December 10

East Van Vodville Cinema
A little free cinema showing short films and great film scenes out of context inside a miniature recreation of a lost historic vaudeville/movie house. Thanks all for the help with cat video suggestions! [more inside]


December 9

Geronimo Was A Beaver
A folk musical puppet documentary(5 mins) about the time Idaho Fish and Game parachuted 76 beavers, featuring paper puppets and a hand-carved wooden beaver.


December 6

The Judgement Of History
"It was perhaps an hour after midnight on the night before Christmas when the discussion amongst those of us still present turned to the true nature of hell, and more interestingly, whether one would recognise it if indeed we were to find ourselves there..." The Judgement Of History is an atmospheric ghost story in the general Christmas tradition of atmospheric ghost stories. [more inside]


December 5

Ghost from the River: A Spiritualist-Inspired Film
I am the co-author and co-producer of a full length feature film project, "Ghost from the River." It's a family drama set among the Spiritualists of Camp Chesterfield, Indiana, an actual place that influences a story about personal growth. It has a ghost, but it isn't a horror story. I hope you will take a look. Ghost from the River


December 1

Clearing the Neighbourhood
A very small project: A ten-minute instrumental song about a planetesimal becoming a planet. Some background here.


November 29

Yet Another Hallmark Christmas Movie Review Blog
I started reviewing Hallmark Christmas movies (and maybe some others in the future). I'm like 3-4 weeks behind on watching them this year, but if you're into that...


November 25

Apocalypse Pickin' Party lyric videos
I made lyric videos for all 12 songs on my band's new album. I used it as a way to force myself to learn the basics of Adobe Premiere Pro and Photoshop. We play apocalyptic roots music and it was surprisingly fun to make these simple videos - curious what folks think!


Anchoreum: a game for learning CSS anchor positioning
Anchoreum is a game for learning all about CSS's newest module, anchor positioning. It's in the same spirit as its predecessors, Flexbox Froggy and Grid Garden. The CSS feature, and thus the game, is only supported in Chrome and Edge as of now, with broader support coming soon.


Murder in the Dark: An Outline History of a Murder Mystery Parlor Game  
"Murder in the Dark" was a murder mystery parlor game that was widely published and played from the 1930s to the 1980s. This weekend, I worked up a long blog post giving an outline history of the game, supplementing many previous fun facts about parlor game history.


A 2025 calendar template for Affinity Publisher 2
Not a magnum opus, but I've been working on holiday gifts for friends and family, and wound up making a tabloid-sized calendar template for 2025 in the low-cost design suite Affinity Publisher 2, if anyone needs one.


November 22

My Rejuvenated Artistic Image Gallery
I started writing this program in the 1980s and still add to it every few years, but the page hosting it stopped working at my mostly moribund website some years ago. I have fixed it, along with a light redesign. [more inside]


November 19

Gridflip
Gridflip is a tile-flipping puzzle game where you have to flip the entire grid from white to black in as few moves as possible. It's playable in browser, and contains 3 slightly different game modes, high scores, and saves.


today things
I started a substack to goofily share whatever I’ve learned $today - so far this tends to include lots of animal facts, thoughts on books I’ve been reading, advice on falling asleep, meanderings through etymology and talmud and literature and deep corners of the internet, really anything with interesting details to dive into!, more animal facts, and so on


November 17

AI Or Not: Poetry Edition
I saw a piece of research being reported about a study showing that survey participants were worse than chance at telling whether a piece of poetry was human- or ChatGPT-made, so I downloaded the paper's supplementary material and turned it into an online quiz. It picks 10 poems at random out of their list, usually about 5 are AI and 5 aren't.


November 13

Memento Movi - A Cinematic Progress Bar for Life  
Memento Movi is a little toy app I made. The user enters date of birth and life expectancy, and chooses from a list of movies. The site then shows a frame from that movie that represents your place in your lifespan. So, for instance, a twenty-year-old who selects Star Wars will likely get a frame from Tattooine, but a sixty-year-old who selects Jaws will be on the boat.


