Monday, December 31, 2018
Adventures in Woodworking Year-end Review:
Problem Solving key to IT and Woodworking
People who know me as an IT guy are always surprised to find out I’m a woodworker.
I don’t know why. Because the way I see it, they are essentially the same thing.
Okay, I know, what you’re thinking. How in the world is dealing with all of today’s latest electronic gadgets and do-dads anything like that most basic of all technologies which has been around since man learned to sharpen a stick?
Well I’ll tell you.
Both require a fair amount of problem solving skills.
In fact, I’d even go so far as saying that both IT and woodworking require you to be a problem solver above all else. The other skills are just incidental.
I know just about anyone who has ever dealt with a computer, tablet, cell phone or other smart device on the fritz won’t need an explanation of how problem-solving skills apply to IT work.
After all, it’s fairly obvious.
But far fewer people have firsthand experience building something out of wood. From what I’m told, most schools don’t have “shop” class anymore, which, if true, is a damn shame. Today most people’s only exposure to woodworking comes from watching Norm Abrams on reruns of the “The New Yankee Workshop” or from the dozens of home-fix-up shows on cable TV. Others might have even watched a video or two by members of the “maker” community on Youtube.
Watching these folks complete their projects in 30 minutes or less make the whole process seem simple. I mean if Norm could build a reproduction 17th century highboy in 27 minutes and have it look like something you’d find in a high-end furniture store, how hard could it really be?
As stated in a previous blog, the answer to that question is ALWAYS “much harder than you can imagine.”
Woodworking has always been about more than just having all the right power tools, as Norm always seemed to have. I’ve seen some pretty damn impressive projects built by people with just a few basic hand tools: a hand saw, hammer, plane and maybe even a chisel or two.
It also goes beyond a person’s ability to follow a set of plans, whether written or on video. Although it helps to be able to do that, those instructions can’t take every situation into account and sometimes they are just not all that clear. Just ask anyone who has ever struggled to assemble Ikea or other brands of knock-down furniture.
So why then is woodworking or just making something from scratch so difficult?
Well, in the case of woodworking, wood is a natural product. No two pieces are exactly the same.
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The living room cabinets all assembled and installed. They didn't
quite come out as I planned and there is still more work to do,
but this project once again reminded me about how important
problem-solving skills are to woodworkers.
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This is where “problem solving” comes in.
It’s more than about fixing mistakes when they occur – and they always will. It’s about looking at a set of plans and adapting them to the size and type of materials you have on hand, the type of tools you have at your disposal and your particular skill level.
Can’t make that most classic of all woodworking joints, the dovetail, but still need a strong way to assemble a set of drawers? Then you need to figure out what other joinery types you can use that fit the bill.
Box joints would be the next logical choice. But that requires a jig to cut the evenly spaced fingers. Don’t have a jig? Well now you need to figure out how to make one.
I think you can see where I’m going with this. Woodworking, like IT, isn’t about just fixing a “bug,” patching a system or fixing a mistake you made while building your project.
It’s a process that starts from the moment you decide to build something and often continues well after you think you’re through with it.
What brought all this to mind was thinking about the woodworking projects I did this year. It seems to me I spent the better part of my year in the shop working on the built-in bookcase and media center project that I have been documenting.
Right from the very start, I faced a number of issues, and although I thought I’d solved them all in the planning stage, they continued straight on through the build. I even documented one of them in my August blog: Sometimes Failure is not only an option: It’s a necessity.
Even after everything was built, assembled and installed in my living room, there were still more problems. Not everything worked the way I had intended. So once again I was forced to sit back and think about how to fix them without starting all over.
While mulling over the changes I needed to make to fix my cabinet and media center at home, I was dealing with a server upgrade at work that had gone sideways.
I had done all the required research and finally acquired all the software and licensing I needed to execute it. Like my cabinet design, it seemed a fairly straight-forward process, one that should have only taken a few hours with most of them spent watching a status bar inching it’s away across a screen and me clicking the occasional “Next” button.
However, about 60 percent way through the process I started hitting problems. I’d work my way through each one only to hit another. Turns out there was a “minor” bug with the software which the vendor didn’t see fit to inform anyone about until you called them.
As a result of this minor bug, I had to come up with a workaround to get my systems back up and running, which I was able to do.
I like to think that these two problems happening at about the same time were just coincidence, but being a writer I can’t help but think that it was just some sort of cosmic plot device designed to re-inforce my belief that problem-solving is the key to both my chosen profession and one of my biggest and most written about hobbies.
I hope this little life lesson from my experiences in 2018 will be of benefit to you in the coming year, and may you all have a happy and healthy 2019!
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Recent deaths remind us what to be thankful for
I suppose one of the worst things about getting older is that you begin to lose people who’ve been fixtures in your life.
Sometimes these people are friends, such as Stacy Briggs, who I wrote about last month; family, like my Uncle Jack, who passed away on Nov 10; or public figures you may have never met, but whose work influenced you in some way.
This Fall has driven that point home in a big way. First to go was my former colleague in October. Then came my uncle, just before Veteran’s Day. Only a few days later, came the deaths of comic book maven, Stan Lee on Nov 12 and filmmaker/writer William Goldman, who is known to geeks from Florence to Guilder for “The Princess Bride.” He died Nov. 16.
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| JOHN "JACK" WISHNICK: Still teaching me things about being a good person. |
You see, my Uncle Jack, was another larger-than-life character in my life who did far more than get me my first car and teach me to drive stick-shift.
Through his wit and charm, he taught me about being a good person and how one should treat others.
Even at his funeral, he still managed to continue to teach me those lessons.
After the services we began telling “Uncle Jack Stories,” and a close family friend regaled me with the tale of the time the two of them were on a cruise right around Christmas. They had stopped off at some island and late in the afternoon decided to head out to visit the local synagogue.
