An Unexpected and Welcomed Visit—Ink for August 5th & 6th, 2023

I had a cousin visit my parents' house with her three kids on Monday—she was initially in the region for a family reunion, but decided to stop by before heading back home—and we had a lot of fun. The highlight of the visit though was her son, my second cousin/nephew, finding out where the "video game room" was—it was mine, of course—and then I had the honor of introducing him to MsMadLemon and Banjo Guy Ollie since he was passionate about Minecraft. 

I linked the above video in a recent Mastodon thread—where Maddi shows off her railway system and ends up getting chased (briefly) by an Enderman—and when that scene with that shadowy creature happened, he was laughing up a storm. We checked out some of the other videos in the playlist as well including an earlier video where she explores a nearby cave, another prior video where she starts her Minecraft journey, and her tutorial on building a Hamam, before switching over to playing Street Fighter II on my Genesis/Mega Drive Mini where he ending up winning with two full bouts. 

Before that, and alongside Ollie's synth cover of the Minecraft theme, I attempted to introduce him into the Nintendo Force magazine...initially with the issue containing my Hypnospace Outlaw review. I think he was more mesmerized by the screenshots from Kris Randazzo's review of Fight Crab though—and I don't blame him! :-)

I did show him other issues of the Force—the recent one with Pikmin 4 on the cover (Issue #66), then the Eastward review from issue #56, and the one in which Metroid Dread graced the cover (Issue #55). I think he enjoyed reading them and he also talked at length about the E.M.M.I. robots in Dread since he owned those very same Metroid amiibos I mentioned previously.

That, and he was entranced by Ollie's Metroid covers—he requested the ones of Brinstar and of Kraid's hideout, while I had him guess the one for Phendrana Drifts since he had Metroid Prime Remastered on his Switch. 

All in all, it was a lot of fun and I was glad to see my cousin again after not being in touch for years. She was the person who recommended the university I ended up graduating in which, even under all the stress, is something I'm still grateful for to this day. She also ran a couple blogs in the past decade but sadly, they're both inactive and offline so I don't have any links to share. I can say from memory—and Kristin, if you're reading this, I hope I remembered correctly—that her first blog dealt was thought-provoking and dealt with sociological matters. 

Speaking of Relatives...

You can now listen to the Derek James tapes in their original, and cleaned-up, forms over on his nephew's website—Derek's nephew being Tom of Channel84. These tapes were originally showcased on CheapShow in episodes 105, 119, 140, and 278, with commentary by Paul, Eli, and Stuart Ashen (for the latter two) that helped bring these bizarre, yet lovable tales to life. I will always be fond of Derek's Bone Hoover story, not just for the sudden, comedic twist at the end but also for how he describes his journey to Cairo—I sometimes have that CheapShow episode on repeat for the commentary alone! 

I can actually imagine Derek hosting a fiction writing workshop or being famous for creative nonfiction memoirs, but I digress...

What I've been listening to recently...

I would be remiss if I did not mention MsMadLemon's latest album, Paradox. I thought about doing a more in-depth review on it, doing a track by track look similar to the one I did for Pocket Vinyl's Winter Person in 2020...and I might do so in future. What I can say right now is that this is Maddi's best work yet and the variety of synths and trackers that make up the tracks evoked a feeling similar to the soundtrack for Eastward!

There is also Lacey Johnson's latest cover album featuring her take on some of Persona 5's greatest numbers, which is also amazing of course!

But the album I thought was the most interesting was this original soundtrack from a group called Alpha Something...   

I actually owe it to Ro Panuganti for both his cover of Nee Dhaane and his playthrough of Venba for introducing me to this game that centers on Southern Indian cooking with an emphasis on family. 

Weird thing is, I haven't played it yet and as I'm writing this post, I just found out that the game is also on the Switch. This is what happens when I more or less watch YouTube solely on the iPad these days so the video description stealthily hides itself behind a tappable word. I did rectify this and downloaded the game from the eShop and I think it will be a good way to partly spend my weekend.

