Are You Ready for Some...Rugby?

The Barclay's Churchill Cup international rugby competition starts in Santa Clara on Saturday, as the Bay Area plays host to one of the two pools of this international rugby tournament. The Churchill Cup is an international rugby tournament jointly organized by the USA, Canada, and England. (Note that I do mean "England," not "Great Britain" or some other combination. England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland -- the last being a unified team, north and south -- field separate national rugby squads.) They have invited three other countries to this year's tournament, and split the six teams into two pools. The "San Francisco" pool, which will be played at Buck Shaw Stadium at Santa Clara University, consists of the USA, Ireland A, and the New Zealand Maori. The other pool is (Canada, England 'Saxons', and Scotland) playing in Ottawa and Toronto. The results of pool play will seed the six teams for the final round in Edmonton.

I hope to attend all three matches being played here, because it's rare to get a chance to see world-class rugby around here. Even though the non-North American unions are more or less bringing along their secondary or developmental sides, it still should be a good series of matches.

Saturday, June 3rd - 2:00PM
United States vs. Ireland A

Wednesday, June 7th - 7:30 PM
United States vs. New Zealand Maori

Saturday, June 10th - 2:00 PM
New Zealand Maori vs. Ireland A

Afterthought, 10:20 AM: This presumably means that before the matches including Ireland A they will play Ireland's Call, which is a wonderful anthem. And the matches with New Zealand Maori will mean we get to see the Haka. Yay!

Match Game at Westercon

Westercon's Programming folks have said that they are tentatively interested in having me host Match Game at Westercon, and they've put "Match Game panelist" as a choice on program participants' questionnaires. They aren't certain they can provide the physical set-up we had at BayCon (and which I would prefer), but there are alternative set-ups we can work with. (As I've described, there are various levels of sophistication with the game, and we can drop down levels if necessary.) I already told them that panelists who did the show with me at BayCon will have first crack at panel slots at Westercon if they are interested. (So y'all need to tell me if you will be going to San Diego and want to be a panelist again.)

I've decided that, given freedom of set design, I want the panelists bank (the two rows of three) set at stage left (not center like we had it at BayCon), and canted twenty degrees or so so, with the contestants at stage right and canted the opposite way. That way the contestants can see the panelists more easily. (BayCon set things up the way I requested. I just didn't think the set design out properly.)

I like having the opening titles animation, but it's not at all mandatory. If we ever stage it in a large venue, I hope we'll have rear projection or a ceiling mounted projector. One thing I kept doing at BayCon -- and it was inevitable, given how we had to arrange things -- was walking in front of the projector as I had to go back and forth to the announcer table so Eric could announce new contestants, prizes, and commercials. Of course, with fewer tech constraints, we have a fixed microphone at that table so I don't have to go over there.

And to those of you who were telling me that Gene Rayburn's microphone was corded: I stand corrected. I forgot that 1970s technology would have made a wireless microphone much more troublesome than it is today.

Hanging the Armadillo

In the BayCon art show, I bought a nicely framed print of Jim Burns' Spaceport Glasgow (the link takes you to the CafePress store where you can buy merchandise imprinted with the artwork). This is a limited print (10 of 75) of the artwork that Burns did for the cover the Interaction program book, and it is, IMO a wonderful piece of artwork. If I ever have an office instead of a cubicle, I will hang this piece there. Indeed, as "captain" of the WSFS Armadillo, I'd love to own the original, but that's never going to happen, so I'll have to settle for this print. I feel lucky that I was able to get it for the minimum bid of $150.

I hung the artwork this evening over my fireplace. (We never have a fire in the gas-fired fireplace, as the apartment never gets cold enough to need it, but we do have a fireplace.) I was fortunate enough that there happened to be a couple of wall studs in the right places, so the pair of wood screws I drove to hold the artwork up are biting into studs, not just the drywall. The art looks evenly hung, and the placement is nice.

Except...I've discovered that the way my living room is lit, there's glare off the print no matter what I do. Moving the floor lamps is unlikely, as they're placed so as to cover the whole room with light. There's a chance the artwork won't look right except maybe in natural light. And I don't have a lot of blank wall space onto which I'd like to hang it. Oh, I could hang it on the wall behind the sofa, but I want to be able to see while sitting on the sofa, just like I can see my ConJose-surplus Hugo Award trophy and cherylmorgan's real 2004 Hugo Award.