Somewhere around 2007 I found my tribe. That seems like a strange thing to say now because in some ways that tribe doesn’t even exist anymore. For a brief moment there was an online community that merged around the idea of “skeptical activism.” …

One day I did something in Windows 10 and suddenly I had no windows borders. That may sound trivial, but without the border, it was really difficult to tell which overlapping window I was working in and I frequently clicked menu items in windows that were behind the one I…

This is a strange time. As I write this we’re in the middle of a worldwide pandemic and things seem weird, desperate and likely to get worse before they get better. And here we are on April 1st — a day that I’ve often used to fool my mom or…

Part 6 — Clues Blues This is part 6 of a 6 part series about a mystery, a puzzle, a game, and a lost treasure. Previous Posts can be found here: part 1, part 2, part 3, Part 4, Part 5 People have been discussing the Quo Vadis puzzle in various little corners of the…

Part 5 — The Puzzle of Quo Vadis (Spoiler-Free Version) This is part 5 of a 6 part series about a mystery, a puzzle, a game, and a lost treasure. Previous Posts can be found here: part 1, part 2, part 3, Part 4 This is, to the best of my research, a list of the puzzle clues from the…

Part 4 — Paging Dr. Langdell This is part 4 of an 6 part series about a mystery, a puzzle, a game, and a lost treasure. Previous Posts can be found here: part 1, part 2, part 3 [Note: This is not the version of this section that I wanted to publish. I conducted a very…

Part 3 — Finding Steve This is part 3 of a 6 part series about a mystery, a puzzle, a game, and a lost treasure. Previous Posts can be found here: part 1, part 2 It turns out that a lot of people are named Steve Chapman. I’m usually adept at finding contact information for…

Part 2 — RUN This is part 2 of a 6 part series about a mystery, a puzzle, a game, and a lost treasure. Previous Posts can be found here: part 1 Video games have changed tremendously over the past 34 years, but many of the features we take for granted in modern games…

Part 1 — LOAD Every mystery tale needs a setting. This mystery comes to life in England in 1984, but to understand the context, we need to go back a few years before that. The mystery at the heart of this research was buried in a computer game, but I don’t believe it would…