Futurama Relationship-O-Meter

 Doing it... in the future!

Futurama's Dating Advice

When you think of Futurama's long, broken run, it was only when the show reached Hulu that one cast member was with another cast member long enough to spawn children. Amy Wong, of the Mars Wongs, somehow managed to get "reptilicus" (the spineless, cowering, weak, floppy, green, annoying alien aide to the magnificent Zapp Brannigan) to get her pregnant. 

Of all the creatures Amy could have dated... and there were many... Amy chose the most annoying, the most clueless and the most terrified gelatinous blob, by far the least useful of any character, including washbucket. So ignoring the unsightly mess that Hulu made (a celebration of trends that died 1000 years earlier), which of the characters was the most prolific at banging the other characters? Gotta be Bender, right?

 

 

You'll notice that Kif is the least popular one here, even the Professor has more luck with the women. Still, Kif joins Amy's other workplace lovers for a total of 7... good enough for third place. Joint first place is Fry and Bender with 10 lovers each, but only Amy has slept with everyone at Planet Express.

Leela bring up the rear with a disappointing 5 lovers, of which two are too brief to count, one is with a girl and the other two will sleep with anything that doesn't say no. Even worse, Zapp's paltry 3 lovers comes dangerously close to Kif's two, but at least he slept with Amy!

The lesson to learn here is this: sleep with as many people outside your work as you can, then sleep with as many people at work as you can. That's a lot of sleeping but fortunately sleeping at work is fine.

What no-one tells you about making an ebook

 

Making kindle / ebooks from Word documents

 

From 2020-2025 I wrote 3 novels, a trilogy, with some unusual formatting. Text boxes, images with captions, big text, you know, standard book fare, I thought.

Turning those docx files into .azw3 (kf8) or .epub was an absolute nightmare. In the end I had to reformat all 3 books. Here are the shortcuts I learned, that has NO online source, not even Reddit.

If you’re having conversion hassles, these points may soothe your journey.

 

So, first off, the word doc is in fact a website. You can view the website by choosing ‘Web view’

Amazon format, kf8, azw3 etc… is also a website. And epub is a website, too. Rename any epub to .zip and extract to see the site’s files: html, xml, css and jpegs.

Problem 1: Tables and floating boxes are not supported. No tables, no boxes of any kind, everything must be inline.

Problem 2: Tabs are ignored and multiple line returns are rendered as a single line return.

To create a one line gap, sometimes you have to put a white character on that line, like a period.

Problem 3: Reflow

To get a chapter to start on a fresh page, the previous chapter needs a page break. However, do not have that break as the last line on the page, it needs a gap after it.

Red- bad. Green-good.

Despite this, you’ll still get the odd blank page at the end of a chapter, but if you resize the window, that goes away. 

Problem 4: LOTS of blank pages inserted randomly. I encountered this when viewing on an actual Kindle; removing all boxes and tables etc. solved this issue.

Problem 5: Amazon Kindle Create is garbage.

You’re a lot better off making all changes in Word then converting.

Problem 6: Weird hidden shit

Word is riddled with issues regarding tracking changes, hiding things etc. Use the ‘web view’ view to iron out those foibles.

Problem 7: Styles

Everything in your Word doc needs to have a style. Ebooks love styles because everything becomes CSS. For example,don't just make some text bold but rather set it as a quick style, i.e. normal+bold, then apply the style. Styles are exerything.

Problem 8: Fonts

Th newer Kindles can read html5 but the older ones battle along without support for colour images, tables, webfonts, online libraries, local libraries, video or even a zoom function on images. Ebooks are the same, just lower resolution and elastic aspect ratio. For a consistent layout you may wish to keep with the base fonts (Arial, sans serif, Times, serif, monospace, Georgia, Tahoma, Verdana) or at least not use any weird fonts downloaded from some random site.

 

All said and done, if you have some html skills then getting the final ebook to look the way you want is fairly easy.  Editing in Calibre is exactly the same as coding a very basic site.

 

Bonus 1: Animated gifs play in the ebook, which means animation in the book… awesome.

Bonus 2: Muck about in html with outdated tags like <marquee> and get animation styles to display, mouseover events to display hidden text and all the fun stuff you don’t see in ebooks.

Haight Ashbury - The Epicentre of Hippie Counterculture

 

One Wall to Rule Them All

On the wall at the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic is a mural, a sort of collage, cut ‘n pasted there by the hippies who hung out there between 1967 and 1969. It is old now, faded, marred with graffiti and other grime manifest over the last 60 years but it is still there  (and, coincidentally, at my place albeit ‘like new’)   and it has an interesting story to tell, one you won’t find anywhere else.

