Jacob Tender

As my 31 Days of Halloween Challenge becomes less so, I'm changing up the format.

I love link blogs. I follow a bunch of them via RSS and read them every day. They're light, interesting, and random—pulling videos, images, and stories from corners of the web I wouldn't normally visit. Curated link blogs are incredibly valuable, but some go sour.

So, another Twitter clone. I'm present on all of them, active on one. And while I don't need Meta's take on microblogging in my life, I know it's the most likely to last. The advantage being a built-in network of 2 billion users.

Last week I noticed a friend of mine logging a handful of Max Flesicher's Superman shorts from the 1940s. These are currently streaming on Plex and so I thought I'd revisit them as well. The problem was that neither the sound nor the picture quality there was very good. And so I Googled...

Of the many Letterboxd features I've been crossing my fingers for, proper tag management has been at the top of my list for a long time. Somehow it debuted without my notice some months ago.

I had an afternoon as a passenger in a car the other day and spent it playing through this game. I progressed through levels 1-6 in about 20 minutes. I was stuck on level 7 for hours.

It's Revenge of the Fifth and I have a quick Star Wars history lesson for you, inspired by a May The Fourth purchase. Let's dive into the history of Star Wars (1977) posters.

Gosh, I love Letterboxd. It's absolutely my favorite service and so much more than a film diary. It's a brilliant discovery platform, mostly due to the many lists created by the platform's audience. I've talked before about how I make...

Mae, Jazz and I moved into our first house this weekend and, although I'm physically occupied with turning it into a home this week, I can't help but think back fondly about the apartment we just vacated.

Since leaving Substream 2014 and hanging up my column at AltPress soon after, I haven't done much writing about music. This week, an old pal called me out of retirement.

This post collects some of my favorite power-user pointers for organizing and promoting films, lists, and diary entries on the platform.

A quick and dirty FFmpeg command to convert your video to a toot-friendly format.

This year has felt particularly long, but my memory of it feels very short. Maybe it’s the effects of Long COVID, maybe it’s age. I’m nearly 30 after all.

Twelve more months on God’s green Earth, absorbing hundreds more hours of media. It’s only right to denote them, once again, for future nostalgia.

For over 6 years, Deanna Chapman published weekly conversations with a wide variety of guests. Today marks the 300th and final episode of the Welcome To Geekdom podcast.

It's not as hard as it feels.

Seeing some fun ChatGPT prompts and responses floating around the net today, I thought I'd throw in a few of my own. To my great delight, all of them were readable, accurate, and passed any plagiarism tests I could throw at them.

In light of the meltdown of Twitter following Elon Musk’s $44B purchase of the platform, there’s a lot of buzz and confusion about this new(ish) platform. This post should serve as an introduction and layman’s guide.

For the last three years, I've taken on a personal challenge to actually watch 31 horror movies during the month of October.

The set, which arrived on my doorstep a few weeks ago, is massive and extraordinarily well-assembled.

My friend James Shotwell published an essay today about the last time he and I saw our friend Justin Proper.

Another year, another swath of media to devour, process, and regurgitate in the form of bulleted lists.

When discussing our favorite moments of 2021 yesterday, Mae brought to my attention a few activities I'm sure happened a year before. My sense of time has been completely rocked by Covid-19. Thankfully, I've got my camera roll to help me recall all the things that have happened since last year.

When we moved into this apartment in October 2015, I figured the only creature residing with us would be our canine companion Jazz. What I didn't know was that the next six years would feature a revolving cast of characters including bats, squirrels, and birds. So very many birds.

It's been an overwhelmingly isolating year with a lot of moments I will forever regret having missed.

As is tradition, here is a distillation of my favorite media—formatted into digestable bulleted lists for posterity.

As terrible as the year has been, some landmark achievements have happened in spite of it. Here's a rundown of what I've accomplished this year.

For the last decade or so, I've been a staunch proponent of music playback by album. Recently, I've found a deep appreciation for playlist building.

For years I've been punting several preservation projects related to my family's history, photos, and home video. In recent months, I've taken on my immediate family's aging collection of VHS media to pull it forward into the digital age.

I located a long-lost advertisement starring my great grandfather and so much more.

I haven't compiled a mid-year list of my favorite things since 2015. I've just been so struck with compelling media during the year of COVID that I felt it was worth doing a quick run-down of the stuff that's keeping me occupied while most social activities are put on hold.

Anyone who's followed me closely may know that in Fall of 2017, I returned to The University of Akron to complete a bachelor's degree in Computer Information Systems with a specialization in computer programming. I graduated in May. As a...

In January of 2016, an author by the name of Ben Welch reached out for permission to use my 2012 essay on Fall Out Boy's album From Under The Cork Tree. I gave him the go-ahead and a quick interview...

A fast and elegant way to verify that all posts in a Ghost CMS are properly tagged.

Despite removing myself from Google’s ecosystem where I can, I’ve found that Google calendars have been hard to ditch. One thing that’ really irks me though about adding Google calendars to my Apple calendar apps is the mess...