Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

On This Day: Jan 8

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Since I’ll 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. Here are my past posts for January 8…

There are 42 posts previously published on January 8th

  • 2025
    • Recent Netflix Spooky Shows Quick notes on a recent spookybinge on Netflix: The Mayfair Witches, Interview With the Vampire, A Discovery of Witches, and Evil. ➡
  • 2024
  • 2023
    • 🎥 Ticket to Paradise Unimaginative and entirely predictable, but harmless, and more or less saved by Clooney and Roberts' undeniable easygoing chemistry. ➡
  • 2022
  • 2021
    • Twitter permanently suspends President Donald Trump: citing “the risk of further incitement of violence.” ➡
    • Suspended Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules ➡
    • 2019-2020 Tech company donations to Republicans who voted to overturn the election: Google Docs spreadsheet, found via Kottke. ➡
    • The 432-year-old manual on social distancing: “In this spookily prescient booklet, people are advised to keep six feet apart, avoid shaking hands and only send one person per household out to do the shopping.” ➡
    • 🖖 Discovery S03E12 and E13: Well, it ended well, at least for the last five minutes of wrap-up. And there were some good bits scattered through the rest of these final two episodes. But on the whole, this season started strong, lost its way midway, and kind of fizzled out. ➡
  • 2020
    • The opening notes of the closing credits music for Enterprise are so similar to the Non Nobis, Domine from Henry V that I always get the latter running through my head after finishing an episode of Enterprise. 🖖 ➡
    • A Brief History of Convention Ribbons: “If you’ve gone to conventions like CONvergence, you may have seen the ribbons imprinted with catchphrases and clip art people stick to the bottom of the their badges—in some cases, collecting large trails of them. CONvergence does a great job of explaining how you can get your own ribbons ... Read more ➡
    • Best Star Trek Captain: How Captain Picard beat Captain Kirk: “For The Next Generation era, Picard somehow had the swaggering captain thing going for him, but, because he was a little bit stoic and detached, he also had the Spock thing going for him, too. He was the best of both worlds (those worlds being ... Read more ➡
    • Our Idols are Fallible …excusing Asimov by saying that some of his contemporaries were guilty of similar transgressions is like downplaying his productivity by pointing out that other authors were prolific. ➡
    • Domain Switch I've moved to michaelhans.com ➡
    • ‘Star Trek: Picard”: Patrick Stewart on Why He’s Returning: “The new show is different from its predecessor in nearly every respect — texture, tone, format, production value, even the likelihood of characters dropping an f-bomb. That’s all by design. Stewart’s design.” ➡
    • On This Day: Jan 8 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from January 8 ➡
  • 2019
    • As the following conditions are true: There is yet another high wind warning for tomorrow, and, I have ordered a UPS for my computer, but it does not arrive until Friday, I would like to apologize in advance to the residents of Renton for tomorrow’s inevitable power outage. ➡
    • Book four of 2019: FTL, Y’all! Tales from the Age of the $200 Warp Drive, edited by C. Spike Trotman and Amanda LaFrenais. ⭐️⭐️⭐️  📚 ➡
    • I’ve had about 24 hours without power over three separate outages over the past two days. Yay for winter storms! Ordering a UPS for my office electronics, which means the power outages will stop now, right? ➡
    • Book three of 2019: The Stone Sky, by N. K. Jemisin. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 #hugowinner 📚 ➡
    • National Geographic: “Before we explored outer space, we tried to paint it: In 1939, artist Charles Bittinger imagined worlds we hadn’t traveled to yet—sometimes with impressive accuracy.” Gorgeous artwork, from a time when we knew far less than we do now. ➡
  • 2018
