Author: mongreldogs
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Lunacon 2014 (1b): Alternate Technologies in Historical Fiction
Panelists: Russ Handelman, James Cambias, Paul Calhoun And here he is, That Annoying Guy From One Seat Over. This archetype shows up at every con, like a restless spirit. One of the panelists pointed out that, more or less by definition, this would actually have to be about alternate historical fiction. Examples of a missed…
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Lunacon 2014 (1a): Building Character
Panelists: Mike Flynn and Ken Atlabef. I was a little disappointed to see that the first panel sported Mike Flynn as a guest. At the last Lunacon, Mike Flynn was the moderator for the panels I consistently liked least. My recollection was that he was a know-it-all who made points only to emphasize his intelligence…
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Lunacon 2014 (0): Arrival
After a five-year hiatus, I am back at Lunacon, at the suggestion of my lovely wife (who says it’s important we tend to our individual needs as well as our married ones, and who — I believe — also might like having the apartment to herself for a weekend. 🙂 ) Standing in line to…
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Marc Cohn and guests at the City Winery : 2013 Feb 14
I’ve sort of blown the deadline on my 30 Days of Marc Cohn, but I can at least offer up this playlist. 🙂 “From the Station” “Ghost Train” “Perfect Love” “The Letter” with Jon Leventhal “29 Ways” “Listening to Levon” with Dave Mansfield “Healing Hands” with Rebecca Pidgeon “Witness” with Rebecca Pidgeon “Silver Thunderbird” “Walking…
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Art and Design, Fail
I’ve been doing a little reading on the art of design and the failure of art as design. (For example, see this piece about how objects for human use should be designed for, you know, humans.) That led me to the International Push/Pull Pictogram Design Competition, tasked with designing exactly what it says: a non-verbal…
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Review: The Hunger Games (2012)
I suspect I’m about to draw down the wrath of the Internet on me, but I finally saw The Hunger Games (the first one) and I’m simply not impressed. Spoilers and such.
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Review: The Day of the Doctor
So Doctor Who has been bopping around time, space, and the BBC for 50 years now, and the Beeb put on a very special 50th anniversary episode. My thoughts below. And, to quote a certain archeologist: SPOILERS
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Miracles and Wonder
I just received the Kingston 64 GB USB flash drive shown above. It holds (duh) 64 gigabytes of data. I’ve included a US quarter for size comparisons. My first computer was a Commodore-64, for which I had the venerable C1541 floppy disk drive. That used 5.25″ floppy disks — which were actually floppy, you could…
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The buzz about the loop
So Elon Musk has revealed his great new intercity transit idea, the HyperLoop. It would seem the emphasis should be on the first syllable — to wit, HYPE — but I’ll leave engineering analyses to those far more qualified than I. My impression is that Musk offers vaporware that over-promises and under-delivers, that will…
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The Name of the Doctor
So, that’s a bit of a tease, isn’t it? Lots to think about in the season 7 finale of Doctor Who, but first, as River might say, Spoilers! (There’s a recap available at tv.com.) ==============================================