Life - Or something like it

Bah. Almost 4 months since I've posted anything here. Certainly a new record.

As I pointed out back in November, my life has largely taken me away from the topics about which this blog is ostensibly centered.

However, as things often go, life is beginning to take me back to topics on which I feel are worthwhile to blog about.

I've mentioned my attendance at conventions several times in the past, and this past month saw yet another con come and go. This one was Naka Kon 2009 and was my first con I've attended as a staff member (game room overlord if anyone cares). Aside from that duty, I also managed to get myself roped into MCing the cosplay competition (Note to self: Next year, wear gel insoles in costume's shoes).

But perhaps most pertinent was the panel I prepared. It's something I'd been working on for nearly 5 months and went over astoundingly well. The title was "Science of Anime". The idea was to take various phenomenon I'd noticed in anime that were certainly not realistically possible, and use science to show just how nonsensical they really were. The title was patterned off the series of TV shows with titles like "Science of Star Wars" or the "Science of Batman" which occasionally pop up on the Discovery channel. In reflection, I really wish I hadn't named it such (and I'll probably change it in the future) because those shows try to rationalize obviously fictional events with scientific principles but stretch them so implausibly all over, that it's right back into the realm of science fiction. The shows are cute, but ultimately I'm not a fan of them. Thus, I think my future title will be "Anime Mythbusters - Where everything's BUSTED".

Anyway, the panel was videotaped, but since it was in a dark room with a powerpoint, the room is too dark to see me, and the screen is to bright and is overexposed. So the video is worthless. I'm working on getting the audio ripped and making a video with just the slides, but it'll take awhile longer since the person doing my editing work's computer doesn't like the codecs I used to export some of the videos. I'll make a post when it's up on Youtube (or perhaps somewhere else).

Life is also working to take me towards a new career. For the past 9 months, I've been working as a waiter to pay the bills until my lease is up and I can look for a real job somewhere else, but now I'm planning on moving back to St Louis and am planning to teach high school physics (and astronomy if the school offers a course in that area). As such, physics and astronomy education have been on my mind quite a bit recently and I have ideas for a few posts on that topic that I'll likely be writing up when I find time. I've already done an interview with one school district and have resumes out to a few more. Hopefully things will go well.