It was close to dinner time and there were only two taxi/tour drivers left on the dock. My Uncle didn’t want to choose between them, because he thought they both deserved to earn some money. So in his inimitable style, he decided to hire BOTH of them; he had the one with the “better car” drive while the other whose English was better, did the talking.
During the trip, he noticed that the vehicle they were in had transmission issues. When my uncle asked the driver why he didn’t get it fixed, the driver told him it was expensive and he didn’t have the $200 to get it done.
So at the end of the night, my Uncle handed the guy $200 to get his car repaired, so “the next time they came back,” he wouldn’t have to schlep them around in a broken car.
Needless to say, the driver was floored and when the family friend asked my Uncle why he’d done that (they had no plans to return to the island), my uncle shrugged and reportedly said, “So I die with $200 less in my pocket.”
To my uncle, that wasn’t a lot of money, but to that driver, it was a fortune.
It’s an anecdote that will stick with me for the rest of my life. It’s an excellent reminder to be thankful for the blessings in our life because there are others who have less than we do. It’s now changed the way I tip, because the few extra bucks over what I’d used to leave amounts to very little for me, but for a waiter or waitresses at the restaurants I frequent, it can mean a world of difference.
Now you may think that this has very little to do with the stated nature of this blog. But I became a fan of science fiction mainly because of “Star Trek” and its positive, we-can-make-things-better world view. And Uncle Jack’s spirit of generosity certainly reflects that idea of making the world a better place.
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| STAN LEE: Tried to show the good in every person. |
While the Marvel Comics maven may have taken more of the credit than he deserved for the company’s success, there is no denying he had the same positive, make-things-better attitude my uncle had. It was reflected in his motto: “Excelsior” – Latin for “ever upward” – which became his own oft-cited personal tagline.
But Lee gave more than lip service to the idea. He and Jack Kirby devoted an entire comic series and new breed of superhero to the idea of diversity and social justice.
“The whole underlying principle of the X-Men was to try to be an anti-bigotry story to show there’s good in every person,” he once told an interviewer.
And in the midst of the civil rights moment, he couldn’t have made this opinion any clearer by writing the following column denouncing racism:
Let’s lay it right on the line. Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today. But, unlike a team of costumed super-villains, they can’t be halted with a punch in the snoot, or a zap from a ray gun. The only way to destroy them is to expose them — to reveal them for the insidious evils they really are. The bigot is an unreasoning hater — one who hates blindly, fanatically, indiscriminately. If his hang-up is black men, he hates ALL black men. If a redhead once offended him, he hates ALL redheads. If some foreigner beat him to a job, he’s down on ALL foreigners. He hates people he’s never seen — people he’s never known — with equal intensity — with equal venom.Now, we’re not trying to say it’s unreasonable for one human being to bug another. But, although anyone has the right to dislike another individual, it’s totally irrational, patently insane to condemn an entire race — to despise an entire nation — to vilify an entire religion. Sooner or later, we must learn to judge each other on our own merits. Sooner or later, if man is ever to be worthy of his destiny, we must fill our hearts with tolerance. For then, and only then, will we be truly worthy of the concept that man was created in the image of God ― a God who calls us ALL ― His children.— Pax et Justitia, Stan.
Unfortunately, these words are still as relevant today as they were back in 1968 when he first penned them.
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| WILLIAM GOLDMAN: His passing is In-con-ceiv-able! |
This one hit me hard.
William Goldman might not have been a household name, but just about every geek revered him as the creator of “The Princess Bride.”
Like many geeks, I quote from this movie almost constantly as it appeals to my quirky sense of humor.
But unlike others, I held Goldman in high esteem for another of his works: the screenplay for the Oscar-winning film, “All The President’s Men.”
It’s the movie which helped inspire me to become a journalist and writer.
So yes, it’s been a tough two months with so many personal heroes leaving me to continue my life’s journey without them. As a writer I can’t help but try to look for a theme as to why all these deaths happened now.
The only thing I can think of is that they were timed to come before Thanksgiving to remind me to give thanks for all the things they gave to me in my life as well as to remind me to be thankful for all the people still in my life who are doing the same.
And I can’t think of a better thing to be thankful for during this month of Thanksgiving.
Rest in peace, Stace, Uncle Jack, Stan and Bill. One day I hope to see you all on the other side.
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Goodbye, Mr. Briggs
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| A STACY BRIGGS III: The guardian of meticulous |
the worlds of science, science fiction and fantasy, and whom many fans of the genre – if not the general public – knew.
This time that’s not the case.
Few people will know who A. Stacy Briggs III was, and why should they?
He wasn’t an actor in some genre TV show or movie – though he was quite the character. Nor was he a creator of a comic book, novel, film, or television series beloved by us geeks. He wasn’t even one the many behind-the-scenes talents who help produce one of those things. In fact, as far as I know, other than a love of reading, Stacy Briggs had nothing to do with the worlds of science fiction and fantasy.
So why, then, am I placing him up there with the likes of Ray Bradbury, Leonard Nimoy and Stephen Hawking and devoting my monthly column to him?
Because, as well as being a friend, colleague and sometimes mentor, Stacy Briggs was a true master of his craft: writing.
You see Stace – as those who knew him often called him – devoted his life to newspaper journalism and the telling of stories. He may not have been known by many outside the newsroom, but for the last 50 years, the citizens of Bucks County, Pa benefited from his work at The (Doylestown) Intelligencer and the Bucks County Courier Times.
As a fellow former colleague of ours said at his recent memorial service, “Stacy was the guardian of meticulous.” Nary was there ever a coma out of place in the stories he edited or the pages he proofed. And forget about a grammar or spelling errors. Nothing got past his infamous red pen.
