Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

Weekly Notes: April 28–May 4, 2025

by
  • ♿️ Another busy week at work, including a trip out to Emerald Downs planning for graduation, hosting an IPSE Day event supporting our students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and ending with a full-day all-employee training focusing on equity. This year included a session on disability justice, which was led by a colleague from another school who I know through my work with WAPED, DSSC, and through watching the AHEAD listserv. Happily, this session was quite well attended by people across the college, and not just by people who are part of our Access Services department!
  • 🚀 Unfortunately, Seattle Worldcon is in the midst of our first (and hopefully only) big controversy. While it’s not my area, I’m close enough to have some of the not-yet-public information, and it’s been quite the experience watching the wider commentary based on incomplete information while not saying anything. Hopefully as more information comes out, this will calm down and fade into just being an unfortunate bump on the road.
  • 🥳 And, of course, yesterday was my 52nd birthday. We kept it a fairly low-key day, wrapping up with dinner out and seeing the play version of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None” at the Renton Civic Theater. It was a fun show, and we do enjoy supporting local theater.

📸 Photos

One end of a dirt racetrack circle, with green grass and a pond in the center, with the snow-covered peak of Mt. Rainier rising in the distance in a clear blue sky on a sunny spring day.
Mt. Rainier in the distance over the Emerald Downs racetrack.

Four students sit at a table at the front of a lecture hall with a presentation screen behind them, in front of an audience of staff, faculty, and fellow students.
Four of our students were part of a panel discussion for IPSE Day, talking about their experiences at Highline College.

Me, a white man with a short trimmed greying red beard, wearing a black cap, black half-rim glasses, and black shirt and hoodie, standing outside in front of green trees, with a slight smile.
Me at 52. Feeling pretty good about aging well.

📚 Reading

Finished Lois McMaster Bujold’s Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance.

🔗 Linking

Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold

by

Book 23 of 2025: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

We turn to Miles’s cousin Ivan for this entry (Miles is reduced to a cameo role), as he gets drawn into helping refugees from a fallen House, dealing with a heist, and finding a little romance along the way. Another fun romp in the Vorkosigan saga, even if I don’t find Ivan to be quite as strong a character as Miles.

Me holding Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

Weekly Notes: April 21-27, 2025

by

While not a bad week, this was a long week. Having just finished the four days of Norwescon, I had Monday off to rest, and then went right into three days of two combined work conferences for DSSC and WAPED. They were good, and it’s always good to connect with work colleagues from across the state, but oof. Even in different contexts, that was about a week and a half of being on.

This weekend we did as little as possible.

📸 Photos

A desktop with eight piles of papers and booklets stacked around and on top of the keyboards and other computer peripherals.

One of my roles for Norwescon is as assistant historian (a side effect of running the convention’s online archives, and this year, I was given three and a half boxes with several decades of old convention ephemera. Lots was from Norwescon, but there was also a lot of stuff from other cons, including OryCon, CascadiaCon (the 2005 Nasfic), Westercon, the World Fantasy Convention, Worldcon, and bits and pieces from a few others. I’ve sorted through it all, and most of it I’ll try to pass off to more appropriate interested parties, but the Norwescon stuff will be slowly scanned and added to our archives. Lots of fun to see this old stuff!

The coner of my work desk, with a desk lamp with a colorful space vista printed on the shade, and the TOS Enterprise dangling from the chain. Around the base are seven model Star Trek ships. To the right is a green glowing schematic of the TOS Enterprise.

The Star Trek corner of my desk at work got a fun upgrade with the addition of a desk lamp with the TOS Enterprise dangling from the pull chain. A friend was decluttering, so I…well, I cluttered, but that’s okay.

📝 Writing

I inadvertently took a ride in a new Tesla Model Y, and wasn’t impressed.

📚 Reading

Started Lois McMaster Bujold’s Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance. I’m almost done with the Vorkosigan Saga books, and the next book on my Hugo reading project is the second in Bujold’s World of the Five Gods series, so my current plan is to go ahead and finish off the Vorkosigan saga before moving on to her fantasy work.

🎧 Listening

I posted the recording of my set DJing the Thursday night dance at Norwescon. Three and a half hours of listening pleasure for you to enjoy!

