Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)
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When he was younger, the future was a bright, shiny goal that he couldn’t wait to get to. Now that he was here, though it all seemed so sadly pedestrian and banal. Even personal transporters and alien coworkers lost their fascination after a few years of everyday encounters.

On This Day: Nov 29

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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 25 posts previously published on November 29th

  • 2023
    • ABBYY FineReader Amazement and Disappointment ABBYY FineReader PDF is a really impressive tool for converting scanned image-only PDFs into searchable, accessible PDFs. Unless you’re on a Mac, where one of the most powerful parts of the program is missing. ➡
    • Year 50 Day 211 Almost, but not quite, done with Thanksgiving leftovers. ➡
  • 2022
    • 📚 Sundiver by David Brin A fun SF concept that turns into an Agatha Christie-ish mystery, all against a wider background seemingly based off the silly “ancient anstronauts” idea. ➡
  • 2021
    • Updated my iOS “Blog This” shortcut (for sending selected text from Safari to Ulysses in Markdown format) to add two fixes: slightly adjusting the output if no text is selected, and expanding relative URLs (my thanks to Memory Alpha for inspiring this fix). ➡
    • I really wish they had done this in First Contact. ➡
  • 2020
    • Difficult Listening Hour 2020.11.28: Thank(s)/giv(e/ing) Every track has 'thank', 'give', or 'giving' in the title. ➡
    • When he was younger, the future was a bright, shiny goal that he couldn’t wait to get to. Now that he was here, though it all seemed so sadly pedestrian and banal. Even personal transporters and alien coworkers lost their fascination after a few years of everyday encounters. ➡
    • On This Day: Nov 29 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from November 29 ➡
  • 2019
    • “A real ray gun? That’s fantastic!” Excited, he tossed the box aside and examined the weapon. “No,” his father disagreed, “it’s science fictional. That’s fantastic,” he said, and pointed out the window at the hippogriff seated in their front yard. Microblogvember: fantastic ➡
    • 📚 fifty-five of 2019: The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1963 Hugo Best Novel Fascinating partly for the primary alt history, but also for other alternatives and the ruminations on those, an author’s intent, and the characters’ realizations. ➡
    • Amazon Alternatives: “Welcome to the most lovingly curated selection of Amazon and Prime alternatives anywhere. We aim to make giving up Amazon easy and to encourage more people to spend their money with businesses that have higher ethical standards.” ➡
  • 2018
  • 2016
    • Fighting Authoritarianism Important lessons from history to keep in mind over the upcoming years. ➡
    • I do enjoy it when my fumbling ends up looking like some indie album cover. (334/366) ➡
    • Not my official photo of the day. Just saying hello to my Instagram followers. Some of you I know; some I don’t. If you want to take a peek at my world beyond Instagram, here’s where to look! ➡
    • Giving Tuesday For Giving Tuesday, I’m adding two more organizations to my monthly donations. ➡
  • 2015
    • One of my graduation presents for getting through grad school: the #Lego Creator Detective’s Office (10246). Three stories, with a pool hall and barbershop at street level, detective’s office and restroom on the second floor, and kitchenette and rooftop water tower on the third floor. Plus lots of fun little hidden “clues” and secret areas. ... Read more ➡
  • 2014
    • Apparently Popular Mechanics idea of what women wear to damp-proof their basement was inspired by Lara Croft. Seems legit. ➡
  • 2013
    • Sounds From the Lost Abbey 04 Back in February, I took up a challenge from one of my friends to create a mix based around songs that I'd have played at the Lost Abbey, during the mid- to late-1990s. Here's the fourth of quite a few to come! ➡
    • Sounds From the Lost Abbey 03 Back in February, I took up a challenge from one of my friends to create a mix based around songs that I'd have played at the Lost Abbey, during the mid- to late-1990s. Here's the third of quite a few to come! ➡
  • 2007
    • Wishlistr Flying full-bore into the Season of Greed, I'm playing around with Wishlistr, a clean and simple site for tracking all those little (and, me being me, not-so-little) 'I want' bits that pop up. ➡
  • 2006
    • Gaiman, Webley, and Toasty Tuckuses Nifty randomness of the day: seeing Neil Gaiman quote and promote Jason Webley (by way of someone posting the video to Eleven Saints). ➡
    • Snowy Days The local news is a hoot, from the perspective of an ex-Alaskan -- the first twenty minutes of each broadcast can be boiled down to, 'stay home, it's slippery and you don't know how to drive.' Then, maybe, if there isn't a new front moving in, they might fill us in on some of what's going on in the rest of the world. ➡
  • 2005
  • 2001
    • Home again, home again, jiggety jig Just got done talking with dad...we don't have the final details yet, but it looks like I'll be taking a cab straight from work to the airport on the 21st, be in Anchorage until Christmas day, and fly out of Anchorage to come back on the 25th. ➡
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The ball had progressed beautifully. As each reveler grew tired and departed, whether alone or with one or more partners for more private entertainments, they drew a mask from the bin by the door, placed it over their face, and returned to the safety of everyday life once more.

