Skip the bad news, let’s talk happy future stuff and solarpunk. That’s right, I need a break from the bad news and so do you – I see the look on your face. For as much as the slithy toves of 2025 push us into dark corners, Jabberwocky characters present looking-glass possibilities. We might just…
News out of SlashFilm: Netflix is killing Bandersnatch as a streamable title is because it’s ‘boring.’ Interesting concept, great execution – but Bandersnatch couldn’t overcome the systemic narrative challenges of a choose-your-own-adventure story. Ergo, watchers considered it boring and consigned Bandersnatch to the Netflix dustbin. Sorry, folks – I know you tried. It’s never fun…
Not complaining, just explaining – writers need good keyboards – occasionally we get new keyboards. Let me tell you a little bit of how we got to here. First and foremost – I’ve been typing at 60WPM or better for 35+ years. That level of repetitive stress has left my wrists and fingers, shall we…
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Sitting around on a Sunday morning – started thinking about solarpunk and Andrew Carnegie. Wealth inequality and the problems it causes dominates our headlines. Common media topics include re-enacting the French Revolution or ‘eating the rich,’ but is there a better way? Are we doomed to repeat the failed hatreds and phyrric victories of the…
Notes from Eugene on an unseasonably pleasant spring day. Sunshine and clouds and blue sky juxtapose mid-state Oregonian mayhem lurking around corners and in dark doorways. Sometimes the menace takes the form of hardware store hackery. If it’s not the morbidly obese landlord atop the Rascal scooter arguing about cheap sink faucets at the local…
Here’s a moment in weird retrofuturism – did you know Honeywell had a kitchen computer back in 1969? Neither did I, but thanks to the good people at Rarehistoricalphotos we can stroll down geek memory lane with the H316 Pedestal home kitchen computer. And you thought the Skymall catalog sold weird stuff! The H316 was…
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I’m sharing something important: Kindness is normal. Where current events lead us to believe that apathy and cynicism are expected, average behavior – it’s more important than ever to remember that being mean isn’t normal. Kindness is normal. Even if the world makes being kind feel weird, it doesn’t matter. Kindness matters. Kindness is normal….
Hold all the ‘V’Ger’ jokes to the end – this is retrofuturism now – fixing Voyager from fifteen billion miles away. Check out this ~1 hr breakdown on the technical challenges of fixing a 50 year old computer – any command takes 22.3 hours to send and another 22.3 hours to receive. Gives new meaning…
Well that’s that – NANOWRIMO is no mo’ – an elegy for writing challenges everywhere. The nascent National Novel Writing Month ‘was an annual, international creative writing event in which participants attempted to write a 50,000-word manuscript during the month of November. Well-known authors wrote “pep talks” in order to motivate participants during the month….
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Time for some mid-month madness with TRON screams. I was re-watching the original TRON and ran across this hysterical screen grab – a new meme format was born: Jeff Bridges can scream at me any day. He had this to say about the new Tron: Ares – “When we did the original, we shot…
