Lately I have been buying a lot of video games from the Humble Bundle store - a website which started as a one-time deal (and co-created by a friend of a friend from Swarthmore) and has grown into an excellent retail outlet for Indie games. They often have sales (including right now), a portion of your purchase goes to charity, and a lot of the ( Read more... )

The head of engineering at a major tech company has just come down to the shop to inspect the prototype of the company's latest model. On his clipboard is a checklist on which each feature of the device will be checked against the officially approved specification. And so far it all looks good - this is according to spec, and that is according to ( Read more... )

fiddledragon told me excitedly that she had seen a tee-ball parade across the street, but I heard "tea ball parade" and was momentarily confused, until I thought of this charming fictional tradition ( Read more... )

At work there are some whiteboard walls. One of them used to be covered with puns, but recently the puns were erased and replaced with haiku. Since our company writes so much SQL, I thought it would be fun to contribute some haiku in SQL.

create view rainbow ( Read more... )

I had a great time at OVFF, and came out of the con with a great burst of energy that allowed me to get a lot of songwriting done - more songwriting than I've gotten done all at once for a long time. I finished some songs that had been partially written for a while, and I started some songs that are almost finished and which you will see soon. ( Read more... )

Sometimes I dream about luggage. Usually, there is too much of it. I'll be moving, or leaving a convention, or - more often than not - changing trains. Usually I wake up before I manage to schlep, or even zip up, all the luggage. I don't know what it means. Maybe I'm trying to tell myself that I have too much stuff (probably true), or too much ( Read more... )

I've occasionally seen a bumper sticker or button asking, "What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?" Recently, I googled this phrase to see if I could find a source or context for it, and what I found was a touching, almost midrashic commentary on almost the complete lyrics of the Hokey Pokey - definitely worth reading ( Read more... )

And now, a handful of songs about movies, TV shows, and video games. Most of these songs have been on my website for a while, but I haven't yet gotten around to discussing them here. ( click for )

As a songwriter, there are some subjects that I keep coming back to over and over again. One character for whom I have written a large number of songs over the years is Galadriel. There's just something about her - dignity, power, grace, kindness, an air of mystery... yeah, I totally have a crush on her. And I finally wrote a song about that, ( Read more... )

From one of the same twisted minds that brought you the Snow Crash wassailing song comes a carol of the third kind, er, of three ships, "Close Encounters of Three Ships" (mp3), mashing up the carol of three ships you may already know with the story and musical theme from the classic science fiction film. Aren't they both about something wonderful ( Read more... )