Much like Turrican, its a game where a cover and a soundtrack inspired me to buy the game, so here's Ro Panuganti's take on Nee Dhaane with his first try at Southern Indian cooking with dosas and chutneys...

...and that's all from me for now! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Outside of the Literary Comfort Zone—Ink for May 8th, 2023

Last weekend, I wrote that I would be doing just one review for the week and that would be, well, it. 

Instead, I decided to read through the second of three and belt out another review for Thursday and bumped vVilrRuUsS: I Never Forget to Tuesday morning. Rose: Future Heart, I think, is the first time I reviewed something in the romance genre—or close to it anyway—but Hollow: A Love Like A Life is the real test. Whereas Rose: Future Heart was a journey of self-love and empowerment, Hollow is more of proper, supernatural romance between two spirits.

So I'm fully venturing outside of my literary comfort zone for this one, but not unprepared...   

I asked a friend of mine what they thought made a good romance novel and they gave me some very solid points to work from. I felt like those qualities could also act as a narrative framework for what I'm looking for with Hollow: A Love Like A Life. 

Like last time, I plan on aiming for Thursday or Friday since, while the books may be challenging to critique, the format that I set up for them works amazingly well! 

Admittedly, I'm also doing some research on my own based on my friend's advice... 

A couple of weeks ago, I checked the mini-library I usually pass on my walks to see if they had any romance novels I could study from and decided on what I thought was the closest facsimile: The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane by Kelly Harms. Both the title and the premise gave me Return to Monkey Island vibes and with Shipwreck being more of a rom-com than a straight-up romance, I could still look for some of those same key factors but in a more familiar genre.  

I'm not sure if I'll rank it on Goodreads since I'm not the book's intended audience, but I do plan on reading that one to the end. Maybe I'll give a proper review on the blog, but I'm not sure about that yet. 

Okay, that's the admin done with...

The video of the week goes to John Rodgers for one of his recent adventures alongside the River Brent. He's become a sort of go-to channel for my post-work Sunday afternoons with his walks across London, and even Paris (although I feel like he's done more than that), which I find very relaxing. He has a way of bringing tranquility to the city's heavily populated streets, making even the most mundane bits of architecture shine with historical relevance.    

Those familiar with CheapShow will be no stranger to one of the locations featured during the video. It was actually through their live show for episode 300 that I learned who Rodgers was during their YouTube parody intermission, (I caught Paul mention his name in the live chat.)  

John Rodgers also has his own blog, the Lost Byway, in case you're interested in reading more from him.

Other Videos I Watched...

• Pixel Vixen in Japan is back with the second installment on how to speak Japanese for retro games shopping
• Rebecca Watson reviews Solaris
• Banjo Guy Ollie experiments with ChatGPT, allowing the program to write some Irish tunes for him to play
• Even more Taskmaster recommendations (and some I discovered along the way)—putting rain boots on a spider, finding someone's occupation through just yes or no answers but with a twist, high-five one of the hosts but specifically be the third person to do so, and yoga ball billiards     
• MsMadLemon plays a Saturday morning session of Robocod (James Pond 2) for the Amiga 
• Mr. Wright Way goes to Japan for some game hunting and more
• Ashens looks at cheap Coronation-themed things

Other random links...

• The Cozy Mystery anthology, A Warm Mug of Cozy, is still accepting submissions for stories until May 31st  
• Highly inspired by MsMadLemon's own blog, Jason (or BloodRayne on Mastodon) decided to join the blogging bandwagon with his own blog, "We don't tape the top 40" where he talks about his family (and how they inspired him), electronics, computers, and more! It has a memoir feel to it to, which I really like     

Hope you all have a great week!

