Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)
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Trump could be removed from office today, if Pence would actually act to uphold the oath he swore to protect this country. I’m absolutely fine with letting Pence be POTUS46 for the next two weeks, and letting Biden take up the mantle of POTUS47.

Trifecta

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I hoped, but didn’t expect, that Georgia would come through. I am so happy to have my expectations proven wrong and my hopes realized.

NPR GA Results at 98% Reported

As I write this, Warnock has been declared the winner, and Ossoff is leading by more votes than Biden won GA’s presidential ballot by. This is momentous: GA elected a Democrat President, two Democrat Senators, and flipped one House seat blue (which GA with a 6-8 Republican majority in House seats).

Which means that, for the first time since 2011, Democrats will hold the House, Senate, and Presidency.

And Mitch McConnell will finally lose his Majority Leader position and, with it, his ability to block legislation from being passed (somewhere upwards of 400 bills passed by the House stopped at his desk).

Pale Man from Pan's Labyrinth

And we need to make that count.

Democrats need to do everything they can to pass legislation that actually helps as many people as possible, to right the imbalances that have mounted over the past years, and to trumpet their successes so that we hold on to this advantage when the 2022 midterms come around.

The first two priorities that come to my mind are COVID-19 relief and expanding voting protections and accessibility, but there are many more.

There’s still a lot of work to do, of course, especially considering the number of judges that Trump has been able to seat throughout the country. But at least now, we have a good chance of actually being able to get things done.

Lots of Reason to Laugh

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One glorious paragraph from the Intelligencer’s attempt to dig into the story behind the Four Seasons Total Landscaping debacle, Four Seasons Total Landscaping: The Full(est Possible) Story:

Whether it’s war and peace or public relations and gardening, sorting out the truth is a complicated endeavor when it relates to Donald Trump. Everyone involved in anything, no matter the size, no matter how stupid, seems to lie as a first resort, or to know very little, or to lie about knowing very little, or to know just enough to send blame in another direction, and the person in that direction seems to lie also, or to know very little, or to lie about knowing very little, but perhaps they have a theory that sends blame someplace else, and over there, too, you will find more liars, more know-nothings, and before long, a whole month will have passed, and you still haven’t filed your story about how the president’s attorney wound up undermining democracy in a parking lot off I-95 on a strip of cracked pavement in a run-down part of a city that ordinarily would command no consideration from the national political class or the very online public or the equally online mainstream media, which, when forced to look, found lots of reason to laugh.

DJ Wüdi in 2020

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One of the more personally entertaining bits of 2020 for me was resurrecting–to a certain extent, at least–my DJ Wüdi alter-ego. Aside from a few appearances at some Rodeo City Rollergirls derby matches in 2012, and a couple Thursday night dances for Norwescon, my DJing endeavors have been mostly a fond memory since I moved down to Seattle in 2001.

I’d been missing the DJing, and so at the start of 2020, I’d decided to start playing with using the game streaming service Twitch for broadcasting DJ sets, which I’d seen a few other DJs experimenting with. I got started, got a few weeks in…and then COVID hit. And suddenly there was an explosion of DJs showing up on Twitch, as clubs worldwide shut down and DJs and club goers scrambled to find a way to keep going, even if only from our homes.

So, as it turns out, in a sea of hundreds (at least) of DJs around the world using Twitch to broadcast sets, keep their friends and fans happy, and make a name for themselves…well, I’m one of them, but I can’t really say much more than that. Which is fine, as even pre-pandemic, this whole thing was basically a vanity hobby that I just wanted to do for fun. And in that respect, this project has been a resounding success! Some days it’s just me broadcasting to no-one, but some days there are a few people who pop in, and I even have a few regular listeners, so I’m happy with how it’s going.

In 2020, I posted 38 sets (aiming for one a week, with occasional weeks off when I had other obligations that took priority). Most of the time, I just wing it, with no set plan, just grabbing whatever I feel like at the moment. Some weeks, though, I took the time to play with a particular idea, put a set of tracks together, set them in order, and plan and practice the transitions.

I also had fun working on evolving my Twitch display as the year went on. While I can’t do many of the fancier tricks that many DJs do, with “emote” graphics dancing across the screen (things like that are reserved for streamers who broadcast more regularly and have built up enough of an audience to actually work on earning money; I’m nowhere near that level), I do like where I’ve ended up.

Twitch screenshot

The cute little avatar version of me was originally artwork by Sharii, and I’ve set it so that the graphic on the t-shirt changes every 30 seconds. The background is a motion video loop, and can be swapped out with other loops. The text overlay is just a text file that I keep open and update as I go with whatever track is currently playing. At the top, the waveforms and decks are clipped out of the djay Pro AI window. And finally, of course, there’s that goofy guy in the middle of the screen generally making a fool of himself. :)

I broadcast on my Twitch channel, and then later (usually the next day) upload the audio recording of the mix to my MixCloud account for listening at any time, and organize the mixes into playlists. Once uploaded, I posts links to the mixes along with the final track lists to my DJ Wüdi blog.

