Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

A love letter to Star Trek

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Something to bring a smile to your face (especially if, like me, you’re a life-long Trekk[ie/er]) — A love letter to Star Trek.

One year and a couple months ago, on Star Date something-or-other, my sons and I started a family tradition by accident. We rented the first disk of what seemed like an endless set of Star Trek: The Next Generation DVDs.

[…]

I don’t remember those early shows now. All I remember is watching three boys huddled under a navy blue crocheted afghan, mouths open, eyes krazy-glued to the small screen in our sunroom while reflected images of people with ridged skulls and pointed ears flickered on three glass corner windows. They were hooked.

[…]

One day, a bad bad day, when many soldiers lost lives in that distant senseless war, my middle son stood with barefeet on the cold tile floor of the kitchen, listening to NPR, and clenched his fists in frustration.

“Why don’t they stop fighting? We’re never going to join a Federation of Planets if this continues. Don’t they know that? Why don’t they want to help end starvation instead? I wish we lived in the future.”

[…]

Something about the mythology, the space, the ongoing conundrums of time, kept my sons going, kept them full of hope. They started reading books about the solar system. They followed the NASA mission to Mars and knew more about it than their teachers. They built star ships of blankets and chairs in the sunroom and spent lazy Saturday afternoons playing with styrofoam planets. All peaceful, all scientific and humane. Children from the future.

The last season of Star Trek came too fast. We watched the last episode last night. My boys have grown tall and already those Star Trek shirts are getting tight. They look forward to renting Deep Space Nine episodes. I look forward to it, too, but my heart knows this time is over, no anomalies can bring it back.

As a child who grew up on the origninal Star Trek, sitting on my dad’s lap and pointing excitedly somewhere over my shoulder as the Starship Enterprise swept across the screen, I can easily identify with the sense of wonder, excitement, and hope that these kids are just finding now.

Wil Wheaton also has some nice things to say about this post.

(via Jacqueline)

Winer goes off the deep end

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Rather amazing, the things you miss when you disappear for a few days.

Over the weekend, Dave Winer suddenly decided that due to a number of factors, he could no longer support the weblogs that he, along with Userland Software, had been hosting for free under the weblogs.com domain. Rather than do something reasonable, like contact the people about to be affected by the change to warn them or give them time to archive their posts in preparation for a move to a new hosting solution, he simply pulled the plug, replacing the affected sites with a tersely-worded notice:

This site is for people with sites that used to be hosted at weblogs.com.

  1. I can’t afford to host these sites. I don’t want to start a site hosting business. These are firm, non-negotiable statements.
  2. There are several commercial Manila hosting companies, including weblogger.com. Thomas Creedon maintains a transcribed Dave’s audio post, which (to me) really doesn’t do that much to clear things up.

    What blows my mind about this is not that Winer/Userland decided to stop providing free hosting services — that’s certainly within his/their right, and to a certain extent, you should expect to get what you pay for. However, his methodology here was flat-out ridiculous, as is his proposed “solution”. I have no idea just how many weblogs.com sites were affected by this, but I’m sure that nobody was pleased to see their weblog just suddenly up and disappear, with no method of retrieval beyond kissing Winer’s ass (he started off the comment thread for the announcement with “Personal comments, ad hominems, will be deleted. And no negotiating or whining.”) and hoping that he gets their site exported sometime in the near future (just what sort of timeframe might people be looking at here, anyway? “Sometime after July 1” leaves a lot of wiggle room) so that all their past writings don’t just disappear.

    It’s difficult for me to even conceive of doing something like this. While I don’t host anywhere near the number of sites that weblogs.com did (whatever that number might be), I do host a few friends sites for free, and I can’t imagine simply pulling the plug on their sites. Not only is it an amazingly callous thing to do, but the guilt alone would have me up at night — and that’s just for three other people!

    But then, I’m not Dave. Good thing, too, I’d say — I’d hate to have engendered such fear in people that they’re afraid to say anything bad about me…

    Some bloggers contacted for comments for this story said they didn’t want to make disparaging comments about Winer’s actions, for fear he wouldn’t provide them copies of their blogs.

