God, sacrifice, and Yoda

The other week I shared on here that I had put my beloved Yoda puppet signed by "Weird Al" Yankovic up for auction on eBay.  It was something I had never, ever thought I would find myself doing.  I had outright declared that it would never happen.  When I asked Weird Al to sign this, it was always with the intention that it would be just for me, a real treasured prize for both my Star Wars and Yankovic collections.

 

But real-life circumstances had forced me to make some difficult decisions.  It was compelling me to betray myself and go back on what I had promised to never do.

 

Since posting about that, there have been a number of developments.  Some things transpired and, well... let's just say that for once, I have been seeing the hand of God at work and I am not doubting Him, that He provides even when all seems hopeless.

 

So yesterday I had my smart speaker set to the "Weird Al" Yankovic station.  And one of the first songs it played was "Yoda".

I took that as confirmation that I should de-list the auction for the Yoda puppet.

 

Maybe I merely needed to be ready to sacrifice it, like Abraham had to prepare to sacrifice his son (recorded in the Book of Genesis, chapter 22).  Now a forty-some year old toy signed by a musical artist is NOT the same thing as one's own child.  But I think God sometimes asks us to be ready to sacrifice something precious, so that He can make something wonderful of that.

 

In my case I learned a little bit more to trust in Him.  I think He knows what value this puppet has for me: it's something Mom bought for me when I was going on seven years old.  I like to think she was a Yoda fan too and delighted that I was crazy about the character.

 

But unfortunately that is one of the few truly happy memories that I have about my mother.  She and I had a very difficult relationship.  It was absolutely monstrous at times.  Along with the bipolar disorder, what happened between Mom and I is something that has demanded its own strategy in counseling.

 

This puppet is one of the few tangible reminders I have left that Mom could be a good person, too.  That she wasn't always consumed by the kernel of cruelty within her.  It took me a very long time to be able to forgive the memory I have of her.  That finally happened this past year.

 

I guess, maybe God knows that.  And knows that my faith in things isn't really based on anything a person can own.  But sometimes God winks at you, and maybe the provision He's made in so many ways is more appreciated because I was ready to give up something.

 

Just some thoughts I'm having this evening.

 

So, I've de-listed the puppet.  I'm confident now that things are going to work out in my circumstances.  And God has taught me some things from this particular side tale of the larger episode of late.  I can and will be thankful for that.

 

Besides, if I really did have to sell Yoda, I did NOT want him going to someone I didn't know.  I'm gonna try to "keep it in the family", with someone from among my many friends.

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Happy 15th Birthday to FALLOUT 3!

 "War.  War never changes."

 

It was on this day in 2008, exactly fifteen years ago, that the long-awaited Fallout 3 was released.  And computerized role-playing gaming was never the same again.

This was the first Fallout game that I ever played.  I bought it a few months after it was released.  At that point in my life I was needing something to distract my mind from itself, after a lot of recent events had rocked my world.  I bought Fallout 3 on something of a lark, having heard how much it sucked the player into it.

I am very glad that it did.

At the time I blogged about my journey through the Capitol Wasteland: the grim setting of the game.  Fallout 3 became not so much a game as an experience.  Something that put you in situations that you share as tales you tell your friends.  To this day I have to giggle whenever I think of going into the Lee Mansion and finding that shrine to Abraham Lincoln down in the basement.  Fallout 3 is rife with little details like that.

I've played other Fallout games since.  Though I haven't finished Fallout: New Vegas (one of these years I will) and Fallout 4 was certainly worth waiting to get a proper rig to play it on.  I sincerely tried to get into Fallout 76 but ultimately it just didn't have the same allure.  And I did eventually play and enjoy the first and second game in the series, which are definitely products of their time and not the 3-D worlds of the third game onward.

Fallout 3 though.. that's the one that I'm going to take with me the rest of my life.  It and I have a very rare connection between a game and its player.  And I'm always going to appreciate that.

Think I'll have the Fallout 3 soundtrack album playing for the rest of the afternoon as I work on some things...

 

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Too Much Tolerance? Another op-ed piece from my college's newspaper

It's been a truly fascinating journey for me these past few months after finding an online archive of The Pendulum, Elon University's student newspaper.  I'm finding articles written by me that I had forgotten about.  I can really see the person I was then, and contrast him with the man who I am today.  There is a lot of growth there.  Some things changed in the intervening decades while others remained starkly the same.  I think my beliefs evolved, while staying true to the heart meat of my being.

So here's my essay from The Pendulum's October 1st, 1998 issue... gadzooks that was twenty-five whole years ago!  Well, this one calls for some background.  A year and a half before this was published Joycelyn Elders - the former surgeon general under President Clinton - visited Elon and spoke one night.  And I was a hot-blooded American youth "full of piss and vinegar" who was going to confront Elders on her radical stance on abortion and sexual policies.

