Full power to the deflectors
Yes, of course I want a full-size replica of a Constitution-class captain’s chair. It’s silly, and gaudy, and it would make an awesome reading chair for my office. (Only because it wouldn’t fit in front of my computer desk.)
But, uh, $2700? Now, come on. I seriously doubt it cost Matt Jeffries that much to make the first one, even in 2009 dollars. Yes, corporate greed has once again saved me from making a ridiculous decision. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get some measurements out of my old Star Fleet Technical Manual…
20 SF Movies
There’s a “25 Things About Me” meme going around Facebook. Rather than just re-post it here, I was inspired by John Scalzi’s column to write “20 Memories of Sci-Fi Movies of My Youth”. Agreed, it’s not quite a catchy a title, but I can live with that.
1) The first SF movie I saw in the theaters was “Star Wars”, when I was seven. I remember seeing the commercials and thinking, “Meh, might be okay.” Yeah, underestimated that one a bit. I do not remember “Episode 4” atop the opening crawl. The John Williams soundtrack spent long hours in the following months accompanying my pretending to blast TIE fighters from a laser gun turret.
2) The next one I recall seeing in the theaters was “Starcrash”. This would only have been a good movie had I been old enough to enjoy Caroline Munro’s outfit. I can’t remember too much about it now, which may be a good thing, but I’m tempted to find a copy and enjoy the badness from a whole new perspective.
3) “Close Encounters” confused and frightened me, especially the part where Richard Dreyfuss starts losing his sanity. I didn’t understand the ending at that age, either. In fact, to this day, there’s a lot of unexplained bits having to do with the aliens, which is just as well; I suspect that any explanation from Spielberg would have been far lamer than the mystery.
4) While we’re on such movies, I was mildly traumatized by the laser surgery and ‘cannibal’ robot in “Logan’s Run”, and I didn’t understand the whole “Carousel” thing at all. That’s another movie which is probably unwise to watch before puberty, especially in a midnight showing in a darkened house.
5) “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”: Wow, new Klingon ships. Whoa whoa, new Klingons! Triple whoa: I am in love with the new Enterprise model! Okay, excellent, what’s going to happen for the next ninety minutes? Oh. Not much. I’m glad I never took it in to my head to get myself one of that movie’s uniforms.
Bowling for Dilithium
I don’t even know who won the Super Bowl. As the “Mythbusters” marathon unreeled in the background, I spent the day doing laundry and dishes, finding our digital camera which has been lost for three months, and making a little box for the new kitten’s food bowl. The box has an opening through which only she should be able to fit, therefore keeping the other cats from stealing her kitten food. Older cats seem to love kitten food.
Anyway, the Internet’s allowed me to catch up on some of the Super Bowl movie trailers. J.J. Abrams has done me a favor, I think; it’s finally gotten through my head that this is not the Star Trek I grew up on, and that I need to stop worrying and just go along for the ride, or not. Right now, I’m still on the side of giving it a shot – if nothing else, it’s audacious, and the franchise needs “audacious” badly. Besides, I’m a bit impressed with their method of crowbarring this story into 40 years of canon whether it ought to fit or not.
Plus, Enterprise appears to have a LOT of firepower these days. In that one half-second clip, she seems to be absolutely dumping phasers and photorps on whatever’s upset her. Battletech players, remember the “alpha strike”? “Screw the heat, screw the ammo, fire everything!!!”
Having said that: the Ninth Doctor as the arms-dealing mastermind behind Cobra is awesome, but I already miss his mask. And the Baroness’ bodysuit. Also, Land of the Lost didn’t look too bad, once we take out the bits with 20-century junk lying around. And the bits with Will Ferrell. Oh, wait…
Moar Interviewing
Had a chance to sit down and think about my answers to gryphynkit, and so here they are:
(Rules thing first: to be interviewed, reply to my post asking me to interview you. I then reply to your post with five questions. You should post your answers and this meme on your LJ, because thinking up these questions is hard, daggonit.)
1. What is your favorite episode of anything?
I choose to parse that as “Pick something you really like, and talk about your favorite episode of it.” My favorite episode of Classic Trek would have to be “The Doomsday Machine”; I loved episodes where we got to see other Starfleet vessels, making it seem less like Earth had only the one ship. There’s some (very one-sided) space battle stuff, excellent lines from Kirk and Scotty in places, and that cool pounding ‘space-predator’ soundtrack. Absolutely grade-A stuff. The digital revision isn’t bad at all, either.
2. Given the chance to meet *anyone*, real, unreal, living or not, who would your top 5 be?
1. If there’s a Creator(s) of the Universe, with a form that I can perceive and understand, then I have quite a list of questions.
2. If there are friendly, advanced alien civilizations somewhere out there, than I’d like to meet a member: I have a list of questions.
3. I would like to meet a book publisher who thinks my science-fiction novel is awesome, and wants to give me a six-figure advance on the sales. (The fact that the novel doesn’t yet exist in any coherent form is immaterial.)
4. I would very much like to have met Douglas Adams. We could talk about music and Mac stuff all day.
5. I want to meet the people on my Friends List that I never have in person. I generally friend people because I find them interesting, and most of the time, people turn out to be more so face-to-face.
3. What is the Question?
Who are you, and how do you plan to evolve into who you want to be?
4. What person/char/entity would you most like to be like?
Fictionally, I think I’d like to be somewhere between Buckaroo Banzai and the Doctor I mention below. Realistically, I’m pretty happy with who I am at base level, though there are a few qualities – mainly, ambition and drive – that I’d like to have more of.
