I normally avoid map-making panels* at cons for professional reasons, but thought I’d try the one here. This was a mistake, but not for the usual reasons of Really Bad Maps and Really Bad Advice; This one was just Really Boring, with one presenter murdering the development of star maps with quasi-straw man comments about modern-day views of historical cartography, combined with questions to the audience about details of unreadable PowerPoint images. Kind of took me back to some high school teachers, now that I think of it.
I lasted maybe half an hour, then snuck out behind another escapee.
( * Russell Kirkpatrick exempted, of course )

The next panel, about factual Steampunk Monorails, was awesome, and very educational, including details about the steam monorail built in Ireland, video of the restored engine in question, and some information on the various attempts at pneumatic railways.

I took a couple of panels off and went to have lunch by the canal, where a wasp took an entirely unwholesome interest in said lunch, & required a bit of shifting to get away from.

Post-lunch, and post-wasp, was a panel on Zombies.
Well, it started out as a panel.
And maybe it should be a panel on Undead, since, as Seanan McGuire put it, ‘Zombie is a term borrowed from Haitian Religion; It’s like saying “I’ve invented this new monster; It’s called The Pope.”‘
This was interesting, but pretty swiftly turned from being a four-person-including-moderator panel into a conversation between Seanan McGuire & the Moderator where Seanan did most of the talking & they talked past the other two panellists, as said superfluous panelists were in the middle.
Lots of Resident Evil movie analysis.

Animals in Speculative Fiction spent maybe 20 minutes getting increasingly pedantic about what constitutes an animal in a story, then kind of rambled from there.
Mostly it killed time until the closing ceremony, which was … pretty much what you expect from a closing ceremony.
There was the unfurling of a flag of some sort, but a git with a camera stood right in the way for the entire time it was unfurled. Can’t find a picture of it either, so thanks a bunch, pal.

The traditional Dead Dog party followed, though I only stayed a couple of hours, chatting to people. Didn’t even attempt a run at the bar, as I did not have access to a crowbar or one of those little battering ram things.

Went back to the room & read for a while before getting an early-ish night.
The current book is Hull Zero Three, by Greg Bear. It’s not about an English town at all, which was a nice surprise, and instead has a certain Pandorum vibe to it. Written in First Person Present, which is not a favourite of mine.
Once I got into it, it’s a good book, but that took a while.