Morton Fox's journal

Last weekend was FA United 2019 in Northern Virginia. That was my fourth and last furry convention for the year. It'll be hard to cut one convention next year to make room for a new one because each convention had a strength or niche of its own. In the case of FAU, it was games and gastronomical adventures.

The most interesting panel to me was the virtual reality panel. After a demo by the panelists, the audience got to take turns trying a Vive VR headset. The game I played was Richie's Plank Experience. From what I heard, this is a game often used to show newcomers the possibilities of VR. In this game, you take an elevator 80 floors up. When the elevator door opens, all you see is a wooden plank, sticking straight out into the air, with a cake at the end. Then you have to walk out on the plank, get the cake, and return to the elevator. It's scary if you're afraid of heights. Interestingly, I didn't experience any dizziness or vertigo playing this game. Despite what I saw, my mind and body could tell it wasn't real. So I went to the end of the plank, got the cake, and took the elevator back to street level and that was the full plank experience.

I also played on the Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator. In the panel room, we had six laptops networked together. Each laptop showed a screen of controls for a particular role on the spaceship bridge, e.g. the science officer had a screen for checking and scanning various objects on the map. I was the engineer, so I had controls for directing power to various systems (weapons, shields, engine, etc) on the ship. There was also one screen on the projector for the ship captain. The game was a lot like Star Trek. There were space anomalies that we had to check and battles with enemies. We did an easy mission first and then a harder one. In the harder mission, the spaceship nearly got eaten by a space dragon, which was hilarious.

The Board Game Tournament was a lot of fun too. We had a bunch of games (tiddlywinks, Liar's Dice, Sorry, Scattergories, and LCR) in the room. We had five minutes to play each game before moving on to the next game. Scoring was based on progress in the game, regardless of whether we finished. Because of the variety of games, we needed luck, skill, and a combination of both. When we were done, I found that I was actually only one point short of 3rd place, which was a lot better than I thought I would do.

( Food adventures, maybe not for the squeamish )

So I had a great time at FAU. It's not the biggest convention, nor does it have the most panels and events, but it definitely offers some unique experiences.

Last weekend, I headed off to Virginia Beach for FursonaCon. I keep coming back to this furry con because among the cons I attend, they have the most fun, easy-going vibe and they like to try different things instead of borrowing ideas from other furry cons. This is the kind of con where, alongside the more usual panels and workshops, there is a panel where someone tried to do a Bob Ross painting in MS Paint. (It was probably the most hilarious panel in the con.)

There were no fursuit games this time, although that's par for the course as this kind of event has been on its way out for a while. There was a short and sweet fursuit parade, which went from the main events ballroom through the dealers room and finally to the hotel lobby for the photo shoot. With 155 fursuiters in the parade, we really filled up the hotel lobby! After the fursuit parade, I participated in a music video shoot, choreographed by achookitty, to the tune of Honey, I'm Good. It was fun to do. We had a two-hour block in the schedule to rehearse and video record the dance but it was simple enough that we finished early.

And finally, because I like to bring something back from each con that I made myself, I went to the sewing panel and made a furball keychain. There was a problem with the projector so we did not have the instructional video during the panel but it still wasn't too difficult.

How exactly does one write the name of this furry con? Their website has "FurtheMore", "Fur the More", and "Fur The More". Their social media adds "Fur the 'More", with the apostrophe, which I think was the original way to spell it. Anyway, that's where I was for this past weekend, from March 14 to 18.

No trip to DC would be complete without a little side trip to a place of interest. Since I was getting some Flagstack dice flags (actually a lot of them!) in Fort Hunt, I went a bit farther down the road to take a look at Mount Vernon, George Washington's home. My overall impression is it's a nicely preserved piece of history but the mall-style food court in front of the property looked really out of place.

Like last year's FurtheMore, I didn't fursuit much this year. I participated in the fursuit parade and the fursuit games, and wandered around in fursuit a bit on Saturday but that was about it. There weren't too many other fursuit-oriented activities if you aren't into dance competitions. The fursuit games this year were set up as a set of carnival games that you can play in any order you want. (Last year's FA United had a similar setup but with an olympics theme instead.) I thought some of those games were difficult to play in fursuit but still, with some luck and a whole lot of flailing, I got four prizes out of the five games.