Long story short: I did not comport myself as the Christian I had become five months earlier.  Instead of trying to change hearts I only made myself look very foolish.  Some fellow students liked that I had "taken her on."  But over the following weeks and months I came to realize how wrong I was in doing that.

I decided that I had to do something to try and make things right.  This essay was in part an attempt to do that.  Some people expressed appreciation for it.  Others ignored my apology and homed in on what I wrote about homosexuality.  Which wasn't the main focus of the article at all.

Well, anyway, here it is.  Click on the pic to embiggen it.

What do you folks think?

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HEIC? What the heck is THAAAAAT???

Had to take some photos with my iPhone and send them to my personal e-mail account.  But when I was about to use them I was hit with a shock: the pics were in something called HEIC format.

I had no idea whatsoever what that meant.  Only that it wasn't readable by my usual image software, much less usable for most critical purposes.

So I did some quick research and found that HEIC, or HEIF, stands for High Efficiency Image Container.  It was adopted over ten years ago by Apple for use primarily in their mobile devices.  But for some reason I'm only now hearing about it.

Basically it makes the same photos that you usually work with as JPEGs and ummm... makes them smaller in file size.  Sort of like how we used to compress files with PKZIP back in the day.

If you're reading this, you're probably wondering how to turn HEIC/HEIF off so that you can have your full resolution JPEGs.  That's what I'm going to tell you to do.

It's really simple.  Go into your iOS devices Settings, and find Camera.

Look for the Formats setting.

Change that from High Efficiency to Most Compatible.

And that's it!  Hope this quick tip will help you if you're also confronted with the HEIC hobgoblin :-)

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Mythic Games: They'll NEVER deliver this Kickstarter

For a few months now I've debated whether or not to make this post.  I gave the company at issue a gracious amount of time to respond to the very MANY people who had taken them at their word and trusted them to produce a great product.

However it has now been almost seven months since anything in the way of official word has been published.  That should have been plenty of time to let the backers know what's up.  Claiming that it's been caught up in "manufacturing problems" isn't cutting it anymore.

So it's time for Mythic Games to level with us: Is there going to ever be a release of the Monsterpocalypse Board Game?

I've written before about my fondness for Monsterpocalypse: the miniatures game about giant kaiju monsters thrashing it out with one another atop a city that the players build, then demolish.  Monsterpocalypse was first published by Privateer Press in 2008.  And it enjoyed some terrific growth in popularity for a couple of years.  Unfortunately a series of business decisions (making the game "collectible" and having to buy blind boxes of minis, the mishandling of the movie deal among others) caused a dip in interest.  Privateer Press eventually brought the game back as a more traditional miniatures game, where players were free to buy whichever models they wanted and paint them on their own.  Which was certainly how the game should have been marketed from the beginning.  But it was still an awesome game.  I certainly enjoyed playing it, especially with my precious Lords of Cthul faction.

Anyway, Monsterpocalypse has lingered for some years now.  And then two years ago this fall a French company, Mythic Games, announced that it was adapting Monsterpocalypse as a board game.  Basically the same as the regular Monsterpocalypse but with miniatures that didn't call for assembly and painting, and playable on the resilient surface typical of most board games.

There was a lot of hype for this game.  And to finance it, Mythic Games turned to Kickstarter: that website devoted to letting people find backing from those who are interested enough to want a copy of the finished product.  Kickstarter has been a terrific platform for fostering innovation and creativity.  A few years ago I had thought about doing a Kickstarter, for a board game I had designed rules for.  Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) some friends convinced me of how politically incorrect the game would be, and that was the end of that particular project.

Mythic Games however, dangled a really beautiful carrot before us.  There was going to be the core Monsterpocalypse Board Game.  And the more backers supported it, there were "stretch goals" that would be unlocked: more miniatures that would produced.  As backing grew, so would the game itself.

The Kickstarter went live on November 2, 2021.  In a matter of minutes the core game set was fully funded.  And by the time the Kickstarter had ended on November 24th more than $1,300,000 dollars had been raised.  A handsome amount by any measure.

I backed the core game.  My finances were a little off-kilter at the time (in short, I was skint broke).  But then came the stimulus check from the government and I decided that I wanted to go "all-in" on the Monsterpocalypse Board Game.  When the pledge manager was activated after the Kickstarter itself, I loaded up and pledged support for all of the unlocked minis, as well as faction-dedicated boxes with more minis.  It wasn't every product that I put down for, but I wanted to have a complete set of all the factions so that if I played someone we would have all the options available.

