I don’t have anything today. I blame my right foot. It still hurts like muddafudda. Strangely, the one piece of footwear I own that doesn’t hurt my foot when it gets like this is my Nike hiking sandals. So, naturally, on a day when it’s below 20 degrees outside, I’m wearing sandals, shorts, and aContinue reading “On “The B Game””
Author Archives: Allyn
On the Cold
It was cold today. Really fucking cold. I shouldn’t complain. It was fifteen degrees here in Charm City. Other places were far below that. Still, it’s cold. I don’t like the cold. I especially don’t like the cold, because it makes me limp. Many years ago in college, I accidentally brutally broke a bone inContinue reading “On the Cold”
On Unwritten Scenes
I’ve had The Lord of the Rings on the brain of late, the proximate cause being the repeated e-mails I’ve received from GameStop telling me to come into a local store to pre-order Lord of the Rings: Conquest, which came out on Wednesday. And then, of course, there was my discovery that a new TolkienContinue reading “On Unwritten Scenes”
On Longer Days
For a few months now, my grandmother has expressed confusion at dinner time. It’s dark outside. And in her mind, we shouldn’t eat dinner when it’s dark. Dark, to her, means breakfast. Since it’s dark, the meal must be breakfast, even if it’s not remotely breakfast-like. Surely there must be a time change at hand,Continue reading “On Longer Days”
On Tricking Out Opera
Yes, I know. I’m an evangelist for Opera. I can’t help it. For this atheist, the Opera browser is the closest thing to a religious experience I’ve ever found. 😆 Gah, that sounded bonkers. Seriously, though. It’s not just my favorite browser. I simply couldn’t imagine using the Internet without it. Firefox, IE, Safari –Continue reading “On Tricking Out Opera”
On a Graveyard of Boxes
Along the subway line, there is a graveyard of newspaper boxes. The train rolls along, through a wooded stretch of track, and then, suddenly, on the south side of the track there is a fenced off area with woods all around. There, in the middle of the enclosed space, stands perhaps twenty newspaper boxes. TheyContinue reading “On a Graveyard of Boxes”
On Evening Conversations
My grandmother was taking a nap. Dinner was ready. I needed to wake her. She was on the couch. I shook her foot, and she let out a ooh! of surprise. “Dinner’s ready,” I said. “You mean breakfast,” she said. “No, dinner.” “It’s dark,” she said. “Of course it’s dark. It’s dinner time.” “We justContinue reading “On Evening Conversations”
On The Century of the Black Ships
Recently I was given a history book on a narrow, though interesting, subject — the literature of Japanese/American warfare written between 1900 and 1940 entitled The Century of the Black Ships. It was written by a Japanese scholar, Naoki Inose, and published in Japan in 1993. Viz, a manga publisher, translated the book into EnglishContinue reading “On The Century of the Black Ships”
On New Tolkien
In May, HarperCollins is bringing out a new book by J.R.R. Tolkien. However, it’s not another Middle-Earth book, as there’s probably nothing else on the subject to publish. Instead, it’s something rather different. And for me, rather interesting. In the 1920’s, Professor Tolkien worked on a version of the Volsung Saga, The Legend of SigurdContinue reading “On New Tolkien”
On Early Morning Coding
Well, that was a frustrating two hours of working with PHP code. :-/ Our story began last week; I changed my blog’s theme to Tarski, which I ran with for a while and really liked. (To be honest, I don’t even remember why I changed.) Tarski is not easy to work with under the hood,Continue reading “On Early Morning Coding”