Lord only knows how many times he used it on me and on the stories and pages we produced together. I always tried to produce clean copy, but no matter how many times I went over my own story or read over copy from another reporter, Stace would always find something I missed.
This could be annoying, especially when we were pushing deadline (or past it), but I always appreciated that desire to get everything right. While he would rib me from time-to-time (okay, it was more like constantly) about my less than perfect spelling, it never came from a mean place nor a desire to prove he was better than me or anyone else. He just wanted everything to be correct, and as Mrs. BlueScream often reminds me, Stacy and I did share one common trait. We were/are both CDO (which is similar to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, only the letters are in the correct order – the way they should be).
In fact, one of my fondest memories of working with him came one summer Saturday evening, when we were putting out the Sunday paper. Mrs. BlueScream had given me a new t-shirt for my birthday, on the front of which was the saying: “Is anal retentive hyphenated?”
I had worn the t-shirt just for him, and as soon as he saw me in it, I remember his brow furrowing and him casting me one of his disapproving looks and saying, “That’s NOT funny.”
But Stacy was more than just the newsroom’s grammar Nazi and punctuation police. He cared just as deeply about getting the facts of a story correct as he did about the way a story was told. Like most decent copy editors, Stacy could take the worst piece of writing and polish it until it shone. Yet unlike some other editors, he took time to coach the writers he worked with to produce better copy so he didn’t have to do that.
At his memorial service, person after person told stories of how Stacy influenced them: from the former sports editor who’d occasionally receive marked up copies of his section with Stacy’s comments on how to make the stories better to a reporter who said that when she first started at the paper, he recommended that she use the same “voice” she used in her columns in her news stories to make them more interesting and compelling.
All these stories started me thinking about all the ways Stacy influenced me and my writing. It took a while, but I suddenly realized that my often obsessive desire to find exactly the right words or phrase to get my point across comes from my time working with him. Yes, it often slows me down as I write and rewrite the same few lines struggling to get them just right. Yet I know in the end the time I take to do that is worth it, because it’s improved my writing ten-fold.
So for his contribution to the craft of story-telling and his influence on me to always strive to get it right (or write?), I think A. Stacy Briggs III does belong enthroned among the superstars of sci-fi/fantasy, that I’ve written about in the past. Because anyone so devoted to his craft and to helping other story-tellers deserves some recognition even if he shunned it during his life.
I just hope that he’d approve of this story and find no reason to red pen it.
Monday, September 17, 2018
Making the world a better place, one apology at a time
And while I have written about doing this before, this year's message was a bit different, brought on by things I've been observing now for a while and find quite troubling.
So now I'd like to share my message with everyone here in the hopes that you too will take it to heart, and will join with me in making the world a better place...
An Apology...
It is that time of year again where I need to send out my usual Yom Kippur apology letter. But this time as I forgive all who may have offended or wronged me, and beg for forgiveness for any hurt I may have caused – knowingly or unknowingly – over the last 12 months, I’d like to ask all of you all a favor.
I'd like to do it a bit as I forgive all who may have offended or wronged me, and beg for forgiveness for any hurt I may have caused – knowingly or unknowingly – over the last 12 months, I’d like to ask all of you all a favor.
I’d like you all to consider joining me in making amends with everyone you know, whether you celebrate Yom Kippur or not.
I ask this of you because I’ve been noticing a hardening of hearts in our society and a slide toward intolerance of those who don’t agree with us or our opinions.
It has made the world a meaner place and made it acceptable to purposefully hurt another person with little regard for anyone’s feelings but our own.
This, of course, runs contrary to the spirit of Yom Kippur, where Jews around the world are not only supposed to atone for their sins against G-d, but must also seek forgiveness from others who we might have wronged over the last year. As it is written in the Talmud, a collection of writings that covers centuries of Jewish law and tradition:
“For sins between man and G-d Yom Kippur atones, but for sins between a one and one’s fellow, Yom Kippur does not atone until one appeases one’s fellow.”So, in addition to my usual litany of apologies I make to you every year, I’d like to add this:
If I have been less tolerant or dismissive of your views and/or opinions, I apologize and promise to try and be more understanding of them in this coming year. I also promise to try and realize that I do NOT need to prove your beliefs and opinions are wrong just to justify my own. Nor do I need to prove you wrong just to delude myself that I am somehow morally superior to you, because only G-d can make that judgement, not me.
I further apologize if I offended you in my zeal and perhaps self-righteousness to support those causes I believe in.
I ask you all to join me in making this apology to everyone you know, because another part of the Yom Kippur tradition is Tikkun Olam – which means doing an act that “repairs the world.”
I know that making an apology doesn’t seem like it can make a big difference in the world. But it could make a small difference to our little part of it. And just imagine the kind of change that could happen if everyone decided to repair their small corner of the world.
Perhaps then we could live up to the potential for good that G-d gave to all of us and earn our place in the book of life for another happy and healthy new year.
Friday, August 31, 2018
Adventures in Woodworking: Sometimes Failure is not only an option. It’s a necessity
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| This cool picture was the only nice thing to come out of my shop on one very frustrating night. |
Sometimes though, as I found out recently, the effort to fix that mistake (or small series of them) just is not worth the time and effort. You’re better off throwing in the towel, admitting to yourself you screwed up, and starting all over again.
Over the last month and a half, I’ve been working on the bottom, center cabinet in the bookcase/media center I wrote about back in May. Its main feature is supposed to be a pull-out rack for my stereo and A/V equipment that can swivel 90 degrees to the right and left to allow easy access to the wiring at back.