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📚 forty-seven of 2020: Exiles by Howard Weinstein ⭐️⭐️⭐️ #startrek #tng 🖖

The best of the early TNG novels so far. The characters felt right, and there was a good mix of serious plot and humor throughout. An obvious final solution, but that’s forgivable.

On This Day: Nov 28

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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 23 posts previously published on November 28th

  • 2025
  • 2023
  • 2021
    • Thoughts on The Hobbit Trilogy After re-watching The Hobbit trilogy (extended) for the first time in a good few years, I’m solidly of the opinion that, while good, there are some definite tonal issues throughout. ➡
  • 2020
    • The ball had progressed beautifully. As each reveler grew tired and departed, whether alone or with one or more partners for more private entertainments, they drew a mask from the bin by the door, placed it over their face, and returned to the safety of everyday life once more. ➡
    • 📚 forty-seven of 2020: Exiles by Howard Weinstein ⭐️⭐️⭐️ #startrek #tng 🖖 The best of the early TNG novels so far. The characters felt right, and there was a good mix of serious plot and humor throughout. An obvious final solution, but that’s forgivable. ➡
    • On This Day: Nov 28 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from November 28 ➡
  • 2019
    • A surprise inheritance was strange enough, but that it included lakeside property had stunned her when she got the notice. Not as stunned, of course, as when she discovered it was actually a cemetery whose residents weren’t as quiet as she expected. Microblogvember: property ➡
  • 2017
    • Book forty-seven of 2017: The Dead Seekers, by Barb & J.C. Hendee. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
  • 2016
    • Wishlists For holiday considerations: my Amazon wish lists, or a few organizations that I think are worth donating to. ➡
    • Post-Thanksgiving Status A brief note on this year’s Thanksgiving break activities, and minor updates to this blog. ➡
    • The break is over, back to work we go! (333/366) ➡
  • 2015
    • This may not have been the best choice of display method for your holiday stuffies, Fred Meyer. #tw #triggerwarning #inappropriatehumor ➡
    • Getting started on putting Christmas up (after Thanksgiving, as is appropriate). ➡
  • 2014
  • 2013
    • Sounds From the Lost Abbey 02 Back in February, I took up a challenge from one of my friends to create a mix based around songs that I'd have played at the Lost Abbey, during the mid- to late-1990s. Here's the second of quite a few to come! ➡
  • 2007
    • Badass Bible Verses Cracked has a list of the top nine 'badass' bible verses. Just for fun, I'll list the verse citations here. Any guesses at what stories they're referring to (before looking at the linked article, of course)? ➡
  • 2006
    • No Snow Day for Us Grrrrr. It's not _just_ that I want my snow day -- and sure, I do -- but it's _dangerous_ out there. Demanding that students and teachers fight their way through this crud to get to school is stupid and irresponsible. ➡
  • 2004
  • 2003
  • 2001
    • Enterprise: Cold Front In original Trek, time travel was shown as a somewhat simple, if not trivial, concept. Now, however, we're being told that the Vulcans have 'studied time travel extensively' and determined that it's an impossibility. ➡
    • Privacy, shmivacy 'Magic Lantern,' a government developed 'trojan horse' style virus that appears as an e-mail attachment. Once on your machine, it can record keystrokes and transmit them back to the FBI for analasys. ➡
    • Aaaah! I wanna see it! I wanna see it now! Reviews of the first Lord of the Rings film, Fellowship of the Ring, are starting to hit the net...here's what I've found so far. ➡
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Once the initial breakthrough was made, time-travel was actually fairly simple…as long as you were going backwards. After all, that had all already happened. But going forwards was a much larger dilemma due to the difficulty in targeting any one of the infinite possible futures.

