I’m in my late 40s, and have so many Doctor Who toys on desks and shelves.

My spouse is sweetly tolerant of the sheer quantity of TARDISes in our small apartment (which is, alas, not bigger on the inside) and has even gifted me some of them.

I’m picking nits, but Impossible Mission didn’t use voice synthesis (where a computer creates the voice sounds from scratch.) It was using really low-fi by modern standards (but amazing for the time) recordings of actual speech provided by an unknown actor.

From this interview with the programmer:

The speech in the game was real, digitized speech. The performances were provided by Electronic Speech Systems, who also provided the software for reproducing the speech on the Commodore 64. I told them what I wanted the game to say, and when they asked me what kind of voice I had in mind, I said I was imagining a fiftyish English guy, like a James Bond villain. I was told that they happened to have such a person on their staff, so, instead of hiring an actor, they let him take a whack at it, and I thought he was just fine. I never met the guy who provided the voice, but, to my knowledge, the recordings were not altered or processed, apart from being digitized. It is certainly possible, though, that Electronic Speech Systems could have tweaked them without my knowledge. There are no other digitized sounds in the game.

The “Final Cut” rerelease added voice lines for (I think) all the characters.

Even the turrets!

Finally, a chance to romance Foul Ole Ron.

I used to run a fansite about Sealab 2021, back on the Old Web.

It was a good time and I made some long-term friends through it. It was a great community.

BRB, typing my PIN number into the ATM machine to get some cash for SCUBA apparatus.

I preordered the new Katamari game that’s coming out next week. I’m very excited!

Hey, it’s you! Cool!

• Little brain: Plain metal case
• Regular brain: Buy a case with a pre-cut window
• Glowing brain: Cut your own case window
• Galaxy Brain: Leave the whole side panel off

I vaguely remember a standup comic from maybe 25 years ago who had a joke about being at a gas station, and suspecting the attendant was moonlighting as a porn star. Just before the fuel tank was done filling, the attendant pulled out the nozzle and sprayed it all over the car’s hood and windshield.

🪴

This is glorious! I got into that game on desktop ages ago but haven’t played in a long time, and reading that post by the author has me really interested to play the mobile version.

I’m real I thought I told ya

I’m real even on Oprah

I still automatically think “YOUR .SIG IS TOO HUGE!” when reading modern work emails with rows upon rows of name, job title, company, contact info, disclaimers, embedded graphics, etc. at the bottom.

I’m happy to be a direct supporter of creative people whose work I enjoy; think Patreon and similar setups.

I find that making small monthly payments to a handful of independent folks who do work I love and who directly appreciate my support to be far more satisfying and worth it than subscribing to a wealthy and powerful media conglomerate thing which feeds me a bunch of crap the majority of which I don’t care about.

Dates with the person who became my wife. (Fortunately, she felt the same way.)

I’ve always felt that owners of dogs and/or cats should have more than one, so they have one another to interact with when you’re not home. They’re meant to be social creatures and, assuming they don’t happen to incompatibly hate each other (which can happen), it’s a lot nicer and healthier for them than just leaving a single pet home alone all day.

Those crappy old chairs in the classrooms have no lumbar support.

Or white, let’s not forget that bit.