Steven Howell Wilson's Blog, page 43

Emotional Property

I know I promised part two of my Lost Horizon musings this week. I've made a lot of notes on what I wanted to say, and have been reading the book and the screenplay, as well as acquiring a biography of screenwriter Robert Riskin, along the way.

But Friday a senseless tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT caught the attention of most of us. I've stayed off Facebook; I've avoided watching television; I've carefully picked what news outlets I've read.

I've...

REVIEW: Capra & Riskin's Lost Horizon (1937)

My father introduced me to Lost Horizon. I had heard of Shangri-La as a small child, because it was mentioned in Star Trek at least once. James Hilton's fabled hidden utopia had also influenced the mythos of Marvel Comics' Iron Fist. I had some passing familiarity of it. I recall the movie (the remake, I was to learn) airing on NBC just after Christmas, 1977. We were spending Christmas with my father's parents, and the only TV channel they received was the NBC affiliate out of Gre...

Making Time

"How do you get so much done? Where do you find the time?"

It's the most common question I get asked, except maybe for, "Would you have the time to show me how to (fill in any IT related task you care to imagine)?"

Well, I don't reckon I find time. I have the same number of seconds to use that everyone else does. But my time is my most valuable possession, and I'm miserly with it. Downright mean and stingy.

My experience is that most of us tell ourselves the same...

Review - On the Blue Comet by Rosemary Wells

I picked up this book while on one of my regular bookstore prowls, this one at Constellation Books in Reisterstown, which I've mentioned in previous articles. I was a guest of the store, and wanted to be a good guest, meaning I wanted to leave with some of their books in my hand and some of my money in their cash register--my small contribution to an important small business.

In the days of eBooks, when titles from sane publishers can be purchased for a fraction of the cost of the hardback...

Crashplan!

Ask anyone, how often do you back up your computer? The answers fall into a few basic categories:

- I have automatic, scheduled, online backups.

- My system backs up automatically, but only when I plug in the USB drive.

- I backup everything manually, but I do it once a week.

- I really should backup more often.

- I backup my important files to a flash drive or (shudder!) floppy.

- Um, I don't... but you can still get my data off the hard drive that just crashed, right?

- What's a backup?

The...

Henry F. Potter - Crony Capitalist

"That's Henry F. Potter, the richest and meanest man in the county." With these words we are introduced to the villain of It's a Wonderful Life, the quintessential American Christmas movie. There are several versions of A Christmas Carol, of course, but Dickens was from England. No matter how many dozen American versions of the film there have been, it's a British Christmas story, not an American one. It has almost no sense of humor, and little warmth toward humanity. Everyone's...

Discussion - The Walking Dead Issue 100

I try to avoid negative reviews of works. This time, though, I think there's a lot of intellectual meat in a discussion of a work I had a very bad reaction to, and why that same work has been overwhelmingly popular. Here we go. Below are vague spoilers. No names mentioned, but some events described.

I’ve been behind on the graphic novel series The Walking Dead. Way behind. Volume 17 is due out next month, and, as of last week, I had read through Volume 8. Ordinarily, I’m not no...

Birthdays - Part Two: My Uncle Bob

This is part two of two. Last week I wrote about my Dad. This week I have a piece I wrote for my Uncle Bob's 80th Birthday. This goes into a memory book my Aunt Nelda is putting together for him. Sadly, I missed the party, which was 500 miles away in our hometown, Burnsville, NC.

Whenever anyone asks me how I got started with a lot of the crazy things I do today, I often find my answer beginning, "Well, you see my Uncle Bob..."

Bob and I are both youngest sons. He came along ten y...

Birthdays - Part One

This month, two very important people in my life hit milestone birthdays. My father turned 90 on October 4th, and my Uncle Bob, his brother, turns 80 this coming Wednesday. It occurs to me that I should say something about these remarkable people here, since they’ve had such an effect on who I am. This week, I’ll talk about my Dad. Some years ago, I wrote an article for his hometown paper about him, when the local School Board wanted to recognize his contributions to education in...

Review - Atlas Shrugged: Part II

I'm very excited about the release of this film. When Part I came out, it was on a very limited release, and critics who cannot put their political agenda aside did all they could to kill this baby in the womb. I trekked through a torrential downpour to the Bowtie Harbor Theater in Annapolis to see it, arriving late as I had to first document for Google how wrong their directions to the theater were. My group just barely managed to find seats in a packed house, this being opening night at...