    • Linkdump for December 27th through January 8th An automatically generated list of links that caught my eye between December 27th and January 8th. • Why So Many Men Hate the Last Jedi But Can’t Agree on Why • My Hero, Luke Skywalker • Stop reading what Facebook tells you to read • List: Alternatives to Platonic Love • This is not going to go the way you think: The Last Jedi and the necessary disappointment of epilogues ➡
  • 2016
    • The plows came through our circle yesterday, and the resulting snow pile is huge! (8/366) ➡
  • 2015
    • Trust There is a better than 50% chance that I'll be ordering an Apple Watch on the day they're added to the Apple Store. ➡
  • 2014
    • I’m about to eat twenty-seven peanut butter cups! ➡
  • 2013
    • Unhappily Ever After Seven short tales, all based off of Disney tales, but far darker than what you're used to. ➡
    • Eclecticism The eight and last of my old mixes to go up. Hopefully I'll eventually start putting _new_ mixes up! ➡
  • 2009
    • Links for December 28th through January 8th Sometime between December 28th and January 8th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • freezebubbles • xkcd: Converting to Metric • Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service: Seattle: Green River near Auburn • UiRemote: The Universal Infrared Remote for iPhone • 25 Years of Mac: From Boxy Beige to Silver Sleek • 6 New Web Technologies of 2008 You Need to Use Now • NCIS: The Official TV Soundtrack • Weak cellphone law puts drivers off the hook • Whose Streets? • Chart Porn: The Unofficial Theory Of Sci-Fi Connectivity ➡
    • Stormpocalypse! First off, the good news: we're not being affected by the current weather craziness hitting the northwest. That said, this is nuts! This stormpocalypse hit us in two stages: first the snowpocalypse, and now the floodpocalypse. I've been watching #waflood on Twitter, and it's been fascinating watching all the updates appear. ➡
  • 2008
    • Good Action is Geography If you build a fast engine, you don’t need fast cutting, because the story’s being told fluidly, and the pages are just turning very quickly. ➡
  • 2006
    • Whoops…something slipped. And I think that pretty much brings us up to date. Plans for tonight are light: work 'til 6pm, do my reading for school tomorrow, have dinner, and watch tonight's Desperate Housewives. Non-stop excitement, I tell you! ➡
  • 2005
    • Progress: Related Entries The keyword index will work, but I've got a lot of work to do on my keywords before I can bring it live. In the meantime, I've re-implemented Adam Kalsey's 'related entries' code, listing five similar entries in the sidebar of each individual entry page. ➡
    • This is Ponderous This is ponderous, man. Really ponderous. ➡
    • 12 Sentences From ctakahara: Take the first sentence of the first post of each month for the past year and make a paragraph from it. ➡
  • 2004
    • About that iPod mini So, contrary to my initial opinion, count me fully in the camp of the iPod mini supporters. If my current iPod ever dies — which hopefully won't happen for quite a while yet — the iPod mini will do quite well for me. ➡
    • U.S. Treasury: Anonymous until we change our mind The U.S. Treasury Department plans to publish nearly 10,000 e-mail addresses on the Web, violating its privacy promise to Americans who used e-mail to comment on a government proceeding. ➡
    • Announcing the…iHPod? In an unexpected partnership, Apple and HP announced today that HP will be re-branding and selling Apple iPods and including iTunes pre-installed on HP branded desktop computers. ➡
    • Photoshop CS won’t do money Adobe Photoshop CS apparently has special image-recognition code built in that will detect someone attempting to work with scanned currency, and then refuse to work with the image. ➡
    • I’m going to be an uncle! My brother and his fiance just found out that Emily is pregnant! ➡
    • Your handwriting as a font Fontifier can make your handwriting into a font ➡
  • 2003
    • Abuse my taste in music Take a peek at the last ten tracks that I've listened to on my computer, then leave a comment to tell me how much my taste in music rocks. Or sucks. Whichever. ➡
  • 1996
    • [From the archives: 1.8.96 0212] Just a couple of quick changes at the moment. I've got a few more planned, but they'll have to wait, as I've just been invited out to coffee at VI (Village Inn), and we must have our priorities, mustn't we? ➡

