Before the end of Anticipation, we had made a tour of the freebies table since a friend tip us about some editors donating some books.  We have found an anthology and left overs red bags.  But, just beside the table with the books we have the holy grail of pamphlets, page holders and various trinkets.

We have begun to check the websites and we were very impressed by the quality of the work we find.  Unfortunately conventions in Quebec and Canada are mostly absent in the publicity we have seen.  I think we may have missed an opportunity here.  Now go for the links Boo.

continue reading "From the freebies table"

Why we never have fun when we read  French SF? with Alain Ducharme, Christian Sauvé, Alamo St-Jean, Benoît Girard

On this panel, the discussion was about how difficult is it to find humor in French SF novels and how difficult is it to write such novels.

First, humor is culturally different if you live in France, Africa or North America. Even if you write in French, people from Paris won’t laugh for the same thing than French Canadian.

Second, the language structure is not the same than English. For example, the translation of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a real challenge for the translator Jean Bonnefoy (he complains all along the preface of the book). French writers cannot do humor the same way than English writers.

Third, it’s hard to find a writer skilled enough to make a humorous novel even in non-SF novel.

At last, it is hard to find such novel to be published or translated.

If you find such novel, write us and we will read it happily!

On Tuesday, the day after the closing ceremonies, we had the luck to go on the CSA tour with some peoples of the convention.  It was a very interesting tour and we took many pictures for the one who where not here.  I was surprised by the scope and uses of the technologies developed by the space agency.  The major ones, we have seen, are on deployable lightweight structures, robotics, movement algorithms and detection instruments.  All of these subjects can be adapted for use on Earth.

The guide of the tour was a scientist working at the space agency.  Her specialty is on deployable structures.  She assisted to some panels during the convention to get a feeling of the knowledge and type of discussions we had there.  She was surprised by the high level of the discussions and it was showing in our tour.  The tour we had was not a family tour.

continue reading "Canadian space agency tour"

Cory Doctorow was the moderator on this panel with, as participants,  C Meeks, Howard Davidson and Jack William Bell.  The discussion was about how people relate to technology and is it possible to take control of it.  For most people technology is like a black box, a very complex black box with no possibility to thinker with.

But in fact its possible to repair or modify many things.  We only need to change our mindset to “I can do it and it won’t explode”.  Its not that hard and it can be a rewarding experience.  You will find a list of projects at the end of this post related to making things by ourselves.  As Doctorow said: All you need, is to know its possible, how to spell it and how to use Google.

But there is a good chance that many projects will fail or be too difficult for most people.  Its necessary and help us to discover what we can do and to develop related skills.  The blogging project where anybody is publishing on the Internet is a classic case of failure on massive scale because many blogs are dying without any readers.  The blog system has given to many peoples the opportunity to try and to discover if they are made for blogging.  As a whole we have found many talented writers and we are still discovering new ones because its easy to blog and it only need access to a computer.  Its a brilliant experiment.

A problem with the maker approach is the trade secrets and protection used by companies to protect their rights.  Nokia was a big fan of this kind of protection.  At one time someone estimated the number of transistors used to detect a non Nokia brand battery.  He found that there is five time more transistors devoted to detect the battery brand than to protect the data exchanged.  A lot of money and time has been invested in the battery and it doesn’t give usable features to the user.  In fact, there is no value added for the us.

Here is some links and Google keywords:

Feral robotics dogs
Sugar linux
Arduino
Radio amateur handbook (this book has been reedited many times)
RepRap
Afrigadgets
CNC machine shop
Electronic frontier foundation
Fair copyrights for Canada
Myth TV

Keywords:

maker bill of rights

Sorry for the delay.  We are back at Chicoutimi and needed some time to recover after the convention.  The fifth day was the last day of Anticipation.  It was mostly a social day where we took some time to talk and share with friends.  We won the two artworks we wanted and they will on display in a few days in our home.  There will be no pictures of them because of copyrights but we have found some informations on the artist.  He is very talented.  If somebody is able to find an official web site for him, please put it in comments.  I’d like to see more of his artworks.

Naotoshi Inoue

Naotoshi Inoue is an illustrator, was born in Tokyo. He graduated Tokyo Designer Gakuin (Professional school for designers). He works for making fliers of music concerts, illustrations of stage drama for children, etc. He was also on the team that brought up the excellent Nippon 2007 Worldcon.

We had gone to two panels this day and to the closing ceremony.  The panels were “No User Serviceable Parts Inside” and “Pourquoi ne s’amuse-t-on jamais en lisant de la SF en français?”.  As usual we have some pictures to show of the closing ceremonies and of the bids on the artworks.