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Conventional Thinking Write, Write, You Bloody Well Write

Fatherhood, Fandom, Fading Out, and a Book Update

Fatherhood, Fandom and Fading OutSurprise! New book! And probably (with apologies to Steven Moffat) not the one you’re expecting. Fatherhood, Fandom, and Fading Out is a book of essays, largely culled from this very blawg as well as from theLogBook.com ‘Zine, though there are a few “previously unreleased bonus tracks” in the mix as well, and of course everything’s been modified so it works as a book. Watch for it later this week in theLogBook.com Store and Amazon.com.

So let’s talk books for a little bit, because I haven’t talked books in a while, and the last time I did talk books, this new one wasn’t even a gleam in my eye.

FFFO, as I’ve come to call it, is just a little bit of a stopgap project, something that will (hopefully) bring in a wee bit of scratch while I finish up working on the next book, which will be WARP!1, the first Star Trek guidebook in a format similar to my previous Doctor Who guidebooks, VWORP!1 and VWORP!2 (both still very much available in theLogBook.com Store, by the way). But it’s not a completely cynical, let’s-make-a-quick-buck thing. The element of the VWORP! books that has gotten more feedback than anything is the brief essays that offer much-needed detours from the synopsis/cast-and-crew/trivia/review format that is 90% of those books. The essays seem to connect with people – a lot. So an all-essay book was always in the offing; I simply decided to move it up in the schedule, just in time for Fathers’ Day no less, while I decided what to do about the WARP! books.

Because the playing field has changed a bit where WARP! is concerned. We now have a new Star Trek series in pre-production, with such luminaries as Bryan Fuller, Nicholas Meyer, and Rod Roddenberry doing the honors. After years of mega-budget popcorn flicks bearing little resemblance to the Star Trek we know and love, the idea of an all-star return to form is incredibly appealing…and it changes things up a lot. … Read more

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Conventional Thinking

Do you even know how to vend?

This year, in the Facebook groups for two local conventions that I support and attend, there were little blow-ups at the last minute that got under my skin a bit. In one case, an attendee was protesting the long-standing rule that he couldn’t sell his own games person-to-person on the show floor. (That’s a no brainer. If anyone can do that, why pay for vendor tables?) In another case, a poster was berating Sunday foot traffic at the convention in the past and made the observation: “Glad I wasn’t a vendor. I would have been pissed. Because if you didn’t make your money on Saturday, you damn sure wasn’t going to make it on Sunday.”

Whoa there! 😆 Just stop before you embarrass yourself any further. Seriously. Because if you are a vendor, you’re the author of your own destiny at these shindigs. What follows is a slightly disjointed series of notes that I’ve jotted down over three years or so. … Read more

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Conventional Thinking Gadgetology Gaming

OVGE 2014 Post-Game Roundup

The 11th annual Oklahoma Video Game Exhibition (OVGE) has come and gone, and as has been the case since the first year of the show, I was there with goodies from my game collection for everyone to try out, as well as some stuff to sell.

OVGE 2014Read more

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Conventional Thinking Gaming

OVGE Pre-Flight Checks

Power UP! Today was a day of dusting, battery compartment cleaning, screen-cleaning and general getting-ready for this weekend’s OVGE event in Broken Arrow. Everything, even my finicky Coleco Donkey Kong Jr. tabletop, is ready for action.

Coleco Mini-Arcades

The theme of my display for this year is how much portable gaming has changed. (Spoiler alert: it’s changed a BUNCH.)

Coleco Mini-Arcades

Extra batteries are on standby, and the mini-arcade is at the ready. Are you?… Read more

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Conventional Thinking Write, Write, You Bloody Well Write

GlitchCon is THIS WEEKEND!

