My pants, they are very fancy

So get this craziness:

Remember the conference? Well. They're making a book of the conference proceedings and my paper is one of the ones they've selected for publication.

I KNOW.

Pardon me while I go off and Squuuuuuueeeeeeeee. And then bury my ass in revisions. Oh man, I have a lot of work to do.

Ireland - The photos

Finally. I got around to uploading my final batch of photos from the trip, from Dublin and the surrounding countryside.



Jim Larkin implores you to raise the roof.





One of my favorite captures of the entire trip. Street performer on Grafton Street.



At the Guinness storehouse, they had this section where they invited you to leave a postcard with a message. This was one of my favorites.



Mmmm. Best. Guinness. Ever.



Oscar Wilde thinks you're very droll.



Even more street performers!







Shamrocks in Ireland! I know, it's a cheesy picture. I COULDN'T HELP IT, IT TOOK IT ANYWAY AND I LOVE IT.



Irish sheep!



Performer at the art opening I attended at Gallery H.



River Liffey. Sigh. This photo makes me homesick for Dublin.

Some conference stuff

I haven't really talked about the conference very much, as I've been trying to wrap my head around the whole experience.

I go back and forth — some days I'm like, "I'm awesome! I held my own and did really well." Other days I'm like, "I should have done it differently." Whatever. I'll talk about my presentation, and my feelings about it, later. The bottom line is that it was something I had never done before, and not only did I go out there and do it, I did it all by myself* in a foreign country. So I'm proud of that, regardless of however my presentation went over.

Overall, I was incredibly impressed by this conference. Mostly, I was thrilled to meet a whole group of passionate, intelligent, fun people. I was totally impressed my fellow academics/presenters. Listening to the exchange of ideas, the debates, the fanwanking...it was all so stimulating. There were times I felt like I was in over my head, of course (I know nothing about Foucault, other than he has a pendulum — oh wait. Wrong Foucault), but overall, it was fun to be in the mix.

Of course, there were times I was really intimidated by all the other smarties. The first presentation of the conference was done by a student from Toronto, Jessica Frey, on the Doctor's Canadian identity. She did such a bang-up job, right out of the gate. Her paper was well-crafted and thoughtful, and she presented so well, even in light of some technical glitches. Immediately I thought, "I'm fucked." It wasn't until more people presented that I felt comfortable enough to be like, "Well, they won't throw rotten vegetables at me, so I'll be OK." Not to sound too girl-crushy here, but I was just impressed by Jessica full stop, because not only was she whip-smart, she was also vocal, opinionated without being brash, organized, well-spoken, and confident. In a word, she is the nerd I strive to be.

At the first tea break (we had many tea breaks) I went up to Jess and told her how impressed I was with her paper and how high she had set the bar for the conference. She was very nice and we chatted for a bit. She gave me her business card and it turns out that she's an academic correspondent for a site called HardCoreNerdity.com. What a sweet-ass job!

Jess is a part of the GeekU podcast, and the latest episode is about her experience at the conference. Again, she speaks very well about the highlights of the conference and what an academic conference is all about. Imagine how chuffed I was when Jess briefly references my paper! So if nothing else, I was memorable. You can listen to the podcast here. (Spoilers for the entire New Who series, natch.)

* Well, Tammi was there to see me do it, but you know what I mean

Doctor Who - The Photos

All right. Settle in for an extremely geeky fan girl posting.

While in Cardiff for a Doctor Who Academic Conference, I just had to stop by the Doctor Who exhibition. For academic reasons, of course. For the learning. You know, research and stuff.

I'm quite committed to the learning.

Mainly it's a collection of the props and costumes from the past 4 seasons, and an excuse for me to goofily grin like a dork at all the memorabilia.



It's blurry, but that's Nine's jacket and jumper! Oh Nine, you're MY Doctor. I miss you a bit.



Again, blurry (there were all kinds of lights flashing in this corridor, making my auto focus freak), but there's one of Ten's suits.

