I’m sorry; I know the blog’s been a bit dead, with no updates since March. Well, I had a good reason.
I was on vacation.
And it was such a vacation. I had been planning this trip for literally a decade. Slightly longer, actually. And I finally did it. Continue reading
Philip K. Dick (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
So a while back I was browsing for something — I don’t know what, because I instantly forgot it when I found this instead.
First of all, somebody’s made a robotic Philip K. Dick. (If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s a major science fiction author whose books became some of the world’s hallmark sci-fi films, such as Bladerunner and Total Recall.) The robot is not only designed to look fairly lifelike (always an interesting choice in robotics, the aesthetics) but has Dick’s thoughts uploaded, in the form of all Dick’s works and recorded conversations. Thus the robot should be roughly able to answer questions as Dick would have done. It’s also capable, using its prodigious artificial intelligence, to form new answers to new questions, integrate new knowledge, and develop new “thoughts.” Continue reading
There are several stories of dogs showing unbelievable tenacity in looking for or waiting for their missing owners. One of the most famous is Hachiko.
Hachiko was a regular at Shibuya Station in Tokyo, where he spent the first couple of years of life meeting his owner Ueno Hidesaburo as he returned from teaching at the University of Tokyo. But one day in May 1925, Ueno collapsed during a lecture of a cerebral hemorrhage and died at work. Hachiko went to the train to meet him as usual, but Ueno did not arrive.
Continue readingSo I was picking up around the house, and I noticed a theme to my personal accessories….
It’s been no secret that I like red, and black, and red and black together, but this was a fairly solid example. At least shopping is easy!
With the impending release of The Force Awakens, a lot of old Star Wars material is being revisited about the internet, including several fun conspiracy theories. I delayed writing this post too long, so you may have seen some of these by now, but here’s a roundup of my favorites.
Continue reading
I think it’s time we were all honest with ourselves and just admitted that Daylight Saving Time is a failed idea.
It’s not a bad idea, in its original form. When early proponents (such as Benjamin Franklin) realized that we could take advantage of longer daylight hours by getting up earlier, that was a legitimate and factual observation. Ben satirically suggested cannons to rouse the populace earlier rather than changing the clocks, because changing the clocks was kind of a dumb idea, but the cannons didn’t exactly take off either.
Since then, Daylight Saving Time (it’s singular, despite popular mispronunciation) discussion has been full of good intentions with poor follow-through.
Continue readingI just thought that today, you should see the most badass butter packaging of which I am aware.
Continue readingOkay, I’ve seen a number of people post this now. Many are people who don’t know each other. And I’ve seen the sentiment echoed from all demographics, people getting student discounts and people getting senior discounts. It’s everywhere. Here’s the thing:
And I’m going to step into the Old Ben mentor trope for a moment and pontificate, because it seems there’s something critical being missed.
Guys, this is not “that friend.” This is EVERYONE. Continue reading
So I came across an interesting game premise recently.
Well, not a game, per se. There’s no gameplay and no storyline and no final boss battle. There’s no leveling and no skill-building and no farming. No gold, no XP. Instead, it’s just a virtual environment to be explored like an open-world game, for the purpose of prompting would-be writers to actually write.
Lots of people want to write but are then intimidated by the blank page. And traditional writers’ adages don’t necessarily help.
Enter Elegy for a Dead World, a game to encourage novice writers to shut off the self-doubt and just write.
Continue readingI’ve mentioned previously that I cut an annual autumn maze. What I didn’t mention is that the last couple of years, I’ve used a secret theme.
It’s hard to invent a wholly new labyrinth each year without being repetitive, so one year I chose an usual word from a book title, a word I figured no one would recognize, and used it as the basis for my maze. It seemed to work pretty well, the maze was reported properly twisty — the word was kitsune — and no one realized they were actually walking through connected letters.
That became my private joke. Half of the maze was bizarre swirls and winding paths, meant to draw out the younger kids but not lose them, and half was a series of interlinked passages based on some personal literary reference. But last year, I was found out, thanks to Google Earth. My mother, who with my father owns the field in which the maze is cut, was looking up her property’s aerial view for some reason and realized the map had been updated after I’d done my maze. Continue reading