GlitchCon is this weekend! August 1st through 3rd at the Springdale Holiday Inn. A few notes ahead of the show…

  • Death panels! Well, okay, not really. I’m doing two panels Saturday night: at 7pm in panel room 2 (the Sci-Fi room), I’m doing “Doctor Who in the Off-Season”, which will begin with the somewhat off-putting question “What will you do the next time Doctor Who is cancelled?” (Don’t worry, I’ll offer a detailed justification for asking that question in the first place.) At 9pm in panel room 3 (the Steam room, which hopefully doesn’t obligate me to do a karaoke version of the Peter Gabriel song of the same name), it’s “Beyond the TARDIS”, a look at British sci-fi beyond Doctor Who.
  • D20: The Musical! Friday night between 8pm and 10pm in panel room 4 (the Anime room), the cast of D20: The Musical is doing a readthrough of their script. Quite a few of my friends are behind this show, so check it out, add +3 to your Wisdom score, and enjoy.
  • Star Trek ContinuesStar Trek Continues! Vic Mignogna of Star Trek Continues will be there all weekend, showing the latest episodes of the ridiculously-professionally-produced Trek fan series, signing autographs and answering questions. My one stipulation to the organizers of the show was “Please, for the love of whatever gods are applicable, don’t put me up against Vic Mignogna at the same time on the schedule, because I don’t want to speak to an empty room.” 😆 These episodes have to be seen to be believed.
  • Books! I will have a few copies of both VWORP!1 Second Edition and the brand-new, just-released VWORP!2 with me; hit me up at the end of either panel (or between panels) if you’re interested. Here’s where it gets funny: in order to have a chance in hell of having copies of VWORP!2 on hand, I had to “game the system” a bit and order a box full of proof copies from CreateSpace. These copies have a visible bounding box around a oopsparagraph of text and a photo at the back of the book; for the eBook and the “general availabiity” edition, the caption for the photo has since been rewritten slightly and the bounding box eliminated. I will sign and number these because in some weird way I suppose the error make them collectors’ items (look! proof that the author was pulling an all-nighter and fell asleep at the wheel!). Due to the delay in making that fix, the print edition of VWORP!2 won’t be available until after GlitchCon. 😳 The eBooks are available NOW, including a bundle of both volumes in eBook form. I will also have the last few copies of Phosphor Dot Fossils on DVD with me, even though the video game panel has been nixed for this year.
  • On the lack of the video game panel: shed no tears. While I enjoy doing the video game history panel Odyssey(I can tell you the story of Ralph Baer and his industry-spawning gizmo until I’m blue in the face), it requires that I lug around something on the order of three times the amount of stuff (consoles, controllers, monitors, cables, extension cords) than just talking about British TV would. I may still have an opportunity to do the video game panel in September at Konsplosion, and there is an event in the works in northwest Arkansas that’s not yet on the schedule, and that may interest fans of video game history as well. Fear not, the Magnavox Odyssey will get its annual workout.

I’ve also decided what my quirky-and-just-a-little-bit-cheap-and-cheesy “theme” for this year’s OVGE will be (aside from the ever-popular and absolutely-necessary “Buy My Books And DVDs!”): PDF Unplugged.

But more on that after GlitchCon. 😉… Read more

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Conventional Thinking Write, Write, You Bloody Well Write

GlitchCon 2014 panel schedule

A brief history of time (war)The whole schedule can be seen here, and it’s full of events that are smothered in awesomesauce and seasoned with a liberal sprinkling of amazeballs. For those curious, I thought I’d “zoom in” briefly on my marathon triple-threat panel-o-rama on Saturday night. 😆

So it’s like this: I’m going to be speaking for three hours straight. 😯 Here’s what I’ll be blithering and blathering about… … Read more

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Conventional Thinking Write, Write, You Bloody Well Write

How I can be in two places at once when I’m not anywhere at all

Do we have contact?Being in two places at once is pretty hard, yo.

On the same day that I got confirmation that I’ll be at least one panel presentation during the weekend of August 2nd at GlitchCon in Springdale, Arkansas – not quite an hour north of me – I received an invitation to be in Fairfield, Iowa the same weekend for the public unveiling of the next round of Twin Galaxies trading cards, commemorating events, milestones, and personalities from the world of video games… because, while I was totally happy to get a mention on the card for Classic Gamer Magazine, apparently I now get my own. … Read more

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Conventional Thinking Write, Write, You Bloody Well Write

Glitchcon 2013

Glitchcon has come and gone again, and for the second year running, I gotta say, man, is this ever a neat little show. Except that there’s nothing little about it. This year’s show moved to the Springdale Holiday Inn, which is a really nifty space – the artists’ area (where I had a table for theLogBook.com) was in the atrium, and there were several panel rooms, gaming rooms and a video room. It was a really classy space to be occupying. I’m totally cool if they want to stay with this venue for a while.

The first order of business, of course, was to haul in my somewhat modest setup and… well… set it up. … Read more