I seem to be getting more and more into gaming activities nowadays. On Friday, I joined an escape room session. This is where my team had to figure out codes to unlock boxes and a safe. We got stuck on some puzzles and needed a couple of hints but with a two-minute extension, we completed the mission. Then in the evening, I played some Jackbox games in the video gaming room. These were all party games where you watch the monitor and answer questions on your smartphone. Somehow I did the best at the Patently Stupid game. This is a mock startup / venture capital game in which each player is given a problem and has to draw an invention to solve the problem. Then everyone decides which inventions to fund. On Saturday, I went to the loot brawl, a gift swap game. Then later, I went to the tabletop gaming room to play Telestrations. This game is a combination of Telephone and Pictionary, in which we take turns drawing something and guessing what was drawn, with hilarious results. On Sunday, I visited the tabletop gaming room again to play Spyfall 2. This game is similar to Werewolf, except we have to figure out which one person is the spy by asking questions about a meetup location while the spy has to figure out which location is the meetup location. All in all, there was a good variety of games at the con and I enjoyed those a lot.

Next year, FurtheMore will move from the Sheraton Tysons to the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City, near the Reagan Washington National Airport and closer to downtown Washington DC. I thought it would be an interesting change until I found out that hotel parking is valet-only and costs $40/day! I heard FurtheMore will try to negotiate a parking discount, so I'll have to see what the parking rate they settle on. At the same time, this may be a nudge to try a different local con next year.

Only two weeks after FA United, I went on a trip again, this time to Virginia Beach for FursonaCon. With only 424 attendees, this is the smallest con I attended this year. However, they have friendly and enthusiastic vibes all around. In addition, there were a number of panels and workshops with audience participation, so you're not just listening to someone talk. I quite enjoyed those.

The fursuit games (called Gladiator Games to fit this year's Ancient Rome theme) at this convention are unique in that they are spread out over three days with each game being its own event. The downside was each game was an elimination round so once you're out, you can't play the remaining games. I would prefer if everyone got to play every game, the way it was done the previous year. I played the scavenger hunt round but was eliminated in the trivia-bowling round, more because of bad bowling than the trivia. However, the prize from the first round was what I picked up in the scavenger hunt, which was a poster from FursonaCon 2017. Pretty nifty piece of history, and it's nice that the con found a way to reuse those.

The Hatoful panel was a lot of fun. It was Thursday evening, so I went to that right after arriving at the hotel, checking in, and picking up my badge. Hatoful Boyfriend is an interactive visual novel with some choices along the way that affect the direction of the story. There were lots of characters in the dialog. The panelists took the main characters but everyone in the audience could jump in and voice the secondary characters. I did three voices, two of them snooty characters but I really got into it. Even after the panel, I caught myself casually doing one of those voices when I went out shopping later that night.

The STEM Furs Meet and Greet had some really good discussion too. I've worked in software development for a long time so I had plenty to share and everyone else had a lot of special expertise too, so the hour really flew by. Another fun event was "If I fits, I sits", where fursuiters could play around with large boxes and squeakers, like a bunch of cats. The Jackbox Party Night was hilarious too. Imagine a room full of people joking around and tapping choices on their smartphones. We played Murder Trivia and Quiplash. Then there was the Nerd Congress panel, where we debated and voted on a number of make-believe laws for the fandom. And last but not least, I also went to the drawing workshop that was run by one of the guests of honor. I haven't done any art in years but it's good to know I still have some base level of skill.

To summarize, FursonaCon was a small con but with more interesting things going on than one would expect for this size of con. There were a lot of energy and a good vibe going the whole weekend. I would definitely return the next year.

Last weekend, I was once again in Pittsburgh for Anthrocon, continuing my streak of attending every single Anthrocon so far. As usual, I got there a day early, on Wednesday, and stayed to Monday morning with roomies Marauder and Joey Gatorman.

Let's start with the improvements. I'm sure there were many more but of the two I noticed the most, the first was in scheduling. I'm glad they moved the fursuit games to Friday afternoon. I couldn't participate the last two years because it was in an early Sunday morning slot. The second improvement I noticed was they had pretty much eliminated the line for the fursuiter tag pickup. In previous years, they needed to do some recordkeeping to avoid giving out multiple tags to the same person. There were so many fursuiters picking up tags after the opening ceremony on Friday that even a slight delay resulted in a long line. This year, they simply punched a hole in the con badge and that was the indicator that the fursuiter had gotten a tag. Simple and clever. Of course, I've already heard people complaining that con badges are collectibles and should not have holes punched in them but I don't mind.