On This Day: Nov 27

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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 24 posts previously published on November 27th

  • 2023
    • Year 50 Day 209 The joys of remote work: on the one hand, on the other hand, and on the gripping hand. ➡
  • 2021
    • Vinegar: YouTube5 was a Safari extension back when Flash was still a thing and hated by everyone. It replaced the YouTube player (written in Flash) with an HTML <video> tag. And now the YouTube player situation has gotten bad enough that we need another extension to fix it. That’s where Vinegar comes in. Vinegar also ... Read more ➡
    • Figured out how to create an iOS shortcut that grabs a webpage URL, title, and any selected text from Safari, formats it into a Markdown link and block quote, and then sends it to Ulysses as a new post to be published to my blog. Pretty happy with the result! ➡
    • With No Time To Die, or even wash his hands, James Bond’s travel hygiene fails: From his questionable sexual behavior to his unsafe eating habits to his risk-taking with regard to insect- and animal-borne diseases, it’s remarkable that the famous fictional secret agent has repeatedly lived another day. In a new paper, published in the ... Read more ➡
  • 2020
    • Once the initial breakthrough was made, time-travel was actually fairly simple…as long as you were going backwards. After all, that had all already happened. But going forwards was a much larger dilemma due to the difficulty in targeting any one of the infinite possible futures. ➡
    • On This Day: Nov 27 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from November 27 ➡
  • 2019
    • Merely being rich wasn’t enough. Even being the richest person wasn’t enough. But finally, he had amassed all the wealth there was; all else was poverty. And as Bezos looked over the wastelands from atop the Amazon citadel, he still yearned for more. Microblogvember: rich ➡
    • Amazon’s Ring Considering Facial Recognition While the basic home security idea isn't bad, the implementation, especially when combined with the (existing or just discussed) partnerships with law enforcement, giving them unfettered access to the video captured by the cameras, is really, really disturbing. ➡
    • No Love for White Gloves, or: the Cotton Menace: “Rare books, unlike many museum objects, are still used today in the same way that they would have been when they were new centuries ago – they’re held and opened, and their pages are turned. It would make sense that these historical objects should be handled ... Read more ➡
  • 2016
    • Book fifty-two of 2016: Battlestations!, by Diane Carey. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (332/366) ➡
  • 2007
    • Zoom Cosmic View, Cosmic Zoom, Powers of Ten, and the Simpsons. ➡
    • Schedule? What Schedule? Two more days without posting. It's official -- trying to enforce a daily posting routine just didn't work for me this year. ➡
  • 2006
    • Rainier and the Flood Looks like the scenery is going to be a little bit different next time Prairie and I are able to head down to Mt. Rainier for a weekend getaway. The heavy rains and flooding of the past weeks have hit Rainier National Park _hard_, including quite a few of the areas that we went through this summer. ➡
    • Best Bad Review of the Zune The Zune is a complete, humiliating failure...it almost becomes _important_ that you encourage people not to buy one. ➡
    • Snowy Evening A small selection of photos from an evening walk last night, after Seattle got an unusually heavy snowfall. ➡
  • 2005
  • 2003
  • 2002
  • 2001
    • Paying bills is such fun So that was about it...home by 10:30 or so, in bed about midnight. Not the most exciting stuff in the world, I suppose, but that's the way my life goes. ➡
  • 2000
    • Vacation time Vacation time! Off to Florida, Indiana, and Seattle -- back to Anchorage on Dec. 14th. ➡
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🖖 Discovery S03E07: After last week’s action, really liked having a week of talky-thinky Trek that expanded both the season arc and the overall world building of the new era. Vulcans! Romulans! TNG throwbacks! Plus a nice tribute to NuTrek’s Chekov, the late Anton Yelchin.

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While spell development was superficially similar to most any other sort of creative process, the fine-tuning was killer. There were just so many variables to know what to adjust — ingredients, gestures, words, tone of voice — that those final touches could be quite dangerous.

