Author Archives: actonrf

Con Report Rose City Comic Con

The Con:  Rose City Comic Con

The Place:  Oregon Convention Center

The Dates:  21 -22 September 2013

Rose City Comic con bills itself as the Largest Pop Icon and comic convention Oregon. Both of my Hello Kitty plushies were my companions.

Saturday:  I got to the convention site around 11:00am. The line  was not  very long and I spent the time checkout the exhibitor’s  hall  and taking pictures  until 12:00 when  I  attended the Chris  Judge (from Stargate ) panel.  It was my time  at a big Comic con style panned, Chris  was ok but I was bother that  he wanted to up things  to a R rated panel but had to restrain himself to a few off color jokes.   The rest of the time I drifted around the exhibitor’s hall especially the old school video games including Altair Star wars with its glorious vector graphics. I attended the Kiju and Hollywood to Comic panel which was very informative.  I went out to dinner and came back for the costume contest and after party. I love the two costumes form the move 9 and the two Cosplay families, mother father, and the kids in costume.

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Con Report Kumoricon 2013

The Con:  Kumoricon

The Place: Vancouver, W#A Hilton and Rad Lion

The Dates:  31 Aug – 2 Sep 2013

Kumoricon is the Portland / Vancouver WA premiere Anime convention ; this is my sixth year in attendance.  All three of my giant plushies were my companions 

Saturday:  Got down to the convention site early for the panelist meeting. I pretty much stuck to fan met and greet panes including the random panel of doom, which I was not all impressed even though   it was fun.  I had confused it with the often renamed panel which was not present this year.  I also attended the Kumoricon, Face Book forum meet up Panel before having a seat for the AMV contest and most of the show.  I went out to Joes Crab Shack  for dinner then did lounged around and spends some time in the video room before calling it a day.

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One Large Leap for Plushies

Giant leap for Pi-powered teddy bear

A soft toy controlled by a Raspberry Pi computer has recreated Felix Baumgartner's record-breaking skydive.

Mr Baumgartner made the furthest freefall in October 2012, from a balloon almost 39km (24 miles) high.

A bear called Babbage has now leapt from a similar height after ascending beneath a hydrogen-filled balloon.

The Raspberry Pi low-cost micro-computer inside Babbage transmitted his position and shot stills and video throughout the flight and descent…….

Read the rest of the story here
Video of the jump


I been following Dave for a while because I think of doing my own High Altitude Balloon mission one day using the Raspberry Pi.

Mothers and Twenty Somethings Leave Those Stuffed Animals Alone

I often lurk around Yahoo Answers and often read and answer a similar question, ether a teen or twenty something or older anguishing that their mother has thrown out their children’s prize stuffed toy collection, the mother want to throw out their stuffed, or an adult wanting to know how to get over their anguish wanting to get rid of their stuffed animals collection but unable to. I have a simple message to the adults and Mothers:

Put the bag down step slowly away from the stuffed animals collection and leave the Plushies be.

I confess I am a furry and a stuffed toy collector, Mosley Hello Kitty or Sanrio but I do have others. I am one of the 35% men who travel with a stuffed animal according to an UK survey.  I sleep with 10 of them yet in all my “immaturity” I am still a well adjusted 50ish year old adult.

I poured   over many parental advice sites wanting to know who to get rid of their kids stuffed animals, in all post are from mothers and women and not a peep from the men.  In all I cannot find, except moving or loss of interest, any logical reason why to dump their kids stuffed animals collection. Most answers are in a form of logical fallacies of appeal to tradition: this we always raised children that way, Bandwagons fallacy or others might think, or generalizations have stuff toys make one immature.  I do not see any logical region to dispose one kid’s cherish plushies  or  prohibit on nagging a child  from  carrying  one interest in stuffed animals will into adult years .  It may be time for parents and adults to grow up and leave stuffed animals be.

Signed

Me a 52 year old stuffed animal fan who says you can only give away my collection of my stuffed toys that cannot fit into my coffin next to my cold dead body.

Big Collection

Part of  my collection