Here’s one playlist with all 38 of my 2020 mixes…

…but if you just want to sample some of the highlights, here’s a playlist with just the “theme” weeks:

For 2021? I’m just going to keep going and see how long I can keep this project going. At the very least, I figure I’ll be going until we start emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic and actually want to go places and do things with our Saturdays once it’s safe to do so again. In other words, I’m not planning on stopping anytime soon.

If you listen, thanks, and I hope you continue to do so, whether live on Twitch or later on MixCloud!

2020 Resolutions

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My resolutions for this year:

  • 5120 x 2880
  • 1920 x 1080
  • 1280 x 800
  • 1668 x 2224
  • 1125 x 2436
  • 368 x 448

(That’s my retina iMac, its secondary display, the MacBook Pro I just got from Prairie when we upgraded hers, and my iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch, respectively. Yes, I make this same stupid joke every year, cause it makes me laugh.)

Happy New Year!

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If you’re reading this, we’ve made it through 2020 and are getting started with 2021. Happy New Year, everyone. It won’t be immediate, but I truly believe that things will improve. I hope I’m right, and that this is true for everyone I know (and most everyone I don’t know, for that matter).

2020 Reading Round-Up 📚

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Every year, I set myself a goal of reading at least 52 books over the course of the year — an average of one a week. This year I made it to 54. Here’s a quick (?) overview…

My Year in Books graphic

Basically, 2020 took its toll, and all lofty ideas and goals aside, this year was almost entirely dedicated to escapist fluff. Gee, I wonder why that was the case?

Non-fiction: Just one, and it was Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Inside the Art and Visual Effects, so not exactly pushing my boundaries here. Still, it’s an excellent work, and is a perfect companion to Preston Neal Jones’ Return to Tomorrow, which covers the same territory in much more depth but without the visuals.

Non-genre-fiction (where “genre” is shorthand — though, not very short, if you include this parenthetical — for science-fiction, fantasy, and horror): Three this year, the best of which was Fredrik Backman’s My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, which was recommended to me by my wife and which I can easily recommend to you.

Quality genre fiction: While I had high hopes for this category after starting my Hugo reading project and getting through twenty-two books in 2019, this did not end up being anywhere near the majority of my reading.

It started well, with a strong slate of Philip K. Dick Award nominees. Both the winner, Sarah Pinsker’s Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea, and the Special Citation Award, Sarah Tolmie’s The Little Animals, were excellent, and there weren’t any this year that I didn’t like.

Continuing the Hugo reading project also started well, with Frank Herbert’s Dune (which mostly holds up, though the obvious queer coding of Baron Harkonnen and Piter de Vries to indicate villainy or imply untrustworthiness is something that really stood out on this read), and proceeded apace for a while — but then, well, 2020 happened. Plague! Lockdown! Isolation! And while on one level, being stuck at home with little to do sounds like a great way to get a lot of reading done, for me, at least, the attendant ever-present stresses of living the pandemic life meant that concentrating on serious fiction was difficult to do. I kept trying for a while, but then hit John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar — a bleak dystopian vision of overpopulation, government control of the masses, eugenics, colonialism, and protests by an oppressed populace, all wrapped in a very cynical extrapolation of late-60s sexism and racism pervading society in ways that are very different from what we experience now but simultaneously depressingly prescient in how they are still such strong influences. With all that, it took me nearly three full months to slog through (from June 7 to September 30), and I had to take several “fluff breaks” during that time. It wasn’t a bad book, but it was really tough to read something that bleak during this year, and I can’t say that I enjoyed it.

Fluff genre fiction: Unsurprisingly, this ended up being the strong majority of this year’s reading. Almost entirely Star Trek novels, with a few detours into movie adaptations. And given everything that was going on in 2020, it was very nice to have a bookshelf full of options that wouldn’t take a whole lot of brain power for me to disappear into.

Finally, some stats on my year’s reading, according to Goodreads:

  • 15,842 pages read across 54 books
  • Shortest book: Isaac Asimov’s Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (142 pages)
  • Longest book: John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (650 pages)
  • Most popular: Frank Herbert’s Dune (1,481,714 other readers)
  • Least popular: A “double novel” of Leigh Brackett’s The Nemesis from Terra and Robert Silverberg’s Collision Course (29 other readers)

On This Day: Dec 31

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Since I hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 33 posts previously published on December 31st