There are commercial versions of this, but they cost between $550 and $800, which seems to me like an outrageous sum considering my six-piece, component stereo system cost that much back in 1987! It’s not like the designs of these racks are all that complicated. It’s just a small shelving unit that slides out on rails and can turn around. It seemed to me I could accomplish the same thing with a pair of full extension drawer slides and lazy Susan turntables.
I briefly considered using a small computer server rack with bolt-on shelves as they are strong and light. But after a quick Google search, I found none were exactly the dimensions I needed and the few that were close were almost as expensive as the slide-out AV rack I was trying to recreate.
So then it was off to the big-box store to look at perforated angle-iron, like the kind that is used in utility or garage shelving. The individual pieces they had in stock were too light-duty for my needs and the more heavy-duty versions I was after only came as part of those shelving units. I suppose I could have gotten one of them and cut the few parts I needed from those kits, but that would have been expensive not to mention wasteful, defeating the idea of building this on the cheap…
That left me with only one option: Make it out of wood.
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| The design for the pull-out A/V rack. Seems simple, right? |
It seemed simple enough and I AM a woodworker. How hard could it be?
I should know by now that the answer to that question is always “much harder than you think!”
Even though I had spent a few hours “building” it in SketchUp, cutting every piece and all the joinery in the program as if I were in the shop, I still encountered problems building it in the real world.
I keep forgetting that there is a big difference between handling material in the virtual world and how you handle it when you’re trying to safely push it through a spinning blade. Mostly that problem came down to the fact that some of the pieces were just too big for the capacity of my table saw.
As I endeavor to leave the shop with the same number of fingers and limbs I entered it with, I often rehearse cuts before I make them with the power off and blade down. This way I can see if there are going to be any problems and plan how to avoid them. This was especially important this time around, as Mrs. BlueScream wasn’t around to rush me to the hospital in the event something did go wrong.
After a few rehearsals, I very quickly realized that there was NO safe way to make the cuts I had planned to do on table saw. This forced me to improvise and instead of taking time to think things through in my usual meticulous manner, I just winged it, because I didn’t want to add another delay to this project.
That turned out to be a big a mistake.
Because the solution I came up with – while safe and almost as fast as using the table saw – turned out sloppily cut joints and slightly out of square parts. In the hands of other woodworkers, a jig jaw and circular saw can be super accurate. But I only use mine to cut the rare curved part I can’t do on my bandsaw or for breaking down plywood into more manageable sizes.
I deluded myself into thinking I could fix those errors in the glue-up stage and with some trimming here and there when it was dry, so I pushed on and painted and finished the unit. I was all proud of myself that it came together pretty well and most people wouldn’t be able to tell or see where I messed up. It even fit in the cabinet.
Well almost.
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FAIL! Not only is this way too tight, it's also out of square!
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The depth issue didn’t seem to be a big one. I’d purposely made it a bit deeper than I thought I needed, because I knew I could fix that issue safely with two quick rip cuts on my table saw.
The binding/out-of-square problem wasn’t as easy to fix.
I spent a sleepless night tossing and turning trying to figure out a way to fix it. Unlike the depth issue, there was just no way to correct this using my table saw. So I broke out my hand tools and got to work.
I spent an entire hot and humid evening in my garage trimming, plaining and sanding only making a tiny bit of progress. At 11:30 p.m. I literally threw in the towel I’d been using to wipe away my sweat and admitted defeat. It would take at least another whole weekend to try and fix it this way and the results would NOT have looked good. In the same time or less I could just get another sheet of plywood and start all over again.
So that’s what I did and the pictures you see here are mostly from that build.
At first I was discouraged by my failure and having to throw out a month’s worth of work. I began doubting my skills as a woodworker. After all, the Youtube makers I watch on a regular basis always make their projects look so easy.
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| New plywood stands next to my failed first attempt at the rack. |
My solution for the joinery?
No power tools.
Granted, it did that did take over twice as long to make them that way. But they came out much more accurate because the slower pace at which they cut meant I had more time to check and correct any error before it got too big. I also felt I had better control over the tools because I wasn’t constantly worried about accidentally cutting my fingers off before I could realize they were in the way of the tool.
Interestingly, I also discovered I enjoyed using those “old fashioned” methods. Using handsaws, a chisel and a hammer, made me feel more connected to my craft and more like “a real woodworker” in a way that my power tools seldom do.
So was this really a failure then?
I learned some new techniques and now have a better understanding and comfort level with some of my more rarely used power tools. I also now have a better idea of when and where those tools work best for me.
Taking that into consideration, I’d say no, it really wasn’t.
It wasn’t a win either, as I did waste some expensive material. But I guess that is the price you pay to get better at your craft.
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| The new pieces of the rack have been cut out and sit on the old rack. The holes for the adjustable shelves have also been drilled into the side and middle rails. |
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| Here I'm making the side notches that the side rails fit into using just a back saw, hammer and chisel. Originally I was intending to make these cuts by standing these panels up on my table saw and running them through a dado blade. |
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| The notches in the center of the top and bottom panel were made in a similar manner. Except instead of a saw, I used to drill to hog out the waste then the hammer and chisel to square everything up. |
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| Its really true that a woodworker can never have too many clamps, especially large ones! I needed almost every long clamp I had to hold the rack together while the glue dried. I also used those black angle brackets everywhere to ensure it came together dead on square this time! |
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Here's the new rack in the cabinet. It fits with room to spare and no longer rubs or binds when it slides out. All it needs now is a coat or two of black paint. (The cabinet is sitting upside-down on my bench with the base now sticking up in the air).
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| And finally this is the rack extending out of the case on its rails. In this position, I'll be able to turn it to the right or left to access the wires on the back of the equipment which will sit on those adjustable shelves. |
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Digging deep into Worldbuilding
One of the best things about Sci-Fi and Fantasy is being swept away by the story and taken to magical lands or strange new worlds in galaxies far, far away.