🔗 Linking

  • Chrysalis Magazine: “Chrysalis is a literary magazine by trans youth, for trans youth (created with a little help from trans adults).”

  • Anne Minahan: “Martha’s Rules”: An Alternative to Robert’s Rules of Order (PDF link): “…Martha’s Rules…were developed by Martha’s Housing Co-op for families in Madison, Wisconsin. Martha’s Rules are not only an alternative to Robert’s Rules, but provide ideas for people in organizations who are committed to consensus decision-making and who want to make it work well.”

  • Catherine Zhu at CBC Radio: 45-year mystery behind eerie photo from The Shining is believed to be solved: “In Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic The Shining, the camera zooms in toward a black-and-white photograph hanging in the hallway of the Overlook Hotel. It’s dated July 4, 1921. Dead centre stands Jack Torrance — played by Jack Nicholson — smiling in a crowd of partygoers. ¶ But the photo wasn’t taken on set with extras. It was a real photo from the 1920s, and Nicholson’s face had been superimposed over someone. But whose face was it?”

  • Tim Stevens at The Verge: The $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen: “Meet the Slate Truck, a sub-$20,000 (after federal incentives) electric vehicle that enters production next year. It only seats two yet has a bed big enough to hold a sheet of plywood. It only does 150 miles on a charge, only comes in gray, and the only way to listen to music while driving is if you bring along your phone and a Bluetooth speaker. It is the bare minimum of what a modern car can be….” I’m not at all a pickup person, so am not really in the market, but I’m rather fascinated by Slate‘s approach. Kinda wish there was a car version of this.

  • Lia Woodward and Leah Folta at McSweeney’s: This Five-Hundred-Word Bumper Sticker On My Tesla Explains Why I’m Not A Bad Person: “Before the last few months, Musk was only mean toward some people, and I hope you can understand that I and most people in my social circles were not among them. So when that suddenly changed for me this year, I was just as outraged as any of you, as evidenced by this five-hundred-word bumper sticker prominently placed on my Tesla.”

20 Minute Tesla Model Y Review

by

Entirely unintentionally and much to my chagrin, I had my first ride in a Tesla today; one of the newest Model Ys, in fact. I’d never have done this voluntarily, but I was taking a Lyft from a work conference at a school about 20 minutes away from my home, and didn’t realize it was a swasticar until it pulled up.

What an absolutely foolish design.

The touchscreen display on a Tesla Model Y, showing the display as described in the rest of this post.

Virtually no physical controls. Nearly everything is on this display, mounted dead-center, so none of the critical info is directly in front of the driver; you have to look down and to the right to check anything. I think the only physical controls were the wheel, with a couple buttons, and the pedals. There was no stalk on the right side to control things like the wipers, I couldn’t see if there was a left-side stalk for turn signals or not.

The left third of the display is a live updating animation of whatever the car sees, which means there’s a large, constantly moving distraction just barely out of your eyeline, primed to pull your attention away from the road in front of you. Every car or pedestrian the car senses is shown on the display. It will even show whether a car is a sedan, pickup, or box truck, if it can figure that out (more likely when they’re crossing side-on rather than directly in front or behind). I’m a little surprised that it doesn’t distinguish other Teslas with some sort of special icon or coloring or something.

The right two thirds are all the controls, presented with a low-contrast dark grey on light grey color scheme, with small text and icons, all of which makes it difficult to distinguish any one control from another at a quick glance. And, of course, because it’s all a touch screen, you can’t do anything by feel, because it’s one flat pane of glass and you have to look at the screen to make sure you’re touching the right spot.

Even if the owner of the company wasn’t a raging monomaniacal ego-driven techno fascist doing everything he can to rip this country apart and grift as much money out of the process as he can (which, to be clear, he is, and if Republicans were actually at all serious about getting dangerous immigrants out of the country, he should be at the top of the list), I’d still be baffled that these cars are approved to be on the roads and that people are as enamored with them as they are. It’s like a master class in designing a user interface that’s as potentially dangerous for the driver as possible.

