Got a letter from Bill G last night, and he’s now on Episode 20! I have already answered it, and managed to trick myself into making it a 100% thermally-typed letter, pasted up onto the Episode sheet. It’s kind of fun – I may do this for all my December Letters, just to switch it up a bit! 
Happy accident indeed! Back in the 80’s a bored kid working in a print shop like me, would occasionally play around with the Xerox copier and eventually discover that if you moved your copy subject around on the copier glass *while it’s scanning*, you could get really cool stretched-out, wavy effects in the resulting copies. It did not occur to me that the same thing applies when printing out a thermal print. Messing with the pace & angle of the paper feed while it’s printing will do the same effect. I see many exciting possibilities! (: 
Currently in the eyeholes: 
Connections! Yes! What an excellent show!
It’s been ages since I’ve seen the series.
I fell in love with his “Day the Universe Changed”. Burke was an exceptional presenter. (The companion books were great, too.)
Those series, along with Tim Hunkin’s “The Secret Life of Machines”, addicted me to English TV. (Yeah, that and an endless diet of *Doctor Who*… And maybe a dose of *Blake’s 7* for good measure. And *Hitchhiker’s Guide…”)
I sense binge watching coming up…
Heh, don’t forget “The Ascent of Man” :D
Huh… never even knew there WERE companion books!
Yep, somewhere around here I have the first “Connections” book. I think my dad bought me that one in the 80’s. (:
Just re-watched that whole series! Still fantastic!
Agree, though it made me a little sad when Burke’s prediction of “Fusion power within a couple years” and his puppy-like optimism about 1990’s Internet while he’s sitting in a Brazilian jungle village with his little Apple laptop and satellite phone browsing something that is obviously *not* 1990’s Internet didn’t really work out after all.
That 90s optimism is kinda… well….
I remember reading Brand’s _The Media Lab_ back in the day, and just sort of accepting, whole cloth, the techno-optimism, the idea that “technology is going to give us enlightened utopia”.. We were all going to be plugged into the world, endless information at our fingertips, a world of knowledge, interconnected…
And then Facebook happened. And Twitter. And… well, everything else.
“Puppy-like optimism” definitely says it…
However, I still get a kick out Burke’s presentation. Thinking more about “Day the Universe…”, some of the little “in-jokes” were awesome. ;-)
Heh, I remembered having “The Day The Universe Changed on DVD, but it’s not on my Jellyfin. You just made me go dig it out and rip it. :D