And if the story happens to be part of an on-going series, so much the better, because as the stories progress, those settings get more and more fleshed out until you can almost imagine yourself living there.
In the parlance of genre, this is called “world building” and the better a writer or writers can do this, the more they will be able to capture the hearts, minds and imagination of fans.
Sounds like a good thing, no?
Well, not always – especially when it comes to us geeks.
You see we sci-fi/fantasy/comic book enthusiasts are a particular lot, and as a community we tend to be more passionate about our likes and dislikes than most normal people. We often catch the smallest of details most others gloss over and put way too much thought into the real-world consequences of those things. It’s something that casual fans of the genre, like Mrs. BlueScream just can’t seem to get her head around.
As a result, we geeks will begin to argue – sometimes quite vehemently – over how that throw-away line of dialogue or plot device makes no sense in the context of the world that’s being created right before our eyes and ears.
Sure, we realize that that line was only meant as a comic moment or the plot device was just a shortcut to propel the story forward without having to bog the action down with a lot of boring detail. But that’s not the point. We’ve already become so invested in this new world, and want it to be so real, that our minds automatically reject even the subtlest of things that would break our suspension of disbelief.
This is why Mrs. BlueSream hates seeing genre movies with me and my geeky friends. (Are there really any other kind of friends?) After the film we will often spend hours dissecting it and discussing “trivial” things she and most other people would never have noticed.
Another thing she fails to understand is that examining these obscure details can also add an entire new layer of subtext and meaning to a story. More often than not, it makes the film, book, comic or TV show a hell of a lot darker than I think the author or creators intended or even realized.
Let’s take “Star Wars” as an example.
The now 10-film franchise is, on the surface, a simple morality tale. In it, the freedom-loving, democratic good guys always triumph over the oppressive, fascists bad guys. Yet if we start to take a closer look at some of the background details built into these films, we being to see that our heroes have a few dark stains on their white hats…
Perhaps biggest and most obvious of those stains is not only their tolerance of slavery, but the fact that many of them are slave owners themselves!
I am, of course referring to the Droids, but there are human (or organic) slaves too, which when you begin to think about that, makes no sense given that droids would seem to be a more practical labor force than living beings. But I digress....
When we first meet Anakin Skywalker, in episode one, “The Phantom Menace,” he and his mother are slaves on Tatooine. When Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi first encounter him they show no outrage over the fact that he is a slave or that slavery exists here. Then they show no interest in freeing him until they Qui-Gon discovers Anakin is extremely Force sensitive and might be the “Chosen One” who is prophesized to bring balance to The Force.
Not only is this a callous disregard for the fates of an oppressed group by JEDI KNIGHTS who are supposed to be protectors of the weak, but they do nothing to free Anakin’s mother, who you would think would be as important to the Jedi as Mary, mother of Jesus, was/is to Christians.
Yes, there is some lip service in the movie that they don’t have the money to buy both Anakin and his mother from their owners. But the fact they are willing to buy and sell people says they are OK and accept the concept of slavery. If the Republic didn’t really tolerate slavery, and the Jedi were their galactic policemen, surely two Jedi should have been able not only free both of them but put an end to slavery on that world once and for all!
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Turns out, L3 was right. Droids are slaves in the
"Star Wars" universe
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Again, I don’t think this was an intentional bit of world building. The writers just needed a shortcut to set events in motion that would send Anakin down the path to the Dark Side so they decided to have Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan seemingly disregard the precepts of their order. That way she was “free” to be killed off at a later time convenient to the plot.
Of course it’s easy to find faults with the prequel trilogy, but the slavery subtext, especially when it comes to the treatment of Droids, is present from the first “Star Wars” film.
Remember when Luke, Obi-Wan and the droids enter the cantina in Mos Eisley? The bartender points to C3P0 and RD-D2 and says “We don’t serve their kind in here!” It’s the exact same thing you’d expect to hear in the Jim Crow South.
This attitude carries right through to the most current movie, “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”
In it Lando’s personal droid, L3-37 constantly talks about droid rights and how (if you’ll excuse the expression) “droid lives matter.”
It’s obvious from the way this is handled in the film that the writers were NOT trying to make a statement about equal rights for all. It’s played for laughs, as if someone today were to suggest that Siri, Alex, Cortana and OK Google, should be granted personhood.
This film also makes it clear that everyone in that universe thinks of droids as nothing but mindless automatons, with no individuality, feelings or self-awareness, which is odd considering the writers have almost gone out of their way to prove the opposite.
While making L3 an abolitionist is played for laughs, it’s also a shortcut the writers took to give her a distinct personality from the other robots we’ve met over the series: 3P0, the nervous-nelly; R2, the plucky-resourceful sidekick; BB8, the loyal puppy; and K2-S0, the snarky cynic.
Not only do the droids have individual personalities, they’ve all shown they are capable of improvising their way out of tough situations. C3PO did it in “Star Wars” when he bluffed the Stormtroopers who broke into the Death Star hanger control room he and R2 were hiding in. R2 also showed similar initiative in “Empire Strikes Back,” using his fire extinguisher to cover his companions as they ran to the Millennium Falcon during their escape from the Cloud City and again by repairing the ship’s hyper drive. Certainly, K2S0 is the best proof, directly disobeying his order to stay behind and not follow Jyn and Cassian into the city on Jedha. His bluffing attempt, while less successful than 3P0’s also shows his ability to improvise.