On This Day: Jan 7

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Since I’ll 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. Here are my past posts for January 7…

There are 35 posts previously published on January 7th

  • 2025
  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2021
    • ITV on the Trump Insurrection A good seven-minute overview of yesterday's events in Washington, D.C. ➡
    • 20 Macs for 2020: Now that this is done, I’m bookmarking it so I can come back and read through the full thing. Eventually. Someday. :) ➡
    • This shirt seemed particularly important today. ➡
  • 2020
    • It’s Got a Great Beat, and You Can File a Lawsuit to It: “Originality is a con: Pop music history is the history of near overlap. Ideas rarely emerge in complete isolation. In studios around the world, performers, producers and songwriters are all trying to innovate just one step beyond where music currently is, working ... Read more ➡
    • Defining the decade: ten years of Apple on one page: “Apple had to graduate through the passing of its founder, juggle relationships with an ever-expanding list of consumer and professional market segments, and adapt to the public attention and scrunity that only comes along as a consequence of being the biggest company in the world.” ➡
    • On This Day: Jan 7 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from January 7 ➡
  • 2018
    • Chucks of the day (56/56): bright all-pink waterproofed low-tops. These will be great for Jan. 20th! #chucks #converse ➡
  • 2017
    • Selfie with moose! ➡
    • Time to start heading home. I’ll put up a fuller post later, but thanks to all of you who made it to my dad’s service today. It was very appreciated. ➡
    • Book three of 2017: Attack the Geek, by Michael R. Underwood. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
    • Pretty Alaskan sunrise over the Chugach range…at 10-o-freaking-clock in the morning! Gotta appreciate those five hours of sunlight we’ll get today! ➡
  • 2016
    • Another workday done. Taken on my way to coax Prairie out of her office. It didn’t take much coaxing. :) (7/366) ➡
  • 2015
    • Default Human Being We need to realize that our concept of the 'default human being' is highly dependent upon our own culture and ingrained biases. ➡
  • 2014
    • Snow! ➡
    • These two just would not stop squabbling. Had to banish them to opposite sides of the desk. ➡
  • 2013
    • Where Time Becomes A Loop Number seven from my old collection of mixes that I'm re-posting. We're moving back into longer sessions again, with this one coming in at just under an hour. ➡
  • 2010
    • Links for January 5th through January 7th Sometime between January 5th and January 7th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • The Online 78 Rpm Discographical Project • Best Buy Optimization Is a Big Stupid Annoying Waste of Money • Word of the Year 2009: Distracted Driving • The Science of Success • The Darwin Awards ➡
  • 2008
    • Pre-Seattle Days Those who follow me on Flickr will have noticed this already, but I've been spending some time digging through my old archive CDs and uploading a bunch of old photos from years (and digital cameras) past. At this point, I've made it through all my digital photos up to the last few days before I bailed out of Anchorage and migrated south to Seattle. ➡
  • 2005
    • Gallimaufry 3 Third verse, same as the first… ➡
    • Netflix and Best Buy? Interesting — Netflix' header navigation tab graphics have changed (less rounded and all gold tones now), and there's a Best Buy logo next to the Netflix logo up top. There's nothing in their Press Releases section about partnering with Best Buy…is this something that's been announced at CES? ➡
  • 2004
    • This GarageBand is a hit You look at an application like GarageBand -- you can't get that on another platform at any price. People will buy Macs on the basis of GarageBand. ➡
    • Firsts For how many of you was your first sexual experience consensual? For how many of you was your first penetrative sexual experience consensual? ➡
    • Zeugma Cool word of the day: zeugma. ➡
    • Even if it…what? This little $20 app is a must-have, even if it weren't made by Microsoft. ➡
    • Works for me! Republicans for Voldemort ➡
    • This town is a mess I won't be surprsied at all if today turns out to have more accidents, simply because since it's not snowing, people will think that they can drive normally. Conditions like this certainly don't make for safe driving, though, and it's my bet that quite a few people will be figuring that out over the course of the day. ➡
  • 2003
    • Revamping the Archives My archives finally approach something resembling user-friendliness. What I did and why I did it. ➡
    • More on Safari In order to give it something of a workout, I went ahead and set Safari to be my default web browser. Mark Pilgrim has a good rundown of current CSS bugs that he's uncovered in Safari so far (thankfully, though, it renders djwudi.com just fine). Amusingly enough, I may have just found one more while I was reading his post. ➡
    • Thoughts on the keynote Just a couple quick thoughts I had regarding some of the news from Steve Jobs' keynote speech today at MacWorld. ➡
    • MacWorld Expo '03 Keynote Summary of Steve Jobs' keynote address at MacWorld San Francisco. Lots and lots of really cool stuff that I can't afford! ➡
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📚 two of 2020: Encounter at Farpoint, by David Gerrold ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A fairly straight adaptation, only a few notable differences from the broadcast episode. As a friend noted, quite amused by the descriptions of men (competence, personality) and women (they’re hot!). 🖖