November 10

My parents' role in the Manhattan Project
"Honeymoon in Oak Ridge" is a documentary that tells the story of my parents, two young newlyweds who unknowingly contributed to building the world's first atomic weapon. [more inside]


Quest Heroes
Quest Heroes is a sort of cute and cuddly (and hand drawn and fairly rough) card game version of 80s role playing board game classic Hero Quest which I made for my niece and nephew the other week (who both love Hero Quest a lot for some reason)


ICS-in-CSS
International Code of Signals Flags in the Browser – is an HTML/CSS implementation for the flags of The International Code of Signals (ICS), a system of signals and codes designed to communicate important safety and navigational messages when speaking is difficult, for use by vessels to communicate important messages regarding safety of navigation and related matters. [more inside]


November 8

The Lenker
I started a Substack to promote some liberal, progressive friendly views online. [more inside]


November 1

We made hastags for the open web and called it Octothorpes.
Octothorpes is an open protocol that lets you put hashtags and backlinks on your own website to connect with other independent sites across Rings. We're launching a public beta today. [more inside]


October 31

Well heck, it’s another Helloween cartoon!
By Satan’s forelock, it’s Jabo’s Annual Halloween Cartoon 2024. Not much to be scared about this year, amirite? So this year I’ve just drawn up my favorite cartoon scalawags mixed in with a liberal dose of tales about THE END OF THE WORLD! Nuthin’ special and no worries about HOW WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. Enjoy!


October 25

How to make your research group more inclusive for autistic trainees
A 6-page guide for research-group leaders in academia, providing concrete suggestions to make labs more welcoming and accessible to autistic students and postdocs. Written by a late-diagnosed autistic academic. [more inside]


October 24

Return of the Jedi Storyboard Site
I've done my best to collect and catalogue all of the storyboards from the production of 1983's Richard Marquand hit Return of the Jedi, driven by wanting to see what unfinished or cut scenes could be revealed. [more inside]


Shakespearean Sonnet Machine
The Shakespearean Sonnet Machine is a slighty pointless little randomiser app that spits out endless variations of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets. (Well, not quite endless, but there should be 562,448,656 different ones in there if you're patient enough to keep reloading.)


(A) Stand-up to Protect Our Vote
A fundraising drive for the Election Protection Hotline. (Not a US resident or US citizen? Hate all the major parties? No problem! You can donate!) Then, on Oct. 26th, watch 8 minutes of nerd jokes about open source software and how programming skews your brain, and none about politics.


October 18

100,000 Balloons - How the political convention balloon drops happen
For the past almost 40 years, Treb Heining has engineered the balloon drops at every Republican National Convention and most Democratic National Conventions. I photographed how he and his team inflated and then dropped 100,000 balloons on the final night of the RNC this year in Milwaukee. [more inside]


October 15

Problems With Polls - The Polls Are Broken
The polls in the headlines are alarming ... but polls have been way off in the past few years. This website documents some of the huge discrepancies between polling predictions and the actual results; notes some reasons for those errors; and suggests some other indicators that may offer a better sense of how the candidates are doing. The site's main message: don't panic - take action instead. [more inside]


October 14

spaceships on strike
North Continent Ribbon is a collection of linked short stories including an assassin with a crystal sword, a judge whose best friend is a book, and spaceships on strike. I wrote about the way the worldbuilding intertwines with eighteenth-century crime records for Mary Robinette Kowal's column My Favorite Bit, and the first story, Closer Than Your Kidneys, is available for free at Frivolous Comma. [more inside]


October 12

My third book is loosed on the world
Stark Raving Mab, the third book in my urban fantasy trilogy Gravity's Daughter is out as of yesterday. If you're intrigued by any of the following: action-heavy urban fantasy, less-traditional faeries, gravity-defying antics on public transit, Canadian settings or in-over-their-heads characters who will not give up sarcasm 'til you pry it from their cold, dead hands, then give the books a look or request them from your local library. [more inside]


October 7

My newsletter, The Eighth Sea, forever free of charge.
In which I write about Islam, spirituality, my Hajj pilgrimage in the summer of 2024, living as a USian in southern Spain, and change both voluntary and unwilled. [more inside]


October 4

Rate My Existential Dread
It's a GPT that rates your existential dread


October 1

The Redemption of Andy Capp
Reg Smythe’s Andy Capp was the greatest British newspaper strip of the 20th Century, but few people realise how much of his own troubled childhood Smythe poured into Andy and Flo’s lives. Andy was essentially a portrait of Smythe’s wastrel father, Flo a version of his formidable mother, and their neighbourhood a portrait of the pre-war Hartlepool where Smythe grew up. My new book traces Smythe’s own biography, explores its parallels in Andy’s world, and tackles the strip’s early wife-beating jokes. There’s also a look at how the balance of power has shifted between Andy and Flo down the years and my own analysis of just what made Smythe such an accomplished and stylish cartoonist. [more inside]


September 26

Radio Static
Radio Static is a small and ultimately pointless internet radio that plays nothing but various forms of static and occasionally some industrial noises that also kind of sound like static (can also be downloaded here for offline play).


