Geekery, sappy and comedic
I was lucky enough to be near a broadband connection yesterday when SpaceShipOne went up again. The live feed from the small rear-mounted camera was breath-taking: no movie effects, no footage released by NASA months later; the viewers were all stowaways, participating in this ride.
No thunder, flames, pieces designed to fall off; yesterday some guy just got in a plane and went up to space for a bit, just like all the science fiction said would happen. It doesn’t hurt that his launch system looks like Hayao Miyazaki and Gerry Anderson went out drinking together one night.
You know why I like this setup – both launches have suffered control problems, and both times, it didn’t matter. It was a minor inconvenience, not even as major as a flat tire in a car. That’s the sort of ride I’d feel good about, over a system “guaranteed” to have no issues at all. Leonardo DeCaprio and Kate Winslet learned a truth about systems that “can’t fail”.
In unrelated news, mollyringwraith has posted “Lord of the Rings told in lines from Star Wars“. You should check it out.
GANDALF: Lord Saruman. I should have known. Only you could be so bold. The Wizard Senate will not sit for this, when they hear you’ve attacked a poor little–
SARUMAN: Don’t play games with me, Gandalf. You weren’t on any pipeweed mission this time. You passed directly through a magic-infested area. Several transmissions were beamed to this tower by palantir. I want to know what happened to the Ring you found.
GANDALF: I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a friendly old wizard on a diplomatic mission to Hobbiton…
SARUMAN: You’re part of the western Alliance, and a traitor. Take him away!
Yub Nub!
Y’know, the fan commentary on the release of DVD Star Wars is just further proof to me that I’m abnormal: I have never found the Ewoks annoying. I always thought their victory was a metaphor for the fact that the Empire’s arrogance and brutality were in fact its biggest weakness. Or, in the Princess’ words, “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”
Jar-Jar, on the other hand, I’ll give you.
Those winters get cold
… I sure know a lot of people born in August, September, and October. 🙂
Happy birthday, eeedge! (Pronounced “eeee – juh”)
Lame wishes to you both
Happy belated birthday to jlfranklin and nius, who are remarkably alike in that – ahhh… they, uhhh… both have birthdays.
Ahem.
Ooops, almost forgot my towel
Back a few years ago, there was a a BBC Radio program called “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” broadcast in two Phases of 6 episodes each. This program spawned two novels (with a slightly altered plot), a computer game (with a further altered plot), a TV series (with a even more altered plot), a towel (with no plot to speak of), and an upcoming Hollywood film (three guesses).
There were three more “Hitchhiker’s” novels which have not been adapted into any other form and thus needed no plot alterations… until now. BBC Radio has posted streaming audio of Phase Three, Epsiode One on their “Listen Again” website. Episode Two will be streamed live tomorrow, and posted to “Listen Again” sometime Thursday.
If you have a little trouble following the plot at the beginning of the first episode, worry not. We all are (see above).
Add another picture to the Rec Deck
The transport, entertainment, and communications group Virgin has commissioned Bert Rutan to begin construction of the VSS Enterprise next year. This vessel is intended to take passengers on suborbital flights at $200,000 a ticket as part of the new, whimsically named “Virgin Galactic”.
In the past 40 years, the cost of putting a human into space has lost 4 zeros off the right end; perhaps it won’t be too much longer before we lose another two. It may turn out that Heinlein and others were right – space will not belong to countries, but to companies. No matter what, it’s fun to watch.
And a note to rubinpdf – now that we’re putting Rutans into space, can Sontarans be far behind?
Props to our Peeps
I want to thank everyone who’s helped us out with the move this weekend… it was a draining pair of days, but would have been frighteningly worse without you all.
Major props to shrewlet and rhaps, who stood by us both days and slung a lot of boxes; not to mention that Rhaps’ truck-driving experience was absolutely invaluable.
Nick P., Courteney, Nick V., Meg, and rattrap – you made three flights of stairs seem like not that big a deal! I’m so proud that, at the storage unit, we managed to appall someone with a dirty mind and a sick sense of humor. Only we freaks 🙂
Tom, Dwight, Dave, and Jodi made unloading go three times as fast as loading did; now we just have to spend until MarsCon unpacking all these boxen.
And special thanks to silver_hawke, who’s put in a lot of work at the Salem end, both at the apartment and providing sanity checks to raininva. We did have to explain to the Norfolk crowd what you wrote on the boxes you packed. 🙂
Finally, apologies to vond and kittenchan – under other circumstances, we’d have tried to help out. At least we wouldn’t have stolen so many potential assistants.
See many of you at Rising Star!
Moving Reminder
This is just a quick reminder for anyone who is coming to help us move tomorrow. (And we appreciate it too!!!!)
When – Saturday September 25th starting about 10am
More random-selection meme sheepage
I wasn’t going to post this one, but the answers did make me giggle:
Cat with Phonesaber
KayLee is spending less time under my bed, and more time perched on the living room windowsill, or sitting at the sliding glass backyard door looking out. She still prefers to be curled tight against me when she can manage it. In fact, she loves it when I’m lying on my bed with my knees up, typing on my work laptop; she then slides under my raised knees and goes to sleep, effectively immobilizing me.
I have a working phone now. This is a major load off my mind, and a great savings to my cell phone bill.
I hear that they finally did fix Ben and Vader’s lightsaber blades in the hangar bay fight of A New Hope. I’m going to end up doing what raininva wants to do with Dune: import all the versions into Final Cut Pro, and recut the thing myself. In an unrelated note, I hear that BitTorrent files of the old Original Edition laserdiscs are very hot right now for some reason.
Ben and Vader’s: sounds like a light-side / dark-side ice cream.
Yeah, think I better have some lunch before my blood sugar drops any farther.