Here.  Read this: My post from a year and a half ago about Monsterpocalypse Board Game.  That alone should convey how much I was looking forward to getting this game.

Well, delivery of the game and all it's associated products was stated to be around November 2022.  A reasonable amount of time.  Mythic Games after all had to mold the zillions of pieces, print the various paper/board components, do everything required for marketing a board game.  And for awhile we the backers were getting updates from Mythic about how the production was coming along.

And then, inexplicably, the updates - which had been weekly and then became something to expect monthly - began to decrease in frequency.

This concerned many backers.  Was there something wrong with production?  Mythic elaborated that time was needed to machine the molds.  And then it was the global supply chain breakdown that plagued many manufacturers world-wide.  And these were reasonable, the backers thought.

But the rate of updates was decreasing even more.  And some were now wondering if Mythic was committed at all to giving us Monsterpocalypse Board Game.

Well, some backers  began demanding refunds.  I cannot recall if this has at all happened.  I do know that Mythic Games is offering store credit for its other products.

Ahhhhh yes, the "other products".  Mythic Games meanwhile had been selling and doing Kickstarters for more games.  While apparently doing not only nothing at all about the Monsterpocalypse intellectual property, but it's been speculated by many that the company took that $1.3 million from the Monsterpocalypes drive and has been applying it to their own IPs.

Is that the truth?  I don't know... but I can report that bulk e-mails have been regularly received by my main account, pitching other games.  I've tried unsubscribing but that's not happening.

Those updates?  The ones that Mythic promised at the start of the year would be a regular feature?  The most recent update was on March 31.  There has been absolutely nothing from the company about Monsterpocalypse since then.  Complete radio silence.

This, is unacceptable.

If the company would be straight with us, and give assurance that the Monstepocalypse Board Game was being produced even now, then I might... might... be willing to wait another year.  I believe a number of backers of this project would be willing too.

Unfortunately the more shady that Mythic Games gets with us, the more that our patience runs thin.  The more that some might be inclined to press legal charges against the company.  Mythic Games is based in Paris however, which may make litigation that much more wonky.  But I'm sure there are some with a little know-how and understanding of the French legal system who could start a court case against the company.

A year and a half ago I was cheerfully steering readers of this blog to the Monsterpocalypse Board Game pledge manager.  I believed with honest intent that Mythic Games was going to deliver on this product.  However it increasingly is becoming apparent that the resources pledged on this particular Kickstarter have been misappropriated and abused and that there is no publishing of this game that is actively being pursued.

Mythic Games made me look foolish.  It did that for everyone who was enthusiastic about Monsterpocalypse not only about this particular product, but about the entire franchise.  Monsterpocalypse is a very fun pastime.  To see it treated like this, is abhorrent.  It deserves much better.  Maybe it's primary publisher Privateer Press can take over the project.  But that would require the original funding being transmitted to them, and I don't think that's going to be possible.

What am I trying to say with this post?

Avoid Mythic Games like the plague.  That company has abused our trust in it.  If you've been contemplating getting this Monsterpocalypse-based game, DO NOT DO SO.  Neither would I recommend any other product that Mythic Games is presenting as a game.

Mythic Games owes us a solid explanation.  And if there is no Monsterpocalypse coming, it owes us our money back.

Will that happen?  I doubt it.  But at least with this article some may have warning against doing business with them again.

EDIT 10/18/2023 8:53 PM EST: A correction.  I have been notified by a number of readers that while Mythic Games has much of their operations in France, their headquarters is located in Luxembourg.  This blogger appreciates that bit of information.

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Tammy the Pup: Caught in the act

I really should post more pics of Tammy, my miniature dachshund.  She's just so cute and comical... and sometimes too smart for her own good.  She has also literally saved my life and sanity.  I would be a far different person - and maybe not here at all - were it not for Tammy.

So last night we were getting ready for our Saturday evening ritual of tuning in to Svengoolie, on the MeTV network.  I was finishing up a few things at my desk before the show, and Tammy had peeked her head out from under her blanket.  And she just looked so cute, reclining back on the sofa.  It was such a good pose that I picked up my iPhone to snap her picture.

And it so happened that I caught her about to yawn.  I quickly hit the button.  And got this pic:

Maybe I'll get lucky one day and be able to snag some video of her yawning, because she sounds really sweet when she does that.

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My Yoda puppet signed by "Weird Al" Yankovic is now listed on eBay

Well, I'm now a liar and worse.

A little over ten years since I vowed that I would never, EVER do it, I am indeed selling my much-loved Yoda hand puppet signed by "Weird Al" Yankovic.

