Who am I to argue with history?
Usually the first in line.
– The Doctor and Rose
I’m definitely enjoying the new Doctor Who.
Category Archives: Fandom
Old Signature Block
Going through some old emails (in this case, March 25, 1997) I found this bit of ASCII art. I’m not sure whether it’s something I once used in my own signature, or something that someone else was using. Either way, I’m certainly not the one who originated the artwork. Regardless, it’s a pretty good graphic considering the medium. (This will probably be unrecognizable on a mobile device.)
___
___....-----'---`-----....___
=========================================
___`---..._______...---'___
(___) _|_|_|_ (___)
\\____.-'_.---._`-.____//
~~~~`.__`---'__.'~~~~
`~~~'
Hand over the chocolate and nobody gets hurt.
(Uh oh! They left Troi in command!)
Farewell to Arthur C. Clarke
Between the two of them, Da-Cap and Da-Simon pointed out that the Hubble Space Telescope was reported to have found precursors of life (signatures of the necessary chemicals) in another solar system at just about the same time that Arthur C. Clarke passed away.
John posted a neat bit pointing out that when you look at the dates involved, it turns out that the man who gave us both 2001: A Space Odyssey and the geosynchronous communications satellite also managed to time travel.
The Joy of Tech presented two commemorative cartoons featuring both HAL and Arthur. As well as some older cartoons, one about the idea of a space elevator, and another about the Tycho Monolith.
For myself, I’ve never been able to listen to “Blue Danube” or “Thus Spake Zarathustra” without thinking of O’Neill colonies and proto-humans flinging jawbones into the air.
If the purpose of books is to entertain and provoke thought, then Arthur C. Clarke certainly succeeded.
Attention to Details
It should be quite plain to all that this is not a brown coat. It is in fact a brown shirt.
Oversights such as this undoubtedly contributed to the Alliance victory.
Fark'ed
A few years ago, I discovered that several pages on MySpace were using images from the Shore Leave site as backgrounds. And then, every so often, someone would go and put one of the photos into a comment on a message board. But rather than copying the photos, they were loading them directly from the web site.
At the time, I talked with one of the con chairs and we decided that rather than “blocking” the images, we’d make some lemonade from the situation. Nowadays, if you view any of the archived photos on the site, you’ll discover that they have the site’s address embedded in them. (In effect, every time someone links to an image, they end up giving Shore Leave some free advertising.)
Looking at the server logs last night, I discovered Shore Leave had been getting a significant amount of traffic from Fark.com (the amount of traffic coming in via Fark in the previous 14 hours was about 4-5 times as much as what came in from from Google, Yahoo, and everyone else combined in the preceding 48). It turned out Fark was running a thread about a would-be robber who was armed with a spork. The fifth response in the thread included a photo of a very familiar convention hallway.
I’m taking the view that all those people (more than 1,000 as of 24 hours ago) seeing the archived photo of Spork Man is a wonderful way to get publicity at very little cost. And to keep myself amused, I’ve lightly edited the photo to say hello.
And who knows? Perhaps Slashdot will provide the next link! 🙂
Sonny's Viper
I don’t remember the exact details of the conversation, but during the 2007 Farpoint convention, I found myself talking with Sonny Wright about his idea for building a replica of a Colonial Viper from Battlestar Galactica. At one point, he told me, “If you guys book a Galactica guest, I’ll build a viper.”
I immediately pointed out that Richard Hatch was one of Farpoint’s guests that year and Sonny therefore owed me a viper.
In June(?), Farpoint added James Callis (the new Galactica’s Gaius Baltar) to the 2008 guest line-up. When I saw Sonny a few weeks later at Shore Leave, he told me he’d already started working out how to build the viper.
Sonny and his team arrived at Farpoint last Friday evening and worked through the night to assemble the pieces. By Saturday, there was a viper parked at the end of the hallway, right outside the main ballroom.
Ain’t she a beauty?
Serenity
I imagine somebody’s already done something similar to this. After all, it’s been more than two years since Serenity first came to the theaters, and even longer since Firefly went off the air. But ideas for filks follow their own schedule.
(To the tune of The Ballad of Serenity)
Take my show,
Off the air,
Claim the fan base,
Is not there.
I don’t care,
I’m still free
To watch the show on DVD.
Make the TV
Go to black
Say the show
Ain’t coming back.
I don’t care,
I’m still free
To watch the show on DVD.
(bridge)
There’s no show,
I’d rather see,
Next I’ll watch Serenity.
You can’t take the show from me.
The Christmas Spider?
Today’s mail included a Christmas-themed ad booklet from Hallmark. Paging through it, I was struck by the absurdity of one of their connections between the Christmas Season and licensed merchandise.
One of the featured cards has a picture of Spider-Man on the front. Curious about what Spidey has to do with Christmas, I read the pictured card-front:
Building to building,
he slings and swings,
from wall to wall,
he leaps and springs…
and do you know what Spider-Man brings?
Presents for all the good little boys and girls? No, although they both wear red suits, I don’t recall any stories about Santa being bitten by a radioactive spider. (Anyone up to the obvious challenge of writing such a story? Preferably one where Santa doesn’t die from the experience.)
Eggs and candy? No, Spidey doesn’t have the ears or the tail. Besides, that’s the wrong season.
According to the ad booklet, he’s bringing “Christmas Wishes” but the last I knew, Spidey’s alter-ego worked as a free-lance photographer. The second movie did have him delivering pizza, but I don’t think he’s ever worked for Western Union. (And besides, didn’t they get out of the telegram business?)
About the only things I can think of that Spider-Man might bring would be either a sense of safety because you know he’s protecting you, or else a nagging concern that he’s being chased by some variety of super-villain and maybe you’d better flee the area.
Does anyone else have any suggestions about what Spider-Man might bring?
A Lucky Escape for Shatner?
The reports have been circulating for the past couple days that William Shatner is disappointed because he won’t be appearing in the upcoming Star Trek movie.
What I don’t understand is why he’d want to be in this movie in the first place. (OK, aside from the paycheck, I don’t understand. But he already gets a paycheck with his gig on Boston Legal, and no doubt also gets a steady-stream of residual checks from the Trek franchise.)
According to the article (it appears to be the same one, via multiple outlets), Leonard Nimoy is going to make an appearance as Spock. It also mentions specific actors as the “Young Spock” and “Young Captain Kirk.” Great. So Nimoy’s going to appear because the movie involves a time travel plot (Boring!) or else the entire movie is a flashback (Equally boring!)
So at least we already know the title.
Star Trek 11: Jumping the Shark
Another New Voyage
The New Voyages team has released their third episode, World Enough and Time starring George Takei as Hikaru Sulu.
At the moment, the episode is only available for download via Bittorrent, though a streaming option is also available. (Check the New Voyages web site for more information.)
I chose the Bittorrent option which took about an hour to download the 370+ MB file. (Your download time may, of course, vary for a number of reasons.)
Two quick notes for those who decide to download it that way:
- It may be just my download or it’s possible the filename got scrambled at the source. Either way, the file extension should be “.MP4” and not “.MP4(2)”.
- As you may have guessed from the previous item, this is not a MPG or WMV or even a .MOV file. To view the downloaded version you’ll need a fairly recent version of the QuickTime player. (I have no idea whether there might be some other viewing option, that’s what worked for me.)
I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve had a chance to watch the episode in it’s entirety, but what I’ve seen so far is quite impressive. They’re getting quite good at the visual effects and the acting keeps getting better.
The episode’s somewhere around an hour long which is about 18 minutes longer than any normal length “hour long” episode on TV.