The last remaining boxes of Isaac's papers are out of my apartment. They're on their way to the University of California at Santa Barbara's Religious Studies Collection. I used to think that the stuff Phaedra Bonewits and I were sending to UCSB was just being warehoused somewhere. If you click on the above link, you'll see I…
After working on Isaac Bonewits' biography on-and-off for eight years (mostly off), I've finally completed one of my key tasks: To scan in all his files and papers. (The exception is if Phaedra Bonewits sends me any more boxes of Isaac's old material.) So what's next? Send all the remaining physical files, papers, and calendars to the…
It's probably unfair for me to review Shadow of the Tomb Raider so soon after Spider-Man. My viewpoint is skewed because Spider-Man is clearly the better game. It's also unfair because I'm not a professional videogame reviewer, though I feel compelled to write reviews; I feel that one game is better than the other, but I struggle…
I'll start by addressing the big problem with this game: On its easy difficulty setting (dubbed "Friendly"), the game is much too hard for casual players -- at first. The game starts in media res, with Spider-Man fighting the thugs of Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin. Since this videogame is frequently compared with Batman: Arkham Asylum, I'll…
Through a World of Warcraft discussion message board, I heard of a research study being conducted by West Virginia University on the relationships between videogame players and their avatars. In a "what the hell" mood, I responded to the survey with a story about one of my WoW characters. I thought the story was minor, but to…
The New York Primary Elections are on Thu, Sep 13th. We've learned in recent years that primary elections are very important; the results of those elections bear on issues like who the superdelegates are at the Democratic National Convention. I've been doing some web research on the candidates. I found Ballotpedia to be a very useful resource,…
Once again, I'm in an introspective mood as I contemplate my history in the Craft. It's been forty-three years since I took out a copy of Real Magic from the reserved stacks of the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Without that book, I never would have engaged with paganism in my later years. It's been…
I'm still working on the biography of Isaac Bonewits, though I admit my progress has been slow. I periodically scan more documents from the last boxes of papers Phaedra sent me. One big issue with my research was transcribing interviews. I have about 70 hours worth of interviews so far, with still a few more to go.…
Of course not! The setup I described in my previous post has an issue that's not obvious: the fans are on all the time. They're powered by the +5V pins on the Raspberry Pi. The fans were pretty quiet, but they were still audible in a quiet room. It was also a waste of power. I wanted…
I knew from the start of this project that I'd need to put all the components in an enclosure. This was to be a semi-permanent installation; I couldn't have wires and heat sinks dangling everywhere. Sam Groveman suggested this type of project box. I picked one that would be big enough to hold the solid-state relays along…