This One Goes To 11
Twenty-One is one more than Twenty
Previously on Phil’s Newsletter: We turned out the lights on 2020, and ventured back into the Mojave Wasteland.
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It’s Thursday, and you know what that means… it’s time for Phil’s Newsletter. Welcome to 2021. The elephant in the room, aside from the literal siege of the US Capitol by a racist mob, is that I am looking for work. You can hire me to create new things for you, or make your existing things way better. Please give my LinkedIn post a share and/or a comment, it helps the algorithm. Goddamn do I hate having to care what The Algorithm wants.
It’s a chilly 60 degrees (F) this morning here in Wizard Tower Gamma, and I just finished up my first Instagram Live session of the year. I’m still working on the 2020 Phil Year In Review. I guess it could’ve been worse. I’m still on this side of the dirt anyway. Gonna take some time to get it all into perspective for you.
The Insta Live was thinly-attended but that was probably for the best, as I had just gotten out of bed and was a little slow to start. I made some coffee and showed off a recent 3D print:
You may need to tap to open it as a video. No, it is not a futuristic sex toy (yet). It is a functional two-way screw. The cool thing about it is you can use the same bolt with special nuts that screw on clockwise OR counter-clockwise. It’s a fun little fidget toy but the concept could be useful elsewhere. You can grab the model on Thingiverse.
Other highlights on Live included Canadian author and (actual quote) "master of bowel-loosening terror" David Demchuk suggesting things to drink out of a peppermint-flavored shot glass. His next book, RED X, arrives in August 2021. You can pick up the first, Bone Mother, already.
I’ll be back on Instagram Live next Thursday morning at 7:30am drinking coffee and cracking wise. Today on the newsletter we’ll talk about new stuff turning comfortable, RetroStrange Movie Night, Math Art, and of course I save The Good Links for last.
Wearing It In
I’ve been living alone for about 18 months, now. Given the timeline, I think it’s obvious that most of that has come during the current pandemic. I’m not going to sugar-coat it, this has been a long, lonely, time for me. I am not a huge extrovert, I get socially exhausted pretty quickly unless I’m buzzed, but even I am desperate for some human comfort that isn’t coming any time soon. So, like a lot of you, I have to find it elsewhere.
This week I’ve been trying to find some of that comfort in the wearing-in of some of the items I purchased when I first moved out of the apartment Lauren and I shared for 7 years in September 2019. I kinda hate New Stuff. You get anxious about scratching or breaking it.
A lot of This Stuff, necessarily, had to be purchased new or close to new. I don’t have any family out here, so there were no hand-me-downs to be had. So, New Stuff. New, uncomfortable, probably not very good because I ain’t made of money, Stuff.
Today my janky Wayfair couch finally has a nice butt-groove where I sit. My on-clearence-at-Target coffee table has a few scars in the top from my dropping a pair of needle-nose pliers on it. There’s a small makeup stain on one of my white pillow cases. My baking sheets, bowls, and utensils are quite worn in, indeed. These are good things. They are comfortable things. I’ll take any of it I can get.
A Toroid Affair
My friend Josh Millard has really been digging into some serious Math Art lately, with this exhaustive process thread about nested polyhedra on Twitter being one of the best distractions from the ongoing mess that I’ve found recently. I’m shit with this kind of math, which is surprising for a guy who works in 3D all day, but reading these posts about concepts I only sorta grok has been a nice little escape.
You can buy some of his work in this style/form and a dozen others on the Cortex Craftworks etsy account. I especially like the linocut prints.
RetroStrange Movie Night #16: The Prince of Space (1953), Captain Z-Ro (1955, Episodes 1 & 2)
This weekend is a big one: Movie Night #16 and my nephew Henry’s 13th birthday. I can’t believe that boy is a got-damn Teenager. I remember when he was just a (large) baby, now he’s the tallest Nelson by half a head and one of the most genuine, kind, humans I’ve ever met. Also he now shreds on the guitar. HBD Hank. I love you, bud.
For Movie Night we’ll be watching Prince of Space, a several-episodes-smashed-together version of the beloved Japanese tokusatsu TV series Planet Prince. You may recognize Planet Prince as something of a knockoff of the Super Giant / Starman film series, which we’ve shown on Movie Night before.
We’re also going to show the first two episodes of the long-lost American sci-fi kids show Captain Z-Ro which originally aired on KRON-TV here in San Francisco in the 50s. You can think of it sorta like America’s Doctor Who, but without none of the cachet.
In case you missed it: RetroStrange now has a Facebook group and a proper blog at retrostrange.com. We’re back-filling a history of the Movie Nights, with links to buy and stream the movies and suchlike.
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Boundless affection to mrsugarmuffin, smashjax666, urstarstuff, tetris, katanma and d_hock for subscribing to the Twitch channel this month. You are shining beacons of decency in a time of asshattery.
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Divergent League Baseball 1993 Season Starts Tomorrow!!
Thanks to all who have signed up for this season of Divergent League- I’m in the process of sending out the official league welcome letter today. The season will cost $10 to play. That entry fee goes toward paying for the Bip Roberts Memorial Trophy Even Though He’s Still Alive which is presented to the winner of the World Series.
Even if you aren’t playing, you can keep up with Divergent League on https://divergentleague.com. We’ll be streaming games live on Tuesday evenings and Sunday afternoons for the next 5 weeks.
Phil’s Good Links
The good links are all. Hail the good links.
Vice remembers Altavista, the first good search engine
Prop 22 fallout: Grocery chains Vons and Albertsons both fired all of their full-time delivery drivers and replaced them with lower-paid gig workers who get no benefits
Master Chief .vs. Thomas The Tank Engine. Need I say more?
Jack Ma, one of the world’s richest men, has been missing for weeks and is assumed to be being held captive by the Chinese government
The release of Magic Castle, a game that began development 23 years ago
Speaking of PS1, check out PSX Party- a web-based Playstation 1 emulator with multiplayer support. It can load ROMs from the Internet Archive!
Building a clone of Bond’s Apple IIc from 1985's A View To A Kill
Mike Davidson remembers the departed (as of December 31st 2020) web technology Flash
A shortish (40 mins) documentary on legendary Detroit street racer The Black Ghost
Advertising and Venture Capital are such a scam that Uber didn’t know they were being cheated out of 2/3 of their ad spend, and when they were told they didn’t seem to care
Congratulations to the first union at Google. Solidarity forever.
Aaron Reed is playing one text game per week this year from oldies like Oregon Trail to newer stuff like A.I. Dungeon
From AdAge: CIA’S REBRAND LIKENED TO THAT OF A MILLENNIAL POP-UP SHOP
I, too, miss these carpets:
Oh, also this week, a bunch of armed fascists staged a siege of the Capitol building because the sitting President told them to and nobody important will ever be held accountable. You might’ve heard about it.
That’s all from me. Sorry for the length. I didn’t have time to make it shorter. Be kind, babies. This too shall pass… or not. Maybe not.
— Phil