distinctions between how things are perceived I was fascinated.

My other must see was Just a Minute ably compered by Paul Cornell (nicest man in the world - official) This had been a highlight for me last year and was not disappointed this time round as Emma Newman, Gareth Powell, Stacia Kane and Chris Brookmyre did battle. Watching Emma Newman's inner pedant wrestle with her anxiety was brilliant.

One of the things that was disappointing was that two of the major TV guests pulled out in the week preceding the event and it left the event feeling a little bit light on that side of things.  I spent most of my time in the Spaceport listening to writers and learning as much as I could. I loved the panel on dystopian futures and post apocalyptic fiction.

Other huge things for me were meeting Brian Blessed and Peter Davidson both were utterly lovely and charming.

We attended the imaginarium on Friday night and having missed out last year was mostly impressed we felt that some of the acts went on a bit too long and an interval of 15 minutes would have been a godsend.

Saturday more signings and author panels. I have a hard time speaking to people I don't know so chickened out of speaking to some authors because I was a little bit intimidated.  The saturday night entertainment ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous.

On the side of Sublime, Professor Elemental who was fantastic. He kicked ass and I vounteered to go up on stage and was an apprentice monkey butler who was also a dalek.  Yes I am Dalek Jane.

The Gameshow between Robert Rankin and Dez Skin which on paper sounded good, was excrutiating and went on too long.

The dancing afterwards was epic, I got my geeky dancing on with the GeekCampGirls who had been cosplaying their asses off all weekend and much fun was had.

Bad points?

Just a few, TV and film guests were few and far between.  Guests are fairly important to me, I like to meet me heroes when I can and was disappointed when the big names pulled out.

It was cold.  our fire didn't light automatically and we had to buy matches, the heating in the bedroom was completely ineffectual. But we spent so few hours in the chalet it didn't really matter.

I thought placing the author panels in the space port was a bit rude, the sound was dreadful and a bit disrespectful to the guests.

The 'gameshow' on saturday night was awful.  Jokes about child abuse aren't funny. 

I didn't hear any abuse from muggles thrown my way, but I would have been gutted if there was.

We'll be back next year but Chic will have to up the ante and sort out some of the issues.

To sum up, you get out of these events what you put into them -  this time I took a big risk and I dressed up and I loved it and I've made friends from the experience too, that made the event worth while.

Making a Dalek dress for the craftily impaired.

I've made a dalek dress, not from scratch you understand because that is beyond my skillset but I have made one and here is how I did it.

What you need:

1. A jersey dress - I got one similar to this though you can play around with styles that suit.
2. Ribbon  - to decorate the bust area I used 5 metres of silver and just over one of black satin ribbons
3. A sink plunger
4. Polystyrene spheres cut into halves
5. acrylic paint in black and silver
6. a wide plastic alice band
7. two sound to light kits from Maplin http://www.maplin.co.uk/sound-to-light-led-22545
8. a whisk
9. glue gun
10. all of the pins
11. elastic stretchy belt
12. leggings
13. knee high boots
14. A friend to help with fittings

I decided I wanted to be a black and silver dalek because the materials were slightly easier to source and I was running short on time. 

Unless you have a you shaped mannequin it is impossible to set the ribbons on your own.  My friend used me as the dummy and we pinned the ribbons in place to look like the venty mid section on the dalek in a grid pattern.  I decided to have three horizontal silver lines and three black uprights. On the front and back and pinned the ribbons in place so I would know where to sew.

So this took a while and because my bust is on the large size, we had to shape the ribbons over the top.

Due to the nature of the jersey being a stretchy material and the ribbon being non-stretchy, I've only sewn in strategic places so that there is still give in the jersey.  On the sleeves I've stitched three piece of silver ribbon but again only in certain spots to keep the flexibility.

Next the balls.

I am not to be trusted with sharp implements so I enlisted the help of my father to cut them into half.  I ordered 25 60mm diameter balls and ended with 50 half spheres.  I have hand painted them all silver.

