Cool ideas and cool happenings

Did you ever have an idea that was so good you just wanted to drop everything else in favor of it? I have – fairly recently too. And the sad thing is, I’ve had several of these ideas, one on top of the other, that are all such good ideas, I want to pursue them all. Which necessitates winning the lottery and quitting my day job. đŸ˜€ Seriously though, this latest idea is intensely cool, and hopefully you’ll see it on the site before 2006 is out. Because I know, deep down inside, you’ve always wanted to be a fiddygibber. I mean, we all have at one time or another, haven’t we?
As the year winds down, I thought I’d reflect on some of the cool stuff that’s happened this year. In fact, let’s make it a bit of a countdown.
Christopher Eccleston is Doctor Who.8. Fleeing the Cylon tyranny in the TARDIS. This is the year that Star Trek went off the air…and I think we’re all okay with that. (And quite frankly, those who aren’t need to just get over it.) That said, Star Trek went off the air with a damned good season…but it’s obvious, when you’ve got shows like the new revivals of Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who on the air, kicking Trek’s butt in the storytelling and characterization department, and we even get an almost indisputably grand Star Wars movie and a better-than-we-had-any-right-to-expect big screen version of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in the same year…Trek’s time has come and gone, plain and simple. I forget who said it – it may have been Peter David – but even in its unexpectedly good final season on TV, Star Trek ceased to be the unflinching commentary on human foibles and current issues that it once was, and merely became a meta-commentary on…well…Star Trek. Given that I’m counting down to the next new episodes of Galactica and Who right now, I hardly miss it.
7. How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Blawg. It took a few false starts – short-lived blogs at Digital Press and Mail2web.com – but I realized how much I enjoy this bloggage business. And then it hit me right between the eyes that I’ve been blogging (albeit infrequently) longer than most people – longer than the word’s been around. Hence the reworking of Scribblings, which you’re reading right now.
Me playing Star Wars: The Arcade Game at OVGE 2005.  Photo by Charles Pearson.6. OVGE 2005. It’s my own fault (well, and that of the fine folks at work, who at the time apparently deemed my presence at the station as too mission-critical to allow me to have enough time to sleep) that I didn’t get more out of OVGE ’05 than I did – I was in a zonked, zombie-like state in my booth, and for that I can’t apologize enough to everyone who was there just asking questions about my stuff and getting very sleepy-eyed answers. (On the sleepy-eyed flipside, I guess there are far worse things to be than the Joel Hodgson of the classic gaming scene.) And what a crowd this year. My plans to encase more of my display in a, well, display-case style setting fell through due to lack of time (and sleep), and again resulted in a great many people being disappointed that more of my wares weren’t on sale. But I got to catch up with old friends and meet folks for the first time who I’d only talked to on the ‘net, buy some more AtariAge homebrew goodness, work some trades, and spread the word about the site. Good times – I’m always up for running another OVGE/OKGE booth whenever they’re ready to have another one. Especially if they bring back that Star Wars arcade machine. (Thanks to Charles for the photo – I was so tired I forgot to bring my own camera!)
Orac, HAL and Zen5. New Computer, New Camera. This has been such a long time in coming. These two pieces of equipment have helped me find a bit of focus, they’ve helped me get the site done better and faster, and have opened my eyes to just hundreds of new possibilities. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that. The camera really helped me remember just how much I like videography…just not the way we do it at work. (The fact that I’ve repeatedly put stuff on the air at work, shot with my own camera, and nobody’s noticed the difference, really validates the camera purchase for me.) The camera makes much of the cool stuff you’re seeing on the site recently possible. And the new computer that doesn’t freeze up every 5 minutes and crash and burn every half-hour helps a lot too.
Meeting the Apollo-Soyuz crew.Tied for 3. CGE 2005 & the Apollo-Soyuz Reunion. I’m sure some folks are thinking I’ve lost my mind when comparing Classic Gaming Expo to a gathering at an aerospace museum, but I’ve gotta say it’s a toss-up. Plenty of boyhood heroes to meet at both events. The crew of the last Apollo mission to hit space before the six-year wait for the shuttle, and the first astronauts and cosmonauts to take part in a peaceful international joint space operation – for crying out loud, Alexei Leonov was the first human spacewalker. And over in San Francisco – my first visit to California, no less – the folks who programmed the games that I spent so much time playing. While there’s a vast gulf between astronauts and programmers, these folks did much to inspire the direction of my life (obvious, ain’t it, what with me being neither programmer nor astronaut?). It’s unimaginably cool to get together with any or all of them, truth be told.
Here Katie.  It's a diploma.  You'll spend the next 20 years of your life trying to get one.2. Got Me A College Girl. My wife finished her college degree, and while it wasn’t easy – it was never easy, and frankly, the lack of a consistently supportive attitude from her own family completely baffled and infuriated me – she plowed her way through it. She wasn’t the only person I know who walked that walk and escaped with that piece of paper this year. And they’ve inspired me to start thinking about doing that myself, to correct a critical mistake that was no one’s but mine to make, many years ago.
1. Victory Over The Forces Of Evil And Stuff. I still bristle at how much I want to be able to say this without it being in the vaguest of terms, but ah well. I beat them. Oh sure, it’s referred to in slightly less decisive terms on paper, but I feel like – I know – I beat them. They tried to take what was mine and while I didn’t have a chance to prove them wrong in plain sight of everyone, they were obviously worried enough about it to want to get it out from under it as quickly as they could. I almost have to thank them for it – not only for making much of the above possible thanks to their sheer bone-headedness – but for bringing into sharp focus that there is value to what I do, even in my spare time, and that there is a future in it. Other recent events have occurred to cement that idea in my head. I’m convinced that going back, finishing my unfinished school business, and this site and the projects related to it, are the way forward – or least stand a better chance of being the way forward than staying my present career course.

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  1. 1
    Dave Thomer

    Man, I don’t think I’ve seen you so enthused about anything in a long time. And now that you’ve posted this in public, we have an excuse for whapping you upside the virtual head if you don’t follow through.

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