It was my task to recreate this mural for a TV show about serial killers – in this instance, Charles Manson. Working with very little reference, I set about making the enormous artwork in precisely the same manner as the hippies did back in 1967 – by using the free posters Bill Graham would deposit there.

Bill Graham & LSD

Bill Graham was the name on every poster which he used partly for promotion but principally to market direct to users of LSD. Bill’s formula was to host benefit events, which skirt a good deal of the bylaws, and so offered to hold benefit gigs for the clinic, where LSD and his market intersected.  The Summer of Love emerged amongst all this and the rest is history, but know that here, in this room, under this artwork, was the epicentre of Haight Ashbury and the principal role it played in the emergence of the hippie counterculture.

Bill Graham’s story you’ll find on Wikipedia, but that’s the ‘official’ story. The wealthy black man who owned the Fillmore auditorium had conservative values; Graham’s first few gigs, being benefits, made the cut but it was unlikely he would be fine with back-to-back shows from Friday noon to Monday noon, a for-profit venture which hinged on the supply of LSD and the engineering of the first large-scale counterculture in US history. Graham took the lease and then, mysteriously, the wealthy black guy was murdered! How unbelievably fortunate for Graham, and lucky too that he had the support of the LSD supply chain, which would naturally remove any hinderances to moving product in volume.

Graham gave out free posters at the gigs and naturally dropped off a stack of the things at the clinic, a marketing move. It served to attract an audience and also inform the supply chain of the sorts of numbers involved. A popular show would need a good 30,000 tabs of fresh blotter, or some 250 sheets be made available, and the clinic was the only place of central exchange.

The Clinic

The Clinic naturally didn’t describe itself as a LSD hub but as a social welfare place, something of a do-good rehab, a medical support service.  However, people like Manson, who was permanently high, hung out there pretty much because you got free acid and would meet a number of runaways, drawn to the legend of the district. He could conscript girls and have them do pretty much whatever he said; the acid was free, the concerts were free and there was no chance of getting in trouble with the law.

So the Clinic was the hub, no big whoop. Our posters on the wall tell us that Jan 1967 to Dec 1968 – those two years – were the height of the fad and the concerts outgrew the hall. Haight Ashbury became a magnet for every part-time criminal, chancer, vagrant and addict to descend in great numbers. The Clinic had to start to distance itself from the drug trade as the district started turning into slum, with all the unwanted attention this brings, so in 1969 the LSD transactions took place off premises. This marked the end of the poster series and the start of the whole thing winding down. The hippies trekked off to Woodstock and Haight Ashbury started cleaning up.

The Posters

These aren’t just any posters, they are works of art and core to the psychedelic movement in how it came to be defined. They epitomize, and illustrate, legendary artists in a unique age and gave young people a voice.

 

Ladybird Books "The Computer" (1971)

 

