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World Space Party: Yuri’s Night!

Tonight is Yuri’s Night, the anniversary of the first human to make it into space and live to tell about it! Named after Yuri Gagarin, who took his epic ride on April 12th, 1961, this date is now used to celebrate all aspects of humanities continuing efforts to leave this gravity well. That first link will get you details to 183 events in 44 countries on 7 continents, so there will be something going on near you (unless you live way out to sea, in Antarctica, or along the full length of the former Siberia/Alaska land bridge and the lands it tied together). And even if you live in those places, or just don’t feel like driving, there are 9 Online Parties so you can celebrate with your friends at the Second Life International Space Flight Museum or Second Life Frontier Spaceport, the Foundation for Space Development at Mach30, and at Area 52, Outlands for you WoW folks (message HumanityPlus in-game for details, that event is on the 17th).

If you are a bit more serious than that, go for the Constellation Apps platform party, if you have the application development enviro installed, or hit NASA’s Third Rock Radio to listen to it all come down, or watch on SpaceVidcast online or on Roku. There are a lot more; find the one that works for you and join us in celebrating mankind’s attempt to escape this cosmic trap, and survive through the ensuing millennium.

First Official Doctor Who Con

The first Official Doctor Who Convention will be held in Cardiff the weekend of March 24th and 25th. The guest list is every bit as impressive as you would expect, and since they actually film in Cardiff there will be outrageous new opportunities, including a TARDIS set tour on the actual sound stage. Pretty much every special presentation ever held at the Doctor Who Experience will be part of the weekend, which makes sense when you realize they have already closed in London and moved it to Cardiff, where they are now putting it back together, along with various new bits. I feel the need for another excursion to the UK coming on…

Nerd Machine

Now that the TV series Chuck is over, Zac Levi’s next project is The Nerd Machine, which is pretty much what you would expect from the name. They threw the must-attend party at the last Comic-Con, and their most recent public presence was at this year’s CES. The key component of their web site appears to be the forum at this juncture, although they do have a respectable number of nerd related videos.

Hatsune Miku tomorrow

If you are lucky enough to live in or near the 9 cities the event is going to be held in, then know tomorrow night, November 10th, you could attend the Hatsune Miku Live Party 2011. This is part of the new Live Viewing Japan network they are starting to build at various movie theaters in the US, and the event will kick off at 7PM local time across North America, just to minimize confusion. They already have more events planned, and with luck they will be able to expand the number of theaters in their network soon. Note that every one of the nine cities they started off with hosts one of the major Anime Cons every year; good choice to start building your fan base, since you know they gather there.

Otakon

This weekend is Otakon, the by fans, for fans convention covering Manga, Anime, and all things Asian pop culture like. It takes place at the Baltimore Convention Center and the surrounding Baltimore Inner Harbor from July 29th through the 31st. Their schedule is huge, and for the last handful of years they have sold out the convention center, which is a lot of people. They generally try to hold back a block of tickets for same day walk up sales, but you have to be there awfully early in the morning to get them. One of the movies scheduled to be screened this year is Bunraku, currently on the film festival circuit and looking quite tasty, as you can tell from the trailer. The unscheduled Otakon event that got the most YouTube coverage last year had to be the fire drill, when 30,000 Otaku were all on the streets of Baltimore at once.