It's really out of my hands (no pun intended).  For reasons which I don't care to disclose publicly, some financial resources have come to be required.  That's just the way things are right now.

So last night the listing for "1980 Star Wars Yoda Hand Puppet Signed By "Weird Al" Yankovic went live on eBay.

Mom bought me the puppet in 1980, a few months after The Empire Strikes Back came out in theaters.  I was six years old and distinctly remember that night at the toy store.  Long story short this puppet - which has maintained PERFCT condition despite the years and miles traveled - went with me to a book signing by "Weird Al" Yankovic in June of 2013.  Al's eyes lit right up when he saw it!  And he was very glad to sign it.

It's Star Wars.  More to the point it's Yoda.  And it's been on the hand of and signed by the greatest parodist in the history of the arts.  For those reasons and more, it's a very precious possession of mine.  And now I'm prepared to let it go.

I thought long and hard about how much I'm asking for it.  This is such a unique item, and it really does matter to me that this will go to a good home.  In the end I had come up with a substantially larger figure.  However eBay's system doesn't think I'm a "power seller" just yet and it's restricted me to bidding starting much smaller.

So if any of this interests you, click on the link above and learn more.  If you would like to bid on it, I wish you all the best.

 

 

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C'mon, Google: Allow for better review of AdSense banning

This is probably an issue I should have addressed ten or so years ago.  It angered me then but now, it's absolutely infuriating.  Not that I actually expect anything proactive to be done, of course.  But hey, avalanches start with one pebble rolling into places that a pebble doesn't belong.  So who knows?

It's about Google's AdSense program.  And how it's impossible to regain monetization if you so much as look at a YouTube video the wrong way.

For a few years this blog took part in the AdSense program.  And it made a little bit of money.  Enough that I used it to purchase my first iPad.  AdSense was very easy to implement and it really livened up the blog, which was the main reason I wanted to take part in it.

So it was a pretty good relationship, I thought.

And then, a little over a decade ago, my AdSense account was disabled.

I know exactly how it happened, too.  Because it was eventually admitted to me.

I had (emphasis on "had") a friend who earnestly believed that he/she was doing me a favor, when they repeatedly reloaded this blog wherever they happened to be, whether at home or at work or wherever.  I had no idea this was happening.  If I had, I would have absolutely requested that they stop.

That's why I was banned from AdSense.  Because of a single third party's misbehavior.

It could have happened to anyone.  It could happen to you, if someone is holding a grudge against you and wants to very easily cut off a source of potentially sizable income.

Well, I appealed the disabling.  It was rejected.  And that's it.  There is no appealing anymore.  Google tosses your @$$ out to the curb.  It's decision is final.  And creating a new AdSense account is not allowed.

This should not be.

There are a myriad of reasons and many of them ridiculous why a person using Google could be demonetized (or worse, have their content deleted completely).  It does no one... including Google... any good.  It chokes off the Internet from being a place where information is available and flows freely across an impartial playing field.  From a business standpoint banning users from AdSense for capricious and frivolous activity only drives those users to other competing advertising services.  Those aren't much of a threat, right now.  But their virtual circulations are growing.  And it would not be surprising if ten years from now they are the ones who are reaping the rewards that come with giving content creators reasonable carte blanche, without fear of reprisal or negligent administration.

In the course of the past few months this blog has been gaining back a loyal readership that hasn't been had since before I walked away from blogging for the better part of three years, during which I traveled across America in a journey of self-discovery.  It would be good to have AdSense again, if for no other reason than to have ads on display, for sake of aesthetics.  It would be good to have it back period, it having been disabled for activity which was not the fault at all of the publisher himself.

Google execs, I doubt you will read this.  But I'm not going to let this continue without expressing my ire and frustration about your abominable banning policies.  They need to be and should be examined anew and... I believe so anyway... be revised.  Because as things are now and have been for some time, the banning policies are blatantly unfair to many of those who are generating fresh material on a constant basis.

You are not gaining anything by exiling content creators from using your platform to earn a little cash not just for them, but for yourself.

If anyone at Google is reading this and wishes to contact me about this, I invite them to write to me at theknightshift@gmail.com.  I would be very appreciative of that effort and dialoguing with you about this.  And it probably should go without saying that I would also appreciate a review of my own AdSense account, and be told in no uncertain terms why it was banned.  I would be so bold as to suggest that many if not most users who have been banned deserve a proper hearing.  But that's what needs to happen.

Content creators should not be penalized for the miscreant actions of a third party acting inappropriately.

Come on Google, don't do evil.  Don't let bad people get away with hurting the good ones.

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One day, this will be mine (I hope!)

See this?  It's an enlargement.  The originals are about the size of modern printed currency...