Next Week's Plans, plus a Auditory Trip in Text—Ink for April 29th, 2023

I thought it would be best just to shift the Sunday post to today instead so that I can do another read-through of Jaz Jazalyn's vVilRuUsS and take additional notes for the review. I wrote a small post yesterday on what to expect with the blog reviews—350 to 650 words, favorite poems highlighted, and a focus on the narrative over the poetry itself excluding the noted favorites. 

In hindsight, it might have been best just to edit that in elsewhere or even drop the criteria here. I partly feel like I rushed myself as I was doing the Goodreads brief for the first book. Either way, I feel better knowing how to tackle them with the first full dropping sometime next week. I'm going to aim for Thursday or Friday as I did with the Axiom Verge double bill. 

Without further ado, let's start the weekend link blog with one of my favorite YouTubers with a musical number... 

I've mentioned MsMadLemon a couple times here on the blog, while boosting her YouTube uploads over on Twitter and Mastodon—where I also did a little promo for her blog and channel. I don't think words could proper cover the attention she gives to her work whether its in photography, video, microcomputers, music, and art!

Weirdly, my first introduction to MsMadLemon was through a video where she talked about her treatment within the retro community, but then I decided to view some of her other videos and...well, I've been a fan ever since!

Both her videos and music have been a huge help in recent years, allowing me to soldier through some of the most stressful moments without succumbing to them. If I'm not listening to CheapShow, Kermode and Mayo's Take, or Stone Age Gamer while I'm writing, I'll usually have one of her albums on repeat.  

If you watched any of her videos, you may recognize some of the tunes she composed and Zaman is no exception. It's the namesake track from her latest album that has its roots right on YouTube thanks to some sampling from a Yamaha Reface CS.  

If you any interest in learning about the Amiga, retro computers, electronics, tea, or just want to enjoy a good vlog, do check out her channel and her website! You will be in for an amazing time! 

Other Things I Listen to When I Write...

• Austra has been on repeat with the new work-in-progress—more or less all four of their (and her) albums as seen on Bandcamp
• The Axiom Verge 2 soundtrack for some of the newer blog posts, although I don't think I had it on during the review 
• The GameGrooves Uncovered podcast (usually) hosted by Prog Metal artist, Ro Panuganti, where he interviews musicians and artists in the video game music scene with an emphasis on covers, is another good source of background noise. That's not criticism in the slightest—I think it's a good pod—but having familiar voices keeps me calm and helps me focus on just typing the words out    

What Else I've been listening to...

There was this little gem of an album I discovered last weekend while I was browsing through Bandcamp...

I initially logged into Bandcamp just to download my copy the recently released album from GameGrooves—a Ska tribute to Final Fantasy VII in collaboration with Ska Punk International. Below the download links were other artist recommendations from GameGrooves and Lacey Johnson was the first name on there with her latest album of Metroid covers.

So, as I'm listening to one of the tracks, I notice the above album in her discography so I go and check it out. In short, the first track was amazing enough that I decided to buy it then and there alongside Banjo Guy Ollie's latest original composition.       

I've mentioned playing the Persona games in passing, but in short, I love playing them! I think they a good blend of story, atmosphere, and gameplay—especially Persona 5 Royal!

This cover album, focusing on Persona 4, does that games soundtrack justice. The rock and pop fusion that permeates the game is turned up to eleven in the best way possible with the way Johnson brings out the essence of each track. If you loved Persona 4 and its soundtrack, I'd buy this album! 

I should also mention that Pocket Vinyl also released their latest album in February titled You Never Say Goodbye When You Leave, that you can purchase over on their Bandcamp page, or you could stream it on your preferred streaming service. Below is a music video for the track "Strange Images"...  

I still need to give this album a proper listen and maybe I'll do a review for the blog down the line...

