The goal was simple: capture Laurent Garnier’s career in a documentary. They were looking for backers, and even though I’m not the biggest Laurent Garnier fan, I found it fascinating to be part of it. Just like with Lucas Levitan or Thimbleweed Park.

Laurent Garnier was one of the pioneers from France in the early 90s, when techno and house were blowing up. To me, he’s defined by tracks like Feelin’ Good and of course The Man With The Red Face. But also by the panel I attended with him at ADE 2016.

As far as I could remember, some of the footage was already in the can, with a few selected “Off The Records” events still to come in early 2020. One of them fell on my birthday. With the benefit of hindsight – knowing what the following years had in store – I should have gone. But I didn’t.

The pandemic naturally delayed the production as well. As tends to happen with crowdfunding campaigns, communication and the shipping of perks slowed down a bit. But given the circumstances, understanding was more than warranted. In the end, the team was determined to see the project through properly, and I did receive the digital downloads and the Blu-ray.

After a while, the documentary made it onto Arte and was freely available to everyone. Unfortunately, it’s no longer on Arte. It can still be found on Vimeo On Demand and Apple TV.

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Photo: Featuristic Film via Kickstarter campaign page

This post is part of my Kickstarter page.

It’s not just Zuckerberg¹ and the odd IT nerd taping over their camera, paranoia has gone mainstream and the misappropriated Post-it is everywhere. In addition to the sticky note, there are now elegant solutions. Elegant here means practical, comfortable and built to last.

Spy-Fy is perhaps one of the first to cater to the average paranoid with Spyslide. But before Spy-Fy got its production chain together after successful Kickstarter funding, there were already knock-offs in the usual Far Eastern shops. The idea itself isn’t so new that you’d call the Spyslide the ultimate innovation, but it has been implemented brilliantly! Spy-Fy’s demand for quality also forced a delayed delivery, as the desired result could only be achieved with a new manufacturer.

The small sliders have been shipping since mid-June and make a good impression on the device.

If you want to take your privacy even more seriously, you can dig deeper into your bag of tricks. On a PC, the webcam and microphone can be disabled via the BIOS/UEFI settings. For Macs, a former NSA employee has developed software² that monitors access to the camera and microphone and lets you know when Skype, for example, is trying to access them.

For smartphones, there are limited solutions of this kind. Either you know your way around Android custom ROMs or you root your Android smartphone and use Xposed and the XPrivacy plugin³ to protect yourself. Or you can go all the way with the Librem 5 from Purism⁴, which will be available in January 2019. This device lives privacy down to the last detail. The camera, microphone and modem can be completely deactivated by means of hardware switches, and the Linux-based operating system developed by Purism is also designed with privacy in mind.

The ultimate way is to switch off! You can find the Spyslide at the Spy-Fy shop from €10.

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¹ zeit.de “Kleb’s ab” (German article)
² OverSight by Objective-See
³ XPrivacyLua
⁴ Purism Librem 5

This post is part of my Kickstarter page.

You can also nominate yourself for the invasion by adding the hashtag #iwanttobeinvaded to your own picture. With around 114,000 photos currently using the hashtag, you can imagine how slim the chances are. In any case, the humour you see below is to be expected.

I had been following Lucas Levitan for a while when he announced his Kickstarter project to realise the printed version of his Photo Invasion. I didn’t have to think twice and backed it more than once, as I wanted the signed version for myself plus two more as possible gifts. Which meant I ended up being mentioned twice in the credits. A bit awkward, frankly.

Lucas Levitan now sells the books in his shop, along with some other really good items. One of my favourites is definitely the Wall Clock, if only it wasn’t sold out. Have a look at lucaslevitan.com and don’t hesitate. The book is available for just under 20 euros including postage. You can’t go wrong!

This post is part of my reading page and my Kickstarter page.

I still remember well playing the Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken point-and-click adventures in the early 90s. I never finished any of them, and that didn’t change later with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or Secret of Monkey Island either. With which I have just listed practically all the successful games by and/or with Ron Gilbert.

Other sentences from old people can also begin with “If someone had told me back then…”.

If someone had told me back then that I would be doing my bit to see another game by Ron Gilbert and company produced, and that I would even be featured in the game, I would have looked more than incredulous and confused. But thanks to the crowdfunding campaign for Thimbleweed Park on Kickstarter, it has come true!

Though I need to take it down a notch here. I have nothing to do with the plot of the game and could “only” buy my way into two in-game accessories. First, the phone book, and with it an answering machine message that you can call in the game. My number there is 7709!

The second accessory is even more mundane and refers to the evil clown’s swear jar. It’s so mundane that I couldn’t even remember it when I was at that point in the game. Maybe I’ll go back to it.

It was also very liberating to be able to clear my conscience, if not my karma. Having illegally acquired all the games mentioned above during my youth, my conscience is now clear… well, a little clearer. This does not cover Indiana Jones and Zak McKracken:

Now that I’ve spent ages describing how brilliantly I’ve supported this game, let’s get to the point: It was worth the effort!

I got what I expected. A classic point-and-click adventure, just like in the good old days. Another thing old people like to say.
The typical jokes and lots of references to the old games mentioned above, and endless hours of searching until you finally get a little bit further. In the old days you had expensive walkthrough books, most of which were copied. Now there is a HintTron 3000 in Thimbleweed Park, which can be reached by dialling 4468 (HINT).

Before we get to the trailer, I would like to strongly recommend that you buy it (karma!). The game is available for almost all platforms, including smartphones, and can be found on Steam among other places: thimbleweedpark.com

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This post is part of my Kickstarter page.