The innocence of the early World Wide Web – Part One

I was cleaning out some (very) old files today and came across a few articles I’d saved back in 1995 when the World Wide Web was starting to gain public notice. It’s fascinating to read how exciting and new the web was then. So hopeful and upbeat. Today, of course, we’re almost all connected to […]

PageMaker, Illustrator, and the advent of digital publishing

Who remembers Aldus PageMaker? I do; without it, I wouldn’t be celebrating a 35-year career as a graphic designer. In late 1987, I worked as a technician in the engineering department of a major commercial food service equipment company in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. We made the big refrigerators, freezers, and preparation tables that restaurants use […]

Hey Siri, what’s the “Weather Report?”

On my way to work this morning, I asked Siri “what’s the weather report?” and instead of telling me “cloudy and 35 degrees” I got “Birdland” by the jazz-fusion group Weather Report. I was not disappointed. This is one of my favorite tracks of all time. As much as Steely Dan defined the sound of […]

Cardboard Tigers: T. Walker, G. Wilson, Wockenfuss

Seventeenth and last in an occasional series. Collect ’em all! I’m working through a stack of Tigers baseball cards from the late 1960s and early 1970s, with occasional newer cards. Tom Walker pitched in 36 games for the 1975 Tigers, starting 9 of them and finishing 17 others. He had a 3-8 record, a 4.45 […]

MTV hits the big 4-0

Where were you 40 years ago? Were you anxiously awaiting the launch – at midnight on August 1, 1981 – of Music Television, better known as MTV? Were you born? If you did exist on Earth back then, were you old enough to remember this august (pun intended) moment in American cultural history? I am […]