The scene from the excellent HBO miniseries John Adams where Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the delegates vote to declare American secession from Britain:I have to believe that the mood of the room following the vote for the Declaration of Independence in real life was no less solemn. The look on their faces must have said it all: "Dear God, we just did that. That just happened! What have we done?!"May...
Tuesday, July 04, 2023
Monday, July 03, 2023
Dear Elon Musk: Make Twitter usable again
This line from the 1983 movie WarGames has come to mind in the past couple of days:Except right now it's Elon Musk instead of Dabney Coleman. And instead of the WOPR computer the problem is that Twitter is, at the moment, complete junk.A few years ago I embedded the timeline of my most recent tweets on this blog, in the right-hand column toward the top of the page. ...
Thursday, June 29, 2023
Dad would have liked it: My review of INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY
I was seven years old when Raiders of the Lost Ark first came
out. That film more than any other impacted and steered the direction
of my life. The day after seeing it I had volumes of encyclopedias
opened up on the floor and the family Bible along with them. I wanted
to learn all about the Ark of the Covenant and ancient Egypt and World
War II and the...
Thursday, June 15, 2023
"Zathras warn": The trailer for BABYLON 5: THE ROAD HOME
It was released earlier today. I've watched this trailer for Babylon 5: The Road Home at least five times now... and I am stoked. It looks beautiful. And it seems that they've done an excellent job at casting the voice actors for the characters whose original portrayers have "gone beyond the Rim" over the years.(I'm hoping that we get at least one look inside Garibaldi's quarters aboard Babylon 5. Just to see if the painting...
Wednesday, June 14, 2023
My solemn word that anything you see posted here is genuine
You might have noticed a slight addition to this blog. It's on the header, toward the right of the screen. There now appears the following label: I have heard all kinds of insane stories about people using ChatGPT and other "artificial intelligences" as something more than a curiosity. Students have begun having AI write papers for classes. ...
Tuesday, June 13, 2023
Good deals on Indiana Jones computer games
I'm hearing very mixed word about the upcoming motion picture Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. I seriously want this to be a good movie. Raiders of the Lost Ark is my all time most favorite film and I found something good in each entry of the franchise. I even thought that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was pretty good: all you need...
Sunday, June 11, 2023
Thirty years later: JURASSIC PARK the motion picture
Thirty years ago today, I drove to Brassfield Cinema in Greensboro to catch the film adaptation of Jurassic Park on its opening day. A year and a half earlier during fall break of my high school senior year I bought a paperback copy of the novel by Michael Crichton at what used to be KC Books on Freeway Drive in Reidsville. Between getting the book and the release of the...
Tuesday, June 06, 2023
May it never be forgot
Seventy-nine years ago today.That's a still from the animated special What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? It was the follow-up to the film Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown Linus, Peppermint Patty, Marcy, and Snoopy are on their way back to America. They stop and camp for the night and Linus thinks they're something familiar about the place.Wow. ...
Saturday, May 27, 2023
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun: Carnage-filled fun for gamers of a certain age (and other people too!)
This coming December will mark thirty years since the original computer game Doom was released by id Software. Gadzooks!! Where did all that time go to?!? Well, Doom sucked me in hard and refused to release its grip. There had been a few first-person shooters before, notably id's own Wolfenstein 3-D. But it was Doom that showed off the REAL potential...
Monday, May 08, 2023
The Visitors came forty years ago this month
I was reminded of something earlier today, and I can't believe that this somehow slipped past the radar screen...Last week, May 1st, was the fortieth anniversary of the premiere of the NBC television miniseries V.That doesn't seem possible. It's like it was only yesterday that creator Kenneth Johnson unleashed his nightmarish vision of fascism on a global scale. ...
Wednesday, May 03, 2023
"Faith manages": Babylon 5 returning with animated movie!
I'm feeling some geeky gears in my gray matter starting to rotate like they haven't in a VERY long time.Babylon 5 - the single greatest television series that the Nineties ever spawned - is coming back as an animated film.The show's creator J. Michael Straczynski unloaded the news on Twitter earlier this afternoon. More details are coming soon, including the movie's...
Tuesday, May 02, 2023
Gordon Lightfoot died yesterday
The man is responsible for a lot of well known songs. One of the local stations played "Sundown" around lunch today. There are a few others he did too.But the main subject of this post is about one that's especially dear to me.I was almost two and a half years old when Gordon Lightfoot released his haunting ballad "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald". The song came out several months after the loss of the largest ship on the Great...
Sunday, April 30, 2023
Preview: The Knight Shift's very last blog post
Am looking at making a few edits and additions to this blog. Nothing too drastic though. I used to change up The Knight Shift's appearance about once a year or so. But it's had this template for five years now and it really does seem to be the best it's looked.And I'm going to make sure it stays looking good, up until the very end.A long time ago I heard...
Tuesday, April 18, 2023
Dr. Charles Stanley has gone Home
"Well done, My good and faithful servant." Let us be thankful for the very long time that God let him be among us. A lot of people came to Christ... and drew closer to Him... because of this man's seemingly tireless efforts. Dr. Charles Stanley truly had a servant's heart. I for one learned quite a lot from watching his In Touch weekly series on television.I...
Friday, April 14, 2023
Anyone else feeling this way too? (Spoilers for Stranger Things)
The very last shot from "The Piggyback", the finale of Stranger Things season four:Click to enlargeThat's the overwhelming sense of things that I've had for much of this past year and I imagine it has been for a lot of other people too. The visual metaphor is a most fitting one. Many of our heroes, who have just gone through an incredibly exhaustive tribulation...
Monday, April 03, 2023
The April Fools prank I helped a friend with
The other week my very good friend Eric Smith (yes, the same one who also made a campaign commercial during that VERY wacky school board race years ago) approached me with a project. Could I help him pull off an April Fools stunt this year? I said absolutely, that it would be an honor and a pleasure to work with him.Along with being an expert welder, Eric is also a professional Santa Claus (the reason his beard is so big and bushy). ...
Friday, March 31, 2023
49
Well, I'm feeling pretty good, here on the home stretch to the half century mark. Tonight at 6:09 PM EST I officially turned forty-nine years old.I had come to dread having a birthday. They used to be something that I looked forward to. But at least since 2000 it has come with pain preceded by the notion that I really haven't done much with my life. It probably has something to do with my 26th birthday. That was...