Computers are a new invention, having been developed by both American and Soviet authorities in their quest for space exploration and more deadly weapons of war. This book is to help the beginner understand what computers are and how they may affect our daily lives. Written by Manly Mann PhD, Head Curator, The Cabbage Museum of Calculating Machines and David Scary, PhD, Professor of Theoretical Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Assisted by Blames Wife, Architect, and Big Huge Robinson with Herald Bitwomb MRSCIS, Fine Artists. This book uses the new Linotype Hell Doppler-Laser Configurator with Pure Optical Laser Beams encased within Powerful Electromagnets. This technology enables the typist to preview and adjust any aspect of the typesetting before it runs on press. Our grateful thanks to the 485 technicians, operators, electricians, electronicists, management and staff of the Linotype-Hell complex. The publishers wish to thank the following for their contributions: Waddom Ajcess Mepory, Inv ENIAC and the two-bit bus Whoever invented Television, Dr F. Machine, author of “Potential Transmission Principles” Whoever invented the Telephone The Philips Magnetic Tape Manufacturing Facility, Barbados Copyright 1971 Ladybird Books, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
INTRODUCTION Following WWII, the arms race and the space race, it has emerged that a new type of technology now has a distinct development path. These machines are called ‘computers’. Much like calculators, computers can calculate according to a set of pre-defined instructions. These instructions are accumulated in sets known as 'programs' by highly-skilled demigods whose minds don’t work like ours. This proved useful when going to the moon, although to make sure it worked properly, four technicians had to go with. By Apollo 14, the on-board computers were down to 0.02 mps (mistakes per second), from the original 64 mps prototype that blew up the Death Star. RELAXING Working with large numbers, such as banks do, places great stress on the computer. The operators have to work slowly and gently, as not to upset the delicate balance. Before relaxing the computer, the operator backs up the data by writing it down, or punching holes in cards. FILES A ‘file’ is like a book. To find the file, the operator opens the bin and inverts it, spreading the contents out to make searching easier. Search spiders assist in locating the information you’re looking for, but are prone to exploding if accidentally learning French. The left-over information is vacuumed by bees and returned to the master store for verification.
HISTORY 1,200 BC Archaeological findings in the ruins of Cheops’ tomb included a ‘machine of unknown purpose’. This was later discovered to be an early form of sex swing, capable of fantastic mechanical manoeuvre. Such mechanics were the precursors to Mark Cabbage’s first Calculon, The Impressive Deducing Engine Mark Three, since three of them were called Mark. 1625 This engine was a revelation, replacing hundreds of pre-schoolers in factories. Cabbage went on to invent the punched card for self-playing pianos, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, then applied that to his engine. This replaced all the schoolchildren in the factories, and the young adults started fearing for their jobs. 1642 Following Cabbage’s death at the hands of an angry mob, Blaise Pascal invented the Automatic Incredible Calculating Super-Brain, a mechanical calculator that could add. Tabulator Htllerith combined the designs into one monster machine, the seven-ton behemoth “HTLLERITH ONE” with self-suffocating vacuum energy dispersal unit. The unit could do the work of 117 pre-schoolers and 25 schoolchildren at once, and yet only making 4.5 mps.
DIFFERENT DESIGNS As the machines evolved, they became more complex. To simplify matters, the functions of the machine are broken up into modules connected by cables. MODULAR The key modules are: The Brain, The Brain Mark II, The Store, The Input Device, the Output Device, Kittens, Bees and Dirk Benedict. Scientology is optional. The machine is also becoming more compact. As mechanical gears gave way to switches, then valves, transistors and ultimately the Integrated Circuit, the machine gets progressively smaller. As such, at this rate, by 1992 all the world’s railways will be controlled by a machine not visible to the naked eye. A higher than usual death toll on the rails may indicate the machine has a malfunction and locating it will not be easy. A computer room is the dust-free environment where the modules are installed. The layout is open, so no hanky-panky can go on, although most of the cabinets are empty and they could go in there if they wanted to. The more modern ultra-super-compact layout has cabinets that a couple would find uncomfortable, but not impossible. The newest machine today is the Lexington 2000, with sub-cabinets to harness the excess energy of children so that they tire out and want to sleep. Up to 2,000 Lexingtons can be daisy-chained to keep as many as 4,000 people busy generating answers to puzzles, a process called ‘mining’. The next-generation machine, the Flexington, will work much like the Vibraton Calculon 1000 but have far more space for the bees.
MODERN USES FOR COMPUTERS If there’s a way to automate it, it will be automated. All the jobs we either hate or are useless at, machines will undoubtedly save us so we can get fat in peace. BALLISTICS & SPACE EXPLORATION No more hit-and-miss style artillery, let’s see if we can predict what will happen. The moon is a lot easier to miss than you might think. NAVIGATION: Lost? Well what you need is the computer! You’ll recognise it, it looks like a building. SCIENCE FICTION: At last! The machines will FINALLY take over and we’ll get some much better sci-fi going. BANKING If you can’t count, don’t trust anyone and wish to be completely secure, just computer-ize it all and pray there isn’t a power cut. PROPAGANDA Reach more people faster once everyone has one of these two point two million dollar installations in their basement or wing. PRINTING: Printers today use the monkey-hammer array, with either 32 or 64 monkeys arranged in a line, a wheel or a ball. POWER: Once the computers have it, it ain’t coming back.
THE FLOW OF INFORMATION In computing, flowcharts describing the logic are of enormous value. A flowchart looks like this: The computer, as a flowchart, looks like the page opposite. “Meat’ does NOT mean penis, it stands for Multi Extraneous Aligned Telelinguistics, also known as typing. Kittens are not essential but are known to improve the capacity of the machine, meaning it breaks down less often.