Any New Pods in the Queue? (Past and Present)  

• The Dollop, in which comedians David Anthony and Gareth Reynolds tell obscure stories from American history, mixing it in with a good amount of improv (1st personal episode was #579 where they tell the story of John Alexander Downie)
• All Fantasy Everything where American comedians, including Ian Karmel and Sean Jordan) draft pop culture phenomena and ephemera, which feels like a little bit of CheapShow mixed in with Stone Age Gamer's May-Mania tradition (1st personal episode was in February where they drafted Little Debbie snacks with another notable one being their 2022 US pop culture draft...which is useful if you're like me and don't usually follow what's trending)    
• This Week in Retro—a current events podcast in which Neil (RMC—the Cave), Chris (005 AMIGA), and Dave talk about what's going on with vintage tech.
• Aut-Hour hosted by comedy writer Sara Gibbs where she interviews authors on the autistic spectrum (I don't remember my first personal episode with this one, but Lizzie Huxley-Jones who edited Stim: An Autistic Anthology was on it)
• Threedom, in which Scott Aukerman, Lauren Lapkus, Paul F Tompkins hang out, tell stories, and do improv (1st personal episodes were #159 and #159.5) 

Two of them were recommended to me personally while one was mentioned by Paul Gannon in an interview with We Are Cult. These were more or less the highlights though, but I gave Twitter shout-outs to other pods on International Podcast Day including Mystery on the Rocks and the Amigos Podcast. If Twitter's still around by September 30th, you can probably expect to see the these pods show up in my yearly thread.

If this blog post were a cassette, we've reached the end of Side A! See you next week for Side B, where I review the first of three poetry novels!      

Weekend Checkup for June 24 & June 25 2017 (#2)

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!

Weekend Checkup for June 10 &11, 2017

'Good grammar is essential' #Batman pic.twitter.com/tlsqad0fef

— Mark W. (@TMITGS) June 11, 2017

I planned, over a month ago, that after I did some online spring cleaning,  I would post a series of weekend links on May 12th. Then the following week, I planned to use my vacation time to blog things that I wanted to write out for awhile. Most of "spring cleaning" was managing my Patreon contributions and culling through who I followed on Twitter. The latter went as well as I thought.

Same goes for this post. I did enjoy my vacation however, and with it came a nice bookstore haul...

The only one that came via Amazon was Jem Roberts's The Frood, while the two Doctor Who novels, White Trash, and The Handmaid's Tale I bought at Bank Square Books. We are the Change We Seek, Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, and Bird by Bird were from the Savoy Bookshop while all the Shakespeare plays I purchased at Barnes & Noble in Warwick. I read through The Frood already and loved it as the book expands on Douglas's life and career beyond the confines of Neil Gaiman's Don't Panic. I also finished A.L. Kennedy's Doctor Who: The Drosten's Curse and, while it was nice to see an Fourth Doctor novel, its take on psychological and cosmic horror ultimately hindered it.

Speaking of Who, I've been obsessed since the new season began. Bill (Pearl Mackie) and the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Calpaldi) are an excellent duo and a breath of fresh air since Clara left two years ago. Aside from this past week*, I've enjoyed their stories. I thought about doing Doctor Who reviews in a similar vein to Stuart Ian Burns over at Feeling Listless or Frank Collins who has done a thorough, academic analysis of "The Empress of Mars" that I think is worth reading. My mind flashes back to the Behind the Sofa blog in which they both contributed to, a site which is partly responsible for my initial inspiration into the blogosphere alongside FL, Tachyon TV, and Dan Gillmor via Mediactive.

Also, Sean Bonner and Documentally also played a major role to the point that, if it weren't for the former's newsletter, Just Another Crowd, I would never know of Seth Abramson. Seth's done some excellent interpretations of the Trump Administration's actions via his Twitter. The Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article on him which I found via Sean's newsletter (#275 in the letter archive).

Speaking of politics, my local borough went through their mayoral and council elections and I couldn't be happier with the results. The opposition didn't sell me enough on their campaign leading to similar issues I had with Bernie Sanders last year. I also ran into their candidate for Mayor in passing who made me feel rather uneasy and intimidated by him. It's complicated and I'd rather not blog about it right now, but it did affect my vote.


