Posted under Serious Stuff & Cooking With Code
My apologies for not getting theLogBook updated on time - I’ve literally spent most of my weekend filling PDF DVD orders (!!). Hopefully everyone who’s gotten one has liked ‘em. So help me God, I’m going to go get a new office chair in the next couple of days, so I thank everyone from the bottom of my…well…bottom. It’s a little unnerving to sit down and feel the seat start to slide down to its lowest altitude like someone’s let the air out of the tires. I look forward to not experiencing that anymore very soon! Seriously though, the response to the PDF DVD has blown me away. At this point, my biggest fear is that I’m not going to have duplication nailed down for the second run while the orders keep coming in. I honestly was not expecting it to blast off like it has. I’ve also learned a few things (the hard way) along the way, including how to generate Paypal links that actually do something helpful. I think you guys would be stunned to know just how much I’m making this whole thing up as I go.
Turbo Turtle, a.k.a. Gamera, has disappeared from the yard - hopefully to go kick back in a body of water somewhere. Turns out he was a humongous snapping turtle…not good for Zathras. I really don’t need to step out my door and have one of my toes eaten by a cranky and huge turtle.
Another thing that’s occurred to me today is that everything I’ve been doing pales in significance next to the loss of life in China and Myanmar. I can barely even begin to process the kind of numbers of dead we’re talking about there, much less what can be done about it. Perhaps it’s just as well that I’ve got all these distractions.
I’m sitting here watching KTUL showing, at almost 3 in the morning, a live shot of a rotating wall cloud marching into Tulsa County, and I’m thinking “man, am I glad I don’t live in Tulsa County.” Still, pretty amazing stuff…to watch from a distance of two hours away. No disrespect intended toward any TV weather guys or gals I’ve ever worked with in the past, but the guys at KTUL know how to make a show out of this stuff. I love the Wall Cloud Channel…so long as it’s not in my back yard.
Two things tonight that have me going “argh.”
One word of caution, though…anyone expecting anything as elaborate as the Phosphor Dot Fossils displays seen at OVGEs and OKGEs past might not want to get their hopes too high. I’m still all for doing these shows, but with the kiddo on the scene now, the thought definitely occurs that unplugging and uprooting the entire room for these shindigs is getting a little old. As of 2006, I did have a few TVs and monitors gathered that were set aside for “expo use only,” though in the absence of a 2007 OVGE, I started giving those away, figuring they wouldn’t be needed. 
(The general feeling in 2007 was that OVGE wouldn’t be back anytime soon, and with a baby on the way too, it didn’t seem like an unreasonable assumption that my exhibiting days were over.) At any rate, with something like three weeks to prepare, I can’t guarantee a really elaborate display - I’d say expect some Coleco tabletop goodness and the PDF DVD, as always. (After doing this for a few years, I know what the crowd pleasers are.) Actually, did you know that the first year I brought the tabletop games to Tulsa, it was because there was a behind-the-scenes freak-out about whether or not there’d be enough power for every exhibitor? I started bringing the battery-powered Coleco games as a way to hedge my bets against the possibility of not having enough power for stuff with screens and power supply wall warts. They turned out to be incredibly popular items because one just doesn’t see a complete collection in decent shape everyday, and as popular as they were in their day, they just haven’t worked their way into the public retro-video-game subconscious the way that the Atari 2600 and NES have. But everytime someone sees my little stack of these puppies, they always go “Oh yeah! I remember those!” And that’s what makes it worth it for me to keep buying fresh batteries and bringing these guys out to play year after year.
The annual “Christmas tree” is getting to be something of a tradition at theLogBook; basically, it’s a “best of” collection of that year’s Toybox toy reviews and pictorials, all gathered under the tree. As they should be. It’s a very crudely programmed graphical menu that doesn’t really give you any explicit instructions - what you click on is (God and HTML willing) what you’ll see.
) Head over there, try out the sorting options on the right-hand sidebar, and let me know what you think. It’s a beautiful thing.
Phosphor Dot Fossils: The DVD