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I got interested in Star Trek at a young age and unknowingly prolonging my virginity at a time when I still thought girls were cootie carriers. My dad, wisely at the time, decided that he would start me out on Trek by showing me Space Seed and Wrath of Khan as a representative sample of what Trek had to offer.
That was probably a good choice, because if he’d shown me Star Trek: The Motion Picture first then I probably would have sworn off the series forever. When we eventually got around to watching the first Trek movie I remember falling asleep about halfway through out of sheer boredom. The movie is an onerous cinematic slog that owes more to 2001 – A Space Odyssey than it does to Star Wars, except without Stanley Kubrick directing it to make the slow pace interesting.
But what I didn’t know at the time was that there had been a long road to Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The movie was actually a heavily padded rewrite of the pilot episode of a scrapped Star Trek tv series simply called Star Trek: Phase II and featuring the original cast on a new five year mission. For an interesting take on everything that went into the first Trek movie then I’d suggest picking up a copy of William Shatner’s second Trek memoir: Star Trek Movie Memories.
Oh, and here is some old test footage from The Motion Picture that I stumbled across on Youtube. It’s definitely more interesting than the movie:
Check out this article over at Cracked if you or any of your friends are stuck in the iron grip of an MMO and then come back. I’ll wait for you.
MMO addiction can be a real problem, but I agree with the assessment in the article that it’s largely a product of the person playing the game rather than the game itself. Everyone I know who has dropped out of school because they were playing games like Dark Age of Camelot or World of Warcraft inevitably did so because they weren’t happy with what they were doing.
Of course there is always going to be the problem that the rewards in the real world run on a far slower scale than the rewards in any virtual world you can name. Since I got involved in the MMO scene back in 2003 I’ve often wondered how much potential is being squandered in my generation because the next great American novel or the cure for cancer was put off indefinitely because of raid night.
I suppose we’ll never know. The only thing you can do is not let these games control your life. My trick is to use my iPhone as a sort of life authenticator. I don’t play the games unless everything in my task list for the day is completed, and I don’t ever play in the marathon sessions that I used to when I was in undergrad.
And MMOs are really more fun when you play casually. I had a friend back in college who was determined to get the Grand Marshal title in Blizzard’s old Warcraft PvP system. He spent his evenings grinding Alterac Valley while his girlfriend studied next to him on the bed. He tunneled into his home PC from his TA office so that he could play in between office visits. He tied an oscillating fan to his mouse so that it would move his character and not log him out as afk before Blizzard really started cracking down on that sort of thing.
And ultimately he hated the game that he felt compelled to continue playing. He got that Grand Marshal title, but at the end of the day he was so burnt out that he couldn’t stand to log in to use the gear that he’d earned. And I’m not even going to go into the griping when Burning Crusade came out and green items in Outlands were better than the PvP gear he’d invested so much time in.
It can be a vicious cycle, but only if you let it get to that.
Of course part of the ease of breaking the MMO addiction is being conscious of what they’re doing to keep you hooked. Every time I log into World of Warcraft I first ask myself if there is something better I could be doing with my time. Sometimes I stay on and melt some faces in the battlegrounds and arena, but more often than not I log right back out. Its all a matter of setting priorities and recognizing the treadmill gameplay for what it is.
Make the most of your casual sessions and help support Insert Credits:
I don’t care what you say, the new Star Trek movie should have ended with everyone being spaghettified into a string of Enterprise sized atoms! Except warp technology is technically faster-than-light technology meaning that ejecting the warp core could allow them to escape the pull of a black hole.
I wasted a lot of my youth reading the Star Trek Encyclopedia and the Star Trek Technical Manual.
Anyways, the guys over at How It Should Have Ended have given the new Trek movie the old what-for and worked up an ending that’s guaranteed to make millions of trekkies cry out in anger and then get silenced under the cold harsh indifference of the rest of geekdom.
Are you a fan of The Guild? Would you like to help out with the relief efforts in Haiti and Chile while getting your geek on?
If so then head over to this eBay auction where the lovely and talented Felicia Day is selling a unique prop version of Codex’ staff that was featured in the Do You Want to Date My Avatar? music video. Bidding as of this writing is up to around $1300 and there are still four days remaining and all proceeds go to the Red Cross.
I’d like to get something out of the way before proceeding with this post. I’m sure that this is on a a making-of feature on one of the Star Wars DVDs somewhere, but my devotion to George Lucas’ one-trilogy wonder was never enough to compel me to watch all of the extra material. So this video clip featuring David Prowse’s original voice acting for villain Darth Vader was new to me.
