Home again, home again...

[ffutures]

Didn't get to the Dead Dog in the end - there was a huge crowd waiting outside when I got to the hotel where it was being held and I got the impression it was going to be very crowded if I ever got inside. Ended up going into town for a meal with friends. At which point, wanting to take a couple of pictures of the architecture of Helsinki Station, I discovered that my little Fujitsu bridge camera appears to be dead. I could have used my iPhone but for some reason it never occurred to me, so I've ended up with no photos of Helsinki. I hope it's just bad batteries, charging them now and crossing my fingers, but I've a feeling it's more serious.

My flight home turned out to be an hour earlier than I thought so there wasn't really time to do any sightseeing today - plus the most direct route to the airport was the station near the convention centre so I didn't need to go back to Helsinki station anyway. For Dublin in 2019 I really must add a couple of days one side or another of the con to do some proper touristy things.

Got home about five to the usual pile of mail - unfortunately the battery for the Eos 400D I got hasn't arrived, so I can't test it yet. But everything else is OK so far, I had a pretty good time, and given the total cost of the con (and food at the convention centre) the dead camera (if it is) is about two extra meals worth of annoyance rather than a huge disaster.

later - forgot to mention something announced at the closing ceremony: the predicted membership was around 3000, in line with previous worldcons in non-English speaking countries. Instead they got a hell of a lot more - I think they said 5800 plus, the second biggest membership ever. The reason for the initial confusion with room sizes was that all of the arrangements were made with the lower figure in mind, most of the excess signed up in the last couple of weeks before the con.

I have no idea what caused this, but they did handle it reasonably well once the initial panic was over.

Comments

[dormouse1953]

I was telling people all week that those statues on either side of the door at the southern side of the central station look like they belong on an illustration in a thirties magazine story about a lost civilisation.

I have some pictures on my camera but no way to download them to this computer.

[ffutures]

I was thinking of the statues at Hogwarts and/or Girl Genius clanks.

Camera really is dead, I suspect a simple fault but I'm not going to try, I've seen inside a similar camera and it's horribly complicated. I was quoted £50 minimum for Fujitsu to take a look at it. So I looked on eBay and found the same model for £21 inc. P&P second hand and bought that, ought to get it some time this week. If I sell the old one for parts I'll hopefully get my losses down to £15 or so.

[dormouse1953]

I replaced my digital watch last month. Possibly replacing the batteries would have fixed it. I bought it in Japan whilst attending the Japanese Worldcon in 2007. (My previous watch literally broke on the way to the airport.)

However, I had another reason for replacing the watch. It had a metal case and strap and as it got older, the edge of the case became rough and started fraying the cuffs of my shirts. When I bought the new watch I realised it was cheaper than buying just one new shirt.

[ffutures]

I do a little business in used watches, but a lot are fairly worthless - as you say, they are sometimes cheaper to replace than fix.