Rockets, Robots & Rayguns

Infinite Bagel

 

Jumpin' Geminids!

I have always been in love with the night sky, full of mysterious beauty and grand spectacle. Even as a child I could lose myself among the stars and in the silent serenity of the cosmos I would often hear the voice of the muse. I especially loved meteor showers and felt that I was being treated to a behind the scenes view of the hand of the Great Architect of The Universe at work. I always catch the show when I can and look forward to the annual events-- the leonids, the Persieds, and the Geminids.

Viewing the Geminid meteor shower this morning was much more successful than yesterday's attempt. I set up my viewing are in advance, made sure I had everything I needed to be comfortable and that I was facing the right direction. I was prepared with a comfy chair, a couple of fuzzy blankets, a latern, flashlight, heating pad and Diet Coke. I wore two jackets with hoods, gloves and two wool hats. Not that I needed most of that gear. It was cool outside but not cold and the winds were calm.

I had a star finder with me so I could locate the appropriate swatch of night sky. The constellation Gemini was to my Northeast, but once I settled in it seemed that most of the meteors were coming from a more Easterly direction. The first two fell before I even got seated. I turned a bit to the East, where the radiant seemed to be, but meteors came from every direction in every part of the sky.

What a spectacular show! Some were brief, brilliant streaks lasting only a spit second. Some blazed through the heavens almost to the horizon. Some flew a straight trajectory while others wriggled like snakes across the dark sky. A couple made strange arcs or skipped like stones on a pond and a few left sparkling trails that hung for seconds in the air before fading away. I stopped counting at twenty. I'd guess that in the two hours I was out there I saw maybe twice that.

I had plenty of company too. I did not realize that cats were such avid astronomers, but at least half a dozen piled onto me pawing and purring. I'm sure it had nothing to do with my blankets or my heating pad. I'm not complaining mind you. Cats are warm and make great earmuffs. We weren't the only ones up late either. At about ten until two we heard two large packs of coyotes yipping and howling, calling to each other. They were very close by.

By about 2:30 I was cold, starting to get stiff, and the shower seemed to be slacking like popcorn on its last thirty seconds in the microwave. My warm bed beckoned and my eyelids were getting heavy so I gathered up my gear and headed inside. I paused at the front door and asked aloud, "One for the road?" and then as if on cue, a shooting star streaked over the house. I smiled and went inside.

The Geminid showers continue tonight. I've invited Victoria Rose to take in the encore with me. Just after midnight is about the best time to view and plan to spend half an hour or more for good results. At least in the meteor shower department, things are looking up!

E.T. iPhone Home II

After a bit of tinkering, I think I finally got something that will work with my cell phone. It's only half a communicator, but I guess half a communicator is better than no communicator at all! (I think I'll even crop this puppy down and add it to my sidebar.)

Next, I think I'll make a Steampunk version with rotating gears and what not.

E.T. iphone Home

I've had the iphone jones for sometime now, but my foray into the universe of 4G touch-screen geekery is probably down the road a bit. Still, that hasn't stopped me from admiring all the cool Star Trek flavored apps available for the iphone like the TNG LCARS interface,

or the tricorder app.

 

But by far the coolest is the app that turns your phone into a virtual Original Series communicator.

TOS Communicator App for iphone

As you can see in the video, you can activate it with a flick of the wrist, goggle at the cool graphics and play communicator sound effects and voice clips. You can even punch up an old style keypad should you want to use your phone as... you know, an actual phone. Pretty cool, huh?

Well, instead if sitting around waiting to drop my current phone in the toilet or for my contract to expire, I decided to add a bit of Trek flavor to phone I have now. It is a pretty cool little phone-- a Sony Walkman with it's own set of apps and features like an MP# player. (It is a Walkman, afterall.) But it doesn't support any of the groovy cutting edge stuff like Apple's does.

About the only thing I could do was Photoshop a TOSesque background image to use as wallpaper or a screensaver. And so I did.

The first attempt is a pretty good homage to the original prop. The black window on the bottom is for the clock and date display. Unfortunatley, the clock, which can only be in one of two sizes, and only in orange text, didn't fit right. There wasn't any other formatting option either.

So, after a little piddling and revision, I came up with this:

These are both just simple animated GIFs, but you can set them as wallpaper and as the screen saver, which is only on for about 3 seconds before the phone goes to sleep, which seems rather pointless, but whatever... The aggravationg thing is that the GIF is displayed in wallpaper mode with a white border around it making the text along the edges hard to read. Sigh... Guess I'll just learn to live with it if I want my blinkies!

 

Supernova A-Go-Go: sci-fi burlesque at Comic-Con

Produced by the "Pe-Tite Barnum of Burlesque", Penny Starr, Jr. SuperNova A Go-Go brings burlesque, live music, comedy and sideshow performers in a tribute to science fiction, fantasy and horror. Past performers have included Kitten de Ville, Blaine Capatch, Venus deMille, Vernon Wells (Wez from THE ROAD WARRIOR), the Poubelle Twins and Lux LaCroix (Lucha Va Voom)

via itsachick.com

Here's another story on Supernova A-Go-Go. (An Expose, if you will...)

My geekiest fantasies come true! Sex and sci-fi, what could be better than that? They have a new DVD out in September. Ought to be as hot as Summers on Tattooine...

Speaking of which-- How about Three Leias?

And finally, this Kirk/Kahn rendition of "I Will Survive," is pretty funny too.