When I moved my workspace into the basement, I moved myself out of the range of broadcast TV signals. It never occurred to me TV wouldn’t work down here, we used to get signal down here. I guess broadcast signals aren’t as strong anymore.

I have been watching an endless stream of Netflix. First, I went through all the available episodes of Fascape. Then Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Doctor Who, Torchwood, all kinds of the fun stuff. Some I’ve seen, some I haven’t.

Now that school is out and I don’t need to be at my computer working, I could go upstairs and watch regular TV, but I still don’t. I think, I am tired of shows about dead bodies, serial killers and that little known forensic detail that points straight to the wrong doer. I know 30 years ago those shows would have been science fiction; DNA, giant databases of fingerprints, mass spectrometers that identify every little particle, etc.

As bored as I have become with procedural crime dramas, reality shows, situation comedy, soap operas and talk shows have never interested me. I like science fiction (and I use that term loosely), but also I like science shows, history shows, historical dramas. I watch PBS on purpose! (Well, I did when I could get the TV to work.)

I have been pondering what these things have in common. Science shows are about how things work, history shows are about how people survive, historical dramas are about how people work and science fiction is about what it means to be human. I know those who aren’t fans of science fiction never get past the “but it isn’t real” aspect, even though by definition fiction isn’t real. Just because the setting isn’t “real” doesn’t mean the story doesn’t have something to say. When you come right down to it, aren’t shows about solving a murder a little morbid? Yes, it is fiction and not real.

So from now on, I am going to try and post reviews and commentary on the world of science fiction.

Note: I use that term loosely because I can’t think of a better one.

Four beautiful pairs of vintage shoes size 8 or 81/2.

They are from the late 1960′s or early 1970′s. I would keep them if they fit me.

There is a pair of gold bedroom slippers,  a pair of silver sandals, a pair of black heels and a pair of patent leather heels.  Grammie had nice taste in shoes.

I hope they find a good home.

New Template! (Yes! Again!)

I know I’ve said this before -like about once every six months or so- but I think I found a WordPress template I can live with. This one seems to be working really well for me. I do want to learn to build WP themes from the ground up, but that has proved challenging, since I only have time between semesters and I do not know PHP. I really love the transparent background in the text area, I can’t wait till I have time dig around a figure out how that was done!

For right now I would like to spend my effort re-organizing the site. It had become simply unmanageable with a separate page for each of my print-on-demand designs. I did a lot research this summer and I have concluded that I am not using WP to its best advantage and the site would be better off if I used more the BLOGing features to organize information.

Fall Classes

Back in school for nearly a month now. I’m adding Flash, 3D Animation and Digital Video to my repertoire of skills and software. I feel slightly nuts taking all of these at once, but due to the way they are scheduled this was the best option.

We are still working on the software basics, but my head is just spinning with ideas for projects. I want to get a jump on the artwork, so hopefully I can narrow down the possibilities soon.