Now you might argue that only the droids belonging to our heroes have these abilities, because our heroes’ unique qualities have rubbed off on them. But let's take a look at a short throw-away scene in “Return of the Jedi” where 3P0 walks by a Power Droid being tortured on Jabba’s sand barge. It's meant mostly as a sight gag and a shortcut by writers to show the audience how evil everyone around Jabba is. Yet this not only implies that droids can feel pain, it confirms it by showing the droid screaming (and steam coming from it's feet as opposed to blood?).
The fact that our heroes don’t mistreat their droids like everyone else in that universe does, doesn’t let them off the hook. They are still slave owners and treat the droids as chattel.
Remember the restraining bolts the Jawas put on R2 and 3PO to keep them from running away? Luke didn’t have a problem with this and only removed R2’s in the hopes of seeing all of Princess Leia’s message. He also had no compunction about shocking 3P0 to get him out of hiding after R2 had run away.
In “Empire Strikes Back" Solo and Leia turn off 3P0 when he suggests they surrender at the end of the asteroid field chase, and show only passing concern that he disappeared for a while and was found blasted apart.
In “Return of the Jedi” Luke gives 3P0 and R2 to Jabba as gifts to work as slaves in his fortress. Sure, it’s a ruse, but at least 3PO didn’t know it was and though he’d been sold off, and was visibly upset by it.
There are even more examples of this scattered throughout the other “Star Wars” movies, if you really start to look for them. Finding these little details is what makes these films so re-watchable even though we have seen them hundreds of times. It adds layers of subtext that makes you view the characters and situations in a sometimes totally different light and makes the story as new and interesting as the first time we saw it.
The same holds true of any well-written series of books, movies, TV show or comics with a well-developed world. The more you learn about it, the more you want to come back and play in it. And isn’t that what good story does?
Saturday, June 30, 2018
Stop shooting the messenger!
WTF, America?!
I can’t believe that just days before our nation’s 242nd birthday that I’d be so outraged at what has become of our country.
Granted, there has been a lot in the news lately that has left me shaking my head and wondering what has happened to the idealism and American Spirit that once made this country a beacon to the world. But the recent slaughter of five journalist at a Maryland newspaper has me fuming over what has happened to our society.
I may now be an IT guy, but I started my career as a journalist – and up until about a year ago, I worked for a community newspaper much like the Capital Gazette – so this story strikes rather close to home. Part of what has me so worked up is that this story isn’t being treated as what it truly is: A terrorist attack aimed at the very fabric of this country.
Yes, I know the death toll in this shooting comes nowhere close to those of the Sept. 11, 2001 attack;
the Boston Marathon bombing or even the aftermath of truck running down cyclists and runners on the Hudson River bike path in Manhattan last Halloween. And before you point out that (as of this writing) the gunman’s motives weren’t politically motivated, I’d beg to differ….
While in today’s political climate, it may not be “fashionable” to defend the press, I’d like to remind everyone – especially in the run up to the July 4th holiday – that our Founding Fathers thought that the proper, free and unfettered operation of the press was so important that they put it in the First Amendment of our Constitution, ahead of every other right we have as citizens of this country.
They rightfully realized that the press was “We The People’s” final check/defense against abuse of power: whether it come from the government, the wealthy, community leaders or even our own neighbors. And whether you like what the press reports on or even how they report it, a democracy like ours cannot survive without a free press.
So yes, this was a terrorist attack against the very fabric of this country, aimed at silencing all those who would dare question those in power and try to hold them accountable for their actions.
Sadly, I expect this type of intimidation of the press in Third-World juntas, dictatorships or authoritarian regimes such as North Korea, Russia and Turkey, just to name a few. But I’d never thought I see it happen here.
Now I know exactly how Steve Rodgers felt in the Captain America movies. After getting accidentally frozen back in World War II and awoken in modern times to find a nation whose values he no longer recognizes, he quickly becomes disillusioned with the path the U.S. appears heading down as it draws ever closer to becoming exactly like the countries he fought so hard against in the last century.
And that’s what has got me furious. Because unlike in the comics or films there is no shady organization trying to undermine our freedoms and take away our rights. We are doing it to ourselves!
It would be so easy to blame an evil cabal like Hydra for our current predicament. But the truth of the matter is the fault lies with us. For letting our politicians foment division among our people and promoting an “Us vs. Them” attitude for the sake of their own selfish desire for political power. And for believing them when they demonize anyone who tries to point out their misdeeds or hypocrisy.
So in effect, we are all willing accomplices to the murders of Rob Hiaasen, Wendi Winters, Gerald Fischman, John McNamara, and Rebecca Smith, because we’ve let our leaders convince us that the mainstream media is evil and full of “Fake News.” We’ve let them convince us that journalist are sub-human or second-class citizens and it’s perfectly acceptable to commit violence against them or shoot them for any offense, real or imagined.
A decade ago, such an attitude would have horrified us. It would have been dismissed as the rantings of some radical nut-job. But today, it’s simply shrugged off, or worse yet, accepted as true.
Look, I understand that not everyone likes what the press reports, and that’s okay. But it is NOT okay to kill them because of it and it also doesn’t mean that just because you don’t like the things they are reporting, it isn't true.
Instead of casting aspersions, do some research and seek independent confirmation. And if just about everyone else is reporting the same thing, then maybe the story has some truth to it and isn’t just a conspiracy by some nameless/faceless group bent on world domination.
To do this however, we need to stop listening to those voices who seek to divide us and start listening to each other. We need to stop calling each other names like “racist” or “snowflake,” because if you have to resort to this type of name-calling you automatically invalidate any point you may make.
We need to realize that those people who don’t agree with our point of view might actually have valid concerns or ideas and we need to work with each other to find a compromise that’s acceptable to all sides.
That’s what’s made this country work for the past 200-plus years and hopefully will make it work again for the next 200.
Most of all we really need to stop shooting the messenger – both figuratively and literally.
