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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 on its site, including a variety of different vendors that print them. But what is the real purpose of badge ribbons, and how did the tradition get started?” (There’s a fair amount of ribbon collection/trading at Norwescon as well.)

Our Idols are Fallible

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Isaac Asimov has long been, and still is, one of my favorite authors. He was also a person who regularly sexually harassed women. Both statements can be (and are) true, without me having to give up the former or condone the latter.

His history with women is no secret, and is the subject of the article Asimov’s Empire, Asimov’s Wall:

Over the course of many decades, Asimov groped or engaged in other forms of unwanted touching with countless women, often at conventions, but also privately and in the workplace. Within the science fiction community, this is common knowledge, and whenever I bring it up in a room of older fans, the response is usually a series of nods. The number of such incidents is unknown, but it can be plausibly estimated in the hundreds, and thus may match or exceed the long list of books that Asimov wrote.

…I regularly hear the argument that Asimov was simply a product of his era. You certainly don’t need to look far to find parallel offenders, including Asimov’s friend Randall Garrett, of whom Frank Herbert recalled, “You could follow his movements … by the squeals of the women whose bottoms he had just pinched.”

But 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.

I find it important to recognize and consider the flaws in the people and the media that we enjoy, rather than shrugging them off or brushing them under the proverbial carpet. It doesn’t mean we have to “cancel” things, banishing entire swaths of previously-enjoyed content when we discover the creator said or did something we find problematic (though in some instances, we may decide to; each person has to determine that for themselves depending on their values and the situation in question). But learning how to hold ourselves and others to higher standards means not ignoring the failures when they appear.

Domain Switch

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In a project that didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would, I’ve just moved my personal site from its former home of www.michaelhanscom.com to its new home here at michaelhans.com.

The reason for the move is simple: The “…com.com” repetition at the end of the old URL formed by the end of my last name and the .com top-level domain suffix has always bugged me a little bit, and so the new URL is simpler and more clever.

It has been pointed out to me that this new setup is likely somewhat less optimal in terms of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), as “the SEO power of [thing].com is probably less than that of [first-part-of-thing].[second-part-of-thing]”. However, 1) I’ve had my time at the top of the search results, and I’m okay with continuing to drop down in the rankings a bit, and 2) I’ve stopped running ads or paying any real attention to my statistics/site visits/rankings, so SEO just isn’t at the top of my concerns right now. I’m not going to ignore that entirely, but it’s simply not a major concern.

At this point, the move should be complete: All content has been transferred over to the new domain (and I’d like to take a moment to plug the WordPress plugin Duplicator, which made moving my blog much easier than I thought it would be; it wrapped everything up in an archive, I moved the archive to the new location, ran the installer, and that was it–it even scanned the database to replace any links to www.michaelhanscom.com inside blog posts with links to michaelhans.com, which was one of the tasks I was dreading), the .htaccess redirects are in place and working properly, and I’ve adjusted all external connections so that they all point to the right place.

All in all, a rather surprisingly uneventful move.

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? ➡
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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 from the same component parts. It shouldn’t be a surprise when some of what they come up with sounds similar — and also like what came before.”

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!). 🖖