Day: May 8, 2009

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Television & Movies

Snotty, I need those engines working

Scene cut from the new Star Trek movie: Spock doing jazz fingersI dragged little E to the pediatrician today, where we learned he’s got a garden-variety cold that’s being made that much more miserable by an ear infection. So no Trekking for me this weekend, barring some unusual incident where I’m able to step into an alternate timeline where the boy’s healthy enough to leave with his grandparents so we can go to a movie. 😛

While I’m waiting though, I wanted to give a hearty recommendation to a blog called My Star Trek Scrapbook, run by a fellow named Frederick who I’d swear is kind of like my slightly older self from an alternate timeline – think of him as Earl Prime, maybe: works in the media, has a love for Star Trek, and has occasionally-mentioned step-parent-from-hell issues. Anyone else a little bit spooked out by this yet? Anyway, his blog concentrates on news clippings, merchandise and other minutiae from the “lost years” between the original Star Trek’s syndicated success and the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. And even though there hasn’t quite been the ten-year wait between the last Trek to hit our screens and the latest movie, there are some definite similarities at play. His captions and mini-articles are a joy to read, and really recapture what it was like to be excited about Trek’s return in 1979, as well as what it was like to be a Trek fan during that strange period during which the show had never been more popular or more ingrained in pop culture, and yet wasn’t being currently produced. The merchandise is curiously barely-related to Trek – i.e. disc guns with a picture of Kirk and Spock on the box, and other curiosities from the age when reprints of the old Gold Key comics were manna from heaven. The current spate of Burger King ads with “the Kling” cheerfully put me in mind of this period of Trek history – the studio wasn’t being so precious about whether or not it was pissing off the entrenched fan base, and maybe that was a good thing. Frederick is one of the few random folks I’ve stumbled across on the ‘net where I think, after reading his blog for a bit, “Man, I’d like to meet this guy, because he sounds just like me.” If you have even the slightest interest in Star Trek, check his blog out. Be prepared to spend hours there gawking and stuff and going “Oh. My. God. I remember that!”

I also wanted to give a shout-out to my friend Anthony, with whom I worked for many years in the teevee nooz trenches, and now has his own blog where he can be as opinionated as he likes without worrying about it violating some vaguely-worded clause in the employee handbook (like me, Anthony is also a refugee from the teevee nooz wars, and I think he’s discovering, as I’ve done over the past two years, that it’s nicer on the outside). His observations are funny as hell, and yet he can be pretty topical too, and doesn’t hew to either extreme of the political spectrum. It’s refreshing, funny, and makes you think too. Not bad reading at all.

Okay, that’s all the plugging-other-people’s-blogs I’ll do for now – I’m just gonna sit here and cry in my Dr. Pepper, which is swirling slowly in a plastic Star Trek cup from Burger King which, for the record, I plan to display next to my vintage 1979 Star Trek: The Motion Picture happy meals.

In the meantime, I’m preparing for a gap of – in all likelihood – weeks before I get to see the movie, because I’m also developing a runny nose and a scratchy throat since little E is wallowing all over me – he wants me to hold him, or hold his hand, or let him sit in my lap. I’m sure I’m getting quite an exposure to what he’s got, and I have a feeling that all the Zicam I’m talking isn’t going to make a dent in that. Maybe we need to page Dr. McCoy…… Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Gadgetology

Come fail away with me

To boldly go...nuts.I know, everyone reading this is wondering what I thought of the new Star Trek movie…well, I think it’ll be great if I even get to see it this weekend. Evan’s come down with something (yet again) that includes a really nasty hacking cough (again), so our chances of making it to the theater anytime soon just kinda dropped to roughly nil for this weekend. I’m really worried about the little guy – the cough just sounds nasty. I’m more worried about him than I am about missing the movie.

Dave recently asked what I thought of the Star Trek: Countdown comic miniseries – it’s kinda cool. It’s kinda like your last familiar exit before you enter completely unknown territory. I’ll probably do a book review later this month, though it’s been a long-standing not-quite-a-policy-but-more-of-a-tendency here at theLogBook to wait until there’s a trade paperback (a.k.a. TPB, FYI) to do a comic review. This one, though, may be worth making the exception.

Much of my day Thursday, aside from trying to entertain a sick toddler, consisted of trying to get a media center PC installed in the living room for my wife in time for Mother’s Day. Before you go rolling your eyes and saying “How romantic” with sarcasm dripping from every syllable, keep in mind that she’s a fellow geek – and one who has been without a computer to call her own since shortly before Evan was born. This machine has full DVR capabilities, and replaces the CD player, DVD player and VCR that were sitting there (though the VCR is still present as a less-complicated means of channel-surfing). By cobbling the thing together from bits and pieces, I’ve also augured this unlikely machine in for a landing for under $300. There are still a few bugs to be ironed out – namely a stubborn wireless keyboard that seems to hate me – but it may actually be online for the weekend. Considering that it’s looking like a miserably rainy weekend, maybe that’s good timing.

One thing I’ve done with the new box – and every other PC in the house – is ditch Internet Explorer. I don’t have anything against open source software, but for a few years now the smug evangelizing going on from the Firefox crowd has put me off of checking that particular browser out. I’m finding that this might just have been my loss. I’m still not crazy about the grass-roots PR – it reminds me of the South Park episode where a cloud of “smug” was generated by hybrid cars – but I’m impressed with the browser. I’ve added a handful of security add-ons, and I’m well pleased – with just a few add-ons, it’s a damned handy diagnostic tool for someone whose website is under near-constant attack. Not that I’m gonna name any names there. I wish there was a way to remap CTRL+A to open bookmarks, as I have years of deeply-ingrained hotkey sequences burned into my head that are completely thrown off by CTRL+B. Hopefully before long I’ll resume the whole punching-stuff-in-like-a-concert-pianist routine.

Hopefully Evan will be back to his happy old self soon too. He’s been learning at least a word a day, and is rapidly approaching the point where you can have a whole conversation with him about important topics like dinner, kitties, doggy, and bed (nap is a very dirty word, FYI). Once we can talk about poop…well, you know what comes after that.… Read more