rob vincent dot net

HEY YOU GUYS I have returned to blogging in order to whine.

Round about last weekend, the 21st or so, I started to develop a cough. It got progressively worse over the next few days; finally on Wednesday I had to leave work midway through my shift, go home, and skip Off the Hook. Every breath that was anything more than extremely shallow ended in a most fascinating series of solids, liquids, and gases expelled from my lungs. One doctor's visit later and I've got myself a certified case of heavy bronchitis.

I now have pills, other pills, an inhaler, and a nebulizer which makes me feel like one o' them zany hookah-bar hipsters.

I've been taking it easy since, if by "taking it easy" you mean "painfully expectorating enough crud to fill a reservoir on an hourly basis."

When I was a small child, like clockwork, I used to get hit with a major case of bronchitis and/or pneumonia every Winter. Sometime in adolescence the routine began to fizzle, by my count I might have it down to about one bout per decade now. Perhaps that means after this round, I'll have my lungfuck quota filled untill the 2020s.

Psst!

Do I have your confidence, Entire Internet?

This is very hush-hush, dear reader, so I need you to keep it strictly between you, me, and every other living soul on the planet with connectivity.

I've just started a really neat new full-time job. I'm now a workshop tech at MakerBot.

Today was my first day on the job, and it was brilliant. That's about all I have to share about the job just yet - I'm strictly a ham-fisted newbie for the moment - but what I can definitely say already is that it's completely unlike any company I've ever worked at before. I've been given a rare opportunity to use a huge list of my skills, passions, and interests in one place. My intense loves of tinkering, creative art, groundbreaking media, the free-content scene, friggin' robots, and more are all being indulged. You can learn more about MakerBot and the snazzy things they do at the press kit and the Wikipedia article.

I've never talked all that much about my specific employers, or identified them by name, in all my years of blogging. I feel comfortable breaking this rule of mine in this case because, frankly, the company is that brilliant. I'm not just suddenly singing MakerBot's praises because I work there now, mind. I've been quietly fanboying MakerBot ever since word started spreading about the cool stuff they do. I had lots of fun when co-founder and CEO Bre Pettis was a guest on the January 13, 2010 episode of Off the Hook. (Fun fact: Bre took the photo of us in the studio which illustrates the OTH page here on my site.) I dug the heck out of seeing MakerBot's work on display at events like Maker Faire NYC. And now I get to help!

I can't wait to see where things go at MakerBot in the future, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it.

Did I mention the robots?

Friggin' robots!!!

Comic legend Frank Miller has decided he'd like to be a clueless, batshit insane idiot regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement.

So, since I've suddenly lost all my taste for Miller's work, I decided to get rid of the Miller books I own in a constructive way: I've chucked them up on eBay, starting at a penny, and my proceeds from the sale will be spent entirely on supplies I shall bring to the Occupy Wall Street campers at Zuccotti Park.

May The Goddamn Batman have mercy on Frank's poor, misguided soul.

I'm 34 today. Good for me!

I shall be out of communications range for most of the day; not on birthday stuff, but on errands and assorted SRS BSNS.

Last Tuesday was a bit different for me: I spent that whole day working for the Government. Really! It was all very hush-hush stuff... I was an election inspector.

I took the gig because I was free that day, I was curious about what goes on behind-the-scenes at an election, and it was something I hadn't done before. It was a low-importance election as these things go, just some local judges, council members, and such rather than Congresscritters or President, but the gig turned out more enjoyable than I thought it'd be. I was lucky enough to get assigned to my own local polling place, that being the grade school I went to as a kid which is a short walk from my house. I got assigned to work with a group of easygoing and friendly folks who made interesting conversation. Most of my day involved marvelling over how much shorter everything had gotten since the early 1980s. I did this sketch of the place during bouts of downtime. And, ultimately, I learned some neat stuff about how that whole process works.

We get some fun email at Off the Hook, but one we got yesterday from an Australian listener called David totally made my day. I present the following excerpt, with David's permission:

As a side note, listening to the show while driving my 6 yo to school, and when he heard you introduce yourself he said "Rob T FIREFLY?! Imagine being called Rob T FIREFLY! I wish my name was Rob T Firefly!". So, some good outreach there :)

That young fellow is going to grow up to be the most awesome guy in Australia, mark my words.