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I’m going to be (slowly) moving my web presence from michaelhanscom.com to michaelhans.com (because it’s a clever URL), and suddenly had the amusing urge–which, to be clear, I would not actually succumb to–to legally change my last name to “Hans.com”, complete with dot.

On This Day: Jan 6

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Since I’ll 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. Here are my past posts for January 6…

There are 38 posts previously published on January 6th

  • 2025
    • My Workspace for 2025 A look at my home office setup, since I actually bothered to straighten it up heading into the new year. ➡
  • 2024
    • Year 50 Day 249 Out at Seattle’s goth club the Mercury with friends for their Caturday night of musical randomness. ➡
  • 2023
    • Museum of Glass Another day of wandering around a museum, enjoying the pretty sights, and getting back into practice with my camera. ➡
    • 🎥 Enola Holmes 2 Like the first, it was a cute and entertaining adventure, though not quite as good as the first. ➡
  • 2021
    • 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. ➡
    • Meet The Black Women Who turned Georgia Blue: “Yep, it was Stacey. But don’t forget about Nsé, Helen, Tamieka, Melanie, LaTosha and Deborah.” ➡
    • Trifecta There's still a lot of work to do. But at least now, we have a good chance of actually being able to get things done. ➡
  • 2020
    • 📚 two of 2020: Encounter at Farpoint, by David Gerrold ⭐️⭐️⭐️ A fairly straight adaptation, only a few notable differences from the broadcast episode. As a friend noted, quite amused by the descriptions of men (competence, personality) and women (they’re hot!). 🖖 ➡
    • You Can’t Keep Your Relatives’ Skulls: “In theory, people get to decide what happens to their body after death. In reality, it is near impossible to get legal permission to display a relative’s skeleton.” I’d never considered this before, but now that I have, is it weird that I’m a little disappointed? ;) ➡
    • I’m going to be (slowly) moving my web presence from michaelhanscom.com to michaelhans.com (because it’s a clever URL), and suddenly had the amusing urge–which, to be clear, I would not actually succumb to–to legally change my last name to “Hans.com”, complete with dot. ➡
    • On This Day: Jan 6 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from January 6 ➡
  • 2019
    • A quote from N. K. Jemisin’s The Stone Sky, the third in the Broken Earth trilogy. ➡
    • When you want a warm drink in the morning, but the power is out and your apartment only has an electric stove. ➡
  • 2017
    • One of the earliest photos of my dad I think I’ve ever seen. Late teens or early 20s, I’m guessing? Which would put this photo from sometime in the early to mid ’60s. ➡
    • Me and my mum! ➡
    • My parents’ nativity crèche needed a #tinydinosaur cameo appearance. ➡
    • Took the #tinydinosaur for a romp in the snow. Dinosaurs don’t wear boots, so it was pretty cold on his toes. ➡
  • 2016
    • Home, fed, exercised, and relaxing in front of the TV. The usual evening routine. (6/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Whoever decided to combine the fun and excitement of the first day of classes with the energy, smiles, and cheer of a Monday is so fired. (Okay, it’s not that bad, but this idea amused me.) ➡
  • 2013
    • ToriMix v2 Number six in my old collection of mix sessions that I'm putting up for download and podcast. Another 'theme' mix, this is a forty-five minute mix of Tori Amos dance remixes. ➡
    • Pickpocket Magic This profile of a professional pickpocket in the New Yorker is fascinating. There's also a video clip of Apollo doing his thing. Amazing. ➡
  • 2006