Writing that also was slightly unnerving so here's my video of the week to ease your troubles...

Kim Justice does these excellent documentaries on retro games and gaming culture. This is just one of many, and it's s still ongoing. In fact, if you contribute to her Patreon, you'll get early access to later episodes. I've only started watching her videos after listening to her interview with the guys at the Retro Hour Podcast, and thought, "Hey, this was the sort of thing I was looking for with Let's Plays." This video on notable Playstation ads of the '90s is another one of my favorites so far and the semiotic examination makes it more than worthwhile.


As for the Rest...

I've been playing around with the Brave browser for about a few months and it's nice to not only see a privacy-centric browser, but one that's similar to Vivaldi. By that, I mean that they are both browsers with features already built in as opposed to having to search through the extensions marketplace. I found that while using private tabs, Brave is very friendly to my SSD over a few hours of usage. As for RAM, it goes without saying as it's also Chromium-based. I felt comfortable enough with it though that I decided to get Firefox off my computer altogether and that's something.

Mastodon might be my new favorite social network once I finally decide to cull through Twitter. It's open-source and decentralized like Diaspora, meaning that there are multiple, separate instances that connect together. It respects privacy in the same way that Ello does and then some, but more importantly, you can pay to keep the network going via creator Gargron's Patreon. My first post on there mentions this, a fact that I hope gets much love. Brave's on the same page with Brave Payments where the user can voluntary send money to sites whose work they support, while wishing not to be tracked by them.

In other contributions worth donating to, the GaymerX East Kickstarter is still ongoing--five more days as of today. Regardless as to whether or not you're attending, you would be providing a space for LBGTQ players to showcase their latest developments and provide a space to well...play. The rewards are also worth it and I'll admit, after watching TieTuesday** play through Read Only Memories, I'm interested. It's my kind of title. Enough said. Either way, if you can, donate.

One last thing before I go. Remember my recent Doctor Who bug, well, I found this blogger via Clayton Hickman on Twitter, and his analysis of Eric Saward's writing is something else:

Saward has a particular prose style which can be brutally efficient, the grammar of which is so at pains to be correct, it’s awkward.  (Not unlike that last sentence.)

Consider his habit of giving characters concise, frank questions to elicit a response from another character. Often these questions try to fit in both a descriptive noun and and active verb. “The escape was prevented?” is an example. The line could be, “everything worked out fine” or “no harm was done”. But in Saward’s style, we find out two things: there was an escape and it failed. In one super efficient question!

Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like something anyone would actually say. See also, “you have the Doctor?” And “you fear an attack?”. And my personal favourite, from The Mark of the Rani, “you suspect another motive?”

That's all for now! I'll blog again soonish!

*Mark Gatiss isn't my favorite of the NuWho writers. At least recently anyway. Loved the throwbacks though.

**If you're interested in catching Tie's streams, he's moved over to Twitch. The archived ROM stream was originally broadcast on Hitbox (now Smashcast). You can also donate to his Patreon here.

Catching Up and Belated Weekend Links for March 25th & 26

I've neglected this blog for far longer than I intended. I did write a couple posts about the election, but then just decided to go back offline again, not so much offline as being on Twitter for longer than necessary.  If you came here from there, then that means the IFTTT recipe I put into place works. From here on out, I won't be on Twitter as much in favor of posting here and elsewhere in which long-form content thrives or is a thing (Ello, Goodreads, etc.). I'll expand on that in a later post along with talking about my sudden hiatus and other changes which I thought about over for the past year.

Instead, here's some late links for the weekend of March 25th & 26th, 2017.

SKILL, STAMINA, and LUCK--A BBC Radio 4 Documentary on the history of interactive fiction from text-adventures and Dungeons & Dragons to today's video games.