Norwescon 47 Thursday Night Star Trek vs Star Wars Dance

by

From Norwescon 47: Are you Team Enterprise or Team Skywalker? Do you dream of the final frontier, or a galaxy far, far away? Lightsaber or phaser? The Force or the Prime Directive? Let your attire display your affiliation as we dance the night away with DJ Wüdi!

One note: Due to technical issues that plagued the start of the dance, the first 20-some minutes of this has been reconstructed at home. Everything from 27 minutes on was recorded live at Norwescon. This also means there’s one duplicated track…have fun finding it!

Costumed people, inculding Ursula from the Little Mermaid, a Starfleet science officer, and a Vulcan, dance in a circle to The Firm's "Star Trekkin'" as I stand on stage with my DJ gear in front of a video backdrop showing a Super Star Destroyer maneuvering through an asteroid field.

Read more

Weekly Notes: April 14–20, 2025 (Norwescon 47 wrap-up edition)

by

This week was all about Norwescon! Well, Monday and Tuesday were normal workdays, but from then on, it was all con, all the time.

Cat Valente, Wayne Barlowe, Tracy Drain, Jenny Jarzabski, Mike Kimmel, Isis Asare, and Lydia K. Valentine on the main stage in front of the Norwescon logo on the video wall. The Opening Ceremonies, with the guests of honor being introduced and briefly interviewed.

  • Wednesday: Day zero of con is load-in, setup, and generally getting things ready. I spent the morning at home packing up all my stuff, and at noon drove to pick up my wife from work, then she dropped me off at the hotel and headed home for a quiet weekend on her own. From there, it was a lot of wandering around and helping where I could help until I could check into my room, then more of the same.
  • Thursday: Day one of con starts with more helping with setup, plus a lot of general wandering around, saying hi to people, socializing with friends, and so on. I had two official duties for Thursday:
    • 8 p.m.: Introduction to Fandom Dancing was my first time paneling at a convention…though rather than the usual “sit at a table and talk”, this was “play music and help teach people how to do dance”. We concentrated on the Time Warp, the Rasputin, the Macarena, and Thriller, plus encouraging people to just have fun and get out and move and not worry about what you look like.
    • 9 p.m.: Immediately following that was the Thursday Night Dance: Star Trek vs. Star Wars. Unfortunately, I had some technical issues that made the first 20-30 minutes really dodgy, with a lot of starting and stopping and apologizing as I tried to figure out why my headphones weren’t working, making it impossible for me to pre-cue and mix upcoming tracks. Everyone there understood that these things happen, and once I figured out a solution (though I still need to go back and experiment to really nail down what was going on so it doesn’t happen again), I got a good three-hour set in, going until 12:30 a.m., which is pretty good for Thursday night. I was a little frazzled from the clumsy start, so many of my ideas for what I was going to do disappeared from my brain and I know I didn’t play a lot of the tracks I had planned, but people danced and had fun, which was the important part. I recorded the set, and will have it processed and uploaded to my MixCloud page as soon as I can get around to it.
  • Friday: Friday morning I had free to wander and socialize, but the afternoon and evening of day two of the con was all about the Philip K. Dick Award.
    • 3 p.m.: All About the Philip K. Dick Award is held on Fridays to give people a bit of a history of the award and introduce the attending PKD nominees and let them talk about their work for a bit. This year we had three attending nominees, Bora Chung, Tara Campbell, and Subodhana Wijeyeratne. Normally this panel is moderated by award administrator Gordon Van Gelder, but travel difficulties had him delayed, so I stepped up to moderate instead. I was a bit nervous, having only done one panel before (the prior night’s dance panel, where I mostly played DJ) and never having moderated, but I’d sat in on the panel enough to have a pretty good idea of what Gordon usually said. Between myself and a little assistance from audience members asking questions, we had a very nice conversation with the nominees.
    • 4 p.m.: The Philip K. Dick Award social is a private event for the nominees to spend some time meeting and chatting with each other. I got them set up in the room, hung around and chatted for about half an hour, and then left them on their own as I headed down to my room to change.
    • 5 p.m.: The Lifetime Member dinner is another private event for Norwescon’s lifetime members (a group I was inaugurated into two years ago) along with our guests of honor, PKD nominees, and charitable partner representatives. I had a table with all of the PKD nominees and their plus-ones, so we were able to continue the conversations from the prior couple hours as we ate. I left about 6:15 to head to the next room over to do some final setup, and then it was time for…
    • 7 p.m.: The Philip K. Dick Award Ceremony! This was my third year as ceremony coordinator, and after first-year jitters and second-year “we’re switching the room the ceremony is held in three hours before the ceremony” scrambling, this year went off smoothly and without a hitch. Our three attending nominees read selections from their nominated works, readers read for those nominees who were unable to attend, and it all went well. This year’s winners were Brenda Peynado for Time’s Agent and Adrian Tchaikovsky getting the special citation for Alien Clay, and though neither winner was in attendance, a good time was had by all.
    • At that point, I was done for the day, and spent the rest of the evening bouncing back and forth among the dance, room parties, and general socializing as I came across people.
  • Saturday: Day three of the con is normally a free day for me that I can spend doing whatever seems right in the moment. However, this year I was giving a presentation panel in the evening, and though I’d had “finish the presentation materials” on my to-do list for months…well, yeah. Sometimes procrastination bites us in the butt, and I ended up spending nearly my entire Saturday holed up in my room getting everything finished and ready to go. And so, finally, I emerged, got some socializing in, and then it was time for…
    • 7 p.m.: Basics of Accessible Documents and Websites. This is essentially an adaptation of the kind of thing I do for my day job all the time, and a variation on a panel I gave at last winter’s SMOFcon and will be giving at Seattle Worldcon 2025 in August. For SMOFcon and Worldcon I aim it more at “why/how your convention can make your materials more accessible”; for Norwescon, I tweaked it a bit to be aimed more at authors, especially if self-publishing or marketing, and publishers. While I only had five attendees, all of them were interested and engaged with good comments and questions, and as this was the first time trying this out, with a somewhat niche interest, and programmed at 7 p.m. on Saturday against the masquerade, I’m counting it as a success, and hopefully will be bringing it back next year as well.
    • After the panel, it was another evening of floating among the dance, parties, and chatting with whomever I came across as the evening rolled on.
  • Sunday: And finally, it was Sunday, day four and the final day, with nothing on my schedule except packing up and loading out. I took the day slow, got packed up, and headed home just after the closing ceremonies. With that, another con was done!