    • Weblog Hot or Not? A little bit of silliness being resurrected after finding an old post -- is my weblog Hot or Not? ➡
    • Etymologic Here's one for dad: Etymologic. In this etymology game you'll be presented with 10 randomly selected etymology (word origin) or word definition puzzles to solve. ➡
    • Portfolio 1: The Berger Partnership Landscape designers The Berger Partnership are using one of my photos on their website detailing their work on renovating Cal Anderson Park. ➡
    • Moles and Trolls, Moles and Trolls! Snagged from lemurlad -- and as he pointed out, these results shouldn't surprise _anyone_ who knows me. I'm a Real Genius genius! ➡
  • 2005
    • Weekend Project: Keyword Search While running ideas and vague concepts related to my tag-categorization wishlist of the other day, I figured it was worth poking around in the Movable Type Support Forums, where I found these posts by ishbadiddle -- and while he's calling it something else, that looks to be (nearly) exactly what I've been looking for! ➡
    • 13 Free Songs from iTunes Have an iPod? Want some free music from iTunes? ➡
    • It’s official: Six Apart acquires LiveJournal Looks like the rumors were true: Six Apart acquires LiveJournal. Congrats to both Six Apart and LiveJournal — I'm looking forward to seeing where you all go with this. ➡
  • 2004
    • iTMS updates Along with all the other introductions from this morning's keynote, the iTunes Music Store got a lot of new goodies. ➡
    • Home early A gallery of pictures of the downtown Seattle area that I took during my quest for a bus to get me to work have been uploaded to the Hanscom family photo gallery. Enjoy! ➡
    • At least 4 inches so far! I've got about half an hour before my next possible bus (on a different route), so I'm going to head back out and get some more pictures. Expect a fairly large gallery when I get home tonight! ➡
    • Macworld SF 2004 Keynote Macworld SF 2004 Keynote notes, updated live as it happens. ➡
    • Seattle is Closed ;) By my estimation, there's between half an inch and an inch of snow in downtown Seattle right now, and it's coming down strong. ➡
  • 2003
    • Gibson gets a blog Noted sci-fi/cyberpunk author William Gibson has just started his blog. No RSS feed, though, which means I'll probably forget to check it on a regular basis. Bummer. ➡
    • Searchling I just stumbled across Searchling, a very cool little mini-application for OS X. When running, it adds a system-wide search field that allows you to search Google, Slashdot, or a few other sites. ➡
    • So many books, so little time In a fortuitous bit of serendipity, I just re-discovered a website I'd found a few months ago, but forgotten to bookmark — All Consuming, which scans recently updated weblogs for Amazon book links, and uses that data to track what books are currently popular in the weblog world. Nifty stuff to explore! ➡
    • Web Writing Style Guide Popular sites filled with cutting-edge Internet cognoscenti (such as Slashdot and ShackNews) give the lie to this harmful and destructive myth: they are brimming with horrific grammar, atrocious spelling, gratuitous abbreviation and childish, arrogant attitude. To be "in" on the net, you must write like a wanker. ➡
  • 1996
    • [From Usenet: 1.6.96 0000] Okay...just read this last night, so dug up the passage, as I remembered this discussion while I was reading.... From the hardbound edition of the first three books of the Belgariad, pg. 514 (Magician's Gambit, near the end of Chapter Ten). ➡
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📚 one of 2020: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, by Fredrik Backman. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A great first book for the year, this one is wonderful. Touching, heartfelt, and hilarious, and a beautiful blend of real and fantasy worlds. An instant favorite.

