Hello world. I am in Dublin for Octocon. I’ve been offline for a day or so due to lack of Internet access. I’m staying at a friend’s apartment rather than in the con hotel. However, I am now at the con, and the hotel wifi is working OK in the lobby. People are in the bar, and I plan to go and join them soon.

The place I am staying is very nice, sandwiched between a lovely park and the Royal Dublin Showgrounds. Leinster, and indeed Ireland, have played at the RDS, though with Croke Park now opened up as a rugby venue and the renovations as Lansdowne Road finished I don’t suppose they will do so much in future. In any case, BOD and the boys are playing Saracens at Wembley tomorrow so I won’t have any distractions from the convention.

The first people I saw on arriving at the con hotel were George & Parris. As George noted, the last time I saw them was on the other side of the world and we were both waving around large, chrome-plated phallic symbols. We seem to keep running into each other. George has been checking in on the progress of the Song of Ice & Fire TV series filming, which is being done in Belfast. I’ll have more information on that later in the weekend (and hopefully an interview with George for Salon Futura).

I don’t actually know a lot about the TV series right now. As I confessed to Parris, I had a quick look at the casting, saw that Sean Bean was involved, and stopped paying attention as I knew all I needed to know. I gather I’m not alone in this, though Parris tells me that the young actors cast as the Stark kids and Jon Snow are all unbearably cute and liable to set young hearts a-flutter across the world.

I was able to test this theory. Joining us for lunch were George’s German agent and publisher, Venor, and his two twenty-something daughters. Who did the young ladies want to see? Sean Bean, of course. I rest my case. But I’m sure Parris will be proved right in the long run.