Hello, my name is Dan and this is my DT Log.

Could this be the future new Lego video game from Traveler’s Tales?

Image source: Flickr

Dug up from The Book of Lists 2:

In his book The Shadow Presidents, author Michael Medved relates the extreme disappointment of H. R. Haldeman over his failure to implement his plan to link up all the homes in America by coaxial cable.  In Haldeman’s words, “There would be two-way communication.  Through computer, you could use your television set to order up whatever you wanted.  The morning paper, entertainment services, shopping services, coverage of sporting events and public events… just as Eisenhower linked up the nation’s cities by highways so that you could get there, the Nixon legacy would have linked them by cable communications, so you wouldn’t have to go there.”  One can almost see the dreamy eyes of Nixon and Haldeman as they sat around discussing a plan that would eliminate the need for newspapers, seemingly oblivious to its Big Brother aspects.  Fortunately the Watergate scandal inteverened, and Nixon was forced to resign before “The Wired Nation” could be hooked up.

***

A very prescient article, because it seems like Haldeman’s plan to wire up the nation has come to fruition.

It comes from author David Wallechinsky’s list 6 OUTRAGEOUS PLANS THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN.  And while Wallechinsky laments the “Big Brother aspects” of such a technology, he couldn’t foresee the ability of users to be able to communicate freely with one another while the rest of the media becomes consolidated into a huge corporatocracy.

To think we could have had something like Fark 20 years earlier.

From the San Diego Union-Tribune, Friday, January 7, 2000:

Okay, does this actually work?

***

The Verndale, Minnesota Police Department has an interesting report to “blotter”:

Source: Brainerd Dispatch, Sunday June 7, 2009.

What is the difference between an artist and an entertainer?

The entertainer is a capitalist – plays for his bread – like a busker at a bus station, filling his hat to the brim with quarters.  He lives on his work with the pressure to please and to put time – most of his time – into his magnum opera.

The artist knows eventually no one or others may reap financial benefit from his work.  He toils in part-time labor he detests, or he must be supported by the government or a patron.  There is no deadline or pressure, except for time passing into oblivion.

All performers are some ratio of the two, but most are mainly artists, as the horde of “art” collects in the corner of a room while the artisan is away, using his hands, not his head, to maintain a living wage.

It is done.

The DT Log story formerly known as “The Future Will Hold” in 1992 has been reprocessed into a 31,000 word novella.

***

As a note, I have also decided to privatize the pages on the Timebox blog until I decide what to do with this project.

If you would like to read the story, please let me know and I will send you a link to the Google document.

Maybe I shouldn’t look at the stats to Dan Touchette’s Timebox:

I don’t think you can accuse me of keyboard spamming, because this was the passage that probably brought this search term to my dashboard:

Honestly, Troy and Andrew were most excited about this. They were the ones who networked their computers together and played Doom all weekend. Troy was practically fondling the Timebox to suppress his excitement. Andrew told him to knock it off and give to me.

So I had the Timebox in my hands, which were attached to arms around a cute red-headed girl who was, for all intents and purposes, jailbait. The only thing I needed was a day off tomorrow to enjoy this a little bit longer…

Maybe this contraption would make her boyfriend disappear.

I think you can see here that I’m only commenting on the romantic age difference of 20 to 17, which does carry some sort of guilt and delicacy.  There really isn’t anything sexual about this scene other than the fun and innocent flirting I remember from 14 years ago.

So if people are scouring WordPress pages, in search of underage girls,

well, I hereby apologize you had to read my little sci-fi story and left unsatisfied.

Yesterday, the Brainerd Public Library concluded its seasonal book sale by offering a paper bag full of books for $2.00. (Sadly, the bag, overloaded with my choices, didn’t make it into the house and now rests in the recycle bin.  So it goes.)

I grabbed two by Stephen King, a couple of tomes by Erma Bombeck, the last poems of Allen Ginsburg, The Millionaire Next Door, a couple of retro educational books, The People’s Almanac #1 and some children’s books.

I also picked up this vintage computing book:

For the retail price of 5.95 plus tax 1983 dollars – you have 31 games to play on your Texas Instruments computer!

Wait, there’s a catch.

YOU have to type the code into computer, and you also need the Extended Basic cartridge to program and play half of the games.

After all that work typing in the codes, you can begin playing Zombies in the Swamp, Shark Hunt or Las Vegas a Go Go. But how do you save your work?

Presumably, according to Wikipedia’s article, a tape deck and floppy drive were available as peripherals to save TI basic. Though nobody I knew in the early 80s had anything more than the basic console, which cost $600. Add $50-200 for the read-write peripherals, and that’s a lot of money to invest in programming BASIC games with limited appeal and simple vector graphics and/or sprites.

Maybe I’ll get a TI emulator and code these games just to pique my curiosity.

***

Parsec was the star of the TI-99/4A, and more than once a couple of us stayed after school in Mrs. Graham’s classroom playing it.

1989:

IDW to Publish Entire Run of Bloom County (IDW website via Fark.com)

IDW Publishing is pleased to announce the forthcoming release of The Bloom County Library. Beginning in October 2009, each of the five volumes will collect nearly two years worth of daily and Sunday strips, in chronological order. This will be the very first time that many of these comic strips have been collected, and the first time in a beautifully designed, hardcover format. The books will be part of IDW’s Library of American Comics imprint, and designed by Eisner Award-winner Dean Mullaney.

Wow, this will be an essential part of my library… definitely.  As much as I love Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side, I think I’m more influenced by Berke Breathed’s sense of humor and story style.

In theory, this collection would reverse the edits and mixed-up chronology of the Little, Brown paperbacks.

For example,  in the book Penguin Dreams and Stranger Things, the Platypus Comix website notes:

This collection’s strips were purposely arranged out-of-order. Opus’ trip to Antarctica (some of which was from December of 1983) is first; this happened in pieces through the course of months but is lumped together in print. In the newspapers, the “Survivalist” sequence is the actual first week of 1984 strips. In the book, that story doesn’t appear until page 21.

Breathed’s strip was quite topical, so it made sense to edit them for book form.  The beauty of the IDW release will be sidebar notes explaining some the blatant 1980s references such as Caspar Weinberger and Mary Kay Cosmetics.