There is way too much I want to do. That has always been my problem. I just want to do everything, and do everything really really well. I know that is not possible, and I frequently stretch myself way too thin. I really need to stop that, and focus on a couple of projects at a time. Otherwise nothing will ever get completed.

I am working on some stop mo. I started a new diet, and I have noticed a bit of shakiness along with it, so I am waiting until it stops to work more on filming. I am, however, writing and planning. Scheming, if you will. I need some more money before I can buy more building supplies, so that will have to wait too. Cons are really expensive. Especially when you have unexpected expenses after being left at a train stop with no heat over night. (No, I probably will never get over that).

Right now it is freezing outside. Usually here in Oregon we get a lot of rain on this side of the state, but not a ton of snow or freezing. Last year we got a buttload of snow. This year we got thus far a little bit of snow, but below freezing tempuratures that temporarily dip up above freezing. They dip up long enough to thaw just a little bit, then they dip down again freezing everything that just melted into giant unmanageable sheets of ice. As far as getting around, this is tragic. I am kind of stuck in my cave at the top of a hill that is difficult to traverse when cased in ice. My joints are not really happy with me right now. They are taking thier revenge every chance they get. They barely get past the con weekend, then this happens. I have spent a lot of time in front of a space heater.

However....the ice may be dangerous, but it is also beautiful. I went out just for a little bit to do some capturing. I did some regular photogging on Monday, then today I put on the ole reversing ring and got some goreous close-ups of the ice. Ice is so beautiful. It can do so many things. I can't get over the textures I saw on the ice n the leaves and on the branches of the bushes and trees. I am posting a few below, but if you wanna see em all, you can go HERE or HERE to veiw the Flickr page.

So it has been a week. I have been kind of sick and recovering. But Anglicon was a BLAST!! SO worth it.

Anglicon is a British media themed nerd con in Seattle, WA. You can read about it HERE.

*EDIT: Also there is an Anglicon photo group on Flickr. Everyone's photos are pooled HERE. *

Next year it is happening around the same weekend. I plan to be there too. And I am helping to plan where I can.

I took the train up on Thursday previous, to make sure I had time to unpack and decompress. when you have joint issues, decompression time is crucial. I got there and the only room they had open was way on the other side of the hotel from the con. That makes it hard to go back to the room between panels if i need to, so I asked if they had anything closer. She said she would have one open in an hour and to come back then. I went and had dinner and came back. She looked at my reservation, rolled her eyes, swore and offered me a tower room for regular room price. Which of course I took. It has a fridge and is much closer to panels. It was nice having my own room for once. It is definitely cheaper to have roommates, but with no one I know who wanted to go, I would rather absorb the cost than room with an unknown. I need to be able to sleep and relax. I am too old to have people partying around me all night.


I got to help teach kids stop mo. I got to meet a ton of cool people. I ended up getting my picture taken with both the 5th Doctor Peter Davison and the 7th Doctor Sylvester McCoy. I tried Periscoping from the con, but it did not really work, except in my hotel room. I paid extra to the kickstarter so I got to tour Seattle with Peter Davison. It was fun. We went to the Space Needle, which I haven't seen since I was 10. And we went to the Living Computers Museum. OMG!!! My nerd done squeed out everywhere there. They have a ton of computer equipment from the beginning of computing until now, and they have been working to get a lot of it working. It is amazing. They also have some awesome new technology for you to play with. If you are ever in Seattle, GO IF YOU CAN. It is awesome.

I was going to do a blow-by-blow of the weekend, but I am still tired and dealing with a cold. I don't have energy for that right now. At the end I will post a link to my Flickr page and post a few pics I took.

The thing I want to really go into is what happened on the way home. I suppose I should let it go, considering what Amtrak is going through right now, but it is hard. Thier idiocy caused me to spend 2 days on my back with joint issues. The stop at Tukwila, WA is the stop that is closest to the con hotel. It takes a whole $10 off the cab/Lyft ride between the station to the hotel. It is also a minimal stop. There is no building, no heaters, just a few bus type shelters. There are 3 tracks. Track 1, a track for cargo trains, and Track 2. Between the cargo track and Track2, there is a huge fence. I am sure this is to make sure people don't run across the tracks at a bad time. What it does is make things way more difficult. There are also steep stairs from the parking lot to the tracks. The only ramp goes all the way around the area, and only goes to Track 2. If you want to go to track 1, you have to haul your ass and your stuff up the stairs. Do you know how hard this is when you are walking with a cane and have a heavy suitcase? I would like to say this is not ADA compliant, if you can only get to one of a couple of possible places with the ramp. According to the Tukwila Amtrak website, the train I needed to catch usually goes on Track 2. It does say that sometimes it arrives on Track 1. I have used this station before. I know where Track 2 is. I considered it, and decided the probablility of it coming on Track 2 is the highest probability so I wait on Track 2. Then the train shows up on Track 1. None of thier train tracking mechanisms mentioned a change of track. There was no annoucement over a loudspeaker. No warning. I just had to rush over to the other track. Which, if you remember from earlier, is only accessible by going all the way around the 1/2 mile platform area, down some steep stairs, and then back UP the steep stairs. Not a fast process for anyone, but particularly not a fast process for me. So I start trying to head over there. Before I am even to where I can get around the train leaves the station. It is 6:19pm. Late. Cold...below freezing. I had a reservation. They knew I was going to get on. But they did not stop long enough for anyone to get around, much less me with my crap and my cane and my joints that were already painful and not wanting to work from sitting there waiting in the freezing cold. They did not warn me in any way that I would need to get to the other track. I was told the train would beon time, but nothing about the track change. When I called them, they had no sympathy and weren't willing to help me at all. They told me to stay warm until the next day, when the next train came through. Stay warm. I had no money left. Well, very little money left. I just paid my hotel bill for the weekend and my next check did not hit for 2 days. There is nothing close enough. I had to take a Lyft, depleting what little money I had, to get to anywhere I could get warm. There are other stations with other trains that leave later, but further north. They could have offered a cab to get to one of those stations then a ticket on one of those trains. Or to put me up, because I had no way of preventing my predicament. It was entirely thier fault. Nope. Nothing. This makes me so mad. I know, I am being petty. But I can't wait in the cold. I had no money. I expected them to let me know if I needed to be on the other track. I put a call out on the facebooks, and some friends fronted me the money to get a hotel room for the night and cab fare. I swear, if I did not have awesome friends I would have been screwed. And my health insurance does not kick in till Jan 1. Again, I know they have the derailment to deal with. Which, btw, if the con was a week later I would have been on. But they still dropped the ball. The next morning there were 6 people there waiting with me for the train. It isn't like it is rarely used. They know how hard it is to get from track to track. They should already have a mechanism in place to prevent this. It is not a new stop. I have used it in the past. It may be maintained by Sounder, but they need to help thier passangers navigate it. Humph and humph. *shakes fist impotently at the sky* *adds cane shake for emphasis*

