Bipolar as experienced by Kay Redfield Jamison

The series that I have recently begun, "Being Bipolar", is picking up some intense interest. I posted Part 2: "Sketching Uniquet" late last week. Meanwhile Part 1: "The Tale of the Two Chris Knights" has become the most-visited page on the blog over the past several days.During the weekend I made the decision that for the next few installments of the series at least, I am...

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Third TRON movie gearing up already!

And before anyone asks, lifelong best friend Chad Austin and I are already planning our trip to the cinema to see this.But first, if you haven't already bought Daft Punk's electrifying soundtrack to Tron Legacy......then you really oughtta go to iTunes (where I bought it from) or buy it old-school physical media from a retailer and add it to your collection. In all seriousness,...

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World running out of Internet (as we've known it)

Things could be about to get really interesting pretty soon...Sometimes around 4 a.m. on February 2nd - next Wednesday morning - the very last of the still-available IP addresses under the traditional IPv4 scheme will be allocated.And then the Internet as it has existed since IPv4 was established in 1977 will, for all intents and purposes, be running on empty."Who the hell knew how much address space we needed?" said Vint Cerf, Internet pioneer and...

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BEING BIPOLAR, Part 2: Sketching Unquiet

This is the second installment of an ongoing series about living with bipolar disorder. It is well advised that if you have not done so already that you read Part 1: The Tale of the Two Chris Knights before proceeding with this chapter...There are two difficulties that arise when writing about bipolar disorder, as one who must live with and manage the condition.The first...

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Physicists propose idea for "Time Teleportation"

For the past several weeks I've been telling my filmmaking partner "Weird" Ed about Primer: the indie sci-fi film from a few years ago and positivalutely the most genius movie about time travel that I've ever had the pleasure of watching.Well, it turns out that filmmaker Shane Carruth might be on to something...Two physicists at the University of Queensland in Australia have...

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Blizzard stops, then allows "World of StarCraft" mod

Now this could be a story about copyright issues that may wind up having a very happy ending...It all starts with one Ryan Winzen, a 25-year old artist who claims to have no inclination toward video game programming but who has been creating custom maps for Blizzard's Warcraft and StarCraft games since he was 13.A few days ago Ryan sent shockwaves across the Intertubes when...

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Blackbeard's sword? Could be...

It's seen better days (in fact it had to be reconstructed from its separate pieces for this photo) but this gold-gilded sword hilt recently recovered from the site of the Queen Anne's Revenge off the coast of North Carolina is being thought of as possibly belonging to Captain Edward Morgan Teach... more infamously known as Blackbeard the Pirate.If so, it's probably not the...

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It's 2011's first pic of Lauryn!

At the moment I'm... working... through getting Part 2 of the Being Bipolar series finished (read Part 1 here if you haven't already). Not only that but also practicing my lines for Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of Gypsy. Along with a few other "irons in the fire" so to speak.So to make up for a dearth of new material these past few days, here is something...

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Monsignor Charles Pope contemplates "the Strength and Resilience of the Human Person"

In the wake of last week's tragic incident in Tuscon there have been reams of pages written about human nature, with one spin or another on the subject.I haven't read anything that is as poignant and beautiful as what Monsignor Charles Pope - pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian - has composed on his blog hosted by the Archdiocese of Washington.Here's an excerpt "Life is Worth Living: On the Strength and Resilience of the Human Person"...One of the...

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It's a first for The Knight Shift! Guest blogger Simon Burdett reviews FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS!

I can just hear it now: "Chris you've gotten lazy with your blog! It took seven years but you're finally all tapped out!"Well the fact of the matter is, Simon Burdett from Great Britain has been a good friend of this blog for some time now and it was all his idea that perhaps I could allow "special guest stars" to write for The Knight Shift every now and then. And the more...

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Death Star Cookie Jar

Yet another entry to be filed under "Things We Don't Really Need But Are Badly Lusting For"...Available exclusively through the Official Star Wars Website, for $49.99 you can be the proud owner of the Death Star Cookie Jar! According to the product description...The exclusive Death Star cookie jar is built to hold an Imperial army of your favorite cookies, and can even double...

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Is America headed to bankruptcy?

Well, it's more than a fair question. Yesterday I was reading how the Federal Reserve might soon be in need of a "bailout". More than anything else I've heard in recent months, that raised a honkin' big red flag. But then, I've been thinking for awhile now that conditions are ripe in this country for hyperinflation.A good friend of mine, James S. Hodges - writer, Baptist minister, and all-around astute thinkin' dude - published an essay today...

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Stumbling toward GYPSY

Tonight we had the first "stumble-through" of Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of Gypsy. A stumble-through, I learned tonight, is an extreme "rough cut" of the show. Which I assume is like what the preview performances of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark have been about so far... but without all the injuries.So since getting involved with community theatre three years ago I have been, in chronological order: a biblical patriarch, an...

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T-shirts at the Tuscon memorial service?

Does anyone else think that this was crass at best and beyond pale at worst?To the left you will see a few of the 20,000-some "Together We Thrive" t-shirts that were given away free as "souvenirs" - and that's being more charitable than it deserves to be called - at last night's memorial service for victims of this past week's massacre in Tuscon.I didn't watch it on television...

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TRON Blu-ray: Worst. Disney. Cover. Art. Ever.

This is just plum lousy...Hey, I'll buy it. I just pray that I won't need a Mattel Intellivision to watch it on.If that winds up being the final cover for the Blu-ray release of Tron, I swear that I'll compose one of my own design in Photoshop and use that when I put this movie into my personal library.Could anyone blame me? Just compare that Blu-ray cover "art" to the original...

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Personality cults do not exist in this dojo

A contented life of liberty is one lived with no concern or regard whatsoever about what either Barack Obama or Sarah Palin did tod...

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The most disturbing Super Mario Bros. video you will EVER see

A guy named "petermolyneux2" on YouTube has... well he might have some issues, if his short film "Nintendo: A Sad Story" is any indication. I've watched this three times now, trying to make sense of what exactly I'm looking at. And now I CAN'T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD!! No sound sleep for me tonight.No sound sleep for you either, maybe, if you choose to let enter your gray matter this clip that surely must resemble what the 1993 Super Mario Brothers...

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