On This Day: Nov 26

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

There are 27 posts previously published on November 26th

  • 2023
  • 2022
  • 2021
    • The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ First re-watch in a few years. Some sequences really could have been dropped (the mountain giants add nothing except a few minutes of running time), others are just tonally weird (the goblin city sticks out as being goofy in the midst of serious sequences). But that said, it’s still ... Read more ➡
  • 2020
    • 🖖 Discovery S03E07: After last week’s action, really liked having a week of talky-thinky Trek that expanded both the season arc and the overall world building of the new era. Vulcans! Romulans! TNG throwbacks! Plus a nice tribute to NuTrek’s Chekov, the late Anton Yelchin. ➡
    • While spell development was superficially similar to most any other sort of creative process, the fine-tuning was killer. There were just so many variables to know what to adjust — ingredients, gestures, words, tone of voice — that those final touches could be quite dangerous. ➡
    • On This Day: Nov 26 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from November 26 ➡
  • 2019
    • Baby Yoda Has Conquered the World: “‘I had a day with one of the weirdest moments I’ve ever had directing,’ [Director Deborah Chow] told Vanity Fair. ‘I was directing Werner with the puppet, and Werner had just fallen in love with the baby. Werner, I think, had forgotten it wasn’t actually a live creature, and ... Read more ➡
    • He watched the floor in satisfaction from the DJ booth as the crowd moved to the sounds of the music. Those recordings of readings from ancient texts he’d layered into the mix had definitely helped. Now nobody could stop dancing until he decided it was time. Microblogvember: mix ➡
    • Bruce Wayne warns wealth tax on billionaires could result in fewer crimes foiled via jet-powered cars: “When asked whether a wealth tax could help curb costumed murders by investing in public schools, job retraining, and community mental health initiatives, Wayne responded, ‘Sure, but do any of those programs involve a 7000 pound car that can ... Read more ➡
  • 2016
    • Book fifty-one of 2016: Dreadnought!, by Diane Carey. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
    • Book fifty of 2016: Ishmael, by Barbara Hambly. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (330/366) ➡
  • 2015
    • Mmmm…that’s a good looking Thanksgiving spread! ➡
    • A little classic gaming with friends on Thanksgiving. ➡
  • 2014
    • Tear Gas: Banned in War, Used on the Streets The use of tear gas by the US police (and in other countries) is something I find seriously troubling. How can we justify using a chemical agent banned from use in warfare on our own citizens? ➡
    • Debate links regarding Ferguson and Darren Wilson Just found this excellent Tumblr post laying out the most common arguments defending Darren Wilson or condemning the Ferguson protests, and linking to a wealth of stories and resources addressing those points. ➡
    • Mike Brown’s shooting and Jim Crow lynchings have too much in common About twice a week, or every three or four days, an African American has been killed by a white police officer in the seven years ending in 2012, according to studies of the latest data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That number is incomplete and likely an undercount, as only a fraction of local police jurisdictions even report such deaths – and those reported are the ones deemed somehow 'justifiable'. ➡
  • 2006
    • So Long, Space Needle The Space Needle will once again become this city's tallest building in April 2009, when NASA launches the tower into Earth orbit. The rotating restaurant will provide simulated Earth gravity, not to mention fresh salmon and Dungeness crab from Washington and Alaska waters. ➡
  • 2003
    • The trickiest zen on the menu I wanted to take a moment to point out Pops' domain, 2 Hour Lunch. I discovered his site at some point during the TypePad beta testing process, and he's become one of my favorite reads. ➡
    • Bad Santa I first heard about Bad Santa thanks to Pops about a week ago, and it immediately sounded like something that would be right up my alley. Roger Ebert's review has just solidified that. ➡
    • Digital elocution So what do you do if you're trying to put together campaign commercials for a President who can't seem to string together more two multi-syllabic words without stumbling? Simple! ➡
    • Capt. Yee charged with…being a shmuck Two counts of failing to obey a lawful general order, adultery, conduct unbecoming an officer, making a false official statement and failure to obey an order or regulation (the latter two charges stem from allegations that Yee viewed and stored pornography on a government computer). ➡
    • Troy Another film I'm really looking forward to seeing — Troy. ➡
    • Just what I always wanted! Amuse your conservative friends and annoy your liberal neighbors with the brand new Ann Coulter Talking Action Figure. ➡
  • 2000
    • Colophon djwudi.com gets a Colophon, with details on the construction and maintenance of the site. All sorts of nifty geek goodies in there. ➡