    “People have been really afraid to discuss this,” said a New York blogger who asked that his name be withheld. “There’s a lot of concern that any nasty comments will result in Dave not getting around to making a copy of your blog. I think a lot of the politeness and ‘We love you, Dave!’ sentiments that you’re seeing in some Web posts is just pure paranoia.”

    The biggest lessons to learn from this? I see three.

    1. Back up regularly. Make sure that the online copies aren’t the only copies of your work. Never hurts to be safe.
    2. If at all possible, host on your own server. Don’t trust your work to a third party — no matter how trustworthy they may seem, there’s always the chance that something might go badly in the future.
      • Of course, I say this while I post my entire website to TypePad — a third party — and as I act as a third party for the friends that I host on my server. Hypocrisy is the greatest luxury, after all. ;)
    3. And lastly…Dave’s being an ass.

    iTunes: “Mr. Johnson Takes A Bow” by 12 Rounds from the album My Big Hero (1998, 4:03).

Stories too good to be true

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I just watched an absolutely fascinating film — Shattered Glass. It’s the story of Stephen Glass, the New Republic reporter who in 1998 was outed as having fabricated everything from minor details to entire stories during his tenure at the New Republic.

I’d heard a bit about the Glass story, especially with the recent flap about New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, but I’d never actually read enough about Glass to have picked up the entire story. Watching Glass go from handily manipulating everyone around him to a rapid implosion as his stories start to unravel under the investigation of Forbes.com reporter Adam Penenberg is simply amazing.

iTunes: “Defiant” by Lawrence, Christopher from the album Twilight (1999, 7:13).

Blogger Anon-O-Con

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Many thanks to Pops (The Two Hour Lunch) for setting up this Saturday’s Blogger Anon-O-Con down at the waterfront. Got to hang out and chat with Pops, Richard (Tikun Olam), Mike (Dumb Blogs Have More Fun), Anita (Anita’s LOL), Ted (Ted Leung on the Air) and Julie Leung (Seedlings and Sprouts), Chip (The Binary Circumstance), Receptionista (Hammer and Peg), Staci (Daymented), and Myk (Life, it is a travesty), along with Pops’ counterpart Mom, their own Mr. Man, the Leung’s children, and Prairie. All in all, not a bad gathering in the least!

Apparently my Utilikilt was something of a hit, seeing as Mom is now suggesting that Pops should get one of his own — and what do you know, Pops found out that UK is having a Father’s Day Sale.

Utilikilts’ First Annual Father’s Day Extravaganza is open to all Utilikiltarian Fathers, Dads and Papas! Any father who make a purchase of a new Utilikilt between Mon June 14 — Fri June 18th during regular business hours 9:A-6:P PST may deduct your age from the price of any Utilikilt of your choice (limitations and restrictions apply).

Sounds like a good deal to me, though being childless (and in no hurry to change that status), I’ll have to sit this particular sale out…

iTunes: “Mr. Pitiful” by Commitments, The from the album Commitments, The (1991, 2:11).

Saved!

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As had been planned, Prairie and I went out to see Saved! on Saturday afternoon, and both really enjoyed it. Aside from a few moments towards the end where I felt it got a little overtly obvious with its message (falling into the “spell it out for the idiots” trap, essentially, the film did a good job of (fondly, believe it or not) satirizing the teen fundamentalist Christian scene to point out that tolerance and acceptance is really the bottom line.

Of course, my favorite character was easily Cassandra — the sole Jewish student at a Christian school, there because she’s been expelled from every other school she’s been to, and constantly out to wreak havoc. Oh, and she’s really cute too, which didn’t hurt in the least. ;)

Lots of cute lines throughout the film. While many people have been picking up at the obvious irony of Mandy Moore screeching out, “I am filled with Christ’s love!” while hurling a bible at Jenna Malone’s back, I’m actually a lot more partial to the next line. Jenna turns around, picks up the bible, and gives it back to Mandy while pointing out that, “This is not a weapon, you idiot!”

Many people aren’t going to enjoy the film as much as I did, unfortunately, especially if they lean more towards the closed-minded forms of “Christianity” that the film satirizes. However, as Roger Ebert points out in his review, the film is “…arguing not against fundamentalism but against intolerance; it argues that Jesus would have embraced the cast-outs and the misfits, and might have leaned toward situational ethics instead of rigid morality.”

iTunes: “Strawberry Fields Forever (Raspberry Ripple)” by Candyflip from the album Madstock…the Continuing Adventures of Bubblecar Fish (1990, 5:54).