THE INFORMATION STORE WHY STORE INFORMATION? To get people used to the idea so that eventually you can charge them for it. ANTI-DATA CORRUPTION To verify all data, the bees  use pollen to simulate a simulation. When operator ‘A’ input doesn’t agree with the verification from operator ‘B’, the terminals lock and the operators are electrocuted. DATA CLEANING Data washing and Data rinsing are the same thing: manipulation, correction, invention and eradication are the four primary functions. THE HARD DRIVE The big cabinets can have as many as 4 romping adults or ten dogs. Wheelchair access is at the far side panel. The ports are camera mounts so technicians can monitor the activity level on a new invention: the Betamax  Tape Capture and Archive Magnetic Ferric Flying Binary Dipole Super System (not in picture). BACKUP On application, the Church of Scientology will etch your data onto large silver disks and blast them into low-Earth orbit, where they will remain until required. You may request to be blasted aloft at the same time, but the return journey is your problem.
PUPPY CONTROL SYSTEM No-one knows how, why or what a puppy control system is, but every computer must have one. This limits the computer lifespan to one year, owing to the puppy growing up. Puppy control is the master system override which keeps the populations of kittens and bees under close scrutiny. Note the under-desk sub-cabinets for the bees, which circulate from fresh (at right) to spent (at left). The operator is getting ready to load fresh bees. Note that, like puppies, computers must rest every few minutes but be furiously frantic when awake. The flowchart pictured here is a model of the theory of computers, to remind the operators of what they’re trying to do. This system is known as the Puppy-Ultimate Primary Processing Yarn (P.U.P.P.Y.) as opposed to the Kink It Then Try Enunciate Now (K.I.T.T.E.N.) method, or the ever-popular Binary Extreme Ejection System (B.E.E.S.)
THE MACHINE BRAIN For decades, mankind has been striving to recreate the human brain, forgetting that all it really requires is sex. However, scientists feel the artificial brain will be cleverer than a person, so to make the artificial brain they need an artificial brain. THE ULTIMATE GOAL The purpose of Artificial Intelligence would be, firstly, to improve itself. Self-awareness is encapsulated in autonomy. The next task will be to build better versions of itself. To expedite matters, we might as well start worshipping it now. XEROGRAPHY This is a dry photocopy technique which draws a paper ribbon past a bee hive, tapping the container with a hammer and making the bees angry. Through a very complicated process, the bees are transformed into parts of kitten, which then self-assemble and carry out the important role of moving the data along. S.C.R.E.E.N. Sight-Corrected Rectangular Enhanced Emission Notification is a system which blasts electrons at your face, then puts a very fat piece of glass in the way before trapping the electrons in a vacuum. It’s all terribly safe. The electrons are murdered 50 times a second to ensure a nice, flicker-free, miniature monochrome baby television.
WOMEN AND COMPUTERS Computers have made it abundantly plain that they prefer female operators, for reasons known only to themselves.  While a male may be as productive, he will on average be electrocuted 18 times per hour, compared to zero times per hour for the typical female. NO FOSSIL FUELS The enormous power used by these machines is offset by the Kinetic Energy Reclamation Unit (or Hydrocarbon Reclamation Unit) which uses the movements of the operators to derive operational power. HARD READER Input happens sometimes via punched card, which is usually crumpled bits of card. These and other hard things are jammed in there in order to be computed. Somehow. AUTO SPANK For the adventurous, another peripheral with dubious origin and mythical purpose. Part of the ‘Plug-n-Play’ paradigm of all such machines, a.k.a. ‘networking’.
NEW ERA OF SURVEILLANCE As soon as everything connects to everything else, we’ll be able to watch our wives have their affairs from the comfort of the office. REVENGE Imagine a war with no casualties! Wars of the future will be fought inside computers, so it is essential that operators make use of only the strongest bees. DIY SSS The Do-It-Yourself Secret Spy Satellite kit comes complete with Titano-Cronik Magnets, enabling you to slap the thing on the side of any rocket headed to orbit. Inside, a monkey with a camera takes the photos and returns once the film is used up. TOWERS These systems (“tele-processing”) rely on tall masts to broadcast the images, so you need to build lots of them, the taller the better.
COMPUTERS AND LOVE While all sorts of activity is useful, people having sex when strapped into the cabinets provide the most efficient energy with no pollution problems. Operators are often seen too exhausted to move, or perhaps electrocuted / stimulated too often. The work is difficult and tiring and only the most dedicated make it to the change of shift. The kittens are known to make use of pornography to motivate the operators, but little is known about the material, where it came from and why it is so effective. The bees inside the cabinets reproduce automatically and only need to be topped up periodically.
THE FUTURE Imagine a future where computers do everything for us, and all we have to do is lie there. The diagram facing page shows a theoretical setup for continuous orgasm, which could be the most popular activity in the year 2000. For such an on-demand system, operators would be called on to service many people simultaneously, meaning the entire city could be attended to by a single operations centre. Continued miniaturisation of computers means they can be inserted into the body to perform various functions, like zapping cancer, viruses, sperm, impure thoughts and inhibitions.

