Original broadcast dates January through February 1965. Another excellent print off of the new blu-ray release. A month of leisure sits heavy on the crew’s hands when the unexpected happens!
Read the rest of this entry »Story 012: The Romans
April 2nd, 2025Story 011: The Rescue
April 2nd, 2025Original brodcast dates from January of 1965. The Doctor, Ian and Barbara wind up on the planet Dido, where they find a shipwrecked rocket ship and a mystery.
Read the rest of this entry »Story 010: The Dalek Invasion of Earth
May 9th, 2023Original broadcast dates, November – December 1964. I wonder if it felt different when you couldn’t binge-watch the whole thing? Must have.
Upon arrival a slide of debris locks the crew out of the TARDIS and they’re forced to try and find help to shift it. It’s a good thing they do, as the Daleks have invaded and plan on taking the planet for a joyride.
Read the rest of this entry »Story 009: Planet of Giants
May 8th, 2023Original broadcast dates October – November 1964
AKA “Honey, I Shrunk The TARDIS!”
In this first story of Season 2, the Doctor and crew wind up on Earth in 1964… except they’re only an inch high. No futuristic space aliens this time, just giant bugs, a huge telephone, and a neighborhood police officer who stops in to check out the rude people and finds a murder victim.
Read the rest of this entry »Story 008: The Reign of Terror
February 19th, 2023Original Brodcast dates August – September 1964.
The Doctor, Susan, Ian, and Barbara wind up tangled up in the French Revolution. We get to meet some famous people, see some famous moments, and watch the Reign of Terror come undone.
Read the rest of this entry »Harbor Freight Fluorescent Magnifying Lamp
January 10th, 2023Harbor Freight is making a swing-arm magnifying lamp with a circular fluorescent bulb around it. I’ve been looking for one of these for ages, and had only found vintage ones or really expensive new ones. The vintage ones were all a little janky and heavy and sometimes expensive as well. It was not a great combination.
Read the rest of this entry »Compiling Libraries for Strawberry Perl
June 25th, 2022I’ve recently been working on a project that will probably have to run on Windows in the end, which means I needed to use a Windows Perl.
ActiveState has recently changed their licensing and model so it’s very much driven into the cloud, and that’s not what I wanted at all.
Strawberry Perl to the rescue! It’s a nice package which includes a compiler so you can build modules and have everything you need to run Perl, all stuffed into c:\Strawberry. It’s a pretty well put together system. At least, until you need to compile a third party library for it. Then it gets harder.
Read the rest of this entry »City of Heroes $ variables
July 14th, 2019In City of Heroes you can use a few variables in messages. They start with $ and will be replaced with the relevant text for your character. I never found a complete list. Here it is:
Home Automation
February 7th, 2019I’ve been enjoying owning my home because it lets me make changes to it without a landlord getting involved. One of the changes I’ve been enjoying is working on a home automation system, building a “smart home” as they’re often called lately. However, I Know Too Much about how the Internet and “the cloud” works, so I have some very specific requirements on how I will allow a smart home system to operate in my home.
Read the rest of this entry »Modello Player Piano – Arrived!
April 11th, 2017Look what made it to my house!
My Great-Grandmother bought this piano. If I understand correctly, she bought it in the late 1930’s or early 1940’s. It’s a Modello brand piano, with a pneumatic player that plays the paper rolls. It was at my Grandparents’ house until the early 1980’s, when it moved to Mom and Dad’s, so my sister and I could have piano lessons. In 2017 it moved to my house, so Mom and Dad could have the end of their rec room back. My sister, who got way more out of those lessons than I did, lives in a tiny apartment she rents, and has no place to put a piano so it came here. When she gets settled into a more permanent place, she and I will talk about where it goes. Read the rest of this entry »