Some More Captchart.  The 1963 Wostro, The Herpderpiest Automobile The Swinging Sixties And A Wonky

Linus Torvalds (b. December 28, 1969)

Finnish-American software engineer Linus Torvalds is the founding developer of Linux, a free and open-source operating system kernel which led to countless implementations and derivatives and grew into the system driving an ever-increasing amount of public, professional, and private computing work.

Acrylic on canvas, 5x7″.  From my September 2015 set Luminaries of the Hacker World.

Motorola MicroTAC 9800X 1989

The MicroTAC 9800X was not only the smallest and lightest mobile phone of its time, it was the first to feature the trend-setting "clamshell" type design where a mouthpiece flipped to cover the keypad when not in use.

Featuring a dot-matrix LED display, very advanced for the day, the MicroTAC and its immediate variants remained in production well into the 1990s and formed the basis for much of the world’s idea of what a "cellular phone" looked like.

Acrylic on canvas, 5x7″.  From my series of paintings of historical telephones.

In the interest of art-blogging something as quickly as possible which isn't my big ol' face, here's an illustration commissioned by Brad Carter for the Phone Losers of America book.  It's the first of three illustrations of mine appearing in the book, for which I also wrote the foreword.  You should probably go purchase a copy right now, before you've had time to think it over properly.

Archival inks on acid-free paper, 8x6".  Scan is low-res.

In response to the current kerfuffle going on in Neil Gaiman's corner of the Internet, the affable @mistressmousey suggested her artist acquaintances draw this elusive creature known as the pencil-necked little weasel.

So sorry, etc.

I was screwing around with the Doctor Who Red Nose Day special short "Space/Time" (see those first if you haven't) and this accidentally happened.

Doctor Who ©BBC.

Grace Hopper (December 9, 1906-January 1, 1992)

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, USN, Ph.D., or "Amazing Grace" as she is often known to her admirers, was a computer scientist and programmer whose pioneering work on early computers as well as her amiably no-nonsense attitude when teaching continues to inspire.

She is known for distributing "nanoseconds," lengths of wire spanning the distance light travels in that amount of time, at her speaking engagements.

Acrylic on canvas, 7x5″.  From my September 2015 set Luminaries of the Hacker World.

This is a new variant of Scrabble I'm working on which is fairly mean to its players.  Rare letters are no longer rare, point values are rendered mostly meaningless, and you have to make valid plays without actually seeing any of the words on the board. Please click over and share your thoughts, I'd love some input on this.  Would it actually be any fun to play this way?

These logos for fictional trendy Web 2.0 sites were made for the latest episode of The Media Show.  The show called for a bunch of silly but real-sounding website names which were generated in the manner in which we write many of the show's greatest jokes; blurting increasingly random things back and forth at each other on filming day until we've all hopelessly dissolved into fits of convulsive giggling.  I then whipped up suitably shiny icons to match.

"Toop" is pronounced "taupe" because of course it is.

There are only so many combinations available.

My "Save the Clock Tower" flyer prop replica from Back to the Future.

A couple versions of the actual canonical flyer prop, as used in the film's production, have been in general circulation for a long time; you can grab them and other free printable BTTF props here.  I had one on my wall for ages, but was never really satisfied with it.  It's filled with placeholder text, unreadable on-screen but nonsensical in real life, and certain other details don't ring true; there isn't a date on the newspaper's front page, for one thing.  So, I created a new flyer from scratch, correcting errors and replacing the filler text with original newsprint written by myself.

This was made without re-using anything directly from BTTF; even the photo is something I heavily 'shopped from this free one.  I wrote the article text with lots of nods to BTTF continuity as well as some other obscure references and in-jokes, friends' names, etc.  (There's a secret signature of mine hidden somewhere which isn't the "Rob Vincent, Dot Net" or "R.T.F. News Wire" bits, which nobody to my knowledge has found yet.  If you see it, contact me or leave it here in a comment and claim some geek points!)  If you wish to customize or replace the article text, the font is Times New Roman 18pt bold.

Printed up at 300 DPI on the right shade of pale blue paper, these result in a prop replica which I feel is a lot neater in real life than the genuine prop.  Alternately you could print it on white paper, photocopy it, copy the copy, and so on to soften the edges and approximate that 1980s multi-generational xerox look before finally getting it copied onto the blue paper.

There's still a bit of work to do on this before I'll consider it finished.  For one thing, I had to improvise the masthead text with a calligraphy font that isn't all that good a match if you look closely; if I can't find a closer font I'll have to remake the text from scratch someday.

These were a big hit when I dressed as the "Save the Clock Tower" lady for a Halloween parade.

2021 edit: Wow, this blew up. Nowadays around half of the Clock Tower Flyers for sale online by shady prop dealers are my version, which you can still get totally free here. If you paid anyone for a copy of this flyer, you were ripped off.

This did, however, lead to something nicer; my version was found by actual Back to the Future licensee Doctor Collector, who were impressed enough by my work on it that they negotiated my services to rewrite the news text from scratch once again for their authorized version of the prop which is part of their “Back to the Future Time Travel Memories” box of replica items from the BTTF universe. If you have that kit, which is full of so many very cool things any BTTF diehard would enjoy, you have an all-new and official version of this flyer which was written by me.

It wouldn’t have been cool on either of our ends for Doctor Collector to just reuse my free fan-art in their version and sell it, but through their very kind efforts at reaching out to me I found myself actually writing authorized BTTF-universe material. That’s an achievement I won’t soon forget.