On This Day: Jan 5

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Since I’ll 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. Here are my past posts for January 5…

There are 30 posts previously published on January 5th

  • 2024
  • 2021
    • Lots of Reason to Laugh 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. ➡
  • 2020
    • 📚 one of 2020: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, by Fredrik Backman. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A great first book for the year, this one is wonderful. Touching, heartfelt, and hilarious, and a beautiful blend of real and fantasy worlds. An instant favorite. ➡
    • On This Day: Jan 5 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from January 5 ➡
  • 2019
    • At the DoubleTree SeaTac for today’s Norwescon planning meeting, and Aki Con is here this weekend! Having another con here with people running around in costume feels so much better (home-y) than on weekends when it’s just a “normal” hotel. ➡
    • Book two of 2019: The Obelisk Gate, by N. K. Jemisin. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #hugowinner 📚 ➡
    • Trump’s bizarre Rose Garden news conference shows why he’s impossible to negotiate with: Forget impeachment, it’s more and more obvious that the 25th Amendment should be under serious consideration. This man has no business holding the office of President. ➡
  • 2016
    • Icicles! (5/366) ➡
    • This well-hung snowman appeared in front of my building today. The students are back in town! ➡
  • 2015
    • Santa or eyeball? This time of year the candy bowl on my desk is always an amusing mix of leftover Halloween and Christmas candy. ➡
  • 2014
    • Mmmmm: Pork chops with baked apples, green beans, and sweet potato. ➡
    • Prepping for the zombie apocalypse? Or cooking up meth? Either way, looks creepy. ➡
    • Another morning walk, this time along the John Wayne Memorial Trail down the Iron Horse State Park. ➡
  • 2013
    • Blurry Boundaries Honestly, I'm not entirely sure just where the boundary between 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' violence lies for me. I like my horror creepy and/or with a good dose of humor mixed in. Today's trend towards ultra-violent torture porn just makes me feel ill. ➡
    • A Fine Day’s Mix The fifth of my old collection of mix sessions that I'm posting. This one is another 'theme' idea I had, and depending on how much you like the base song, could be either enjoyable or excruciating. ➡
    • Free Islamist SF anthology eBook A Mosque Among The Stars was the first anthology that dealt with the subject of Muslim characters and/or Islamic themes and Science Fiction. ➡
  • 2008
    • Better Buy I may not ever get to a point of just stopping by to browse, or remotely look forward to having to dive into Best Buy...but at least at the moment, I don't feel the need to actively avoid the store or it's sales droids when I do stop in. And, for Best Buy, that's saying a _lot_. ➡
  • 2005
    • Timeline Meme I guess it's a good day for picking up on memes — this one comes from Mike: the Timeline Meme. ➡
    • De-Lurker Day Well, the day's actually almost over, but I just now found about about this thanks to Carla saying hi — today's been declared De-Lurker day! ➡
    • Veronica Moser, Type Key Spammer While there's a fair amount of chatter today about spammers shifting tactics away from comments and towards Trackback, I ran into a different approach — my first TypeKey authenticated spammer. ➡
    • On Ebonics As someone who's long had an (entirely unschooled) interest in language and linguistics, much of what's in here is absolutely fascinating. ➡
  • 2004
    • :hover support in IE! Hot damn — someone figured out how to hack :hover support into Internet Explorer! ➡
    • I used to be a DJ / Gig’s Music Theater I finally got tired of letting my old domain sit inactive, and have resurrected djwudi.com as a monument (however small) to my years as a club DJ, along with a 1998 archive of the Gig's Music Theater website. ➡
    • How to screw your employees A proposed Labor Department rule suggests ways employers can avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible this year. ➡
    • Macworld keynote tomorrow This week is the Macworld expo in San Francisco, and Jim has a good roundup of the current rumors posted. As Lane pointed out, I'll certainly be keeping up with the news during tomorrow's keynote. ➡
    • Sympathy for the Devil remixes Sympathy for the Devil has been one of my favorite songs for years, and I've collected quite a few versions over the years. I'm sure I don't have all of the various versions out there yet, but so far I've managed to dig up… ➡
  • 2003
    • Fine tuning Site adjustments: sidebar reorganization, and bringing back the book reviews. ➡
  • 2001
    • Babies are so darn cute Miranda had a beautiful little girl on Christmas Eve, and she just sent me a picture of the little munchkin! She's a cutie! ➡
    • High Fidelity Imposters Dream of Hallmark I'd actually managed to go through a couple release days without anything catching my eye enough to spend money on — miracles never cease, eh? After work today I had to go by Suncoast to figure out when I work this weekend, and discovered that I had a paycheck waiting for me. Rock on…but funny, I didn't have it when I walked out. ➡