BBC Three have announced the cancellation of Doctor Who Confidential, the series which takes viewers behind the scenes of my favorite show, Doctor Who. I've got a little something to say about that, which will probably be extremely dreary to any non-media-production geek and/or non-Doctor Who geek. You are warned, proceed at your own risk, etc.

I have always loved behind-the-scenes stuff. It was shows like Doctor Who Confidential that cemented my love for media production at a very young age. There wasn't much available to me in the area of Doctor Who of course, here in the USA (though we did get the PBS-produced behind-the-scenes special made during the production of the Doctor Who story Silver Nemesis) but I was transfixed by every other source which ventured behind the scenes of TV, film, and even radio. I watched eagerly as George Lucas and company set up models for Star Wars, and tried to replicate their work with my action figures. I gleefully absorbed the info on LeVar Burton's children's show Reading Rainbow when he brought his crew behind the scenes of his other gig at Star Trek: The Next Generation, and demonstrated model spacecraft made from disposable razors and transporter beams based on the swirling of glitter in a glass of water. My library card was worn thin from all the "making of" books I was constantly borrowing, including a well-worn copy of The Doctor Who Technical Manual (on which, I must admit, I was responsible for much of the wear.) I knew from very early on that media production was something wonderful and magical, and I wanted to be a part of it one day. Not just the dreams of being a "movie star" that most kids have; while being Luke Skywalker would have been cool, I knew it'd be just as awesome to be the guy that flew the model of Luke's spaceship past a special camera frame-by-frame.

I never outgrew that phase. Nowadays I'm still the same sort of nerdy adult who watches all the extras and listens to the commentaries on every DVD I own or borrow; even if the film turned out to be crap, seeing how they made it intrigues and excites me. And of course, I enjoy obsessively reading and contributing to things like the Doctor Who wiki.

While I'm certainly no movie star I did manage to grow up to be, among other things, an artist, writer, performer, and radio broadcaster. It's my privilege to regularly use my skills in a myriad of personal and professional projects with which I find myself involved. Whether my modest career someday grows larger and glitzier or stays right where it is, I'm proud of it and feel fortunate to have accomplished any of it. This all has direct roots in the movie-magic-geek I was able to become at a very early age, thanks to the behind-the-scenes stuff available to my young self.

Doctor Who is currently my favorite thing on television, as it was when I was young. Had there been something like Doctor Who Confidential available to me as a kid, it would definitely have been my second-favorite thing on television. If even a single kid watching Confidential today is inspired onto the creative path by seeing how their favorite show is made, it'd be worth it; in fact, we know this very thing has been happening as evidenced by Confidential's own recent feature Death is the Only Answer. How many kids have been inspired thusly by Confidential over the past six years? How many more might be if the show were allowed to continue?

Doctor Who Confidential would be sorely missed not just by ageing Who nerds like me, but by every other kid out there who might have been inspired to someday do the cool jobs the Doctor Who team get to do behind the scenes. I dearly hope the powers that be are compelled to reconsider cancelling Confidential.

Immediately after the cancellation announcement, fans sprang into action and a very focused "Save Doctor Who Confidential" campaign quickly popped into existence. (If there's one thing TV scifi fans can organize at the drop of a hat, it's a fan campaign.) If you're interested in joining in, you can find them at @SaveDWC on Twitter, where notables such as Russell Tovey, Neil Gaiman, and even Steven Moffat have followed, endorsed, and retweeted them; the hashtag to apply to your own tweets is #SaveDWCBBC. You can sign their online petition which garnered 14,000 signatures on its first day, and as of this writing boasts over 24,000. If Facebook is your thing, the SAVE Doctor Who Confidential community page is the place for your "like" clicks. They have also started an official blog. And of course, you can contact BBC Three by all the standard avenues of communication to voice your support for Doctor Who Confidential and urge them to reconsider its fate.

My area is feeling the beginnings of this lady, with the major hit happening throughout tomorrow. Since most of Long Island's utility infrastructure is made of papier-mâché, there's a very good chance we'll lose power and/or Internet service tomorrow. So, this is just a notice that you Internet organisms might not hear from me for a few days.

After the storm, depending on cell service, I'll probably be able to send outgoing tweets to to my Twitter via SMS long before regaining my Internet access. Full access to the web, email, and everything will depend on how thoroughly my electricity and Internet services get spanked. At least my mobile phone can hold its charge for a few days; one benefit of having a dumbphone rather than a smartphone.