 

I first saw this at a Boy Scout camporee in September of 1985.  I was a brand new full Boy Scout.  They were handing out life-size copies of this: A ten shilling note used during the Siege of Mafeking during the Boer War in South Africa.

It dates back to 1900.  Colonel Robert Baden-Powell, who later started the entire Scouting movement, had these printed up and used in place of scarce real currency.  After the siege was lifted and true money started flowing again these were redeemable for actual ten shilling coins.

My friend and grandfather figure Doc Lewis told me about all that.  The “shillings” they were handing out during the camping event were copies of an actual siege note that our local Boy Scout council had in its possession.

I’ve been fascinated by this note ever since.  So much so that I resolved to someday own a real one.  It’s still a dream of mine.

I found some really good pics of Mafeking siege notes and then printed this one out.

It’s been on the wall next to my computer desk I’m writing this from for awhile now.  It’s become a source of inspiration for me. Baden-Powell held out in Mafeking for 217 days until relief finally arrived.

If he could do that with limited supplies, maybe I can hold out a little while longer for whatever God may have for me.  I hope so.

And hey, how many currencies in world history have soldiers manning cannons and machine guns printed on them?  That alone makes this note pretty cool!

If I ever can finish and sell my book, I’m going to buy a real ten shilling note from the Mafeking siege and frame it and put it on my living room wall.

I think that would be pretty neat.

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Commentary: The Boredom Machine

Ruins of the Capitol
from the video game Fallout 3

It's been several hours since some semblance of a historical event transpired here in America: Kevin McCarthy was ousted from being Speaker of the House in the House of Representatives.  It's the first time that's ever happened.  McCarthy is now third place in being shortest term of office for a speaker.

I've taken a peak at some of the more prominent online news and politics forums.  And this has obviously been an event arousing considerable discussion, anger, and triumph.

But the best I've been able muster up is an indifferent shrug. 

Once upon a time, I would be following the ouster of Kevin McCarthy with intense interest.  It IS the very first time in American history that a House speaker has been tossed out of the position, after all.  In days past my eyes and ears would be absorbing every scrap of information about what is now happening, collating it all in my brain as fast as it could possibly be done.

But I'm older now.  Presumably wiser.  And definitely more world-weary than three decades ago.  I've seen "leaders" and their parties swept into and out of power for so long, with very little lasting good for the nation, that I'm just plain bored with it all.

Heh.  "I'm so bored with it all."  Those were the final words of Winston Churchill, you might be enlightened to know.

It's much worse now.  The utter mundanity of modern politics.  Especially modern American politics.

I think Donald Trump was the first really brilliant flash of invigoration since Ronald Reagan.  But Trump ultimately failed to counter and rein in the overly-burdensome entrenched institutionalized wickedness that our government has become.  He accomplished some good - the border wall is, or would be anyway, one example - but he surrounded himself with people whose allegiances were with "the machine".  They were not loyal to the American people and their republic.

And now we see "the machine" bearing down on Trump, doing its damndest to squash any possibility of his re-election and retribution.  Take heed, friends and neighbors!  This is what "the machine" can do and will do to any and all challengers to its power and influence.  It will quash its dissidents like vermin... because that's all that we are to them.  Trump?  He's just the biggest person to make an example of.  I can tick off many others who have been besieged and destroyed by the machine for their insolence.

Don't think I'm a Trump uberfan.  You'll never catch me dead in a "Make America Great Again" cap.  I don't have political idols to follow.  But I damn well know what an all-out war to destroy an individual in almost every conceivable way looks like.  If it can happen to one person, it can happen to anyone at all.

This is what modern American politics is not just becoming, it already is.  It has turned into the very thing that our fathers and grandfathers for over two hundred years have fought to keep our country from becoming.

We all know it, even if we refuse to admit it.

This country has wound up with a lifelong chronic liar and a political prostitute in its two highest offices.  And we are supposed to applaud that?

There is now much more spying on regular citizens than the Stasi ever were capable of.  The propaganda of "the machine" has powers that Goebbels never imagined.  Silencing dissent has become a science to the priests of power.

The Internet?  I would tell you to search Google for evidence that its algorithms are biased against all but leftist people and policies, but it's algorithms don't allow for that.  Only a token few results are let slip by.  The machine controls the search engines.  Right now only Twitter is an isle of freedom of ideas and information... but God only knows how long that will last.  Social media?  The day will soon come when I and multitudes of others won't be allowed to post these things.  We'll probably have our accounts deleted.  Made unpersons.  As if we never existed on the Internet at all.  I genuinely wonder if the blog I've maintained for almost twenty years will one day be deleted.  Just one reason why I keep regular backups of it.

