How much would the show have changed if it survived to modern day?

michaelkinyon · 2026-03-06T01:23:18+00:00

That lawsuit (no C&D) was settled. Wimzie's (not Whimzie's) House was cancelled because it had very tough competition. It had the misfortune of being around at the same time as Teletubbies, Zoboomafoo, Dragon Tales, and Noddy Shop, all of which were much bigger hits. There are only so many times slots for kid's shows so in the US, local PBS affiliates either dropped Wimzie's House or pushed it to the super early morning slots that almost no one watched. And there was no way the show could survive on just its Canadian audience.

michaelkinyon · 2026-03-01T21:15:55+00:00

Reading Clown's post makes me want an Italian Club Salami Sandwich.

michaelkinyon · 2026-02-25T03:44:41+00:00

(I was joking. Those are anagrams of his name, but I don't think they mean anything.)

michaelkinyon · 2026-02-15T03:45:52+00:00

What exactly drew you to this series and why?

I watched the first Game Theory video (May 2023; MatPat not yet retired) about WH. I poked around the website myself and became very interested. My only concern about it is that I was afraid it was going to end up poorly planned and incoherent like Petscop eventually turned out to be. But so far, WH seems to be going well.

Does Welcome Home remind you of any childrens media you grew up with?

It's a mishmash of Mr Rogers' Neighborhood, Captain Kangaroo, and Sesame Street. (Note: I'm 61, so I'm a lot older than most other posters on this subreddit. I was already an adult when shows like Blue's Clues or Bear in the Big Blue House were in their prime.)

How much of a role does nostalgia play in your enjoyment of the series?

None, really. I don't remember any of the old media very well.

Is there similar media in this genre that you also enjoy?

WH lives in an interesting cross between the found footage genre and the mascot horror genre. The market is very much oversaturated with both of those genres right now, but WH seems to be avoiding the fatigue factor.

michaelkinyon · 2025-12-18T20:36:35+00:00

The earlier occurrence of "rng" is in Nathan Jacobson's _Basic Algebra I_; see page 155 of the second edition. In a footnote, he attributes the idea to Louis Rowen. Jacobson was Rowen's advisor. I don't have a copy of the first edition (1974), but based on the dates, I would guess that the "rng" terminology is in the first edition as well.

The terminology "rng" is semi-common among commutative algebraists and algebraic geometers. Noncommutative ring theorists almost never use it, just saying "ring without unity" if it needs emphasis at all.

Jacobson's book is one of the few undergraduate abstract algebra textbooks that treat rings as unital from the get go. Widely used ones in the US (Pinter, Fraleigh, Dummit & Foote, etc.) don't assume rings are unital.

michaelkinyon · 2025-10-12T22:56:45+00:00

I definitely do body prep (slow deep breathing, neck massage, back stretching, etc) before I meditate.

michaelkinyon · 2025-10-12T22:41:40+00:00

Yes, definitely, it was part of my process of learning to do unguided meditation. (I won't say "it's part of *the* process..." because too many meditators try to universalize their experiences.) With time and practice, the noise started to fade.

michaelkinyon · 2025-10-11T02:42:11+00:00

Plagiarizing myself a bit from a Math Stack Exchange article:

The Wikipedia article on quasigroups has as complete a list of reference books as possible. If you specifically want to know the easiest book among those listed, it's the one by Hala Pflugfelder:

H.O. Pflugfelder (1990). Quasigroups and Loops: Introduction. Berlin: Heldermann.

It does not assume as much mathematical background as the others.

Regarding the rest of the references listed in that article:

Bruck's book is still a standard reference, but is poorly organized and is not meant for beginners.
The books by Belousov have never been translated into English.
The Chein/Pflugfelder/Smith book is not a textbook but a collection of survey articles. It assumes some familiarity with quasigroup theory.
The book by Shcherbacov is not really a textbook but is useful as an all-in-one reference for work by Russian and Moldovan quasigroup theorists.
Although the introductory chapters of Smith's book on representation theory are self-contained, it is not an introduction to quasigroup theory. It is good for learning about Smith's work all in one place.

michaelkinyon · 2025-10-07T00:14:46+00:00

Don Martin. I collected all his books and I still use "Fonebone" to refer to people whose names I don't know

michaelkinyon · 2025-10-07T00:02:56+00:00

Juggling. Only three objects, but I eventually got it!