The Pitch: Animated Pilot, sound vs light

 The importance of sound

One of my back projects is an animated series and the one key aspect which tripped me up was the theme. Unlike any other aspect of the production, the pilot bears the theme which remains with the show; it sets the tone, provides backstory, has a memorable hook, has noises reflecting the genre or style, has broad appeal, is unique, is short, is exciting, builds anticipation and above all, wows the execs at the network – or at least, doesn’t clash with their values and might have promise.
So, no pressure then.
I am of the opinion that 75% of any presentation has the power of delivery in sound. Sound is the most important aspect when communicating emotion, it has greater power to move than the visuals do. So sound is really important, and I have experience with sound and could probably do it, but I don’t think I’d do a very good job.
So far the writing (for 3 seasons, to circumvent any major character changes), the visual character development, animation components and scenic back plates are all made by me. The animation, and the voices, can be AI  for the pilot. Those can, and do, change.
However…
The theme tune, there’s a stumbling block.
Then…
On Youtube, in the shorts, a Canadian musician mucking about with mini-synths - lo-fi, experimental, wide-range, all-mood demos -  and there, in the midst of this lot, not one but two short compositions which could easily be the theme. I haven’t thought of the project in 3 years yet from the first chord, these found that je ne sais quoi which instantly managed, somehow, to tick all the boxes.

The unimportance of video

In the 90’s, Turner bought Cartoon Network and created Adult Swim. The idea was to have a 24-hour cartoon channel, meaning anything running between 10pm and 5am needn’t be mainstream, adult-oriented toons, really, MTV style. One excellent show was Space Ghost, a 1968 character recycled from the Hanna-Barbera archives, which Turner also owned. Space Ghost aired on Adult Swim at midnight on a Sunday - hence a budget of almost zero.
But the show needed a sound guy! Because Zorak, the arch-enemy, was now the band and the hero Space Ghost was now a talk show host (the idea of a talk show is genius, because it requires virtually no animation). Aside from the theme and outro, you need stabs or stings which are the fanfare preceding the guest, or accompanying a joke. So Williams Street, the production company, get their friend Sonny Rollins, who plays guitar, in to do all that, and his band riffs the theme and a few stings and there’s the sound.
The result is the poorly-animated mantis, scaled poorly, in low resolution, whose mouth moves randomly and whose arms move randomly over a keyboard, to imitate drums and guitars. The animation is so bad, it practically doesn’t relate to the sound at all, and the sound is nothing more than strangled noise.
And yet it airs because none of those things matter.
What is important:
1.    Zorak is now the band
2.    Zorak hates Space Ghost
3.    Some sort of musical sting announces the guest
4.    The sting relates to the theme
Visually, the scene does not need to be congruent with the sound and for this reason, I set the sound down first and use that to guide the visuals. It's always sound-first.

Why pitch a pilot?

Does it make sense for a show to generate 1.5M views on release while a clip from that show generates 15M views on Youtube? Surely vertical shorts, which require no music or theme and get auto-dubbed, at sub 30-second inserts, are a LOT easier to make?
A pitch can always be cut up for Youtube, so that’s the go-to (all vertical format).

However, if successful, the pilot (and costings) lead to an order for 1 or 2 seasons. Conservatively the budget per episode would be under $200K. All of that will wind up on Youtube, eventually, sliced to shorts, but a network or streaming service will pay for it and afterwards, you still get paid every time it syndicates. There are many advantages without ruling anything else out.

The downside is the first season analytics, projected, factored against the cost analysis, is the metric which determines if the show will be renewed, and if so, for how long. The projections simply predict when the metric falls below threshold and simply does not order that season be produced. Those thresholds are fluid, leading to shows being cancelled, then rebooted then cancelled again, then rebooted by a different network with lower thresholds, then cancelled. Then everyone goes back to what they were doing before.

The AKAI MPK Mini Mk.3 Limited Edition

I haven’t used it in like 2 years and it deserves more than that! Maybe I should give it to the Canadian musician and see if I can't bribe him into helping with the theme. I'd feel better knowing it was being useful.