And a little disappointing. I’m reminded of the scene near the end of The Emperor’s New Groove where Eartha Kitt is transformed into some random animal complete with obscuring mist and a sinister laugh only to zoom out on a cute little kitten with a most non-threatening high pitched voice.
The ever awesome io9 has a post up that takes a look at great sci-fi themed attractions that have since been closed to make way for new attractions. The post was inspired by the return of the George Lucas directed and Michael Jackson starring Captain Eo to Disneyland out in California after a long hiatus.
Rides featured in the post include:
- Back to the Future: The Ride
- Kongfrontation
- ReBoot: The Ride
- Star Trek: The Experience
- Stargate SG-3000
- The Ghostbusters Spooktacular Show
I finally had a chance to ride Back to the Future: The Ride back in 2006 when the family took a vacation down to Universal Studios the summer before my last year of undergrad. The film was a bit faded and you could tell that they hadn’t kept up on the maintenance as well as they might have, but those things tend to get glossed over in your mind when you’re finally seeing a ride that you’ve wanted to check out since you were a little kid.
On that same trip to Universal I managed to track down the location where they used to hold the Ghostbusters Spooktacular. There’s still a street at the theme park made up to look like a street in New York complete with a firehouse that boasts a “Paranormal Investigations” sign on one of the windows. You can also see the old Shandor building on the New York skyline in the background.
Unfortunately they decided to get rid of the Spooktacular in the mid-’90s to make way for a really lame Twister themed ride. But with Ghostbusters 3 finally seriously in the works and a resurgence in popularity there’s always the possibility that they’ll bring it back.
I also had the good fortune to check out Star Trek: The Experience a few months before it was shut down for good while on my honeymoon out in Vegas. My beautiful and endlessly patient wife accompanied me and took pictures as I geeked out in front of Trek memorabilia and went through the ride.
You could tell that The Experience was getting on in years as well, the film seemed faded if not quite as bad as Back to the Future and the ride’s version of the strip featured a few casinos that have since been imploded and was missing a few that have been built in recent years, but it was a blast nonetheless. I’m hoping that the excitement over the new J.J. Abrams Trek might be enough to get someone to revive that ride as well.
So click over to io9 to check out their summaries and view Youtube videos of all the rides in question if you were never lucky enough to see them in person.
The Internet has been abuzz with how “totally hot” this tattoo is, proving that anything remotely geeky is usually enough to ratchet a girl up a few hotness notches in the eyes of most geeks. Being a happily married man myself I shall refrain from any such drooling fanboy nonsense…
Wait a sec, is that a Staypuft Marshmallow Man tattoo I see peeking out of the bottom of the shot?
Get’er!
Heh. That was your whole plan, huh? “Get her!” Very scientific.
But seriously guys. The tattoo is pretty cool, but I wouldn’t exactly go making wedding plans and figuring out the perfect school district to raise your kids because someone happens to be willing to permanently ink themselves with ’80s and ’90s pop culture references. You should at least go on a date first, play it cool, see how things go, y’know?
Via Reddit.
There’s another great introductory programming ebook available for the bargain price of $9.99 with a special code at checkout.
Today’s offering is Learning Perl: 5th Edition. Its not the best book if you’re totally new to programming, but anyone with even a minimal amount of coding knowledge will be writing in Perl in no time. I’ve gone through this book before and loved it.
The code at checkout is DDPER and, again, is only for the PDF ebook version. Incidentally, if you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch there is also an app version of this book available at the even lower price of $5.99 in the app store.
I’m terrible about starting to learn about a programming language and then getting bored and moving on to something else once I’ve figured out what I need to do in said language. Then I go back and teach myself more as I come across new shiny things that I want to do. This is a pretty slow and scattershot approach to learning programming that I wouldn’t recommend if you were just getting started.
What I would recommend is this excellent deal on Head First Programming which will introduce you to programming using Python. Enter the code DDAGP today only to get the ebook version for only $10! I’m more of a Perl/PHP fan myself, but I hear that Python is the new hotness from coders who actually know what they’re talking about. And with most languages a concept is a concept that can be transferred between languages as long as you learn the new syntax, so this is a cheap way to get started if you’ve ever wanted to teach yourself to code!
Oh, and I’m not paid in any way by O’Reilly Media. Quite the reverse, actually, as I tend to give them a lot of my money since I absolutely love most of their books. If anyone from O’Reilly Media does happen to read this and wants to send some of that cash back my way in exchange for me saying nice things about them then I wouldn’t be opposed, and I’ll be sure to tell you, the wonderful readers, if I ever write about someone I’m shilling for.
Now Reading
Planned books:
None
Current books:
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Worldwar: In the Balance by Harry Turtledove
Recent books:
- Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
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Retroquest
Now playing on Retroquest:
Super Mario Bros.