Monday, May 28, 2018
Adventures in Woodworking: The Build Begins!
For me it marks the official opening of my woodworking shop and start of a project or two destined to take me all summer to complete.
This year, that project is a long-awaited series of built-in cabinets and bookshelves which will eventually surround the new big-screen TV I wrote about getting last November.
I’ve been talking about building this since we moved in 20 years ago, and now that we finally got that shiny, new, big flat-screen TV, and re-arranged our living room, I’ve run out of excuses to put it off. So now that I’m finally getting around to this long-awaited project, I’d thought I should document its construction. At first I thought about filming it, like the way my favorite Youtube woodworkers do. But my medium has never really been film. It’s always been the written word and trying to break into video production with such a large project was not realistic. I might do it someday, but for now I thought I’d just document my project here with a few pictures and captions.
THE CONCEPT:
My house is a bi-level home with what are called knee-walls on the lower level. These are short walls built on top of a concrete foundation wall. The concrete portion juts into the room more than the upper section forming an odd, shallow shelf along the length of the wall, usually at the three-foot mark. It looks odd and makes the room feel more like a basement than a family room. So my plan was to hide the ledge by turning it into a series of shallow cabinets. Then on top of those cabinets I planned to build bookshelves making the entire wall look like a built-in breakfront. There will be an empty section in the middle of the bookshelves where the flat screen TV will hang.
The first thing I did was measure the walls in my living room to get an idea how large an area I had to work with. It was quite big, almost 12 feet long and just under 8 feet tall. Then like all good geeks do, it was off to the computer to draw up a set of plans.
And not just any plans.
I spent a weekend or two refining my ideas to until I came up with a three-dimensional model in Sketchup that you can see above. It may look complicated, but this project really calls for nothing more than building a series of boxes at different sizes and connecting them.
Then, just because I could, I decided to take a quick cellphone picture of the area these shelves will occupy and though the magic of Photoshop merged the plan with the picture to give me an idea of what they’d look like in place. You can see that at right.
THE BUILD BEGINS:
With the plan in place, and after hemming and hawing over the type of plywood to use for the two base cabinets (they will be covered by solid cherry doors), I made my way to the big box store to pickup the material. The parts from both cabinets came from a sheet and a half of 3/4” birch plywood with the backs coming from a sheet of 1/4” plywood.
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| Here you can see me loading the material into my new car. It’s amazing what you can fit into a hatchback! |
Then it was back to the shop to start breaking the material down to its individual parts:
Here are all the individual parts for both cabinets which were cut from the pieces you saw me load into my car: two tops and bottoms, four sides, two backs and four shelves.
Okay, I kind of
cheated here. I had some extra plywood at home and cut them into 3 ½”
strips to form the bases each cabinet will sit on.
Here’s one of the cabinets dry-fitted together. If you look closely, you can see the rabbet running around the edges of each piece for the back. The shelves are not permanent. There will be holes along each side so I can adjust them. They were just placed in there to verify I had cut to the correct size.
Before assembly, I decided it would be easier to stain each part lying flat on my workbench rather than trying to stain parts that were standing vertically or hanging down and would avoid finish either not getting all the way into corners or pooling there.
The problem with doing things this way, is that there were so many parts, that it took up BOTH bays of my garage workshop for a week. Mrs. BlueScream wasn’t really happy about that as she has this odd idea that garages are for parking cars in and NOT for workshops. Silly, Mrs. BlueScream…..
With the parts finally stained and sealed with three-coats of polyurethane, I was finally able to start gluing the cabinets together and staining the shelves.
Next month, I hope to have the center stereo equipment cabinet together and in place in the house. Then I’ll be able to start on the face frames and doors. I’ll keep you updated!
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Not may must-see movies making my summer viewing list
And if those lazy, hazy crazy days of summer aren’t enough to lift my spirits all by themselves, then I’m trusting that this summer’s latest round of blockbusters will.
The only problem is, I just saw this lineup of genre movies coming out between now and Labor Day, and I’m underwhelmed. Usually after reading it, I have an impossibly long list of films I want to see, knowing that I’ll be lucky to go to half of them before they leave the theater.
But not this year.
Out of the 33 due out, here are the only seven I’m dying to see:
Avengers: Infinity War
I was never much of a comics book fan as a kid, but I have to say I love what Marvel has done with their superhero movie-verse. To me these flicks are the perfect summer entertainment: They are fun, have great, likable characters and are an action-packed, 2-hour roller-coaster ride. Yeah after the movie ends and you start thinking about it, the plot holes become super evident (see what I did there?) but while you’re watching you barely have time to catch your breath.
The movie opens this weekend, but unfortunately, I’m on call, so won’t be able to see it until the following weekend, so NO ONE BETTER SPOIL THIS FOR ME!!!!
Deadpool 2
I just got around to seeing the first “Deadpool” movie on TV last weekend, and really liked the snarkiness of this fourth-wall breaking anti-hero. It’s clear this character and the movies featuring him don’t take themselves seriously and that’s something I need to start learning how to do.
I’ve been so uptight lately, that I’ve been stressing myself out. I need to remember how to relax and not take everything so seriously and I’m hoping Deadpool and his “friends” will remind me how to do that. And with this movie coming out on May 18, the weekend before I start another new job, I’d say the timing couldn’t be better.
How to Talk to Girls at Parties
I didn’t know about this one until I saw it listed in the web article I referenced above. But after reading the description, I was in!
First, it’s based on a story by acclaimed sci-fi author Neil Gaiman ("Sandman," "American Gods," "Babylon 5: Day of the Dead" and "Doctor Who: The Doctor's Wife") so you know it has got to be good. Secondly, its plot about a bunch of boys in 1970s London trying to pick up girls who are more than they appear, is a theme a lot of us male geeks who grew up in the late '70s and '80s can relate to. I mean, if you were one of us, go ahead and tell me you didn’t think that girls (especially the ones you wanted to date) weren’t really aliens from another planet at least once!