5. Who is your favorite Doctor?
Oh, I’ve had my brief flings with Nine and Seven, but there’s really no contest: the Fourth Doctor will always be tops in my book. Never afraid to take a stand, never at a loss, fiercely loyal to his companions, unafraid to take the most disastrous situations lightly. Some might say that he’s less complex and ambiguous than his later incarnations, but that in itself is pretty interesting when one takes in his background and position.
Inside the Borg Studio
Yes, it’s Interview Meme time again. kittenchan asked the questions, and I provide the answers. For those who wish to play along at home, the rules are (c’mon, you know this by now):
1. Reply to my post asking me to interview you.
2. I reply to your post with five questions.
3. You post your answers and this meme on your LJ.
1. What’s the craziest (PG) thing you’ve ever done?
PG, huh? Probably in my teens, when I used to attend USS Heimdal meetings in Lynchburg, the other car in our convoy would race us there and back. 110-120 MPH speeds were known to occur. I wasn’t driving, but I didn’t exactly try too hard to talk the drivers out of it, either. I’m glad that we all grew out of that before something terrible happened.
2. Why did you first join VTSFFC?
It wasn’t really on purpose! When Tom Monaghan started attending Tech, he invited me along on a VTSFFC trip to Stellarcon. I rode with Scott Gosik, whom I had not met before that day, and weathered a barrage of cryptic anime references; witnessed a car accident in our convoy and spent an evening in an Emergency Room with a delirious Rosethorn (also a total stranger); and entered the con costume contest on five-minutes’ notice, using random items I’d happened to pack. The general consensus was that I had passed the initiation whether I’d intended to or not.
3. Do you still draw?
I have not drawn anything in 2008, I fear, besides some crude notebook sketches of my Legion of Liberty superhero. I have several drawings in my head, though, and 2009 will not be artless.
4. Do you ever miss working at the TN?
I miss a lot of the people I got to work with at the TN, but I don’t miss the late Tuesdays (even the abbreviated ones) or the desperate deadlines! Honestly, I wish there was a NASA facility in Blacksburg; the work I’m doing now is great, and I still enjoy causally saying “oh I work for NASA” when asked, but I miss my friends and family up there a lot.
5. What’s your favorite restaurant of all time and why?
After lengthy thought – there are two close runners-up – I’d have to say Sakura, over in Salem. The prices are moderate, the service is very good, the decor is attractive and simple, and the food is addictively good. I can name restaurants that have been better in one or more categories, but this is the all-round winner. I think a certain someone’s impromptu reception dinner was held there, as well 🙂 Stinks that I’m 5 hours away, now.
Nativity
I had a good, if exhausting, birthday weekend.
Starr bought me the delivery pizza I like (which we don’t get often, because they don’t have much that she likes) and a couple of this year’s Trek ornaments for our Xmas tree. Some new clothes and a Barnes & Noble card rounded out my birthday. I confess that I’d rather be 30 than 40, but I’d rather be 40 than dead. Besides, my life doesn’t exactly suck right now. 40 ain’t so bad. Thanks much to the people who wished me Happy Birthday on the last entry! My friends absolutely rock, and I’m fortunate to have folks like you in my life. *group hug*
Of course, we also moved furniture and unpacked stuff at the house, and made another run to the apartment. The front room’s full of empty packing boxes and stuff to be Freecycled, and the kitchen and full bath are just about clear; we still have the half bath and the bedrooms to do, though all three bedrooms are at least partially done. I had hoped to clear them this weekend, but that turned out to be unreasonable. We’ll work on them this week instead.
However, because of the dust we kicked up and the wacky weather, I was sneezing furiously all weekend – I know it was driving Starr crazy. I had to take two Benadryl before bed to ensure that I could breathe all night; it worked, and I got a good night’s sleep, but man, I’m still feeling those Benadryl this morning.
Forward to the Frontier
Since I was four years old, I have maintained an irrational belief in a color-blind human future where we tore around the universe in shiny white FTL spaceships.
I can’t foresee whether, in the long run, history will consider this man a competent president. But I do know that tonight, my species has just taken another tiny symbolic step toward that future where there’s only one human race. And yeah, I’m getting a little verklempt about it.
Good night, everyone. See you tomorrow.
At my door there came a tapping
Happy Halloween – the one day of the year I’m expected to dress funny.
In honor of the season, here’s an audio recording of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven“, read by Starr, myself, and other LJ friends and associates of lemonlye. (5MB mp3 file). You can see the list of participants and the lines they read in this LJ post.
I wore my “Enterprise”-era Starfleet uniform to work today – it’s gone over pretty well. What’s everyone else wearing today or tonight?
Senior officers to the Bridge
Paramount has released several stills from next year’s Star Trek movie. Of course, since I want everything on that big screen to be a surprise, I was able to resist checking them out…
… for all of about twenty seconds.
But I'm cutting it, since I love and respect you guys
Little powdery people
In case you hadn’t heard, we have indeed invented the Star Trek replicator. Of course, it’s expensive, slow, and only works on solid objects, plus the results are a bit fragile. But, one step at a time, right?
A company known as FigurePrints is using this first-generation technology to sell gamers unique figurines of their World of Warcraft characters. The service is so popular that they’ve had to establish a lottery for accepting orders, even with round-the-clock production. Customers dress their characters in their favorite gear and submit the orders; the figure company retrieves (with permission) 3-D model information from Blizzard, then does a little touchup to cover gaps and clipping artifacts. In a bath of extremely fine powder, something much like an inkjet printer head sprays layers of colored glue, and after some hours, the figure is gently removed from the bath and cleaned up a bit. The result looks like the picture on the right (click it to embiggen).
So, if you play WoW, would you pay $130 for one of these? Does your character have the outfit you’d want to see it in? Would you get one if it were available for another game? Would you get one when the technology gets a little better? Expound!
