25 years ago tonight, Voyager 2 made its closest pass by Neptune, zipping over the cloudtops at Neptune’s north pole at a distance of barely 17,000 miles. That’s a close shave by space probe standards. And make no mistake, Voyager had spent the past month or so showing us amazing things.
Holy crap, guys.
It’s after 9pm.
The sun has gone down.
It’s dark outside.
It’s also nearly 90 degrees outside with a heat index of nearly 100 degrees outside. Right now.
If we don’t stop royally screwing this one up, they’re going to stop giving us planets.
Oh, wait. The planets will still be there. We, however, won’t be.
(If you’re wondering why you’re staring at something from the Weather Channel from the 1990s, fear not – that’s actually from tonight, and you’re probably new here. Go read this.)… Read more
This year, in the Facebook groups for two local conventions that I support and attend, there were little blow-ups at the last minute that got under my skin a bit. In one case, an attendee was protesting the long-standing rule that he couldn’t sell his own games person-to-person on the show floor. (That’s a no brainer. If anyone can do that, why pay for vendor tables?) In another case, a poster was berating Sunday foot traffic at the convention in the past and made the observation: “Glad I wasn’t a vendor. I would have been pissed. Because if you didn’t make your money on Saturday, you damn sure wasn’t going to make it on Sunday.”
Whoa there! 😆 Just stop before you embarrass yourself any further. Seriously. Because if you are a vendor, you’re the author of your own destiny at these shindigs. What follows is a slightly disjointed series of notes that I’ve jotted down over three years or so. … Read more
…but I wouldn’t if I were you. Ten minutes later, you might get this.… Read more
I’ve initiated a new category here at Scribblings to encompass my rants, musings and occasional artistic dabblings on the subject of real space exploration. If there’s a surprise here, it’s that I haven’t had a category for such things in the past.
One of the things that inspired this change is this exceedingly brief movie from the outskirts of the solar system. … Read more
The 11th annual Oklahoma Video Game Exhibition (OVGE) has come and gone, and as has been the case since the first year of the show, I was there with goodies from my game collection for everyone to try out, as well as some stuff to sell.
Power UP! Today was a day of dusting, battery compartment cleaning, screen-cleaning and general getting-ready for this weekend’s OVGE event in Broken Arrow. Everything, even my finicky Coleco Donkey Kong Jr. tabletop, is ready for action.
The theme of my display for this year is how much portable gaming has changed. (Spoiler alert: it’s changed a BUNCH.)
Extra batteries are on standby, and the mini-arcade is at the ready. Are you?… Read more
A while back I went on at some length about how the manufacturer of a tablet I had just purchased was trying to wriggle out from under the terms of their own warranty. I launched a Twitter offensive – not an overwhelming one, though I did have some help from my friends 😆 …but it appeared to have paid off. Last week I received the following e-mail. … Read more
You think I don’t have reach and influence? 😆 Check this out:
So the current rightsholders to the Coleco name became so verklempt with nostalgia upon hearing of my PDF Unplugged plans for OVGE, they made this announcement on Twitter, surprising 40-somethings the world over and confusing the crap out of everyone else:
That’s right, I’m going to just sit by the doorway and play video game music on my guitar, and you throw quarters into an upturned hat!
Well, okay, so maybe not. Here’s what PDF Unplugged is really about. … Read more
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