Mark's verdict on #Transformers pic.twitter.com/03DClCAyVT— Wittertainment (@wittertainment) June 23, 2017
After I wrote the last weekend checkup, I thought it over and decided that I prefer writing these as opposed to a set of lists with links. Most of this is inspired by the newsletters I read weekly including Sean Bonner's The Crowd which I linked to last time.
Speaking of Sean, this came in...
...it's not the pin. Don't Go Outside: Tokyo Street Photos was a Kickstarter-funded project that I first read about in early January and was lucky enough to back the tier for a signed and numbered copy. I mentioned Sean last week as one of the major inspirations for my foray into the blogsphere, but it goes slightly deeper than that. I started following him on Google+ not too shortly after my cousin gave me an invite. This was also when I started reading Cory Doctorow and ultimately Boing Boing and so much of it stems from that fact that Sean also embraced Creative Commons by using the licenses on his photos--the book itself uses a CC-BY-NC license. I started following Safecast shortly after and made a donation to them last year along with backing their bGeigie Raku project.
It goes without saying that Sean's awesome, and I'm looking forward to reading his book!
The pin comes from Tinkity Tonk, a group dedicated to connecting fellow Wittertainment (Kermode & Mayo) listeners through these pins while raising money for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society with one pound donated for every pin purchased. Long time followers might be familiar with my love of the duo as I posted about then elsewhere--mostly here, Twitter, and my former Google+ account which unfortunately no longer contains said post among others. I've been listening to Mark and Simon since 2008, far into October, in which Mark praised Of Time and the City while calling Quantum of Solace a "Question of Sport".
That was the haul, and here's the video of the week...
It is part of a larger series where Banjo Guy Ollie fixes up and restores arcade machines which you can view here. I would also reccomend watching this playlist where he makes his own game room.
Unfamilar with Banjo Guy Ollie? I'll let this speak for itself...
You can find his music channel here as Banjo Guy Ollie. His channel for DIY, painting, reviews of retro handhleds and MSX games, thrifts, and vlogs is here under BG Ollie.
Goes without saying, both channels have their own respective Patreons here and here.
What I've been reading...
I just finished JN-T: The Life and Scandalous Times of John Nathan-Turner which covers its namesake who took the reins as producer of Doctor Who from 1980 to 1989. Richard Marson does some really thorough research here and I'm still not sure what to think about JN-T. There is no doubt that he is responsible in part for keeping the show alive for fifty-plus years and that some elements of the show are more prevelent than ever in the modern series which I think is great. Aside from that, I don't know.
In the meantime, I started reading William Gibson's Neuromancer and I'm still working on Cory Doctorow's Walkaway. There's also Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text, The Offworld Collection, and Ukept on my Kindle, but those are on hold alongside a couple of Wodehouse anthologies and Peter Matthiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.
Progress on writing...
Very little, if not much at all. I've done some late spring cleaning on my computer so that I could easily access and work on my projects. Last year was slightly better on the Showcase, now Incarceration Troupe, where I managed to iron out some of the places where I had trouble and made it further into the story.
Oh, there's anothe project in the works that I might post on Wattpad if I can't market it. More on that later.
As for the rest...
Nothing much happened between the past couple weeks, at least personally. In politics, there's the health care bill in the US that, if it passes, would not only repeal Obamacare, but would be an overall disaster. Here's Barack Obama on the matter (Note: Facebook Link). Russia's interference in last year's elections is more of a thing than not. Locally, the town council was about to close a local golf course pub and resturant, only to renew its lease days later. I'll leave this letter from the owners' lawyer here (Note: Facebook link) which is rather telling. Municipal elections for the town proper happen this November, however, so there's some hope.
Jon Ronson wrote about the mysterious arnsons happening in San Francisco's Mission District and Hideo Kojima's Snatcher is more than just a remix of its parts.
From Ronson:
The numbers cited by Campos and others—45 fires in two years—also weren’t necessarily as suspicious as they seemed. It turns out that 25 fires a year is about average for the Mission. But there’s a reason that arson is on everyone’s mind: While the number of fires has stayed steady, the value of the real estate in question has not. The 27 fires that burned in the Mission in 2006 caused $2.6 million in damage; the 22 fires in 2015 caused almost $15.6 million in damage.From Kotaku's Peter Tieryas:
Unlike the protagonists in many noirish cyberpunk books and films, Gillian Seed is expressive rather than following the trope of being stoic and subdued. His strong personality goes from melancholy amnesiac to driven investigator and even womanizer (though he gets almost universally rejected). He’s a likable character, even with his flaws. He’s visually inspired in part by Rick Deckard from Blade Runner, but also the more humorous Lupin the Third from the eponymous animated series.
I'll talk again soon and hello to Jason Isaacs!
