Fursuit Sighting at LinuxExpoUK 2002

Yes, I actually saw a fursuit in a non-furry situation. I was at LinuxExpoUK 2002 for both of the days it was open, helping out at the Debian stand, and on the first day I briefly saw this giraffe wandering around. Of course, the second day I made sure I had my camera, and trailed him around the show for a while and took some photos! He moved quite fast at times, so by the time I took the picture, I was looking at his back. Case in point:

The giraffe appears to be Gerald The Giraffe, the mascot of The Positive Internet Company. It, like most stands, was pretty quiet before the show opened. Note the wooden giraffe statue in the corner!

Gerald was pretty elusive sometimes...

Can you spot the giraffe in the picture below?

There he is!

Of course, no Linux show would be complete without the obligatory fluffy stuffed Tux-the-Penguins on every other stand. They didn't move as fast as the giraffe, so I photographed them for a while, until Gerald reappeared.

Here, Tux sits atop an IBM zSeries mainframe. Amazingly, the Debian folks sold a CD of Debian for s/390 (the processor used in the zSeries) at the show, so perhaps it's this one that's running Debian!

A Sun person obligingly sat a small Tux on an LX/50 server for me to take his picture.

Finally catching up with Gerald, he's chatting to a punter.

A rare picture of him from the front. The black thing he's carrying is a Positive Internet t-shirt, so he can show people who he's promoting.

Gerald pokes his head round the corner of MicroSoft's stand. "What going on here?"

He watched the presentation for a short while, then gave a big pantomime yawn and moved on!

Gerald on his way back upstairs to his home stand.

I was rather disappointed to see that Gerald's performer uncerimoniously popped his head when he got back to the stand. It gave me the opportunity to collect blackmail material, though.

...Not that any of it is good enough to identify the people involved...