Category: Nerdiness

Last night they played the first four Trek films on Space. I must have seen Star Trek IV twenty times but here are a few new observations:

At the beginning of the movie, the Klingon ambassador is in the council chambers, exasperated by the Federation’s lack of diligence in dealing with Kirk’s “rogue” ways. The ambassador leaves in a huff, declaring that “there can be no peace while Kirk lives” and there is a brouhaha from the crowd. I never noticed it until last night, but it sounds like somebody in the background yells out “YOU POMPOUS ASS!” I thought it was just one of those things that you can’t really tell what it is so you just associate it with some random phrase, but it turns out I’m not the only one. From that point on in the film every chance we got we’d yell out “you pompous ass!” Thanks for the reference on that, Stewie.

They should have made a spinoff sitcom about the people at PlexiCorp. “Not now, Madeline!” is my favourite line from the film. We could see all the office hijinx that Dr Nichols and his employees get up to while designing and manufacturing transparent aluminum. Furthermore, Stewie pointed out that that would be an amazingly subtle Trek geekery to make a PlexiCorp t-shirt and go to Star Trek cons wearing that and an “I quit smoking” button. I think I smell my Hallowe’en costume.

The punk on the bus who gets some hot Vulcan nerve pinchery is played by Kirk Thatcher. Not only was he an actor in the film, but he composed and performed the “I Hate You” song that he was listening to on the bus. If you look at his imdb page you’ll see he’s a bit of an 80’s renaissance man. He was a creature technician on Return of the Jedi, has screenplay credit on Muppet Treasure Island, and other stuff. Here’s an interview with him at IGN where he takes credit for the “hello, computer” joke, and writing and speaking all the questions the Vulcan computer asks Spock at the beginning of the film.

NOW THAT’S INTERESTING!

CBS Paramount Domestic Television has officially announced that they are releasing digitally remastered episodes of Star Trek, with all new special effects and music….

Does this mean the Klingons punched Scotty first?

I’ve probably posted something like this before, but it bears repeating. Pursuant to my recent post on who reads my blog and why, I often think about what makes a blog worth bookmarking. Let’s go through the points together, shall we?

1. Updated regularly. And by regularly, I mean once or twice a week. Even I don’t update daily, but I try to get something out once every few days. A lot of leeway is given depending on the type of posts. See below.

2. Content! Some blogs I visit because they are written by people who have a very specific area of interest. John Kricfalusi’s blog is redolent with dark secrets of animation, but if it started to become a journal of what he had for dinner last night, I wouldn’t be interested. Then again, some people can write about dinner and make it entertaining. Most people can’t, and even the blogs I subscribe to have entries I skip over if it’s just about food, or similar things that may be personal to them but no one else. Blogging about meals is like reading about liver conditions—if it’s not mine, why is it trying to monopolize my precious attention span? The same thing goes with photos, especially of vacations, pets, and children. Of course, one person’s dinner report is another person’s cartoon news, so to each his own.

2.b Links. There are websites like boingboing.net and somethingawful.com that collect links to other interesting stuff going on throughout the wide world of web. You can try to one-up them, but you will fail, so why try? Unless it’s some twisted zen thing. Blogs that just post link after link – especially without any setup—are a pet peeve of mine.* If you absolutely must post a link to something, tell me where you’re taking me and why. If there’s popups and ads or a subscription necessary, warn me. Personalize it for me, or at least include it as a footnote to a real post with some actual meat to it.

3. Degrees of Separation. Some blogs have such fantastic content that it doesn’t matter who is writing them, really. I visit Cartoon Brew but I don’t know a damn thing about the author, apart from the fact that he publishes a magazine of the same name. On the other hand, I know that some blogs are frequented in part due to vanity, i.e. “I wonder if my name comes up this week?” My mom obviously doesn’t care about Spaceship Zero or the World Wildlife Federation of Justice. She just comes here to see what my hair looks like this month and if I’m ever going to have a relationship that lasts more than 2 years.

4. Presentation. You don’t have to be a graphic designer or a professional editor to make a presentable blog. Blogger and WordPress and other sites have perfectly decent pre-made layouts, and they work. And they’re simple. I am not interested in graphics, I read blogs for information, not to admire the bells, whistles and flash. Take note, myspace users. That said, sometimes photos and artwork really spice up an otherwise mundane blog (see 3), and in truth I do visit some blogs that are essentially just updated art galleries (see 2), but generally if your occupation is not artist, don’t get carried away. If you must design your own site, here’s some free advice: don’t make your header so fat that I have to scroll down just to read the second sentence of your brand new entry. And by Cthulhu’s greasy beard, no frames please. PS – spellcheck.

* That said, here’s a good one: As seen on Pharyngula,

Wal-Mart has a policy in place to protect its customers from the obscenity and wickedness that writers put into books, yet they still have a few books on the shelves that are terribly indecent—one must assume that their censors are simply too busy to have read them to determine the unpleasantness of their content. In order to help them become more consistent, I urge everyone to sign the petition asking that one of these unsavory texts be removed immediately

Why, I was just talking about The Tick last night. And on Tuesday! And now, an announcement that the cartoon is finally coming to DVD (no date announced, and no extras on the discs)

http://news.toonzone.net/article.php?ID=12216

I ran some Spaceship Zero at the HPL Birthday Party gaming convention this past weekend and now I’m making an effort to write the scenario up all nice-nice. It happens on Mars, so I’m trying to figure out exactly where on Mars. The secret human base needs to be in a deep cavern, and I’ve learned that Valles Marineris is a canyon similar to our own Grand Canyon, but ten times as long and seven times as deep and wide. Neat. Then I read about Noctis Labyrinthus, which apart from having a cool sounding name that literally means ‘the labyrinth of night’ looks fantastic.

Here’s a big shot of Mars showing Valles Marineris, which as you can see is ginormous. At the far left of the rift is Noctis Labyrinthus

This is not a photograph. I’m assuming it’s a digital image or a painting or some kind of combo (by Arnaud and Florent Creux of http://marsrender.site.voila.fr/) :

But here’s an actual photo from the Viking orbiter

And a fancy artistic rendition by Fahad Sulehria of novacelestia.com

I like science. I read various scientists blogs and try to follow as best I can but quite often the jargon is beyond me. This post by Carl Zimmer about the puzzle of loyal amoeba is a good one, and I didn’t get lost. I recommend you read it if you’re interested in slime mold and/or evolution (and you’d be crazy not to). It’s a little long and not enough references to D&D, but still interesting. Incidentally the image of the slime mold stalks doesn’t do justice to the time lapse photography of the mold moving around which you can see on the documentary about cell death called Death by Design which I had the good fortune of seeing when Rogers still stocked VHS.

An isolate is what it sounds like: a person, thing, or group that is set apart or isolated, as for purposes of study.