Ok...enough bitching. Here are a few of the better pictures. You can see all of them by going HERE. Sigh. Enjoy!

So Patreon has annouced a new "funding structure". This has everyone up in arms. I can see why. It is a crappy thing to do, at a crappy time, with no real benefit to the patrons.
*EDIT AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE WITH UPDATES!!!*

Basically, from reading thier blog post HERE, it looks like they are taking fees for themselves twice and adding an extra service charge. And this is not per account, this is per pledge. So if you pledge $1 to one artist and $1 to another artist, they will take nearly that much in fees. They are framing it like they are giving more to the artist, but I don't see how that would benefit them. They are taking double fees so they can make money.

Now, don't get me wrong. I understand they are in the business of making money, not helping people. Helping people is great, but it doesn't put food on the table or pay bills. (Hence the reason artists need this kind of thing). But this....

Well, thier timing sucks. This is the month people are going to be tight on money because of the holiday season. Even if a person doesn't celebrate the holidays, or do christmas or whatever, most people take the opportunity to travel to see family they can't afford to see the rest of the year. Because this upper hemisphere is cold during this month, heating and food bills go way, way up. And due to the economy salaries are not. They are completely and utterly not going up. Many companies in my area of the world are laying off everyone and shutting down completely. I don't know if they even considered that. While I have not heard directly if any artists have been hit hard by people leaving in droves, I suspect many will no longer be able to afford to patreon anymore. If it is between feeding kids and paying an artist, feeding kids will always win out. As it should.

It does seem, reading all their posts and responses, that it could have waited until Feb....after the holidays are over, and after that first month of "what the hell did I do and how do I budget for paying for this" is ironed out. What I am not seeing is a good and sound reason not to announce it now and implient it in February. That gives people enough time to learn about it thoroughly, figure out how it is going to effect them and plan accordingly. This short 8 day turn around is not fair to those who have to change thier direction mid stream. In many cases, this will mean re-evaluating current systems in place and figuring out how to change them to accomodate. That is not an 8 day process. *EDIT: It would a little over 8 days. I realize I was a little late to this game.* This puts undue stress on everyone. And it SEEMS right now that the only motivation is they want more money immediately. They are not coming across like they care at all how this is going to effect thier customers and users. And if you want your customers and users on your side for a change that is only going to financially advantage you, that is not the way to go about it.

I have seen a bunch of people ranting and raving about how they are going to just jump ship, both artists and partons alike. While I understand the sentiment, that action will not fix this issue. As an artist, you are abandoning your fans, your community. Without a replacement option to go to, you are leaving them high and dry. When it takes months for you to figure out a new solution, they will move on to other artists and put thier money there. As a patron, you are abruptly leaving the artist you support without the monetary support they were counting on, only because you told them they could count on it.

Please don't let your knee jerk reactions to this announcement jeopardize a good idea.

If we can hold out, and figure this out, we may be able  to get through this. Whether that is convincing Patreon to wait a bit, or figuring out a better solution for them...or creating a new solution that works better and is not subject to on the fly screw-overs.

I LOVE how many wonderful and talented artists I have seen flourish and grow their business because of our support. I LOVE seeing people able to do the things they love without having to grow ulcers wondering if corporate America will deem them worthy of supporting. I love to see all the new, creative, wierd, awesome, gruesome, thoughful and otherwise art that gets to be made because this is a thing.

It would break my heart to see all this stop because our knee jerk reaction to a bad and poorly implemented decision left a bad taste in everyone's mouths. Because, believe me, if enough people get burned, this won't be allowed to happen again. Trust would be broken, and that is hard to rebuild. But if we work together as a community, I am confident we can turn this debacle into something good.

Because we are creators...we are creative....that is what we do.

Amanda Palmer wrote a wonderful post about why she isn't leaving Patreon just yet. I agree with her wholeheartedly. It is important we stick with our communities. It is important that we as a community decide with our artists what we will support.

I have a lot more I want to say, but I think at this point I have said enough. We as a community, and you as part of this community, need to step up.


*EDIT: So Patreon LISTENED! They actually heard all the comments, took them into consideration, and decided to do what is best for everyone, not just them. This gives me hope. See, I told you we should give them a chance. :) If you wanna see thier full statement, you can read it HERE.

Faith in humanity restored. And Patreon has proven they are not just a coporate entity whose main goal is money, and the people are secondary. It was a bad decision that was not though through completely. They do good things for the creative community. Now that they have proven they are behind us, let's get behind them and give am another chance.