September 24

Celebrate Disco Fanzine (Star Trek Discovery zine)
A Free 42-page PDF you can read on your phone, tablet, or laptop and enjoy! [more inside]


September 20

Downticket Democrats
Downticket Democrats highlights candidates for the House of Representatives and state legislatures in competitive districts, making it easy to donate for maximum impact. [more inside]


A support group for people who are creating graphic memoirs
I'm starting a (remote/Zoom) free support group for people who are involved in creating graphic memoirs. [more inside]


September 17

My new thriller, Floor 24, is now available.
Floor 24, a Hitchcockian thriller, is available from Oliver-Heber Books. [more inside]


September 9

Running for Carrboro Town Council
I've been canvassing and making phone calls for Democratic campaigns since 2004, and I've been a precinct secretary. I've also been on the board of two different local nonprofit organizations, the Triangle Linux Users Group (TriLUG), and the Carrboro Bicycle Coalition. Running for elected office is a big step, and I'm new at this, but I think I have a clear picture of both the logistics and the financial reality of what it will take to run and then do the work of a Town Council member. [more inside]


September 2

Fifteen years ago I made a Flash game called Starcom...
Six years ago I released my first PC game called "Starcom: Nexus" (previously). For the past four years I've been working on a follow-up title called "Starcom: Unknown Space". Today it graduates from Early Access on Steam. [more inside]


August 26

A Castle Built From Random Rooms
A Castle Built From Random Rooms is a Fighting Fantasy-style text adventure (which should be playable in any browser) set in a castle built from random rooms. Can you find your way through the labyrinth and escape... with your LIFE! (and also some treasure). [more inside]


August 19

Diptychs From America
A short project featuing diptychs from a month long trip starting in Las Vegas, to Seattle, then down to Los Angeles. [more inside]


August 17

Corwin Bolt and the Wingnuts at Bridge City Sessions
Live in studio recordings of original junkyard jazz, jangly jive, and ragtime residue. Featuring four brand-new tunes: "Hold on Tight" (a screwloose comedy heist), "Minneola" (a loving tribute to any city or town that happens to be named Min[n]eola), "Paradeiolia" (the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern), and "Mrs Johnson" (a western klezmer veterinary odyssey). Recorded spring 2024 at Bridge City Sessions. [more inside]


August 14

My photos from Sidmouth Folk Festival 2024.
I spent all last week at the excellent Sidmouth Folk Festival in the English county of Devon. I didn't manage to attend all of the 624 events on offer there, but I did manage to see three gigs a day and photograph many of the performers involved. You can find 88 of my better pictures in this Bluesky thread. [more inside]


August 9

Bob and Ray in Westchester Furioso!
From 1973 to 1976, comedians Bob Elliott (1923–2016) and Ray Goulding (1922–1990) hosted the drivetime hours on New York's WOR. A major feature of the show was a spoof of soap operas called “Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife.” Collected here are the surviving recordings of this feature, organized into something resembling chronology. It's almost 20 hours long so you don't have to listen to anything else today!


August 7

I published a novel: The Ballad of the Grey Swan
My first novel. And I’m excited. [more inside]


August 1

Tulip Creative Computer
Tulip is a cheap (US$59, basically the cost for parts/assembly), simple and overall FUN portable computer for making things. music, animations, writing. It boots right into a Python prompt, no other OS. No AI, no ads, not even Wi-Fi unless you type in some stuff. Tulip comes with a really good synthesizer and a lot of music stuff (MIDI, CV, sequencer, sampler, drum machine, DX7, Juno-6). Purely open source, the point is to gather a community of like-minded people that love this sort of thing to make it even better.


Little Riddle
My mom loves word games. Inspired by this comment on the game "Road Toad", I built a super simple browser app that provides a 'Little Riddle' to a two-word answer that always rhymes. If you are stuck, you can receive a hint or a letter. I built in 'making and sharing' so my mom can send me and the family riddles she likes. I hope someone on Mefi enjoys Little Riddle as much as my mom does. I am pretty happy with how it turned out. [more inside]


July 29

Reading Project 2025 online
I started an open, online reading of Project 2025, that major conservative manifesto and playbook aimed at a second Trump administration. [more inside]


Spirited
iOS app for WFDF Rules of Ultimate (frisbee). [more inside]


Over 100 local non-chain restaurants with a website
This is not a work of genius, but more just the result of straight effort, and sharing not to seek praise for any kind of brilliance, but just to show it can be done and maybe nudge people toward doing the same: a local resource (Kingston, Ontario in this case) to make and share a list of non-chain restaurants that you don't have to go to Facebook to learn about. [more inside]


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