On This Day: Dec 1

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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 28 posts previously published on December 1st

  • 2023
  • 2021
  • 2020
  • 2019
    • Gordon van Gelder, administrator of the Philip K. Dick Award, is conducting an online auction to raise funds for the award. Lots of books donated by authors and publishers, many (most? all?) signed by the authors. Check it out! 📚 ➡
    • Found on Facebook, original creator unknown, but it sure made me laugh. Welcome to the holiday season! ➡
    • 📚 fifty-seven of 2019: Way Station, by Clifford D. Simak. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1964 Hugo Best Novel Excellent book, mostly quiet and contemplative, as one man struggles with both his and humanity’s place in the galaxy. An introspective and ultimately hopeful piece. ➡
    • First human composting site to open in 2021: This is really neat, but wow, look at that ‘70s sci-fi cult design! Honestly, I think that’s a selling point for me. ➡
    • Are good readers more likely to give up on maths?: “None of this means that we should stop efforts to counter stereotypes about girls’ aptitude for maths and science versus reading. But it does suggest that much of the impact of these stereotypes occurs not at the point at which girls choose a career, but ... Read more ➡
  • 2016
    • Waiting for my dental appointment. Everyone’s favorite way to start the day. (336/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people '…my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.' ➡
  • 2013
    • Sounds From the Lost Abbey 06 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 sixth of quite a few to come! ➡
  • 2007
  • 2005
    • Snow! It's really coming down -- doesn't seem to be sticking yet, but the flakes are huge. Whee! ➡
    • Lost s02e09: What Kate Did Scribbled notes while watching last night's episode of Lost. Spoilers, obviously, so only read further if you want to... ➡
  • 2004
    • MSN Spaces reactions Robert Scoble is collecting reactions to MSN Spaces, including mine. ➡
    • Balloon Feather Boat Tomato Jason Webley has updated his site with information about his most recent show. He has links up to the photo galleries that Josh and I have posted (nifty!), plus a few other goodies. ➡
    • MSN Spaces launches Microsoft finally makes their long-rumored debut into the weblogging service arena with MSN Spaces. I got curious, and it's free, so I went ahead and signed up to try it out. ➡
    • Switch to VoIP? If I switched over to both OneLink and VoIP, my final cost would be about $6/month more than what I'm paying now, but the first three months would be cheaper, as you get a 'free three months' for signing up (some of which are offset by the setup costs, but that's expected). All in all, this sounds like a pretty damn good deal to me. ➡
    • World AIDS Day World AIDS Day, December 1, 2004 ➡
  • 2003
    • Well, hi there…Dick… According to Yahoo! News, this is a photo of Dick Gephardt's shadow… ➡
    • My G5 is an insomniac Issue 1: My G5 appears to be an insomniac. Issue 2: At some point, I lose the ability to choose some of the commands in the Apple menu: 'About This Mac', 'Force Quit...', 'Restart...', 'Shut Down...', and 'Log Out [username]...' are all non-responsive. ➡
    • Roy Disney resigns from Disney Roy Disney himself has left the Walt Disney company, and includes a call for Michael Eisner's resignation or retirement in his letter of resignation. ➡
    • Getting in Google's good graces I use a number of techniques on my weblog, both in the code and how I create entries, that help Google get the most useful information out of my pages. ➡
    • You're an ex-DJ? I don't think I've ever met an ex-DJ. They're always just 'between clubs' or something. ➡
  • 1993
    • [From Usenet: 12.1.93 0608] All I know is that the local Mucusland (Musicland) moved the date in their little book for his new album from October/November to January. Ergh...starting to get torqued at this! ➡
    • [From Usenet 12.1.93 0608] According to a DJ at the local college radio station, there was a sampler put out by Hollywood records a while back with a remix (not remake) of Queen's Stone Cold Crazy, remixed by Trent Reznor. ➡
    • [From Usenet 12.1.93 0542] Personally, I don't have a whole lot, but...Front by Front is good, best track (imho) being #10, Welcome to Paradise ('Hey poor! You don't have to be poor anymore! Jesus is here!') Good sampling. ➡
    • [From Usenet: 12.1.93 0534] Good stuff (imho). New album, while not produced by Reznor, definitely has some of his touch to it...probably picked up some hints while working on the remixes of BLBT(AJF). Nifty...I like it. ➡
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This year’s series of Microblogvember posts is done! Once again, lots of SF/F microfiction. Find all of them — plus, if you scroll back far enough, all of last year’s — on the microblogvember tag page, and (hopefully) enjoy!

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She closed her eyes, reciting line after line of every poem, song, and book she could remember, desperately trying to reinforce her mental defenses against the earworm’s attack. Unfortunately, humanity had yet to find a working defense against “It’s A Small World, After All.”

