The Winter Solstice coincided (roughly, by about twelve hours) with the full moon this year. I thought, at work, that I’d miss the full(-ish) moon due to heavy rain storms that passed through all day, made work feel quite bleak every time I looked out the window, and made the drive home an adventure, but,Continue reading “Winter Solstice Moon”
Is Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy” a Christmas Song?
Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy” is a staple of Christmas radio stations this time of year. It appears memorably in A Charlie Brown Christmas, but is it actually a Christmas song? A look at the evidence.
They Shall Not Grow Old
In 2014, the British Imperial War Museums approached Peter Jackson, the award-winning director of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, with a request. They had 100 hours of digitized film footage and 600 hours of audio recordings from World War I of Tommies in the trenches, behind the lines, and in battle.Continue reading “They Shall Not Grow Old”
Christmas in the Shire
Last night, for no particular reason, I watched the first of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. (Thoughts on the trilogy as a whole here.) Watching it brought to mind a satirical video I’d seen years ago of the Rankin-Bass Hobbit Christmas special that should have been. Was it still online? AContinue reading “Christmas in the Shire”
The Downton Abbey Movie Teaser Trailer
The teaser trailer for next autumn’s Downton Abbey movie dropped yesterday. Let’s take a look, shall we? There is not much there. Lovely shots of Totleigh Towers… err, I mean, Downton Abbey there. Lots of shadow, lots of light. Shots that could have been stock footage from the original television series. Some crane pans (orContinue reading “The Downton Abbey Movie Teaser Trailer”
The World Famous Time Traveler
Going through some files recently, I came across something that I wrote, showed a few people for feedback, and then filed away. Several years back, BOOM! Studios, a comic book publisher, began publishing original Peanuts comic book stories. While Charles Schulz’s comic strip has been left alone (except for coloring the dailies), there have beenContinue reading “The World Famous Time Traveler”
The New World of WordPress 5.0
On Thursday, the new version of WordPress — version 5.0 — dropped. I’ve been using WordPress since 2004 and version 1.2. 5.0 is the biggest change in years. I’ve been through the introduction of themes, sidebar widgets, post formats (an idea to compete with Tumblr that never amounted to anything). 5.0’s change is an entirelyContinue reading “The New World of WordPress 5.0”
Coding This and That
In mid-November, while clearing away some old papers on my desk, I found a sketch I’d made of a website design. I couldn’t tell you how old it was — two or three years, probably — but there wasn’t anything particularly surprising or new about it. It was the same, basic idea I’ve pursued, sometimesContinue reading “Coding This and That”
Some Christmas Cultural Appropriation
Last weekend I discovered coquito, also known as “Puerto Rican egg nog,” even though it contains no eggs and is really nothing like egg nog. A friend of mine, of Puerto Rican descent, posted a photograph to Facebook of a Starbucks sign for a coquito frappuccino. Now, I’ve not been in a Starbucks in aContinue reading “Some Christmas Cultural Appropriation”
My Armistice 100 Adventure
In mid-September it dawned on me that November 11, 2018 would mark the 100th-anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I. Intellectually, as an historian, I knew this. I knew it in the same way that I know that water freezes at 32 degrees and objects fall to the earth at 32 feet perContinue reading “My Armistice 100 Adventure”