I don’t remember the last time I (Christopher) posted, but it has been a while. It’s funny, because we have been to a plethora of events these last few weeks, with more events this weekend and next weekend. I guess work (my day job), getting ready for upcoming events, and recovering from prior events, are my biggest excuses. Well, here I am, blogging. So, what shall I blog about? How about free giveaway winners from the Houston Celtic Festival? First, however, I would like to welcome all of the people we spoke with at our booth during the festival. Thanks especially to the folks who attended our readings. Despite the volume of rain dropped on us that Saturday, the event in 2010 caused rivers to flow through the arena, so this wasn’t so bad.
Free Giveaway Winners
Well, I wish to first apologize for announcing the winners to our latest giveaway a week late, but those following us probably have detected a pattern. Anyway, due to the huge number of folks who filled out tickets, Heather and I decided to award three winners for the event. The winners are…
- JoBeth Smith
- Fiona MacDonnell
- Janet Tabares
We (likely I) will notify the winners early this week.
New Booth Displays
For those who have had the opportunity to visit us at AggieCon or the Houston Indie Book Fest this year got to see our new indoor booth arrangement. If you have seen us anywhere, you will see that I like lights and colorful signs. For the past few years, I have used 10×10 tent frames to display lighting and signage. This year, however, the opportunity presented itself to design a narrower frame, of comparable height, to use at smaller indoor or outdoor festivals where a 10×10 frame is not practical. While I had been toying with the idea of constructing some kind of frame for smaller events using steel conduit or heavy-gauge PVC pipe, nothing I envisioned seemed practical. Then one day, a tent I ordered arrived broken, and the replacement was incorrect and broken, and its replacement was incorrect, and finally I got the right replacement. From these four tent frames, I got to keep three… two good ones and one broken one.
Since the only broken parts were cosmetic, I decided to take it apart and use it to create my lighting frame for smaller events. Each 10×10 tent frame is composed of a dome assembly, four height-adjustable posts, and four sets of three scissor trusses. I took off the trusses completely from two opposite sides and removed two of the three scissor pieces from the other opposite sides. After grinding the sharp edges of some heavy gauge 6 foot long L-brackets and spray painting them, I constructed a bolt-together frame that adjusts from 6×3 feet to 11×3 feet. This way, I can tuck the frame behind the table at a normal event, where we might have one or two 6 foot to 10 foot tables and not enough room for the 10×10 frame. So far, we put the design to good use at both AggieCon and Houston Indie Book Fest, so hopefully these next two events, one of which is Comicpalooza / GalactiCon, will be successful and eye-catching.