What was it that set them apart? They were part of a much wider literary innovation known as interactive fiction. You don't merely read them, page by page, cover to cover. You were asked to make decisions all the way along about what would happen next, where you would go, who you would even fight, which page to turn to. And you often had to keep a notebook and pair of dice close to hand while doing so. You might fail along the way and have to start again (or more likely you'd keep your finger in the previous page until you were satisfied you'd made the right choice). Essentially, they were puzzle books.

The World Wide Web turned 28 earlier this month...

• Tim Berners-Lee outlines what he sees as the biggest threats to the open web today.
• Aral Balkan, founder of Ind.ie, attempts to counterpoint Berners-Lee by pointing out Silicon Valley's role in causing these issues. 
• Hossein Derakhshan's "The Web We Have to Save" is still, I think, the best go-to about how these issues have come about in the first place. 

The Oxford Comma is important. Atlas Obscura reports on a court case which brings this point home.

The comma, Barron then wrote, was important, since ambiguities “must be construed liberally” under Maine law, meaning that the delivery drivers, who had sued for overtime pay, might in fact be entitled to such pay since “distribution” in the law is not unambiguously separate from “packing for shipment.”

Motherboard reports on the refugees who helped Edward Snowden and the ongoing issues they face today.

As it turns out, this fear was not unwarranted. In the past weeks, Motherboard spoke to the refugees and Snowden's lawyer Tibbo, to find out what's changed since they became known through an investigation of the German Handelsblatt and the National Post. They describe a situation that has deteriorated significantly.

And here's what I've been watching this month starting with Ariel Waldman's look into Earth's history as a giant snowball...

Waldman did an interview for Rebecca Watson and Ken Plume's podcast, Just Admit I'm Right, that also gets streamed live on YouTube for their $5+ patrons. I'll hyperlink the corresponding episode when it comes up on the iTunes feed. Until then, and if your are fans of Rebecca and/or Ken, you should pledge to their respective Patreon pages if you can. I have and I can tell you the streams are worth it.

The next video is actually an playlist for a Let's Play I finished watching yesterday. I've embedded it here, but I recommend that if you're interested for the long-haul, to watch it on YouTube in full. There's also the cut commentary version here.

I've followed Chip and Ironicus for years now, at least since 2010, and their Let's Plays are filled with funny riffs and roasting, while also analyzing the game itself. Programming, design, narrative, anything that makes the game great or interesting gets covered in some way. This latest entry also made it into a Waypoint article by Cameron Kunzelman that not only is a shout out to these LPers but is also about the experience of watching Let's Plays in general:

The magic is happening in the let's play moment. I'm not just enjoying the game, and I'm not just enjoying the two guys talking about it. I am enjoying this weird composite of a game filtered through the mind of two people I've never met. We're a decade into LP culture now, and if you're in it you probably think this is the most boring thing, but it never fails to amaze me that I can enjoy someone else enjoying something so much that I can't conceive of one without the other. I have zero interest in playing an Uncharted game, not because of some problem, but just because they're not for me. But Chip and Ironicus open up a door to an experience of a game, not just a game itself, in a very fulfilling way.

...and that's all from me this weekend. I'll post more soon. Bear with me as I return to the blogosphere and ultimately back to writing.

Weekend Links for May 23-24

It's been awhile since I've done one of these, but instead of the previous format, I thought I'd curate approximately five items of interest that I read over the week plus one video.



With that, the video for this week comes from this year's re:publica conference where Cory Doctorow discusses the issues prevalent with the Internet of Things and general purpose computers with regards to surveillance and digital locks. Reminded me of his 2011 talk at the Chaos Computer Congress that I also recommend watching.

