Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
So it was literally more than twenty years ago that I first put one of my dumbest creations on the internet: The Steven Seagal Movie Generator.
Like I seriously publicly launched that dumb thing back in 2004, and for those of you who were unaware, it assembles a title, cast and plot of a fake Steven Seagal movie from elements of his (real) bad films.
I honestly got the idea from a former-friend, who in high school wrote a comedic piece about how you could mash up the titles of Seagal films in the weird underground "newspaper" that got handed out for a few years. But I took it a few steps further, and made a whole thing.
Mostly it just sat there though, a thing I made once and never went back to. I followed it up with the Sci-Fi Channel Movie Generator (later retitled the Syfy Movie Generator) in 2008. I spent more time on that one, doing a later design update that made the "Syfy" movies show up on a fake DVD back cover.
But the Steven Seagal generator just sort of sat there, untouched.
And Steven Seagal kept making (terrible) movies with (predictable) titles. Like a lot. But the generator still only spat out movies culled from the nineties and early 2000s, ignoring all of his new stuff. There was a whole library of awful movies that just weren't in there, and it made the generator feel less relevant.
So, uh, I went and did something about that today.
First off, I redesigned the page. Now it looks like the back of a VHS tape box. Then I loaded the elements of about twenty-five additional films into the generator. And that was harder than I thought it would be, since some of the films are so obscure that they're not well documented. I literally had to do some deep research to figure out a lot of the basic plot details that are now in the generator.
But I did it.
And it's done.
And the generator is now fully loaded.
It's still useless and dumb, though.
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call it a throwback year
On the good side, some of the purchases and expenditures must have been persistent- equipment and whatnot that will last for a bit. Still, ouchie.
If I understood this correctly, it’s not one-fifth of the total budget, but only a budget one-fifth the normal size for advance funds. The real danger is if anything goes wrong, like a flood or a snowstorm that seriously hurts attendance, then that would also impact the total funds available.
Still, I’d try to ask about those credit card purchases. How can you not know how to contact last year’s treasurer, unless there was a really horrific staff blowup which is not mentioned. Maybe he’s on the run from more than just this con com.
Yeah, the purchases he authorized are final now(though I’d call every dept head and return/hock anything I could get away with), but stuff Gary bought himself? I’d be looking closely at any of those that aren’t absolutely con-related and going after him for every cent. This strikes me as intentional and vengeful on his part, you may as well return the favor.
I heard he got a job with Active Enterprises…
Deep thinking – adds a new dinmseion to it all.
Agreed, some of those purchases should help, but only a bit. Sounds like the Con could use a couple fund raising events.