Voiceover Writing

The Hear Now Festival: Celebrating Audio Fiction

Our move to make more events virtual these days thanks to the pandemic, making them easier to attend, also means it’s easier to forget to attend them. That was the case for me and the Hear Now Festival, an annual celebration of audio fiction put on by folks over at NATF (National Audio Theatre Festivals, Inc.). I missed some of the events, but luckily for me –and possibly for you– there’s a few sessions that…

Continue reading

Writing

How Might They Update the Foundation of Foundation?

Just a little over a year ago I posted the teaser trailer for Foundation, a TV series adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s highly influential work of the rise and fall of galactic civilizations. Well, we’ve got a new trailer and a premiere of September, so gird your space opera loins! Already, I’ve seen chatter on the interwebs about some apparent departures from the books, some of which is also hinted at in the io9 piece on…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry

Google Uncomfortable with Reining in Cookie Monster

It could be the parts of the web where I roam, but I’ve been reading a lot more about privacy, whether it’s Apple’s recent efforts to make their iOS more inherently private (see pieces in Bloomberg and The Verge) or the growing rumblings of government regulation (see pieces in CNBC and in Recode/Vox). By virtue of simply being online, all of us have been inducted into one or more Big Data Mining ecosystems whereby not…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry

Time Off for Productive Behavior

In offices across the land, someone’s co-worker is making a remark that ‘it’s hump day.’ Wednesday. Just two more days after this. But what if the weekend was only one more day away? Joe Pinsker over at The Atlantic does a deep dive into the move by several companies to reduce working days (and hours) down to four, but keeping the pay that had been allocated for five: effectively giving their employees an immediate 20%…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry

The Best Space Dad?

So it’s a day after the fact, but, hey, I don’t usually post on Sundays anyway — even Father’s Day. But Father’s Day means it’s time for plenty of geeky dad memes, say of Jango Fett and his many clone offspring. However, with quite a bit of regularity, someone writes an article about how Benjamin Sisko of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, is one of the best ‘space dads’ around. I have to agree: even…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry

If a Supersonic Airplane Doesn’t ‘Boom,’ is it really Supersonic?

So let’s say you’re thinking about traveling again, perhaps even flying. Perhaps you’re wondering what happened to the efforts to make a new supersonic passenger aircraft since I posted about it in November 2019. Well, you’re in luck! Rebecca Heilweil over on Vox/Recode has an update on Boom, the company working on building new supersonic passenger jets which United is now very keen to start flying. A big question, however, is not only if they…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry

Go A-viking… But Don’t Forget Your Helmet

I really should come up with a symbol/repeatable post that I put up when things get busy, like the prolific writer and de facto pop culture historian Mark Evanier does with his Cream of Mushroom Soup posts. And perhaps it should be Viking-themed. But while I mull that over… and work on both a script and some audio editing, here’s a darn fine Danish PSA. And no, Vikings didn’t wear helmets with horns. It could…

Continue reading

Writing

Fewer Lightning Strikes and More Slow Burns

Besides the inevitable barbecues in the U.S. this long weekend, it’s a good one for reflection (not the least given the reason for the long weekend). So that got me thinking about ideas and inspiration and a recent article by David Robinson for the BBC about how people get ideas… and how a certain professor is testing some assumptions of how people get and choose ideas. The article goes a lot into brainstorming and business…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry

The Rise and Fall of Saturday Morning Cartoons

Tomorrow, your kids may be binge-watching some cartoon on some streaming services. They may even do so whilst consuming copious amounts of Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs. But they will not be viewing a network broadcast slate of cartoons like generations of kids have. Why is that? Charles Moss in The Saturday Evening Post has your answers in a article so perfectly titled, I just used it above. He also provides a whole lot more detail about…

Continue reading