📸 Photos

Me outside the hotel, standing next to a hotel luggage cart with all my stuff on it, smiling and wearing a black kilt and black t-shirt. The now-traditional photo my wife takes as she drops me off for “nerd summer camp”.

Me wearing a black kilt and black shirt with the vulcan salute on it, standing next to a trio of women in Star Trek: The Next Generation themed 50s style poodle skirts. Star Trek poodle skirts!

Me standing next to a woman in Vulcan ceremonial robes, both of us giving the Vulcan salute. With T’Resik, who was stoically bemused by the shenanigans of the humans around her.

Me wearing a t-shirt with that says Star Trek but is written in the style of the Star Wars logo, in front of a video wall showing my DJ graphics, including turntables and waveforms for the currently playing tracks, the Norwescon logo, a cartoon version of me, and a video loop of Star Trek and Star Wars spaceship shots, here showing the Enterprise in drydock from The Motion Picture. I may have the smallest dance, since it’s on Thursday night, but in my not-at-all humble opinion, I have the best looking dance graphics!

The three attending PKD award nominees and myself at the About the PKD Award panel. Philip K. Dick Award nominees Bora Chung, Tara Campbell, and Subodhana Widjeyeratne and myself at the All About the Philip K. Dick Award panel.

Me on stage wearing a black kilt and black suit jacket, holding a microphone and gesturing as I speak. Opening and welcoming the audience to the Philip K. Dick Award ceremony.

A few more photos are available in this Flickr album.

🔗 Linking

  • Radek Sienkiewicz: Why do AI company logos look like buttholes?: “The fluidity and warmth of human-centered thinking through the use of circles is perhaps the most elegant way anyone has ever described making a logo that resembles an anus.”
  • Jeremy Reimer at Ars Technica: An Ars Technica history of the Internet, part 1: “In our new 3-part series, we remember the people and ideas that made the Internet.” I actually haven’t read this one yet, but want to remember to do so and continue on through the series.

