The Birthday Trilogy, Part 4.

Photo courtesy of MasterClass

Through the combination of a real sense of purpose and an enormous amount of work on behalf of a lot of people, we can make impossible things happen.

Chris Hadfield, Masterclass

Dear Colin:

Hello again!  Sorry to hear about your cold - I hope that you can take some time off over the holidays to recover.  Also sorry to hear about the Ralph and wine disaster, which, somehow, sounds like another typical episode from the Campbell Brothers Chronicles.

It's been a few months since my thank-you note regarding your birthday gift, so I thought I should take a few minutes to bring you up to speed on progress.

I'm a little behind on the schedule that I laid out at the time, but, as John Lennon points out, life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. I strongly needed a break from scholastic activity after my online safety course*, and as such didn't sign up for the Chris Hadfield Masterclass on Space Exploration until just Thursday of this last week.  However, I'm now part of Commander Hadfield's virtual classroom, and I have to say that I have absolutely no regrets about my purchase.

The course is made up of just over seven and a half hours of video**, a downloadable 97 page PDF workbook which also links the student to a wide variety of pertinent content, an online discussion group, and an Office Hours module for submitting questions to the Commander.

(And, to be honest, it's the last two that really make the investment worthwhile - I'm more than confident that a quick search through the shadier parts of the Internet would have revealed an archive containing downloadable copies of both the videos and the workbook.)

I'm quite impressed by both the quality and the quantity of the course material, and as you know, I set high standards for this sort of thing. The production values for the videos are superb, and with over seven and a half hours of content, I'm looking forward to hearing the Commander's experienced and anecdotal viewpoint on being an astronaut and space exploration in general.  At this point in his career, Hadfield is a seasoned professional speaker, and his manner in front of the camera is natural and sincere - he's the perfect instructor for a course like this.

The accompanying workbook is well laid out, and the photos are an excellent bonus.  I don't think that any of the linked content is unique to the course, but the manner in which it's tied into the lesson structure gives it more relevancy than it would have as the results of a random Web search.

It's obvious that I'm not going to walk away from the last lesson and expect that NASA will add me to the next mission to the ISS, but I don't think anyone would expect that - the course is intended to offer some privileged insight into the process from the viewpoint of someone with a lot of experience from a wide variety of involvement, and as such, it's exactly what it should be.

In the case of my planned swordplay class at Vancouver's Academie Duello, procrastination actually ended up working well for me.  The centre is having a Christmas sale on their classes, and I was able to purchase a gift coupon for a Longsword Fundamentals course that brought the normal $135 fee down to $99 plus tax.  As you know, I was originally going to sign up for a January course, but the last couple of months have not been terribly cooperative in terms of gym attendance, so my new plan is to take January for a month of preparatory workouts, and then switch to longsword in February.

And that's the news, my friend.  Take care of yourself, and happy holidays to you and Jennifer!

- Sid

* Just for the record, I managed an A, with an average mark of 92%.  I might have done better if it hadn't had so much overlap with my honeymoon.

** A total which I added up on my own for 29 videos ranging in length from just under three minutes to almost 30 - and honestly, base 60 math is a nuisance.

Geekmas 2018: "... if all else fails, surprise me!"

In my Geekmas 2018 gift list posting, I provided the usual list of possible gifts, but, in a bit of a departure from previous years, I urged potential gift buyers to surprise me.  After all, it’s a big marketplace, and I’m not buying as many books as I used to, picking a novel that I don’t already own is not the challenge that it once was.

In the case of Brennan, this year’s workplace Secret Santa, he successfully accepted the challenge, and presented me with a copy of Mage Against The Machine, by Shaun Barger. It’s his first novel, and from what I can gather it’s a possibly young adult genre mix of magic and technological post-apocalyptic AI warfare.  Because it’s a first novel, I’ve got nothing to go on regarding Mr. Barger’s work, so I’m looking forward to seeing what he’s come up with.

Now all we have to do is work on the "secret" part of the process -  thanks again, Brennan, but writing your name on the gift tag does somewhat take away from the mystery of it all.

- Sid

"Oliver Queen is a hero."

My lovely wife Karli recently spent a four day weekend in Palm Springs with her family, but other commitments prevented me from going with her, so I headed out to YVR on the Sunday night she returned so that I could greet her when she got off the plane, as one does when one is in love.

In the fullness of time, the plane landed, taxied to the gate, and so on, so I left my seat in the lounge and moved to the railing beside the exit to the secure area corridor so that I could see her as soon as she came through the automatic doors (again, as one does when one is in love).

As the first person from the flight came through, a bearded man in his 30s, a group of about a dozen people rushed to the railing and he stopped to chat with them.

I was initially a bit puzzled as to what was going on, until I realized that the passenger in question was Stephen Amell, the Canadian actor who plays Oliver Queen/Green Arrow on CW's flagship DC Comics show Arrow*. As they crowded to the railing and he worked his way along the group, I suddenly realized that I was now part of the lineup, and, feeling a bit embarrassed, actually moved away from the railing so as to avoid having to explain I was just there to meet my wife should he offer to pose for a photo.

That aside, I have to give him full credit for rapport with his fans – he's much more pleasant in person than YouTube™ clips of him breaking bones in Star(ling) City would suggest. At 10:45 at night, after getting off a delayed flight from Palm Springs, he cheerfully signed photos, comics and action figure packaging (including some Funko boxes), posed for selfies, and graciously accepted a vintage Green Arrow comic book as a gift from one obviously dedicated follower. If anyone in the entertainment industry is looking for a role model on how to interact with their fan base, they could do a lot worse than taking some lessons from Mr. Amell.

 

Some research demonstrated that his generosity extends past late-night selfie sessions.  Over the past few years, he's worked closely and constantly with a variety of charity groups to raise over a million dollars for causes ranging from cancer to mental health and children's hospice care. Full points, Stephen - I know it's a cliché, but it's gratifying to see that someone playing a comic book character can be a hero in real life as well. 

Which only leaves me with one question – how did they know he’d be on that flight?

- Sid

* I don't really follow the Arrowverse, but as with a lot of things, I just sort of keep track of what's going on as part of my general geekness.