On This Day: Jan 4

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Since I’ll 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. Here are my past posts for January 4…

There are 34 posts previously published on January 4th

  • 2025
  • 2024
  • 2023
    • Museum of Flight Went out to the Museum of Flight and took a few shots with my DSLR for the first time in something over three years. ➡
  • 2021
  • 2020
    • Out for a night of goth clubbing at The Mercury. ➡
    • On This Day: Jan 4 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from January 4 ➡
  • 2017
    • This much winter is a new thing for the #tinydinosaur (not so new for me, though). ➡
    • The #tinydinosaur thought that Batman V Superman was spectacular…ly stupid. Wonder Woman really was the only worthwhile part. Is there a bootleg 10-minute WW edit somewhere out there? #batman #superman #wonderwoman #batmanvsuperman ➡
    • Traveling can be stressful, so the #tinydinosaur recommends the occasional ice cream break. ➡
    • People watching with the #tinydinosaur at SeaTac airport. ➡
    • Book two of 2016: Windows on a Lost World, by V. E. Mitchell. ⭐️⭐️ #startrek #tos ➡
  • 2016
    • Can we just be done with this already? (Answer: no. More snow predicted.) (4/366) ➡
  • 2015
    • The @CardsAgainstHumanity @cah base game, plus five official expansions, two years of holiday bullshit, the 90s mini-pack, and four Crabs Adjust Humidity expansions. I’ve had to split this so the white cards are in the Bigger Blacker Box, and the black cards are in the Case for Humanity box. ➡
  • 2014
    • A nice walk by the Yakima river on a brisk winter’s morning. ➡
  • 2013
    • Mission Accomplished The fourth of my old collection of mix sessions that I'm posting. This one starts a few that move away from the 'Difficult Listening Hour' series to explore some other ideas I had running through my head. ➡
  • 2011
  • 2010
    • School Schedule, Winter Quarter 2010 Well, even though classes don't _officially_ start until tomorrow, I'm already up and running and beginning to dig into the readings for my classes. Here's what I'll be playing with this quarter. ➡
    • Links for December 16th through January 4th Sometime between December 16th and January 4th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • Why Is JJ Abrams Obsessed With Alice in Wonderland? • Population of the Dead • The Weekly World News on Google Books • This Dumb Decade: The 87 Lamest Moments in Tech, 2000-2009 • 20 Greatest SF Movies of the Past Decade ➡
  • 2007
    • Christmas in Alaska It took a few days, but the photos from our trip up to Anchorage to visit my parents are finally up. ➡
  • 2006
    • The Future is Not What It Used to Be Ever since the total, irretrievable collapse of the Internet in a chaos of viruses, worms, spam, terrorism and busts by the FBI anti-porn squad, [bloggers] had become a bigger street menace than mimes, Jehovah's Witnesses, or panhandlers ever were. ➡
    • Plato’s a Putz No, no -- not Plato. Plato Learning, Inc. They're the company that provides the online program that we're using in my math class -- that really shouldn't be incompatible with Macs. ➡
  • 2005
    • Quick Review: The Lion in Winter I'm not really sure when I put The Lion in Winter in my queue, nor what prompted me to do so. I'm very glad I did, though — what a wonderful, deliciously wicked film! ➡
    • My best photos of 2004 I've just created a flickr photoset of my favorite photographs from this past year (hey, every news organization on the planet does this, I might as well join in the fun, right?). ➡
  • 2003
    • Can corporations lie? Nearly one hundred and forty years ago, towards the end of the Civil War, Pres. Lincoln foresaw the rising power of the corporations that had grown the most due to wartime industries. Now, in a case heading for the U.S. Supreme Court, the corporate world may be fighting to hold onto everything that Pres. Lincoln feared, and that has come all too true. ➡
    • I wish… I'm not too sure how they stumbled across me, but I just got notification today that I've been added to the list of birthdays at I Wish, You Wish. They're working on collecting links of bloggers that have their Amazon Wishlists posted, and listing them alongside their birthdays. ➡
  • 2002
    • Rick sent me this quote Video games don't affect kids. If Pac Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms munching magic pills and listening to repetitive, electronic music. ➡
    • The new album from M.C. Escher, ‘Please Escher Don’t Hurt ‘Em,’ featuring the hit single, ‘You Can’t Draw This!’ Hmm...if I didn't babble so much, the title of this post would probably be longer than the post itself. Score one for being talkative! ➡
    • Twitch This is how my friends drink coffee. ➡
    • Now that’s a big gun Maglev technology, basically a big railgun, powering craft from the ground into space. Does my little sci-fi geek heart proud. ➡
    • Chad’s birthday That whole issue of needing to give the appearance of being able to justify your time no matter how slow it is kind of kills much ability to find some interesting ways to kill time. ➡
    • Four Oh Four By now, most websurfers will have seen the standard '404 Error' webpage that pops up when a requested page doesn't exist. Some 404's are cooler than others -- and THCnet has the coolest I've seen yet. If Royce checks my page anytime soon, he should check it out. ➡
  • 2001

