Tour de France: Unchained - Season 3 on Netflix

So excited to watch Tour de France: Unchained, Season 3, especially after visiting the Tour during its filming.

I’m sure it’ll be a different perspective, enlightening our trip to week 3 of the Tour last year in July, 2024.


Murderbot and his "Hippie Clients"

I’m enjoying the Apple TV series, “Murderbot."

The mix of “green world” (organic and open), and “closed world” (artificial and enclosed) are quite prevalent, even in the mind of Murderbot himself: [1]

“I could just leave them to cope on their own, I guess. But it wasn’t that easy. It’s wrong to think of constructs like me as half-bot, half-organic. Like the bot-half should just want to obey orders and do its job. And the organic part should want to protect itself and get the hell out of there. As opposed to the reality. Which was that I was one, whole confused entity.” (S1: E7 at 13:22, Murderbot internal dialogue)

And in the next episode:

“I was trying to calm myself down with some of my favorite episodes. But I couldn’t focus. It was like this new show, “Murderbot: And Its Selfish Ungrateful Hippie Clients,” had just taken over." (S1: E8 at 22:39, Murderbot internal dialogue)

I’d share some screenshots of the show, but sadly, screenshots are disabled on Apple devices. There are some workarounds though, and here’s the trailer:

Note that the trailer is from YouTube. It would be nice if Apple TV shows and movies could be embedded from Apple TV, without all the ads and other nonsense.


[1]: The “green world” and “closed world” ideas are from a book by Paul Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).


Honeywell Rabbit Sculpture

Honeywell Rabbit Sculpture (ca. 1965) at the Computer History Museum.

The Rabbit sculpture features on pages 48-49, in Core magazine (2015), published by the Computer History Museum.

The sculpture, made of resistors, was created around 1965, and part of an advertising campaign featured in Business Week magazine.Core 2015 CHM - Honeywell Rabbit Sculpture.


Univac ad - Fortune magazine, September 1956

“Univac - For Finding Lost Moons of Lost Dollars”

Early computers, from the scientific world to the business world.

Univac ad Fortune Sept 1956.

Video - Tour de France 2024

Video from our trip to the 2024 Tour de France, it’s 15min but quite entertaining!

We toured with Custom Getaways and had a wonderful time. They’re an official tour operator of the Tour de France, making us part of the tour with special access and events, amazing!

The video was taken with an iPhone 15 Pro and a DJI Osmo Pocket 3.


Photos - Tour de France 2024

Photos from our trip to the 2024 Tour de France, week three in Nice.

We toured with Custom Getaways and they were absolutely amazing 👌

Tour de France 2024


Hyper-Reality

Hyper-Reality on Vimeo was posted 9 years ago, but it feels like the not-so-distant future, like in the next 5 minutes.


iPad traffic lights Easter egg

Is it just me, or was there a pre-roll before Craig’s F1 driving showing an Easter egg of the iPad Window Controls? I think there was a quick image of the traffic light buttons on an iPad window floating by in the montage, but it’s not on the published video as far as I can tell.


6 out of 5 stars - Apple WWDC 2025

One of the best parts of the WWDC 2025 Keynote, “6 out of 5 ⭐️” by Allen Stone.


Visualizing History

Histography is a data visualization project by Martin Stauber, and it’s pretty amazing.

“Histography" is interactive timeline that spans across 14 billion years of history, from the Big Bang to 2015. The site draws historical events from Wikipedia and self-updates daily with new recorded events. The interface allows for users to view between decades to millions of years. The viewer can choose to watch a variety of events which have happened in a particular period or to target a specific event in time. For example you can look at the past century within the categories of war and inventions.

The project reminds me of The Fifth Element when Leeloo is researching “War." It’s not the interface, but the way so much information can be visualized in such a compact form – it can be a bit overwhelming.

(Revised and republished April 12th, 2025)


Deep LA Conference at The Huntington

I’ll be presenting a paper at the “Deep L.A.” graduate history conference taking place at The Huntington on October 3rd.

The conference is sponsored by UCLA and USC, with a focus on Los Angeles and Southern California regional history: http://lahistoryconference.tumblr.com

I’m presenting a portion of a chapter in my dissertation, which focuses on mainframes, paperwork, and the electrical utility company Southern California Edison during the postwar era.

LA History Conference logo - Deep LA
(Revised and republished March 28th, 2025)


The Census Has Always Been "Big Data"

The Census has always been “Big Data,” with or without computers and the automation of information.

Census and Sensibility: A Little History of Big Data at IEEE (Wayback Machine link)

Consider just one use of today’s big data with a deep history and a major impact on computational technology: keeping track of a country’s citizenry. This has often been accomplished through a periodic counting, or census. Many references to censuses exist in the ancient world, from Egyptian tomb inscriptions and the Hebrew Bible to, perhaps, most famously, the “worldwide” Roman census described in the Book of Luke in the New Testament.

The Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph register for the Census in Ancient Rome

The Virgin and Saint Joseph register for the census before Governor Quirinius. Byzantine mosaic at the Chora Church, Constantinople 1315–1320 – via Wikipedia

(Revised and republished March 28th, 2025)


Digital Imaginaries at AoIR

Something tells me I should have applied to the Association of Internet Researchers annual conference this year – the theme is “Digital Imaginaries.” The CFP has already passed, but the conference itself is coming up in late October, 21–24th, in Phoenix, Arizona. http://aoir.org/ir16/

The 16th annual Internet Research conference will provide an opportunity to question the ways that networked technologies are imagined and enter into collective imaginaries. In what ways do we culturally apprehend and make sense of digital media? These imaginaries influence our actual and potential uses of technology, as well as how we constrain, encourage, and dream about those uses.