Wish me luck!

Five hours and a partial night's sleep later, and I still can't quite believe it. Our Kickstarter was a success, and production of The Media Show will be funded solely by the generosity of you people out there on this crazy Internet!

It was truly down to the wire. For those unfamiliar with how Kickstarter campaigns work: a project only gets funded if enough people pledge to meet the fundraising goal. If the deadline passes with the total pledges even one dollar short of the goal, the project fails and none of the funds are transferred. When last I blogged here we were just past the halfway point; still over $4000 short with less than two days to go. Yesterday morning, that shortfall was halved but with less than a day left. Watching the progress on it was like the inverse of that last few minutes of a winning eBay bid; instead of constantly refreshing a page and willing the clock to run out before someone else busted my spending limit, I was willing the dollar amount to flip over into the green before the bell tolled. As I wrote on Google+, if you'd balanced a tuning fork on my head right then it'd have started ringing. Finally I couldn't bear any more; I killed the browser and took a walk around the block. When I got back, you'd done it! Our campaign was a success, with a few hours to spare!

I know a lot of you who pledged; there are many familiar names on the list of backers, and you folks are seriously my heroes. I know a lot of you who helped out by blogging, twittering, and spreading the word; you also are my heroes. As for those of you who, even if you were entirely uninterested, just chilled out and tolerated my friends and I going on and on about this fundraiser all over the place, thanks for withstanding the onslaught!

I can't thank all of you enough for making this happen. The Media Show has always been a labor of love for us; now, your love also shares responsibility.

I'm looking forward to puppetting up and getting back to work!

HALP!

We at The Media Show have LESS THAN TWO DAYS to raise $4K and change to make our next season happen. Unless we hit our fundraising goal on Kickstarter, we don't get any of what we've raised already. Our starter needs some serious kicking!!

Every bit of help, even $5 if you can spare it, helps us out more than just giving us a fiver to work with; more traffic gets us on Kickstarter's front page, more interest means more word-of-mouth, and word-of-mouth is quite literally the most valuable thing we could ask for.

Whether or not you can help us by pledging, your help spreading the word is also extremely essential, now more than ever. Every last repost, reblog, retweet, regurgitation, etc. keeps us going in our mission to demystify mysterious tech, uncover shadowy media practices, and interview luminaries from all aspects of our crazy world WITH SNARKY PUPPETS. Please, help us by spreading this link and the word about what we do and how you can help us do it.

We've been posting on our show's site with all sorts of reasons we think this show is an important thing to do. It's also exceedingly important to me personally; The Media Show is a labor of love for myself and my colleagues, and the ability to keep doing it would really be a dream come true.

So for all of you superheroes out there who like to wait until the last minute, this is the last minute. Please help us out all you can with your pledges, your support, your spreading of the word, and your awesomeness. We honestly cannot do any of this without you.

I've been running this site on the Wordpress software, without anything in the way of comment-spam-protection add-ons beyond my blacklist and the auto-moderation of any commentors who have not had a comment approved before. This means that unlike many webmasters, I still see my spam. It doesn't get posted, but behind the scenes I get to watch it ebb and flow like the mighty tides.

The latest tidal-wave of Wordpress comment spam began last night, and has given me around 1200 comments so far on random posts, recent and ancient. This batch of bots is working in a new and strange way; the posts all consist of generic text which is highly complimentary in nature (or would be if spammers could spell) and they all just give either http://www.google.com , http://www.yahoo.com , or http://www.bing.com as "their" URL. There are no other links in the posts at all, spammy or otherwise.

As I mentioned, I use the Wordpress option to let posters who've had comments approved before skip the moderation queue from then on. Perhaps the people behind this are trying to flatter me into approving their comments so they can spam later? It's either that or they're just trying to jam the radar.

In any case, adding "http://www.google.com/", "http://www.yahoo.com/", and "http://www.bing.com/" to the blacklist solved it for now. (There is no real reason for any actual humans to be filling in the URL field with that; it's an optional field, if you don't have anything else you'd like to put in there you can leave it blank.)

Though the comments are now being automatically labelled spam and tossed instead of filling my moderation queue, they're still coming in at a steady rate. I wonder what it's all for.