Myth Conceptions by Robert Asprin

by

Book 22 of 2025: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Like the first, it’s cute, but that’s about it. I really think I’d have enjoyed it more if I’d read it when we were both much younger. Not that it’s bad or juvenile, just that it’s, well, lightly humorous fantasy from 1980, and its not going to appeal to me as a 51 year old in 2025 the same way it might have as a tween/teen in the ‘80s.

Me holding Myth Conceptions

Weekly Notes: April 7-13, 2025

by
  • 🚀 Almost to Norwescon! So, lots of that when I’m not doing other things.
  • 🥚 While we’re not terribly religious, we do like the cuteness and spring celebration of Easter, so since Norwescon takes place over Easter weekend, we continued our annual tradition of celebrating spring a week early. It was a gorgeous day, so we took a nice walk in the morning, and then dyed eggs in the afternoon.

📸 Photos

Eighteen eggs dyed bright colors sitting in an egg carton in the sun.

Colors and speckles and eggs, oh my!

📚 Reading

📺 Watching

We got sucked into the reality tripe of Million Dollar Secret. It’s ridiculous, many of these people are horrible, and it’s keeping us entertained.

🔗 Linking

  • Online Markdown is a pretty impressive web-based Markdown editor. I’m starting to find some annoyances with Markdown (it focuses on presentational markup rather than structured markup — for example, _using underscores_ to add italics adds italics as <em> tags rather than <i> tags, but since I’m often marking up book titles, <em> is the incorrect tag to be using), but until/unless I decide to go another way, this looks like a good tool to know about.
  • Daniel Hunter at Waging Nonviolence: What to do if the Insurrection Act is invoked: “With the Insurrection Act looming, now is the time to learn how it might unfold and the strategic ways to respond — including the power of ridicule.” I’m hoping this is just paranoia, but afraid it isn’t.
  • Nicholas Barber at the BBC: ‘It was a magical chemical balance’: How Monty Python and the Holy Grail became a comedy legend: “An independent British comedy made on a shoestring by a television sketch troupe? It sounds like a film destined to be forgotten within weeks of leaving cinemas – assuming it reaches cinemas in the first place. But Monty Python and the Holy Grail is still revered as one of the greatest ever big-screen comedies, 50 years on from its release in April 1975.”
  • Nancy Friedman at Strong Language: “Smut”: “Although the lyrics reflected a set of social and legal circumstances specific to mid-1960s America, their sentiment has proved to be timeless. In honor of its 60th anniversary and Tom Lehrer’s long, remarkable life, here’s our salute to ‘Smut.'”
  • Ex Astris Scientia: Design Issues of the Original Enterprise: “The article discusses problems or uncertainties about the design of the original Enterprise by Matt Jefferies, as it appeared in TOS.”
  • Tim Hardiwck at MacRumors: How to Adjust Mac Volume and Brightness More Precisely: “Before you press the volume or brightness controls, hold down the Option and Shift keys together on your keyboard. Now go ahead and make your adjustments, and you should see the onscreen indicator move forwards and backwards in smaller increments (four over each segment).” I’ve been using macOS since it was Mac OS, and I never knew this trick.
  • Bauhaus Clock: “A Bauhaus clock screensaver for Mac, designed to be present even when you’re not.” Pretty! But apparently I should have downloaded it sooner; the page is now saying “currently unavailable”. Oh dear….

Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer

by

Book 21 of 2025: ⭐️⭐️ 2003 Hugo Best Novel

A portal is accidentally opened between our Earth and a parallel Earth, where Neanderthals became the dominant human species, bringing one Neanderthal scientist over to our world. Some amusing moments as the scientist comes to grips with the oddities of our world when compared to his. However, I was quite thrown off by the introductions of the two primary female characters: one, in order to dive into water for a rescue attempt, strips down to her underwear, pausing to reflect that she wished she hadn’t donned such a lacy pair that morning; the other is raped at knifepoint. After finishing the book, I have only the vaguest ideas of what either character looked like; one is blonde and beautiful, the other more average. That got the book off on poor footing, and I never really warmed up to it after that. Not what I’ve come to expect from these more recent Hugo winners, and I won’t be continuing on with this series.

Me holding Hominids.