Entertainment?  Let's just say I am not a Disney+ subscriber.  I doubt I ever will be.  And I genuinely hate to say that.

All of this and more... much, much more... have turned America into a dreary landscape of tedium and turmoil, populated with spineless thralls.  There is no more vigor on display in this land.  Only the machine and its attendants and the ashen waste they continue to make of our nation.

McCarthy?  His ouster is just one minor episode in the scheme of things.  Nothing substantial will change.  Nothing will be allowed to change.  Not with the machine in control of very nearly everything.

I'm bored with the machine and everything about it.

You want vigor again?  You want real excitement?  You want serious change?

Be of good cheer then.  It is coming, sooner or later.  It is inevitable.  The machine can not survive forever.  It will eventually run out of willing slaves.

And then the blood will flow.  As high as the horses' bridles.

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Artificial intelligence has original singers performing "Weird Al" Yankovic's parodies... and it's pretty horrifying

This is already the scariest thing I've seen all month... and it's only October 2nd.  A terrible, terrible line has been crossed.  Advanced technology really is taking us to places that, not to put too fine a point on it, are unnatural to the extreme.

Andy Baio at Waxy.org has applied artificial intelligence to a lot of songs - which are mostly parodies of other artists - by "Weird Al" Yankovic.  Baio's intent with this dubious exercise is to see what would happen if the original artists performed Al's parodies themselves.

In other words, Baio has Michael Jackson's voice singing Yankovic's "Eat It".  Among others.

Let Mr. Baio indict himse... I mean, explain himself:

In the parallel universe of last year’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Dr. Demento encourages a young Al Yankovic (Daniel Radcliffe) to move away from song parodies and start writing original songs of his own. During an LSD trip, Al writes “Eat It,” a 100% original song that’s definitely not based on any other song, which quickly becomes “the biggest hit by anybody, ever.”

Later, Weird Al’s enraged to learn from his manager that former Jackson 5 frontman Michael Jackson turned the tables on him, changing the words of “Eat It” to make his own parody, “Beat It.”

This got me thinking: what if every Weird Al song was the original, and every other artist was covering his songs instead? With recent advances in A.I. voice cloning, I realized that I could bring this monstrous alternate reality to life.

This was a terrible idea and I regret everything.

This is a horrific milestone in digital manipulation.  There is no going back now.  Like the Joker said in The Dark Knight "You've changed things, forever."

Mash down here to read more about this experiment in abominable intelligence.  God have mercy on us all.

 

EDIT 10/08/2023 2:44 AM: Feel led to say something here.  All of this "the horror! the horror!" was done purely tongue in cheek.  I actually think is pretty cool.  Excellent work Mr. Baio :-)

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Welcome to Matt Smith's weekly Sunday School!

Very good friend Matt Smith (no not the Doctor Who actor!) and I go back a few years, all the way to our time together at that very strange television station in Reidsville, North Carolina.  I learned a lot about video and broadcasting from Matt, and I continue to learn much from him since his becoming active with the online realm, sharing his talents and his calling as a minister.

For the past two or three years Matt has been maintaining a weekly series of "Sunday school" lessons.  Every Saturday he posts a new one on YouTube.  I for one have been benefiting from Matt's devotionals and I think that others might will also.  Click on over to Matt's YouTube channel and prepare to be edified, enlightened, and maybe even a little entertained.

Thank you for all that you do my brother!

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Elementary school kids in Arkansas produced an AMAZING Indiana Jones fan film and you can watch it now!

This is... THE greatest thing that I have seen in a very long time.  These kids are... wow.  They are amazing!  They were able to pull off what a lot of us thirty and forty years ago were only able to dream of doing.  I know my best friend Chad and I used to plan out our own Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies.  How when we grew up we would be the next Lucas and Spielberg.  I like to think a little of that carried over to when we were making our films fifteen or so years ago.  Still a bit of childhood magic left.

But these kids, the young men and women of Oliver Springs Elementary School in Van Buren, Arkansas were not content to wait that long.  No, they went all out and they did it now.  It took them two years of fundraising and planning and then filming, but they succeeded in their mission: they made a professional-grade Indiana Jones fan film that stands as mighty as any movie ever conceived.

Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Aztecs finds the globe-trotting archaeologist in the swamps of Arkansas circa 1958.  On the trail of the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto, Indy runs afoul of rogue Russian agents who are looking for Montezuma's gold.  It seems that there is some mystical quality associated with the treasure: just the sort of thing that Dr. Jones has expertise in.

It runs half an hour but you are going to want more.  These young people have accomplished a film that is incredibly well-shot, smartly composed, exceptionally scored, and astoundingly acted.  These kids are performing their hearts out.  They get the world of Indiana Jones, maybe better than many adults.  And as if a cherry on top, they even got Karen Allen - Marion Ravenwood herself - to make a cameo appearance!

