Phil's Newsletter Goes To Camp

We Started A TV Channel LOL

Previously, on Phil’s Newsletter: We got a new mixing board, I wrote about the San Francisco exodus, etc.

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Today’s edition of the OpenCV Webinar featured Satya Mallick, Anna Petrovicheva, Grigory Serebryakov, Alexander Lyashuk, and me. We discussed the new AI model marketplace at modelplace.ai. It happens every Thursday at 9am. Phil T-Shirt Watch: Hot Rod.

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I allowed myself to stay in bed until 9am the other day. It has been years since I was not up and about before 9am. It felt subversive, then pathetic. It has been marginally easier to stay awake later in the day with this method. Lately I been feeling zonked out at like… 4pm. Not enough coffee in the world. Daily afternoon anxiety attacks really take it out of you, apparently.

I feel used up and lonesome and none of these are likely to change any time soon… if ever. This intro is a stone-cold bummer. I rewrote it half a dozen times. I have no excuse today. I do not need advice. Let’s just move on to better news.

Thanks to your kind patronage we were able to upgrade the hard drive in my workhorse of a PC, which sort of indirectly led to the next section…

RetroStrange TV Is Live

I feel like it was always going to happen, and it has: We run a TV channel now. It’s being served by an open source self-hosted streaming software called Owncast. The moderation tools for the chat function are non-existent. I cannot recommend it (YET) for people with large audiences for that reason alone. A couple of jerks can tank a whole feed. I wrote a bit about the channel on the RetroStrange blog. You can catch me in the video chat off and on.

The TV channel joins LOFI SCIFI, our free streaming old time radio station, under the RetroStrange media canopy. It’s meant to be the the kind of thing you can just wander over and look at it when the mood strikes you, or if you want something to put on in the background while you’re doing something else.

RetroStrange TV broadcasts public domain movies and shorts that we have featured on RetroStrange Movie Night, plus old episodes of What’s The Big Deal and live games of Divergent League Baseball. Speaking of…

1993 Divergent League Postseason Continues

The 1993 Divergent League Baseball postseason continues, into real-life baseball’s Opening Day. You can find the latest podcast episode in your podcatcher of choice. The next games are Friday night. Divergent League was originally created to fill the void of baseball created by the pandemic. It’s weird to see people acting like things are “going back to normal” as though nothing happened. There is not a normal to go back to for me and a lot of other people.

This is all to say I’m not sure when the next Divergent League season will be. This one has taken WAY longer than I intended, but life gets in the way of these labors of love. I still have TWO Bip Roberts Memorial Cup trophys to send out, and 1977 merch to players. My executive function is real hit and miss these days. I want to keep doing it but I’m not sure if it can compete with the actual MLB. Then again, we only need like… 10 people to make it worthwhile.

This Weekend Is A Movie Night Weekend

We’re streaming Dead Men Walk and Grave of the Vampire on Saturday night. As per usual join us 30 minutes early for some selections from the RetroStrange Safety Squad.

These are two non-Dracula vampire movies, which are interesting for different reasons. Dead Men Walk is kind of a classic. Grave of the Vampire is… it’s something. We hope you’ll join us at 7pm Pacific time on Saturday night.

The Good Links

Gonna be honest with you this isn’t my best week.

• This one is a clear example of Phil Bait: Pulp’s “Common People,” Perhaps the Most Perfect Britpop Song

• Amazon’s vision of work: Peeing in bottles, defecating in bags.

• A thread of the common classical music songs used in old cartoons

• I was mildly fascinated by this footage of workers loading Nintendo games

• Things are not getting better in Hong Kong. Chinese officials will now vet any candidates for office there, which is a bad sign

• Some potential details about Apple’s AR/VR headset: Short focal length, extremely light weight

• 68k.news is my new favorite way to read the stories of the day. “Tested on Netscape 1.1 through 4 on a Mac SE/30.”

• They’re doing a drive-in movie thing at Fort Mason here in San Francisco all month. Pretty awesome.

Happy Opening Day, everybody. The future’s uncertain and the end is always near… so let’s go Cubs. See you next week.

— Phil