As usual, Anthrocon was an overwhelming mass of activities from morning to late night for three days (this year, actually three and a half days) in a row and that's the way I like it. I picked and chose panels, events, games, and meetups. I fursuited a lot more at this Anthrocon than the previous year's, probably to make up for the last few cons where I was a bit meh on that. And somehow, in the midst of all the activities, I found time to meet up with and chat with long-time friends. And in some cases, they found me.

Also as in past years, I took some side trips on the way to and on the way back from Pittsburgh. On the way to Pittsburgh, I stopped in Johnstown to capture some Munzees and in Greensburg for Munzees and lunch. (Had to use the special in the Primanti Bros app, of course!) On the way back from Pittsburgh, I had an overnight stay in Gettysburg. The battlefield park has many plaques, statues, and cannons, which reminded me of my visit to Valley Forge. I also visited the covered bridge on the edge of town, two of the observation towers, and some geological features. (Devil's Den, Little Round Top, and a stone bridge with dinosaur toe tracks) I didn't have a proper sightseeing plan for my visit so it's good that there were geocaches, munzees, and some Flagstack flags at all the key locations so I knew where to go.

So this past weekend, I was back at the Sheraton in Tysons Corner for Fur The More 2018. One thing I like about this con is they try new things. This time, it was a passport stamp sheet that you can get stamped at various locations and events. Fill in enough of the squares on the page and you get a prize. I got the first reward, which was a pin, but not the second. I think it's a good idea since it gets everyone to explore more of the con, even check out some events that one may not have thought of checking out. What I didn't like as much were some passport items that required spending money because it smells like pay-to-play, but there are enough free items to get the first reward at least. Also, they should've made the passport page non-glossy so the stamp ink won't smudge. Maybe next time.

I didn't fursuit as much at this con. I was in the fursuit parade and the fursuit games, and I did a bit more fursuiting on Saturday evening but that was about it. There wasn't much else to do in fursuit at the con. Instead, I found a lot more panels and events of interest. I watched the Japanese tea ceremony. I learnt how to keep a bullet journal, how to make an interactive story with Ren'Py, and how to play Sushi Go. I colored a premade badge. I went to the astronomy party. It was cloudy that night but we used the big telescopes to see the moon and 3 stars. I also went to both loot brawls, panels on contracts and LLCs (presented by lawyers in the fandom), and the furry cringe stories panel. So there was a lot to watch and learn anyway.

Of course no trip this close to Washington DC is complete without a trip into DC. I went twice, on Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, I stopped at several stations along the Silver and Red Metro rail lines to capture munzees, ending at the Eastern Market for dinner and two geocaches. Friday's foray was more touristy. I took the Metro to McPherson Square and walked to Lafayette Square and the White House, or as close as they'd let me get.

DE Furbowl had been postponed since October 2015 while they searched for another suitable bowling alley. In truth though, I wouldn't have been able to make it to many of those. Schedules have gotten pretty full and I had other things to do most of the time. So even though DE Furbowl started again in June, this was the first month I was free enough to consider attending. (Actually there was also a Flagstack event the same weekend, but luckily it was on Sunday so there was no schedule conflict.)

The big surprise: the new location is the New Castle Bowlerama, only about a quarter of a mile from home! How convenient. This bowling alley is bigger than the previous one. The parking area, especially, was ample and there were no parking issues, unlike at the AMF Prices Corner. The inside of this bowling alley seemed more spacious too. There was room to walk around without constantly bumping into other people. However, we didn't have a big party room reserved this time so the fursuit lounge area got rather congested at times. On the plus side, there were comfy chairs and sofas in the fursuit lounge. That's a very nice touch, like a celebrity green room.

Aside from that, it's pretty much the same Furbowl I knew. I met up with some friends, fursuited around the bowling alley a bit, and got into the group photo. That was about it. I'll try to attend another one during the winter months before things get busy again.

So this past weekend was my last furry convention of the year: FursonaCon at Holiday Inn in the Norfolk / Virginia Beach area. It's also the smallest one of the year, with only 297 attendees. (79 fursuiters in the fursuit parade) Funny thing is I think I enjoyed it the most of the four cons I attended this year. There wasn't much programming so that left plenty of time to relax, chat, and fursuit. The local furries are very hospitable. They didn't know me or where I was from ("Remind me again where Delaware is?" said one of them, probably half-jokingly.) but I was just short of dragged to a room party the first night of the con. Of course, with only a few hundred attendees, we didn't have the whole hotel to ourselves but the people from the two wedding parties we shared the hotel with were also very nice and wanted photos with all the fursuiters.