AoIR sponsor image
(Revised and republished March 29th, 2025)


The New Video Arcades: Like A Working Museum, with Beer

Great article over at Polygon on new video game arcades: What it's Like Running an Arcade in 2015

It's a costly business, and it's no secret that many arcades have been looking for other ways to supplement that income, including combining arcades and bars together. "[Most people] have illusions that beer and arcades are a perfect gimmick," Wilson says. "If you don't love video games or know anything about repairing them or how to maintain them, you will lose your hat faster than the few minutes it takes to sign the lease on your new spot."

Brewcade interior.

It’s great that they list figures for the businesses too. When you’re in one of these places it seems like the money is just pouring in, but that’s not the financial reality.

Plus, you’ll need to be really good at repairing these old machines, and in ways that retain their authenticity.

“It’s very important to have a very good video game repairman,” Horne says. “It’s very important. Probably the number one thing. And bring your patience when it comes to sourcing the games.”

Prices for the cabinets can wildly vary, on average costing around $1,000 a unit. For example, Mario Kart can run $2,500 to $3,000. Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! can run $1,500. Mortal Kombat 2 has doubled in price since Horne started buying machines.

(via kottke.org)

(Revised and republished April 12th, 2025)


People Working in Computer Room

As part of my dissertation I’m working with the Southern California Edison Photographs and Negatives collection at the Huntington Library. The photographic collection is now available online at the Huntington Digital Library. A few years ago, when I first came across this collection, it was only available in-person on a single computer.

I stitched the two photos below into an animated gif, showing the transition within computerized space. The images are from “People working in computer room with 1” tape drives" in the SCE collection at the Huntington. These before and after photos taken in 1966 at SCE appear to show how people would fit alongside and interact with the mainframe computer.

Animated .gif showing people in a computer room at SCE in 1966

Photographs such as these often show many people in the room, mostly trying to look busy, with a few of them staring at equipment or pretending to use the machine. These staged photographs for internal use are similar to those used for marketing. In both cases the images are designed to show how people and computers would work together.

The mainframe in these photographs is a Control Data Corporation mainframe, and it appears to be a CDC 3200 system.

The Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley has a brochure for the CDC 3200 mainframe (PDF) available online as well.

(Revised and republished March 29th, 2025)


Univac 494 marketing photographs

I came across this Univac photograph online, showing three people working in a computer room. Using a reverse Google Image Search, it appears that this image and a few others like it were posted online around 2006. From there it looks like the pictures were blogged here and there, recently posted to Pinterest, then making their way to Instagram. I can’t seem to find the original image online, but this one looks like a scan of a partially damaged photo most likely used for marketing. It’s possible that this image could be printed in a brochure other other advertisement.

Auto-generated description: Two women and a man are working in a vintage computer room with large mainframe machines and a terminal.

The image above is a little fuzzy, but the mainframe appears to be a Univac 494. This would date the photograph to 1965 or 1966 or so. The additional photographs below offer a closer view of the mainframe console and its peripherals. There’s also more information on the Univac 494 at Ed Thelen’s website (photos linked below).


univac 494 console
Univac 494 console (photo link)

Univac 494 marketing diorama
Univac 494 marketing diorama (photo link)

Univac 494 mainframe room
Univac 494 mainframe room (photo link)

(Revised and republished March 30th, 2025)


I’ll See You Online: Teaching Assistants, Google Hangouts, and the Online Classroom

This paper was presented at the Cultural Studies Association annual conference in Riverside, CA in May of 2015.

When asked to be a teaching assistant for a fully online class at UC Riverside, my initial response was “of course…but what do I do?” The transition for teaching assistants into the digital world is an often overlooked aspect of online education, with little attention paid to issues of digital preparation, social media training, shifting labor demands, and digital pedagogy. In the physical classroom, teaching assistants play a vital role by grading papers, leading discussion sections, and most importantly, interacting with students. In the virtual classroom, however, TAs can easily become readers or aides that only grade papers and have little connection with students, or even the professor. In order to remedy this situation, in three online courses over the last two years in which I was a TA, the video conferencing service Google Hangouts was used for synchronous class discussions.

Read More →


Amazon: The New Consumer's Bible

From November 2013, Derek Thompson writing for The Atlantic: The Amazon Mystery: What America’s Strangest Tech Company Is Really Up To (Wayback Machine link)

Seriously: What is Amazon? A retail company? A media company? A logistics machine?...

In a way, this strategy isn’t new at all. It’s ripped from the mildewed playbooks of the first national retail stores in American history. Amazon appears to be building nothing less than a global Sears, Roebuck of the 21st century—a large-scale operation that aims to dominate the future of shopping and shipping.

From October 2014, also Derek Thompson for The Atlantic: What in the World Is Amazon? (Wayback Machine link)

...there is something devilishly seductive to the conveniences of digital capitalism that makes life better for us as consumers and worse for us as workers. Does buying diapers once from Amazon make one morally complicit in the working conditions of its warehouse employees? What about subscribing to Amazon Prime? Having an Amazon credit card?

(Revised and republished April 12th, 2025)


Anything Mechanical, Give it a Good Bash

“Percussive Maintenance,” by Duncan Robson

What a great supercut. Montage videos like this are good conversation starters, and they help run a thread through seemingly disparate genres of film and history.

(Revised and republished April 12th, 2025)


McConaughey Reacts to Star Wars

Matthew McConaughey’s reaction to Star Wars teaser #2 (an Interstellar and Star Wars remix)

I feel the same way, but I cried more.

I love when he puts his hand up, so good. I saw the reaction video a couple of days ago, and it had about 40,000 views. Now it’s close to 5 million.

Here’s the full trailer on YouTube.

(Revised and republished April 12th, 2025)