KSFM 5 News has more about the Oliver Springs Music Club and their film, and Arkansas CW Crew has posted a few interviews with some of the movie's cast and crew.

But, you are no doubt wanting to watch this for yourself.  I don't blame you!  There have been precious few Indiana Jones fan film efforts.  In fact the only one that comes readily to mind is the delightful Raiders of the Lost Ark adaptation that was made by Mississippi youngsters in the Eighties.  Well, Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Aztecs possesses no less soul, and has all the benefits of modern technology and cinematography.

I cannot possibly rave about this enough.  So click on over and watch Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Aztecs on YouTube.  Or, watch it embedded below.  Hint: click the link instead.  You'll better appreciate the wide aspect ratio these lads and lasses shot their film in.

Young men and women of Oliver Springs Elementary School, this blogger gladly salutes you!

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Trailer for Doctor Who sixtieth anniversary specials

Doctor Who needs a hard and fresh return to the franchise that that we know and love, above and away from the mess of the Thirteenth Doctor era (which if we're going to be honest really can't be pinned on Jodie Whittaker, she was just working with some really bad material).

I don't know if that's what is coming in the next few months with the specials commemorating the show's sixtieth anniversary (seems like just yesterday we were celebrating its fiftieth) but the pics and the new trailer that dropped over the weekend have me warefully optimistic.

The last time we saw The Doctor, she (ugh!) had regenerated - clothes and all - into a perfect facscimile of the Tenth Doctor, once again played by David Tennant.  However the showrunners seem to insist that Tennant is playing the Fourteenth Doctor.  Which means this is really Tennant's fourth or fifth character with the Tenth Doctor's face he's portrayed since 2005 (just work with me 'mkay?).

So going into the sixtieth anniversary specials it will be David Tennant as... Doctor Who-ever... and joining him is none other than Donna Noble, again played by the delightful Catherine Tate!  Although one seems to remember that last time we saw The Doctor and Donna together it was made clear that they couldn't see each other again.

Clearly, the BBC is throwing caution to the wind...

Here's the trailer for the specials, which materialized about 48 hours ago:

And at last, the BBC is confirming that Neil Patrick Harris, who had long already been announced as being in the specials, is going to be playing The Toymaker: a villain not seen since the William Hartnell era in 1966.

Is it just me, or does Harris as The Toymaker seem poised to chew up the scenery more than any Who bad guy since Davros?

The big celebration kicks off in November.  And I'm very much hoping we get at least a fleeting cameo of Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor.

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So, I lost a teaching job last week

How it transpired is something that a LOT of people have thought I'm making up.  But it really happened.

I was on my first day of substitute teaching.  And I went into that school all shiny and shaved, shirt tail tucked into my khakis, best boots... I was going to make an impression on the students and faculty alike (say, why don't most men seem to tuck their shirt tails in anymore?).

Most of all, I went in bearing in mind all that my own teachers, and substitute teachers especially, had handled us as students when I was in school.  Yes even the subs, many of whom are still burned into my memory.  They knew they only had a day or two to make their mark upon their students' educations, but they were determined to make the most of it.  That's precisely the mindset that I was going to emulate.

The assignment was a high school science class.  Chemistry, to be more specific.  The teacher had left a video for the students to watch, and then afterward they were to set about making 3D models of the atoms of various elements.

The video was about the electrons of an atom, how they orbit the nucleus in different shells.  And how each shell has a maximum number of electrons that can be in them.  We're talking very basic chemistry, per the model that Neils Bohr gave us.

The last example given in the video was about sodium.  The narrator described the nucleus, the first few shells going out, and then the last shell.  Which in sodium has but one electron.  And this lonely particle is what is most responsible for sodium being so drastically reactive.

How reactive?  It didn't touch on that in the video and that's too bad.  Well, when a quantity of sodium comes in contact with water it combusts.  And VERY dramatically at that:

 

 

This is something that every high school chemistry textbook going back at least the past eighty years has described (or at least used to).  It's also something that the chemistry teacher at my own high school demonstrated one day.  He had a tripod out on the football field holding aloft a brick of pure sodium.  Below it was a bucket of water.  He let the sodium brick drop and fall into the water.

The explosion was heard over five miles away.  Dad said they even heard it over the sounds of the machinery at the quarry he worked at.

I thought that along with telling them about Neils Bohr also being an Olympic-class football (aka soccer to us yanks) player, the students might find that virtue of sodium to be pretty interesting too.  So I shared it with all three classes that I had that day.