On This Day: Nov 30

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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 30 posts previously published on November 30th

  • 2025
  • 2024
    • Asylum by Una McCormack 📚: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Trek at its best when it’s looking at modern issues through an SF lens. ➡
  • 2023
  • 2021
    • 📚 49/2021: The World of Science Fiction 1926-1976: The History of a Subculture by Lester del Rey ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
    • Blog This Shortcut for iOS or macOS A cross-platform iOS/macOS shortcut for blogging with MarsEdit or Ulysses ➡
  • 2020
    • This year’s series of Microblogvember posts is done! Once again, lots of SF/F microfiction. Find all of them — plus, if you scroll back far enough, all of last year’s — on the microblogvember tag page, and (hopefully) enjoy! ➡
    • She closed her eyes, reciting line after line of every poem, song, and book she could remember, desperately trying to reinforce her mental defenses against the earworm’s attack. Unfortunately, humanity had yet to find a working defense against “It’s A Small World, After All.” ➡
    • Washington state has enabled COVID-19 exposure notifications for iPhone and Android users. More information and installation instructions are available at WANotify.org. You should enable this! Also, stay at home when you can, mask and social distance when you can’t. ➡
    • On This Day: Nov 30 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from November 30 ➡
    • 📚 forty-eight of 2020: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome by Joan D. Vinge ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Better than I expected for a novelization of an ‘80s action flick. Makes me want to re-watch the film again to see if it’s better than I remember, or if Vinge just did a particularly good job. ➡
  • 2019
    • Thirty days, thirty posts: I successfully completed Microblogvember! All my posts are tagged with ‘Microblogvember’ on my blog. All fiction (as far as I know, at least), all in the general SF/fantasy/horror spaces. This was a fun project! ➡
    • “I told you I had to integrate the all the systems before we could start!” “Yes, I know—I just didn’t realize you meant…all the systems,” they replied, looking in horror at the wires and tubes running from the console and snaking under their skin. Microblogvember: integrate ➡
    • 📚 fifty-six of 2019: Taking Wing, by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Captain Riker’s first assignment post-Nemesis. Also, quite coincidentally, in many ways a sequel to the last Trek novel I read, with several direct ties, and by the same authors. 🖖 ➡
  • 2017
    • Day one! #cardsagainsthumanity #cah ➡
  • 2016
    • Lit by the Christmas tree lights. (335/366) ➡
  • 2013
    • Sounds From the Lost Abbey 05 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 fifth of quite a few to come! ➡
  • 2009
  • 2005
    • Wishlist time! Seeing how it's less than a month before Christmas and we've run full-bore into the shopping season, I figured I'd put up my wishlist. Of course, the one thing standing in the way is that for the most part, I really don't _have_ a wishlist...at least, not a serious one. ➡
    • Tweaking the ads I've done a bit of tweaking on the ads served up on the pages of my site. While I certainly have no intentions of becoming an adfarm, I finally decided that I didn't mind at least _slightly_ increasing the possibilities of having a few pennies slide my way from time to time. ➡
  • 2004
    • ADD, Hyperactivity, and Ritalin I have serious issues with the current obsession with ADD and the associated pharmaceutical treatments. My personal belief is that it's an incredibly overblown and overmedicated issue. ➡
    • iTMS: Kevin Spacey ‘Beyond the Sea’ Last night while bouncing randomly around the iTMS, I noticed an album by Kevin Spacey. Since I know Kevin as an actor, and not a singer, I was a little curious, and did some investigating. Turns out that there's an upcoming biopic of Bobby Darin called Beyond the Sea with Kevin in the lead role, and he actually does all of his own singing for the film. ➡
    • Oddly Enough News Article | Reuters.com An Australian phone company is offering customers the chance to blacklist numbers before heading out for a night on the town so they can reduce the risk of making any embarrassing, incoherent late-night calls. ➡
    • A Seattle-centric blonde joke A blonde was feeling so depressed that she decided to end her life by throwing herself into Puget Sound. She went down to the docks and was about to leap into the frigid water when a handsome young sailor saw her teetering on the edge of the pier crying. ➡
    • Blast from the Past Something I never realized before — apparently, the person in this iconic ad for Maxell audiocassettes…is none other than then-Bauhaus frontman Peter Murphy. Nifty! ➡
    • LotR:TYEBEE (Lord of the Rings: Till Your Eyes Bleed Extended Edition) 7am: friends arrive, pancake breakfast. / 8am: Fellowship of the Ring (~4+ hrs) / 12:30pm: Lunch / 2:00pm: The Two Towers (~3 1/2 hrs) / 5:30pm: Dinner / 7:00pm: Return of the King (~ 4 1/2 hrs) / 11:30pm: Eyes ooze out of our sockets, bedsores open on our asses. ➡
    • Adoption Lately, I've been really enjoying reading The Sticking Point as Tommy and his wife travel to Seoul to finalize the adoption of a baby boy. Being able to experience the adoption through Tommy's eyes has been rather touching for me, as some time ago I was somewhat involved in an adoption from the other side of the process. ➡
  • 2003
    • First LotR:TRotK review…almost The Return of the King is ... sorry about this, but we're not allowed to tell you what we think of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King until next Tuesday. ➡
    • Bombardier Embrio The Embryo is a single-wheeled vehicle, balanced using internal gyroscopes and powered with a hydrogen fuel cell, emitting only water as its exhaust. ➡
    • The fitty-cen' project Of course, the real question is whether gangsta rappers are going to chip in… ➡
  • 2001
    • Upcoming reading material In the course of a LotR discussion quite a few books and series were mentioned, and I thought I'd jot some of them down so I can pull from this list next time I need to find a book to dive into. ➡
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📚 forty-eight of 2020: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome by Joan D. Vinge ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Better than I expected for a novelization of an ‘80s action flick. Makes me want to re-watch the film again to see if it’s better than I remember, or if Vinge just did a particularly good job.

Difficult Listening Hour 2020.11.28: Thank(s)/giv(e/ing)

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Every track has “thank”, “give”, or “giving” in the title. Thematically and lyrically, few if any are particularly Thanksgiving-related, and it’s a mishmash of styles and genres. Happy Thanksgiving!

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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.