The fursuit games were run differently from other cons. Instead of having all the games as one long event, they split it into multiple short events, one game per event. I thought that was much less tiring. Plus, that meant each game had prizes. I didn't do so well in fursuit dodgeball, but my team won trophies in fursuit hockey. Because there weren't many fursuiters, the parade was short and quick and we got fish tags (for the Atlantis theme) at the end of it. One other benefit to a small con: there was never a wait at the photo room and so I got these wonderful lightstick photos.

Biggest downside though was the hotel. While some parts of the hotel were new and fairly up-to-date, my room wasn't. The faucet was loose. The power socket was loose. Lamp fixtures were rusty. The air conditioner was weak. Housekeeping on my floor lacked attention to detail. They forgot various items and even forgot to service my room the first day. Also there was a musty odor in the hotel corridors and some of the meeting rooms. On the plus side, my room had a refrigerator and microwave oven, which helped a lot because that meant I could buy some groceries and not have to contend with that ridiculous 12.6% restaurant tax in the Norfolk / Virginia Beach area.

What would the weekend be without GPS games? I found 6 geocaches on the trip. They were mostly very easy, even though two of them were rated 5 stars and one 3.5 stars. Surprisingly, the cache that took the most time to find was rated only 1 star. One of the 5-star caches was a pretend 5-star but aside from that, I'm not sure how difficulty ratings work any more. The star of the weekend though was Munzee. That area is packed with pins! On the evening of my arrival, I was up to 3,624 captures when I decided I'd better get back to the hotel! I got 290 more on Sunday evening and over a thousand more on the way home, but even then, it looks like I've barely scratched the surface.

( The caches... )

This is an update to End of a Lifetime from five years ago.

When TextDrive ended, I took up Joyent's offer for five years of Joyent Cloud hosting, which came in the form of a credit balance roughly equal to five years of hosting on a 512MB Joyent SmartMachine. Well, that credit balance finally ran out this month. Joyent's $22/month fee is actually rather steep nowadays for VPS hosting. After investigating a number of VPS providers, I opened a Linode account and set up a lowest-tier node there. It's $5/month for a Linode 1024 and I got the first 4 months free as a signup bonus. Then I moved my websites and domains over. I haven't done that in years, so it took a bit of research to find out how to set everything up but with the wealth of how-to articles and example configurations out there, it's actually easier now than it was the last time. And finally, I shut down and deleted my Joyent Cloud instance so they'll stop billing.

So with Joyent's extension, the TextDrive "lifetime" offer lasted 12 years. Even though it wasn't the lifetime that they originally promised, 12 years of hosting is a decent length of time for the money. Going forward though, I won't consider any more such deals unless they break even within a fairly short time.

One of the prizes you can get for attending a Munzee event is a virtual emerald munzee. Emerald munzees are assigned randomly to emerald gardens, which are groups of hundreds of emerald pins, usually arranged in the shape of a pin icon. Since there were a lot of events in July for Munzee's 6th birthday, new emerald gardens have been popping up all over the world. I noticed that one of those emerald gardens was in Atlantic City, so that's where I went on Saturday.



There it is. Splat, right on the beach! Hope Caesars doesn't mind. :) I also went to Brigantine to capture a nascent munzee garden. I think it's a boat but the shape is unclear now. Unfortunately, it was too rainy for a walk along the beach so I left the area after that.

A number of things happened on Sunday, but the most significant of those was I finally completed my 365-day Munzee capture and deploy streaks and got two more super streak badges! I would not say it's easy because doing anything every single day for a whole year takes some dedication, but it's more doable than a geocaching streak because of the sheer number of munzees out there and the different ways to play the game.

After hitting that milestone, I spent the rest of Sunday in Mount Laurel, Mount Holly, Willingboro, Beverly, and Cinnaminson, the area with so many munzees that even local munzers haven't gotten everything. Since I passed through the downtown part of Mount Holly, I stopped to take a look at the Shinn Curtis Log House, a log cabin that is three centuries old. Funny thing is dinner that evening was also in a 300-year-old building, so South Jersey has a lot of those historic structures.

( The munzees... )