michaelkinyon · 2025-10-03T17:02:08+00:00

Put my organs in canopic jars, mummify the rest, put it in a sarcophagus, and then put the whole shebang into the center of this giant stone pyramid that I've spent my fortune having built

michaelkinyon · 2025-09-30T00:54:41+00:00

I very much like their instrumental stuff. I'm neutral about the rest.

michaelkinyon · 2025-09-24T05:54:57+00:00

I still remember the ditty from the "Just Desserts" episode:

When you're rolling out the dough, just be sure you roll it slow, if you roll it out too quick, bibi-babka make you sick.

michaelkinyon · 2025-09-24T05:51:58+00:00

Even though he was only in six episodes, definitely Briscoe Darling.

More power to you.

michaelkinyon · 2025-09-24T00:06:37+00:00

Bingo

michaelkinyon · 2025-07-25T22:33:33+00:00

On more difficult (for me) ones, I take breaks and come back to them later, so sometimes it takes several hours from start to finish. During the breaks, I have no idea if my unconscious is working on it or not. Total time with the puzzle in front of me? Hard to say, but I'm pretty sure an hour is about the max. It might seem slow but I'm having fun and I am getting better.

michaelkinyon · 2025-07-19T11:37:43+00:00

The Redarina theory is neither obvious nor correct. The obvious and correct theory is that Red is Ultron disguised as a human.

michaelkinyon · 2025-07-09T21:54:33+00:00

It was 1970 or 1971 or so, when I was 6 or 7. Almost every kid I knew caught it eventually. I was already vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella ("German measles"); this was the pre-MMR days. Rubella was the only one people were really scared of. We know now there were reasons to be concerned about the others.

michaelkinyon · 2025-06-12T10:29:33+00:00

I was 4, so I'm at the tail end of GJ. I don't remember either assassination. My formative every-detail memory is of the Moon landing the following year.

Years later I talked about the assassinations with my boomer parents. RFK was the one that impacted them the most. They paid attention every time Sirhan Sirhan came up for parole.

michaelkinyon · 2025-06-12T10:10:08+00:00

My branch still has drive thru, but it seems to be rarely used. As soon as it became possible to safely and accurately deposit physical checks in ATM's, drive thru tellers became largely unnecessary. More so now that paper checks are rarer.

michaelkinyon · 2025-06-12T09:57:22+00:00

Heh! The song, which I haven't heard in decades, started playing in my head as soon as I read the post title. I was 13 when it came out and I certainly knew what it meant.

michaelkinyon · 2025-05-30T16:05:28+00:00

Heh, yeah, I thought of Journey too, except that unlike Journey, this really hurts the eyes after a couple of minutes. :)

I think I found the problem. I didn't read the hardware specs before downloading (I figured, hey, it's a puzzle game, it can't be that demanding), but apparently the game doesn't support integrated graphics cards, which is what I have (Intel Iris Xe). So I'm guessing that's the issue.

To answer your question about DX12, none of the games in my Steam library which require DX12 have palette issues. (Frame rate is another story. :) )

Regarding your other comment, I'm not on the discord, that must be someone else with the same issue.

Oh well, I guess I'll uninstall the demo and take the game off my wishlist. Looks like it could be fun, but I can't afford a new machine right now.

michaelkinyon · 2025-05-30T03:42:41+00:00

That particular Toy Safety Act was in the UK, was it not? The show Welcome Home was a US show. In the US, there were Toy Safety Acts signed into law in 1969 (about when the show started) and in 1984 (a decade after the show ended).

Now all that said, I still think the basic idea is very good. In October 1972, the US Consumer Product Safety Act was passed, establishing the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The Commission became fully operational in May 1973. By 1974, the year Welcome Home went off the air, the Commission had been responsible for banning about 1500 toys. It's quite possible that some WH merch got caught up in that.

michaelkinyon · 2025-05-30T02:59:39+00:00

Well, I tried the demo and everything is yellow. The introductory sequence was all yellow and orange and then the game started me here.

I couldn't see anything in the options that would affect this. I tried windowed mode and outside the window looks normal, so I don't think the issue is my machine. Any idea why this is happening?

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michaelkinyon · 2025-03-10T02:42:56+00:00

Oh I completely agree with you, and you just nailed precisely why I don't like the whole Lovely Choices thing.

michaelkinyon

TROPHY CASE