The other, less publicised, problems with sacrificing one's laptop battery through fear of it exploding is that the laptop is then impossible to open one-handed and, it wobbles.

I was all set to sign up to Snap Shot City this Saturday. Seems like a great concept, like a cross between an O-week scavenger hunt and the old White Gloves Film Festival; grab a treasure hunt list, liberally interpret it with photos taken around your home town, upload same to the website.
But then I glanced through their terms and conditions:

• you grant an exclusive licence to Snap-Shot-City to publish, exploit, profit from or otherwise deal with any material you or your teammates upload or submit to the Snap-Shot-City website (or associated websites)

Uh, I don't think so.

The tea I am currently drinking is three years past its use by date.

Still tastes OK. I guess I'm so used now to strangely concocted brews that I could drink anything vaguely herbal and think it was doing me good.

During the Kid's TV panel last weekend, I briefly mentioned some animated shorts currently screening in unpredictable spots on the ABC. It's hard to catch these because they tend not to make it onto programming guides. But if you're interested in experimental animation, there are some people who are making a small living from it.

Mise en Plis (Folded in Two) - Origami animals in a paper world who live by literal interpretation. 50 second mpg

And, also from Marlou Films, Soupe Opera. Witty, animated salad.

Pocoyo A charming, computer generated five minute show that crosses claymation with anime stylings. (Bonus - it's narrated by Stephen Fry.)

But of course the first place to go for short kids' animations is classic and vintage Sesame Street (or rather, YouTube).
The Pinball Song (Number 6)
1 to 20 with sitar sounds
A Linear Argument
Bus Stop
J in the trainyard
The voiceover of this counting garden is creepy.
Russian Nesting Dolls count to 10
A song of ten
Opera-singing Orange
A loaf of bread, a container of milk and err, umm...
Letter i with intimidation issues
Like, wow, check out this great plant I grew from a seed, man.

C4 was this weekend. Sorry if you didn't hear about it, but you can blame me for that. For about the last fortnight I had been planning a pre-con blog post, but I was too busy doing "real" publicity stuff to get to it.

Let me just say, it rocked. Being on commitee definitely gives a different convention experience. Something akin to mainlining, I imagine.

The guests of honour came to the party in a big way and were approachable and friendly and said intelligent things in their panels. Margo Lanagan said in the closing ceremony that the experience had been "Hardly at all scary".

The panels I was on, Kids' TV and Blankety Blanks, went as expected. The first was on Saturday at nine am, but we still managed to draw a few members into a nice casual conversation. It was very pretty with the clips Sara Eggen brought in from Jonathan M. Schiff Productions and, (I was told) it was informative for the audience.

Blankety Blanks was a comedic disaster fueled by exhaustion and hysteria, but that's what everyone was expecting, so I think that's OK. I only hope Mondy has managed to fight his way out of the soaped-up-monkey-skinning time-loop he got himself stuck in.

The Maskobalo was much better than even I had hoped. I am always surprised and impressed by the efforts people go to with their costumes and outfits, and the amount of energy and sheer enthusiasm they bring to something that is, in essence, a miniature disco. Thanks to Hespa, I even had fun putting up and taking down the decorations we had planned, and we recieved many positive comments from the crowd. Needless to say, Liz and I danced our boots off and I am still in some not-small amount of pain.

I'll probably remember some other things I wanted to say later on, but for now I want to shout out (yes, that's how tired I am) to Mitch and Mondy and all the other committe members and volunteers; you were all awesome, but let's not do it again straight away.

Keep an eye on this Continuum 4 Flickr group to get a visual sense of the weekend. And post your own photos and con reports!