Saved!

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The Seattle PI has an interesting (if short) Q-and-A session with director Brian Dannelly, the man behind one movie that’s been high on my radar for a few weeks now — Saved!

“Saved!” — Brian Dannelly’s first feature — is a high school comedy with a twist: It’s set in an evangelical school. It’s a world he knows well, having been educated in a Catholic elementary school and a Baptist high school (with holidays at a Jewish summer camp). His affectionate satire stars Jena Malone as a passionately Christian teen who gets pregnant after trying to “cure” her gay boyfriend and Mandy Moore as a popular student whose uses public demonstrations of devotion as social currency. The film won acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival and played to a sold-out gala presentation at the Seattle International Film Festival. It opens a regular theatrical run tomorrow in Seattle.

“Saved!” also has been polarizing viewers and critics in the Christian community. While many, young and old alike, have embraced the film’s loving approach to acceptance and diversity, it was condemned by Ted Baehr, founder of the Christian Film & Television Commission, as “a sad, bigoted, anti-Christian movie that mocks the Christian faith.” Dannelly knows he’s courting controversy, but he believes passionately about his message.

Saved! opens tomorrow, and I think that it’s definitely on my list of things to do this weekend.

iTunes: “Summer Kisses, Winter Tears” by Cruise, Julee from the album Until the End of the World (1991, 2:37).

Ink or champagne?

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Following up (in a way) on my printer ink woes, today MetaFilter points out that by volume, printer ink is six times more expensive than Dom Perignon champagne.

I still haven’t bothered to replace my printer, though I need to at some point — I’m just still pissy about spending the money on the ink just to find out that my printer was dead. Still, at the moment, as long as I don’t mind waiting for a bit I can just bring anything I need printed out to work (side benefits of working in a copy shop), so I’m not entirely without options. It’s still a frustrating situation, though.

iTunes: “Get Bizzy Time” by Voight Kampff from the album In to the Mix II: The 2nd Coming (1998, 5:03).

VisitorVille

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Apache log file analysis plus SimCity equals VisitorVille, a program that displays your website as a city, with traffic represented by people moving from building to building (page to page), and arriving via bus (referrers and search engines).

Visitors come to your web site from other sites (referrers). Some of these referrers are search engines. In VisitorVille, referrers are depicted as buses. And web pages on your site are depicted as buildings. When a new visitor arrives, a bus delivers them to a building. To move between buildings, visitors either walk, take a cab or — if you have designated them as a VIP — a limousine. VIPs also fly in by helicopter.

When you have many visitors on your web site, it begins to resemble midtown Manhattan, and it’s hard to get your eyes off the screen! Buildings resize and illuminate dynamically based on the number of people inside, their relative popularity, and how many visitors exited through them. Buses, taxis, and limos race around the streets; pedestrians walk across crosswalks; helicopters ply the air. It’s all very real, because it’s reflecting something that’s also very real: Your visitors are human beings, and they exhibit human behavior. They are not abstractions, and with VisitorVille you no longer have to think of them as such!

As goofball as it sounds, after spending some time perusing their website, I have to admit that this is a really cool idea. Unfortunately, it’s a really cool idea whose client software only runs on Windows. Such a shame…

(via Wired)

iTunes: “Part 2 (Bomb the Bass/Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five/The Charlatans/Prodigy/Jane’s Addiction/Tim Dog feat. KRS-One)” by Howlett, Liam from the album Prodigy pres. The Dirtchamber Sessions Vol. 1 (1999, 6:44).

No longer the top of the heap

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Well, it lasted longer than I thought it would, given how fast technology advances, but my dual 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5 is no longer the top-of-the-line machine from Apple.

Apple today introduced updates to their Power Mac G5 line, now featuring a full range of dual processor systems at 1.8 GHz, 2.0 GHz, or 2.5 GHz — and ~~all~~ [the 2.5 Ghz model]{.underline} features a new liquid cooling system to keep heat and fan noise down. Nice!

(via MacMinute and /.)

iTunes: “Hazy Daze” by Wax Police, The from the album Acid: Breaks and Beats (1998, 2:24).