I recommend acrylic paint for this because yes aerosols would have been quicker.  But I didn't want the polystyrene reacting with the paint and thought that the water based paint would be less likely to react.  The down side is that it has taken three coats of paint to get near the shade of silver and the coverage I wanted. Dull work but someone's got to do it.

To attach the half spheres to the dress I use a hot glue gun and stick them on in columns.

And the finished article: 

I got a little over excited when my Dad finished my headset...

I bought a wide plastic alice band and two sound to light kits.  My dad is an engineer so it was his job to do the electronics and mount the kits on it. I'm thrilled with the results.

A reaction to the now deleted Geek Camp Girls Post

I'm quite sad that this post has to be written but it appears it does.

Last night the Geek Camp Girls posted to their blog some guidelines for interacting with them in whilst in costume at geek camp.  I have to admit I felt sad that they felt the need to post it, but in the current climate with geeky girls being challenged a lot I completely understood their need to write and post something.

The tone of the piece (which has now been taken down or I would link to it) was written very much tongue-in-cheek and the thrust of the piece was just asking to be treated with respect.

This post was shared because it was funny because it was talking sense and then bad stuff started to happen.

By bad stuff I mean those who shared the post were getting abuse - getting accused of being sexist(!) and this being the internet things quickly escalated and lots of people involved felt very upset.

So why am I writing this? It upsets me when people I like are attacked and it saddens me that when a group of women are saying that they want to be treated with respect that they get slammed for it.  These are normal women, they are not booth babes, they want to celebrate their fandom, their way and should be able to do that without harassment.

This morning, one of the group has left because she feels she will not be welcome at geek camp anymore and that's the kick to the guts. Fandom is becoming a polarised place  - somewhere that should be accepting of everyone no longer is - at least not to women who dare to stick their head above the parapet.

For the record, this is making me ever more determined to kick ass with my dalek dress that I am putting together.

Poetry

Even though I've submitted my second TMA the course continues to rumble on and I am knee deep in poetry at the moment. Glorious bonkers poetry.  Now it just so happens that I used to write poems horribly naive poems of teenaged indulgence.

It is weird putting poetry to the forefront of my mind again, I feel like I'm squeezing back into skin I've not used in an awfully long time. I've started drafting three different poems this week and it feels like I've been working muscles I've not used in aeons.

I was tidying up my office/geekspace at home yesterday to tidy away some xmas decs when I paused at my poetry shelf. (Yep studied literature long enough to amass a shelf of poetry) and flicked through some old favourites. All the annotations that I used to make and it was weird, I was that person am I still?

I'm certainly fond of poetry, in a free verse ignore the rules kind of way but I'm not sure if it is who I am now.  The course book lists some ways of generating poems which feel clunky and I'm not sure if I'm generating anything worthwhile.

But on the flipside, it's fun and it is a different way of working, if I could write prose in the same picky way, contrstructing and crafting on a micro level it would drive me mad, but in a 12 line poem it is something else.

Well here's a draft of a poem I wrote today.

Between Two Nowheres

There is a rock, cragged old granite,
Fissures deep and wider than two fingers.
Heavy it dominates the plain.

The sky is open here, a dialogue
of weather converses with the land
Shaping and changing it like opinions
And reasoning win arguments.

Place a hand on the ground flat
Palm down, absorb the resonance
Slow throbbing vibrations, a gong
Last hit millennia ago still reverberating.

There is a path, nothing official
No signs or stiles or steps
Just the memory of a thousand feet
Taking a thousand more steps.

Amazed

Last night I posted Geek is a Feminist Issue because it was something I felt strongly about. I was sure that some people would appreciate my opinion but  I've been overwhelmed, amazed and bewildered by the response.

Thanks to @GeekCampGirls especially @dalekette and @_BabyDollNikki_ for helping to get the message out there.

If you took time to read the post and tweet me or comment or shared it with someone else thank you.

I have tweeted @therealgokwan a few times over the last forty-eight hours and I know that a number of other people have done the same or retweeted at him.  As yet he hasn't acknowledged which is a shame. It has been suggested that I write to him personally and I'm considering that option.

It's been a strange 24 hours.