TARDIS!





Oh, shut up. Like you wouldn't want to be whisked away in one.







AHHHH, DALEKS!!!!





The exhibit was quite cute, having an alternate route for kids to go through in case they were scared of the Daleks. Aww.



The Ood. How...odd.



Donna, there's something on your back!



One of my absolute favorite episodes of Who is the Human Nature/Family of Blood story. I love John Smith's journal. I was desperate to thumb through it, but of course it's under glass. It's opened to the description of the events in "Parting of the Ways." At one point it says, "I am a coward, and this time that's good." HEART BREAKING.



K9! "Good dog!" "Affirmative!"

And just to end on a classy note...



Heh. With pleasure.

Cardiff - The Photos

I didn't take too many photos in Cardiff. Mainly because I was sort of busy being a fancy academic person most of the time I was in Cardiff and not running around with my camera.



Cardiff University was quite picturesque.







The Welsh language is kind of crazy.



Since Doctor Who and Torchwood are filmed in Cardiff, there was much stopping at perfectly mundane places -- shopping malls, street corners, etc. -- and getting excited because something had been shot there. There was a point where Charlotte (the fellow academic I was sight-seeing with) and I stood and marveled at a roundabout because it's THE roundabout that the Torchwood team constantly goes around.



Here is the "Brooding Building" where Capt. Jack randomly stands and looks pensively all over Cardiff.

And of course:



THE RIFT! THE RIFT IS OPEN!

Just like Big Ben was my photo obsession in London, the Water Tower was my obsession in Cardiff:







Of course there was the obligatory standing at the base of the Water Tower and dorkily imagining for a second that you were headed into Torchwood via the secret entrance.

SHUT UP. I KNOW.

Still, it was fun.

Oh, speaking of entrances into Torchwood:



The visitor's entrance, or "tourism information." As a fabulous touch, the windows are boarded up and covered with newspapers from the "Boomtown" episode of Doctor Who.



Hee!



In these stones, horizons sing.





Charlotte, my fellow dork nerd academic and fan girl.





More photos of Cardiff are here.

London - The Photos

I'm going to be up front: I'm in a bit of a photography funk. I don't know if it's burn-out, or what, but I was quite disappointed in my photos from this trip. Even while I was there, I could feel my frustration rising as I tried to take pictures. For one thing, I was very conscious of looking like a tourist — which, I am a tourist, so who the fuck cares? — and could feel myself hesitating before I shot things and struggling to find unique shots and what not. And generally, I've been feeling limited with photographic abilities and techniques. I realize that I'm probably being hard on myself, but seriously. My goal is to push myself and get better, so I'm being critical for a reason. However, this is a topic for another entry.

ANYWAY. London.



I was there! Meet Big Ben. Big Ben is totally my clock boyfriend. I could not stop taking photos of it. Anytime Big Ben came into my sight line I had to raise my camera and take a picture, almost to prove to myself that I was actually in London.







See what I mean?







It was Remembrance Day when I arrived. Poppies were everywhere.





St. Paul's Cathedral



There was an art installation going on at the time, and these seemingly random words — TIME, THINK, MOTHER, PHONE, YOUR, OWN, PEACE, etc. — were being projected on the Dome. Mya and I stood trying to puzzle out messages from the words. I was a bit like magnetic poetry.

Buckingham Palace...







The Queen was home! Sadly, she did not invite me in for tea.





Walking through St. James Park, I came across a professional photoshoot. I can't wait to see this ad somewhere. Those models looked cold.





Here's the weird beeping creature I told you about.





My first night in London, Mya, her cousin and I walked around London's South Bank. The tide was so low that sandy beaches lined the Thames. We came across this man taking advantage of the sand. The next morning when I came to the same spot, the tide had risen so high, all of his work had vanished and you'd never be able to tell there would have been a beach underneath at all.

More photos from London here.