It turned out that the students did indeed appreciate my example of how an element like sodium can react with other substances.  All because of that one electron on its outermost shell and looking for stability.  Some of the students asked if we could do that during our class time.  I had to tell them no. But I like to think the visualized image will stick with them.

The following day I taught at another school.  And after returning home that afternoon I got a phone call.  Telling me that my services had been suspended pending an investigation...

It had gotten around that had I told the chemistry students about sodium's reaction with exposure to water.  The administration at the school considered this to be describing how to create high explosives.

Which was the absolutely LAST thing I would have intended.  It was nothing but describing a very simple interaction between valence electrons, involving one of the most basic elements on the periodic table.

Apparently the word "explosive" has been stricken from the vocabulary of secondary education in the public schools of these United States.  I'm going to assume that the mechanics of the internal combustion engine and the bursting forth of Orville Redenbacher popcorn kernels from their original volume will likewise now be deemed forbidden knowledge from the Dark Ages.

Well, I was invited to write and submit a statement about the incident to those investigating it.  I typed it up, trying to describe everything that had transpired.  I then zapped it out across the ether toward the proper authorities.  And I trusted that they would arrive at the same conclusion I was on: that I had not done anything wrong in teaching the fundamentals of chemistry to high school chemistry students.  I sincerely believed that I would be back in the classroom soon.

That was not to be however.

So, I'm no longer allowed to be a substitute teacher in that particular school system.  But for one glorious day I taught those kids some really neat concepts of science.  Like when one student asked about what neutrons do, I turned that into an explanation of how gas centrifuges enrich uranium into nuclear weapons-grade yellowcake.  And no, the school did not possess a gas centrifuge either (the students asked).

This is ridiculous.  There is no reason whatsoever to be afraid of basic chemistry. Ignoring it and making it a punishable offense to teach about it is certainly NOT going to ever deter real bad guys from using that knowledge.  Science is supposed to be neutral. Objective.  Pure science is on a level playing field and irrespective of agenda.  It simply IS.  It seems officials are now ascribing qualities to science in accordance to their whims and feelings, and not purely of physical principles.

Oh well. I gave it my best.  I don't regret for a moment what I taught those young people.  If it got them to thinking a little differently or deeper about the world around them and its wonders, then my task is complete.

Who knows?  Maybe I'll get to someday return to the classroom.  Just imagine the flames I would set alight if I taught the young people about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights!

But it could have been worse. I could have instead been fired for blowing up that little red schoolhouse...

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Well...

 ...at least they didn't fire me for the exploding schoolhouse.

Here is a tip: do not talk anymore about sodium's violent combustibility.

I hope Mr. Springs would be proud of me.  This is the very first time in more than thirty years that I've used the term "valence electrons" in a piece of writing.

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Started teaching today. Here's how it went!

For now, I'm being a very active substitute teacher.  Which, well... we'll see what happens from there.  People have been telling me for many years that I would make for a great teacher.  Today was a chance to give it a shot.

So I taught three blocks of high school sophomore honors chemistry class.  The subject of today's lesson was Neils Bohr, who came up with the standard model of atomic theory.  The students thought it was pretty wild that in addition to being a nuclear genius, Bohr was also an Olympic-class soccer player.

I must confess, I am absolutely BLOWN AWAY by the technology in the average classroom today.  Instead of a TV and a videotape player on a cart, each classroom now has this big touch-screen high-definition set.  I had to get one of the kids to explain to me how to make it work.  The teacher had a video about the Bohr model, using various elements' atoms.

The last atom it touched upon was sodium.  I saw a ripe opportunity to broaden the kids' minds in a way they might find pretty fascinating.  After the video I told them that the one lonely electron in sodium's outer shell is determined to chemically bond with ANYTHING.  And from there I shared the story of how my own high school's chemistry teacher once set off an explosion heard for miles around by sending a brick of sodium plunging into a bucket of water.  They did indeed find that pretty awesome.  A few of the male students asked if we could do that, and I said no.

The kids proceeded to make 3D models of their assigned atoms.  Someone asked aloud about neutrons. Like, "what do they do?"

So I used that as the diving block from which to jump into teaching the kids about how neutrons and atomic weight play an important role in using gas centrifuges to enrich uranium into nuclear weapons-grade "yellowcake":

One lad asked if we had a gas centrifuge in the school's lab.  I told him "I doubt it."  But I must give him credit for his curiosity.

(In case you're wondering, I am not joking about any of this.  Who knows, I may have sown a seed or planted a sapling in these kids' minds today.)

So, I'll be doing substitute teaching for the next little while, trying out different ages and subject matters.  The ultimate role reversal is probably going to be me teaching math.  Oh bruddah... WHAT have I gotten myself into??

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