  • 2025
    • 2025 Reading Round-Up Every year, I set myself a goal of reading at least 52 books over the course of the year; this year I read 67. Here's a quick (not really) overview… ➡
    • The Flaming Arrow by Jerry Oltion and Kathy Oltion 📚 67/2025: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ A particularly imaginative doomsday weapon that really had me lost as to how they were going to technobabble their way out of it. ➡
  • 2024
    • 2024 Reading Round-Up Every year, I set myself a goal of reading at least 52 books over the course of the year; this year I read 76. Here's a quick (?) overview… ➡
  • 2023
    • Year 50 Day 243 Happy New Year, everyone. I even dressed up for the occasion. ➡
    • 2023 Reading Round-Up 📚 Every year, I set myself a goal of reading at least 52 books over the course of the year; this year I read 74. Here’s a quick (?) overview… ➡
  • 2022
  • 2021
  • 2020
  • 2019
    • 📚 sixty-two of 2019: Enterprise, by Vonda N. McIntyre. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ An earlier look at Kirk’s first mission after talking command of the Enterprise. Very different characterizations of the crew—and the Klingons—than what we now know…but then, it was 1986. 🖖 ➡
    • No Comparison: Remembering “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” on its 40th Anniversary: “For those of us who get it, Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a spectacular swing for the fences. And for those of you who don’t get it, it’s your frakkin’ loss.” 🖖 ➡
    • Cyberdyne Systems | Speculative Identities: A deep dive into the Terminator universe’s Cyberdyne Systems from a graphic design/branding/iconography point of view. ➡
    • 2019 Reading Round-Up 📚 A look back at the books I've read this year ➡
    • Ramones Time 2020, 24 hours to go ➡
  • 2018
    • 2018 Reading Round-Up Every year, I set myself a goal of reading at least 52 books over the course of the year — an average of one a week. This year I made it to 60 (plus getting started on what will be my first book of 2019). Here's a quick overview… ➡
    • I’m not closing my account, and will likely keep checking in on occasion to see what my friends post. But I think it’s time for me to stop uploading to Instagram. ➡
  • 2016
    • Good Riddance, 2016 2016 is done. 2017 is here. Let's make it ours. ➡
    • My #2016bestnine – very #Lego-centric! Let’s see…me in my #geek #coexist shirt, me in my little #goth Lego boy costume, my Lego goth couple, my @cardsagainsthumanity Trump bug-out bag (which was funnier pre-election), Lego minifigs, the Lego #StarWars carbon freezing chamber, another shot of my costume, my mother-in-law using a real paper map, and the ... Read more ➡
    • Book sixty of 2016: Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (366/366) This also marks the culmination of my silly little selfie-a-day project for the year! I considered trying to come up with something particularly creative or silly for the final photo, but in the end, decided that just another of the usual photos would be ... Read more ➡
  • 2015
    • It got cold last night – depending on which source we check, Eburg is somewhere between 5° and -3° this morning. The hoarfrost on everything is really pretty, though. ➡
  • 2014
    • The Interview Thanks to the world's weirdest advertising campaign, we watched a dumb comedy that we'd otherwise have had no interest in. And in the end? Yes, dumb, but we've definitely seen far worse, and there were some laughs to be had. ➡
    • MLK on “inconvenient” protests I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice… ➡
  • 2012
    • End of 2012 Well, a fair amount went on in my life this year...not that you'd know from this blog. ➡
  • 2008
    • Happy New Year! However you are celebrating (or have celebrated) the new year, enjoy it, and here's hoping we all have a good 2009! ➡
  • 2007
    • Wrapping up 2007 A little under eight hours left to go in the year, and as I look back, most of what stands out in my mind is just how incredibly _busy_ this past year has been, for Prairie and for myself. That's not to say it's been a bad year, but we just _never_ seemed to stop moving. ➡
  • 2005
    • Happy New Years Eve Looks like the plan is for Prairie and I to have dinner and rest for a bit, grab showers, and then head downtown to hit the Noc No along with gracesine, rainfromheaven...and whoever else may show up. ➡
  • 2003
    • eWeek best and worst of 2003 Forget about all this selling your soul to the devil crap -- he's so incompetent, he couldn't even get a wish to be 'famous' right, and I ended up with 'infamous' instead. Can I get a refund on this deal? ➡
    • Trouble in Georgetown As I got off the bus and started walking down the street, I heard a little commotion in one of the alleyways to my left. Looking over, I saw a young lady frantically running down the alleyway, coat open, trying to keep her footing in the fresh snow. ➡
  • 2002
    • Exhausted Ugh...this sucks. I was supposed to be at work early today, so I could leave early (all that New Years stuff), so I set my alarm for 8:30am and went to bed. ➡
    • Oh yeah All in all, a very enjoyable trip. Except for the 15 degree below zero weather. Ugh. I am so not moving back to Alaska. Ever. ➡
    • Weblog publishing systems Just a quick test here — the new beta version of NetNewsWire Pro has a weblog editor built in. Not bad, seems to handle things alright, and it is handy having the weblog editor built into the newsreader. ➡