Sometimes it happens on a Wednesday. Many times a Thursday.
I get a great idea for SciFriday and, after realizing what day of the week it is (since SciFriday really doesn't work on, say, a Tuesday), tuck that idea into a small drawer in my brain to write about late, late Thursday night or early Friday morning.
Except sometimes I actually forget the entire idea.
That happened this week. On Wednesday, I was laying out newspaper pages at the day job (no, print it not dead, and that's coming from me, a Web site owner) and this absolutely amazing, killer idea came to mind. I was so excited by it that I actually became distracted at work, and started counting down the days until Friday.
I know last night when I went to bed, the idea was still in my mind, and I was anxious to wake up in the morning and start writing.
And then I woke up this morning ... and poof. Idea gone. Long gone.
That sort of sucks, doesn't it? I mean, what am I going to do when something like that happens?
Trying to come up with something, maybe even rehash an old idea (hey, if you can't remember me writing it before, how would you know?) I looked back in the archives and realized that next week, I will have been writing this column on a weekly basis for three years! Seriously! I've (or Alan Stanley Blair, our great news editor here) wrote some 150 columns over the last three years, mostly on a weekly basis (I think we took a break here and there). And I'm a little surprised by it.
It's funny, because I was convinced that I had started the column in 2007. But lo and behold, our archives don't lie. My first SciFriday (then called SyFriday, because I didn't know how to spell) debuted on Nov. 13, 2006. The topic? "The New Era Of The Reboot."
When I embarked on writing a weekly column, I really thought I would run out of ideas after a few weeks. But instead, I seem to continue chugging along. But what's nice is that people actually show up to read this column, although I'm rarely sharing anything useful, and even more rarely actually entertaining. Maybe people are optimistic that I will write something interesting here. If so, then this column should definitely scare them away finally.
I do like reading the headlines of some of the SciFridays in the past. "Save the gay guy, save the world." "Fox television: The two hit wonder, maybe three." "The next Ethan Hunt? How about John Barrowman?" "The great wizards: Dumbledore and Roddenberry." "The Battlestar Galactica Christmas Special." "The Greatest American Hiro." "Reading your letters ... well, not really." "I don't want Terminator terminated." "To V or not to V." "When the Shat hits the fan." "Why order episodes be shown in should" "The separation of church and space."
I could go on for a long time. And if I really needed to fill some space here, I would!
My favorite SciFriday of all time, however, is not the one where I tried to be funny or tried to be serious. It was the one that marked the first set visit I ever made (and thus, to me, the dawn of digital media finally getting recognized by the networks). Back in May 2006, Edward James Olmos invited me to a location shoot of "Battlestar Galactica" in Vancouver, British Columbia. So I got to spend the day in New Caprica, and watch some of the filming of the legendary Syfy show.
I had to wait more than a year before I could share what happened that day, because Olmos said he would hunt me down and tickle me to death if I didn't (that just put a strange image in my head).
But if you never read that column, or just want to put yourself through that torture again, you can peruse it by clicking here.
I wish I could sit here and say that it's been a great three years, and I look forward to the next three. But I'm not that crazy. I'm going to run out of ideas, or at least funny (to me) headlines. Until then, you'll just have to reluctantly tag along.
About the Author:
Michael Hinman is the founder and site coordinator for Airlock Alpha and the entire BlipNetwork. He owns Quantum Global Media Inc., the parent corporation of the BlipNetwork. He's a print journalist by day, and lives in Tampa, Fla.