Hello!  I've Been Painstakingly Replicating The TARDIS Key As Used By The Eighth And Seventh Doctors

My Dragnet-flavored contribution to the "How do I shot web?" meme.

More info on the meme: SFW / NSFW

Over on Twitter, patrickfedo has been organizing a neat Ghostbusters fan-art collaboration.  I'm pitching in with this pic of one of my favorite ghosts from the series, the taxi-driving ghost from the first film.

My performance at "Say Everything" yesterday, August 13, 2015, chatting with intrepid interim hosts Davey Stevey Dave and Babe Parker.

"Say Everything," the unique interactive standup showcase where comics eschew prepared material and just have a freeform chat with the hosts and the crowd, happens every Thursday evening at Paddy Reilly's Music Bar in Manhattan. More info at www.facebook.com/sayeverythingcomedy !

Joan Clarke June 24, 1917 – September 4, 1996

Working alongside Alan Turing and other codebreakers at England's famous Bletchley Park during World War II, Joan Clarke was considered among the most brilliant mathematicians on staff.

She faced many hurdles in her career due to her gender.  One famous example of this occurred when, as no suitable senior codebreaking position existed at Bletchley to which a female was allowed to be promoted, she was granted the title of "linguist" to grant her some measure of recognition for her work.  Clarke, who spoke no second language, would later recall with bemusement filling out paperwork with "grade: linguist, languages: none."

Acrylic on canvas, 5x7″.  From my set Luminaries of the Hacker World.

Leeloo from The Fifth Element wearing a pith helmet.  I’m not sorry.

The t-shirt I designed for Off the Hook, the radio show of which I am part.

WBAI, the nonprofit community radio station which airs our show, must periodically run fundraising drives to keep the bills paid. This shirt has been exclusively available as a thank-you gift to listeners who donated to those drives during our show's broadcast.

Anyone you see wearing this shirt has either been amazingly generous in showing their support and keeping our show and station on the air, or attacked our supporter and stole their shirt.  Either way, that person's sense of style is unquestionable.

Photo © Grey Frequency

My "Save the Clock Tower" flyer prop replica from Back to the Future.

A couple versions of the actual canonical flyer prop, as used in the film's production, have been in general circulation for a long time; you can grab them and other free printable BTTF props here.  I had one on my wall for ages, but was never really satisfied with it.  It's filled with placeholder text, unreadable on-screen but nonsensical in real life, and certain other details don't ring true; there isn't a date on the newspaper's front page, for one thing.  So, I created a new flyer from scratch, correcting errors and replacing the filler text with original newsprint written by myself.

This was made without re-using anything directly from BTTF; even the photo is something I heavily 'shopped from this free one.  I wrote the article text with lots of nods to BTTF continuity as well as some other obscure references and in-jokes, friends' names, etc.  (There's a secret signature of mine hidden somewhere which isn't the "Rob Vincent, Dot Net" or "R.T.F. News Wire" bits, which nobody to my knowledge has found yet.  If you see it, contact me or leave it here in a comment and claim some geek points!)  If you wish to customize or replace the article text, the font is Times New Roman 18pt bold.

Printed up at 300 DPI on the right shade of pale blue paper, these result in a prop replica which I feel is a lot neater in real life than the genuine prop.  Alternately you could print it on white paper, photocopy it, copy the copy, and so on to soften the edges and approximate that 1980s multi-generational xerox look before finally getting it copied onto the blue paper.

There's still a bit of work to do on this before I'll consider it finished.  For one thing, I had to improvise the masthead text with a calligraphy font that isn't all that good a match if you look closely; if I can't find a closer font I'll have to remake the text from scratch someday.

These were a big hit when I dressed as the "Save the Clock Tower" lady for a Halloween parade.

2021 edit: Wow, this blew up. Nowadays around half of the Clock Tower Flyers for sale online by shady prop dealers are my version, which you can still get totally free here. If you paid anyone for a copy of this flyer, you were ripped off.

This did, however, lead to something nicer; my version was found by actual Back to the Future licensee Doctor Collector, who were impressed enough by my work on it that they negotiated my services to rewrite the news text from scratch once again for their authorized version of the prop which is part of their “Back to the Future Time Travel Memories” box of replica items from the BTTF universe. If you have that kit, which is full of so many very cool things any BTTF diehard would enjoy, you have an all-new and official version of this flyer which was written by me.

It wouldn’t have been cool on either of our ends for Doctor Collector to just reuse my free fan-art in their version and sell it, but through their very kind efforts at reaching out to me I found myself actually writing authorized BTTF-universe material. That’s an achievement I won’t soon forget.

Today’s daily doodle is the Dreadful Flying Glove from the film Yellow Submarine, my favorite thing with which the Beatles were ever tangentially involved.

Even if, like me, you’re not all that much of a Beatles fan, see this movie at least once.  It’s beautiful.

In today’s daily doodle, President William McKinley wishes he had a Nintendo Game Boy.

A fascinating fact about the latest Doctor Who trailer.

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