This Week's Links of Interest

Alice Bolin writes about how Agatha Christie plays around some of the most common tropes in mystery writing through Miss Marple:

Miss Marple elevates the archetype of the spinster, which has been, as Kathy Mezei writes, “a recurring icon in British literature.” This phenomenon reflects a reality of British demographics, particularly after the traumas of two world wars: women outnumbered men, and single women were seen as “lonely, superfluous, and sexually frustrated.” Mezei’s wonderful article “Spinsters, Surveillance, and Speech: The Case of Miss Marple, Miss Mole, and Miss Jekyll” from the Journal of Modern Literature lays out the way that a spinster character has been used by Christie and others to accomplish feats of narrative misdirection, and, more importantly, to “covertly query power and gender relations while simultaneously upholding the status quo.”

Simon Pegg follows up on what he said in this week's Radio Times about science fiction and genre films "dumbing down" audiences, noting the traits expressed by Tim and Daisy in Spaced:  

In the 18 years since we wrote Spaced, this extended adolescence has been cannily co-opted by market forces, who have identified this relatively new demographic as an incredibly lucrative wellspring of consumerist potential. Suddenly, here was an entire generation crying out for an evolved version of the things they were consuming as children. This demographic is now well and truly serviced in all facets of entertainment and the first and second childhoods have merged into a mainstream phenomenon.

Jessica Valenti writes in her Guardian column about how the lack of female authors on one's bookshelf might denote sexism, but also points out how others view authors based on sex, race, and gender:

 Part of the problem is that while art or books that white men put out is portrayed as universally appealing, culture produced by women or people of color is seen as specific to their gender or racial identity.

 Leigh Alexander writes about why video game stories are not always gripping:

Having a writer helps, but developers often just bring writers in to help fill in dialogue around setpieces (make up a reason for everyone to have a huge zombie battle in the football arena!) not to contribute to an overall narrative design. Writers on big games have told me privately of the friction they felt between what they wanted to happen in the game and the absurd, dissonant moments of gameplay that were beloved to the developers and too late to change.

Alistair Coleman points out some of the click-bait books that he found on Twitter. Here's one of them:

This man was shipwrecked on an island for 28 years. His one great life hack will blow your mind, and you can use it too! 

May's Itinerary

Same as April's so there won't be another flash fiction piece this month. I do plan on posting a short story to Wattpad in June.

February 21-22 Weekend Links

I noted in my itinerary about other blog postings and with that, here's the first edition of the weekend links. There's no real format, but I'll usually skim through my own Twitter to see what content I found interesting or topical enough to re-tweet, or I go through my Feedly and bookmark similar reads.

Here's this week's links of interest...

Starting with today as International Open Data Day where people worldwide organize public data and create programs using said data to promote the idea to governments worldwide. The link shows ongoing hackathons and explains what one can do to promote the cause. Examples of organizations which help it include the Sunlight Foundation which promotes government transparency in the US.

Early in the week, Mark Drey wrote an article for Boing Boing about the class insecurities brought up in NBC's Hannibal. I just realized that this is an adaptation of Thomas Harris's book series and now I want to read it!

I also found what is now one of my favorite games in the Internet Archive's MS-DOS collection aside from the Oregon Trail and Crosscountry Canada which localization specialist Clyde Mandelin streamed online last year. That game is called Amnesia; a text adventure where the player has the game's namesake from onset and it plays around with the well-known cliche to mesh it into the narrative.

As for more topical stuff...

I mentioned on Ello last week that I was going to jump on the 50 Shades rant train, but thought better of it because romance and erotica aren't my thing unless it's Christine Sneed's work. There are some really good articles and critiques out there about 50 Shades, starting with Jenny Trout's reading (link goes to the first chapter) along with her review of the movie. Speaking of films, Mark Kermode reviewed it for the Observer and Roxanne Gay wrote a piece on it for the Toast.  Then, there's also some clever copywriting from B&Q spotted by Ben Lloyd and two articles about the whole thing being capitalist erotica for lack of a better phrase from the Guardian's Hadley Freeman and Buzzfeed's Anne Helen Peterson.