Norwescon 43 is Coming Up

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Since we’re now in 2020, I figured it might be worth noting that Norwescon 43 is just about three and a half months away!

Norwescon is a non-profit, all-volunteer, fan-run, literary/generalist SF/F convention held at the DoubleTree Seattle Airport hotel in SeaTac every Easter weekend; this year’s dates are April 9–12, 2020 (yes, the same weekend as SakuraCon, but while the two target groups absolutely have overlap, there are definite differences as well). Rooms at the hotel are still available, and attendance for the full weekend (Thurs-Sun) is just $75 until Jan. 15, when it goes up a little bit (single-day passes are only sold at the convention).

As a literary/generalist con, Norwescon has a focus on SF/F books (reading, writing, and publishing), but also has lots of panels and events around all aspects of SF/F fandom, including film, television, fanfic, geek music, costuming, games (computer, card, tabletop, rpg, etc.), and more.

The Guests of Honor this year are:

The panel/event schedule for this year is still being assembled (it usually gets published within the month prior to the con), but you can count on four days of panels on all of the above topics, hands-on workshops, interviews with the Guests of Honor, autograph sessions (with no autograph fees), gaming sessions, special events in the evenings, and a hotel full of people getting their geek on.

Evening events include a costume Masquerade, dances, and concerts, with more being planned. There is a full dealers’ room with vendors selling all sorts of geeky merchandise, and a large art show with lots of SF/F artwork to admire and purchase.

Norwescon is also the host of the annual Philip K. Dick Awards, recognizing the best SF/F paperback-first publications of the past year, and there are usually a few of the nominated authors attending to read from their nominated works.

For those who might be interested in getting more directly involved, Norwescon is always looking for more volunteers to help with the convention, too! Volunteers are always accepted for everything from a few hours helping out at the convention itself to joining the planning committee beforehand and being a part of the group that makes things go.

More information is available on the convention’s website; I’ve been volunteering with Norwescon for around a decade now, and am happy to answer questions however I can, if there are any.

No More Ads

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I’ve (finally) entirely disabled any ads on my blog. I’d been playing with Google Adsense on and off for years, but it’s long since lost any real use for me. Where I used to get $300 every quarter or so, I haven’t received a payout check from them since I’m honestly not sure when. What with the move from context-sensitive, not terribly intrusive, plain-text ads to larger graphic ads that never seem to have any relation to the surrounding context and the rise of near-ubiquitous ad blocking software (and this isn’t a complaint, as I use ad blockers myself), it’s just not worth the hassle and the annoyance they’d present to those few people who would still see them anymore.

For most of you, this probably wouldn’t even be noticeable if I hadn’t said anything, because I expect you’re either reading through RSS or use an ad blocker. But for those few of you who might actually be visiting the site without an ad blocker running, you’ll now have a more pleasant experience.