Last Saturday, a couple of friends came to visit: C and LM. Don't worry, all three of us tested negative on an at-home COVID test before we met. LM brought her dog, Luna, who is a Miniature Schnauzer. LM has brought some of her dogs to my place before, but this was the first time she's done…
Recently, a friend texted me with the following question. Here is that question and my reply in more-or-less the text format of my responses. I have heard that the Gardnerian tradition is pretty secretive. Is this true, and to what extent are those details secretive? I can’t tell you, because it’s a secret! OK, seriously: The word…
This is my once-a-decade reminder that there was a web series that portrayed LARPing in a fully positive light: LARPs It's an antidote to all the depictions in media (like Knights of Badassdom) of LARPers as silly or divorced from reality.
I've often said that Horizon: Zero Dawn is my favorite console video game. (My favorite video game is The Prisoner for the Apple II. It's no longer easily playable.) This Friday, the game's sequel Horizon: Forbidden West will be released. I'm excited! I've already purchased it, and it's already been downloaded to my Playstation. On Friday it…
I recently received some photographs from 1997. They'd been sitting in my father's files for 24 years. This takes me back... Although I received my Ph.D. in particle physics in 1996, I didn't formally graduate from Columbia University until 1997. For the occasion, my mother Beatrice and her husband Bob flew from California to attend the ceremony.…
I started reading the Wheel of Time series about 30 years ago. I don't remember much about the plot. When I got to the third book, I felt that the author was spinning his wheels and didn't know how to finish a story. By the time I finished the fourth book, I thought, "Well, at least I'm…
A mini-review: The Matrix Resurrections assumes that you are familiar with all the previous Matrix movies. If you haven't seen them, this movie will be meaningless to you. The movie is filled with call-backs, flash-backs, and fan service. This is absolutely deliberate on the part of the director, Lana Wachowski, because... This is the most meta and…
In 2012, I lost a ring that meant a lot to me. I spent most of the following year learning enough about 3D software and 3D printing to recreate the ring from photographs. I decided to use those newly-acquired skills to open a shop on Shapeways, which at the time was the premier 3D-printing service for people…
The TL;DR version: After playing one of the best console video games I've ever played, unfortunately I followed it up with one of the worst. In writing about Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, I feel I must make comparisons to an earlier game based on the characters: Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Game. To spare you…
The TL;DR version of this review: Ghost of Tsushima is now my second-favorite video console game, after Horizon: Zero Dawn. The (fictional) island of Tsushima is part of the shogunate of Japan. The Mongols have invaded, led by Khotun Khan. At the start of the game, an army of samurai is defeated by Khotun. You are Jin…