Category: Personal

Stuff about me or my family.

Tabletop Day!

Personal
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tabletopdaylogoToday, March 30th, is International Tabletop Day!

It’s an easy day to observe: just get together with people you like (or people you might like) and play some games.  Old-fashioned cardboard and plastic, look-each-other-in-the-eye games.

Everybody has a game or twenty tucked in a closet or stuck up on shelves.  Get them out!  Better yet go to your local game shop and ask about the hundreds of awesome independent games available.  Whether you have kids or not, five minutes or five hours, want to think really hard or not at all there’s a game out there that’s perfect.  Go find it!

TiVo Sucks, Part 2

Human Factors, Rants
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As I’ve written before: TiVo sucks.  In that first article I lamented the lack of innovation and features for this premium product.  The worse thing I can say is that now, over a year later, every single one of my issues still exist.  In fact there hasn’t been a single truly significant upgrade.  Nothing that screams, “you can only get this here!”  The service today is, for all intents, the same service I challenged as not advanced enough for premium pricing then.  Hell, it’s been two years and they still haven’t completed the HD interface.

Now that my contract has ended I’m considering dropping Tivo and reverting to the stock offering from Comcast.  I went to the Tivo site to allow it to convince me not to.  I got the following “10 reasons you’ll love Tivo”.

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Personal Archaeology: Remember Prodigy?

Personal
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My daughter was cleaning out the family room when she came up with this and asked why it was addressed to me (at a very old, no longer valid, address by the way).  It had been bouncing around my belongings for at least two decades and was currently full of colored pencils:

Prodigy Gift Tube, 1990

When I was a kid of 19 years old (now that I’m in my forties that qualifies as a “kid”) I had a computer.  It was sweet: a Tandy 1000TL 286-based speed demon (here’s an internal sales video of how Radio Shack marketed and sold them).  It ran DOS applications and Tandy’s home-grown “Deskmate” graphical interface and, as you’re told in the video, could even remember the current date and time!

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Riffing Myself with Joel Hodgson

Personal
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Joel Hodgson, Riffing Myself1We moved to Scranton, from Boston, about seven years ago to follow a job.  Scranton’s a nice town.  It manages its finances like a schizophrenic chimpanzee but the people are decent, my kids are happy and we’ve actually got a backyard.  It’s not the most exciting town you could name; but it does have its moments and this is one of them.

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Fun Sloth Fact!

Humor
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My favorite podcast, The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, had, as part of a segment, several facts about sloths.  As this one was a huge hit with the kids I decided to work up a little poster.  Since it made me smile I decided to share (click to embiggerize).

Sloth Poster

You might also be interested to know that sloths are surprisingly good swimmers and, thanks to extra vertebrae, can turn their heads up to 270 degrees.

Joel Somerfield’s “A Pale Blue Dot”

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I’m a huge sucker for Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” speech and experiment.  Seeing and hearing it for the first time is one of the seminal events of my life.  Joel Somerfield clearly feels the same way as his elegant animation demonstrates.

Happy Carl Sagan Day!

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Carl Sagan would have been 78 years-old today.  In his time he introduced more regular people to science than most anybody else before or since.  He’s sorely missed.  Here is Carl’s famous “Pale Blue Dot” speech:

Hearing this never fails to give me chills.

Celebrating Curiosities Safe Landing

Humor
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As is rightfully being reported everywhere the Curiosity Rover successfully touched down on Mars at 1:30am EST last night (my favorite coverage is at Bad Astronomy).  In the spirit of the day (and with just a tiny bit of national snarkiness) I knocked this up to help show our pride:

Really China, it’s all in good fun!

Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters 2012: Shaun of the Dead

Personal, Movies
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“Shaun of the Dead” on IMDB

Horror/Comedy, 99 Minutes, 2004

Our annual “Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters” Easter zombie movie marathon comes to a close with our traditional last selection, the complete and total classic “Shaun of the Dead.”

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