I think of all the movies I want to see this year, I’ll have the least trouble of convincing Mrs. BlueScream to see this one, which opens May 25. She’s a big Anglophile and appreciates the music of that era.
Solo: A Star Wars Story
As a “Star Wars” fan, I’m contractually obligated to see this one. I mean it’s about everyone’s favorite smuggler and rogue, Han, frickin Solo!
What more needs to be said, other than this HAS to be good or else there are going to be geeks rioting across the world come May 25!
Incredibles 2
Of all the films on this list, I’m the most nervous about this one. The first movie, which was released 14 years ago, was so good because it knew how to pay homage and parody both the then long-dead superhero movie genre and James Bond-style evil mastermind flick. Now in a world where superhero movies are almost de rigueur, I don’t know if it will hold up.
Despite my trepidations, I’m anxiously awaiting June 15, when I can see this one with my friend Tim and his family. My friends and I often kid him that he and his family are The Incredibles.
Ant-Man and the Wasp
Yup another Marvel Superhero flick I’ll probably need to drag Mrs. BlueScream to. Luckily for me she’s very understanding of my compulsion to see all these silly super-hero films. Besides, how else am I supposed to know what’s going to happen in the Marvel universe post “Avengers: Infinity War” if I don’t see the Easter Egg at the end of this film???
Opens July 6.
Christopher Robin
Again, not the type of movie, I’d normally want to go see, but I added it to the list for Mrs. BlueScream. While it doesn’t involve her favorite stuffed animal (Paddington Bear), I think she’ll like this movie, opening Aug 3, which finds Winnie the Pooh and his friends hunting down a grown-up Christopher Robin when his life starts crumbling down around him.
With only these seven on my list, I should be able to see them all and I’m just keeping my fingers crossed they are all as good as they sound.
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Goodbye and good riddance, Stephen Hawking
This isn’t going to be one of my typical in memoriam essays on the recent death of a well-known figure in the science, technology and/or sci-fi/fantasy worlds.
Quite the opposite.
It’ll be more of a dark rant about the death of Stephen Hawking, suggesting that maybe the esteemed theoretical physicist, cosmologist and author lived a bit too long.
Now before you jump all over me for saying that, let me make clear that I have nothing but admiration for the man whose theories about cosmology were as revolutionary to modern science as the discoveries of Albert Einstein or even Isaac Newton. In fact, I have the utmost respect for everything he accomplished and am awed by the fact that he did it despite being afflicted with a rare, early-onset form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, (“ALS", or Lou Gehrig's disease), that left him practically paralyzed.
Like Carl Sagan, another “rock-star” scientist did some 38 years ago with his ground-breaking TV mini-series, “Cosmos,” Hawking made science cool and penned the one of the best-selling books of all time, “A Brief History of Time.” According to Time Magazine, the book, which explores profound questions about how the universe began, how it might end, the nature of time and does it in a non-technical way, has sold over 10 million copies world-wide since it was published in 1988. And like Sagan, he even became something of a pop-culture icon, making cameos on such popular TV shows as “The Simpsons,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” He was even featured in in a big Hollywood biopic, “The Theory of Everything” starring two of today’s hottest A-listers, Eddie Redmayne (“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”) and Felicity Jones (“Rogue One”).
Had Hawking continued to live there is no telling what else his genius and insight might have told us about the universe in which we all live and how it works. The only problem is, that not only do I think no one would have cared, but his discoveries would have constantly been attacked by self-proclaimed “experts” whose scientific expertise is limited to the high school physics class they slept through. And I think THAT would have killed him in a slower and crueler way than the ALS which eventually took him from us.So yes, I’m glad Steven Hawking is gone, because we no longer live in a world that values science nor the opinions of the thousands of men and women who devote their lives to the study of physics, medicine, geology, biology, meteorology or any of the other “ologies” out there. All we seem to care about is rantings of Twitter twits, social media morons and TV and radio ideologues who think they have a better understanding of science than the people who have spent years studying in those particular fields.
To them “facts” are flexible and there and only meant to fit their own theories, instead of the other way around. They also believe in “alternate truths,” which we all used to rightfully call LIES when I was younger and the world seemed a bit saner.
If it seems like I’m laying all the blame at the feet of these people, I’m not. As a staunch defender of the First Amendment, I stand by their right to spout their garbage even though I thoroughly disagree with them.
Who I’m really angry at is YOU – and everyone else who listens to these know-nothings. You have given credibility to people who in the past would have been dismissed as crazy conspiracy theorists or extremist who are out-of-touch with the mainstream.
But we’re listening to them now and taking their opinions as gospel because we suddenly only want to hear from people who will echo our own often darkest beliefs. We want to live in an echo-chamber where we are constantly being told we are right, instead of challenging ourselves and perhaps learning something new along the way. We’ve become less and less tolerant of anybody who doesn’t share our world view, and when confronted by facts which run contrary to our long-held beliefs, we lash out like little kids and call our confronters all sorts of derogatory names and claim their facts are wrong or biased despite the fact they’ve been scientifically proven/accepted for decades.
As a younger man I always though the future would bring enlightenment and scientific advancement that would solve the world’s problem’s. Now I fear that we are moving towards the type of futuristic dystopias featured in such popular sci-fi stories as “Brave New World,” "1984," “Brazil,” “The Hunger Games,” “Divergent” and “The Handmaid's Tale.”
So, Steven, I’m glad you’ve left us.
Hopefully you’re in a better and brighter place. One that still values reason and science over ego and hubris.
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