Now seriously, I love me some IO9 — it’s a geeky guilty indulgence. While someone more “cultured” may be more obsessed with the latest edition of some wine of the month club mag, I’m jonesing for some sci-fi geekery and IO9 is my fix. They do have really good articles from time to time that make you stop for a second and say to yourself, “You know, I never thought of it that way!” This is one of those.
And so, here you have it: Getting things done, the ‘geek way’…
1. The Prime Directive is just a suggestion. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Enterprise wasn’t as swashbuckling as he predecessor Captain James T. Kirk, simply because he actually wrestled with breaking the Prime Directive instead of ignoring it entirely. The Prime Directive states that humans shouldn’t involve themselves in the affairs of less developed planets, for fear of messing up their cultures with ultra-advanced tech. While Picard often considers the importance of the Prime Directive in his decision-making, he refuses to be bound by it. Lesson learned? Rules are made to be broken.
2. Always shoot first. Every good leader should be willing to do what he or she asks of her team. One of the reasons for the loyalty of the ragtag crew of Serenity, the ship Malcolm Reynolds captains in Firefly, is that Mal will throw himself into battle to protect his team. Whenever he has a crazy scheme or rescue mission in mind, he takes the first plunge. Lesson learned? Show your crew that you’re willing to take a bullet for them, and they’ll do the same for you.
3. Don’t be afraid to hook up with a cute spaceman. We love Leela on Futurama not just because she’s the only person on her ship with any kind of sense, but because she also lets her long, purple hair down once in a while. She’s always tangling with spacemen and getting mixed up with strange alien pets. And that’s one good reason why her goofy crew would follow her to the ends of the galaxy — well, if she had enough beer. Lesson learned? A good leader has to get laid once in a while, and she shouldn’t be ashamed of it.
4. When you’re about to go genocidal, get a second opinion. Admiral William Adama from the new Battlestar Galactica is one of the best leaders we’ve ever seen. He’s gotten a group of a few thousand humans halfway across the galaxy, despite the fact that they’re being pursuit by a group of homicidal, erotically obsessed cyborgs. He’s had to deal with incredible loss and sheer terror, and he always keeps his head. He is also truly humane. How does he keep it together without going all Admiral Cain on everybody’s ass? By sharing his power with President Roslyn as well as his circle of trusted officers and advisers. Without their guidance, the Galactica and its fleet might have turned into a bloodthirsty military fleet, instead of what it is: a mostly-civilian group with a (sort of) free press and even elections. Lesson learned? True leaders do not ever make decisions alone.
5. Just because you have a crappy ship doesn’t mean you’re a loser. Everyone knows that Han Solo, captain of the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, is piloting a souped-up bucket. And yet his seemingly-crappy ship is probably the very best thing for helping out a group of covert resistance fighters like Obi Wan and Luke. Plus, he knows his ship so well that he can totally slam those Stormtroopers in their McFighters. Lesson learned? Every crappy PC is a lean, mean Linux box waiting to be born. Oh, and in case that didn’t make sense: It’s not the tools; it’s what you do with them.
6. Freedom fighters make good teammates. Say what you will about Captain Janeway on Voyager, but she made a smart decision early on to integrate her Federation team with a group of subversive Maquis who got stuck with them out in the Delta Quadrant. Another captain might have kept the Maquis separate from the Federation types, but Janeway integrated them and gave them Federation ranks — much to her good fortune. She got a great Chief Engineer and First Officer out of the deal. Lesson learned? A little subversion goes a long way.
7. There is always somebody out there who can bend spacetime better than you can. In Iain M. Banks’ novel Excession, the Ship Sleeper Service (which is an AI that captains itself, thank you very much) discovers that its amazing, human-dwarfing brain is nothing compared to the “excession,” a phenomenon that none of the Ships can understand. The excession exists in subspace, and looks like a giant something that could be a gateway to another dimension, perhaps, or a ship from the edges of the universe. Meeting the excession, for the Ships, is a very humbling experience. They realize that they are not as omnipotent as they realized, that that there are intelligences out there far more profound than their own. Lesson learned? No matter how in control you are, always be ready for something for which you’re completely unprepared.
The Russian space agency will soon have a new competitor for sending private citizens into space.
Robert Bigelow, the Las Vegas real estate and banking mogul, unveiled the business plan for Bigelow Aerospace, the company he founded to create commercial complexes in space. Bigelow envisions that the company can service two categories of clients by 2012: nations that have a space program but no launch facilities, dubbed sovereign clients, and international companies that want to conduct experiments in zero gravity, dubbed prime clients.
For countries, Bigelow plans to undercut the Russian space program’s current price to send a person to the International Space Station — $25 million — by 40 percent and allow the astronauts to stay nearly four times longer. While Microsoft Word developer Charles Simonyi paid $25 million for a week on the space station, Bigelow plans by 2012 to be able to house astronauts for four weeks for just under $15 million. Since launch costs are such a large part of the cost, staying up for another four weeks only costs another $3 million per astronaut.
The per-person rate is designed for countries that want to have good “hang time” in orbit, Bigelow said. He argued that having a destination other than the ISS will revolutionize the market for space.
“Our space history has been defined by the fact that there has only been a single destination from time to time to time,” Bigelow said. “And who is in control of that destination?”
Bigelow’s second set of clients, the Prime Clients, will be multinational corporations that want to do zero-G experiments but not launch their own hardware and build a support infrastructure. Prime Clients can lease a facility for $88 million per year or half a facility for $54 million a year. Month-to-month leasing is also available. All maintenance and supplies will be included, as well as astronaut and mission specialist training.
The plan will call for Bigelow to launch two payloads in 2010, a single payload in 2011, and quickly ramp up as clients hire the firm — to 30 launches by 2017. The company has spent $95 million so far to fund development of the commercial complexes and expects to spend a lot more. The benefit of the current business plan is that the company has couched it in terms that any real estate investor knows, Bigelow said.
“We have come up with a business plan that Wall Street understands,” he said.
You know … if I had that kind of money to waste, who’s to say I wouldn’t want to be hurled up into space too? LOL Seriously though, if done right, they could make a HUGE profit!
This quick posting is aimed at those who love mystery/murder and solve-it based games.
I’m sad to say that I’m disappointed in my latest acquisition: Crime Stories. I bought it Friday at CompUSA and finished the game in just a few hours’ straight play. In short, I can sum everything up into 3 words for y’all: Save your money.
I had been eyeing this game for a few months, but knew little about it. From the images show on the box, its enclosures, and the website, this game looked really promising. I thought maybe I had stumbled across another jewel — like Still Life. (Whatever my qualms with its ending, it was and is a VERY good game, and highly underrated!)
Funny enough, the two are published by the same company: The Adventure Company. Crime Stories is nowhere near as easy to maneuver as Still Life was, nor as challenging. Sadly Still Life was limited by outdated graphics, or I think it would have done a LOT better. Crime Stories had slightly better graphics, but there were too many bugs to overlook:
Too many items were mislabeled. For example, a mouseover on a statue would say “Police car”.
Conversations flowed as if William Shatner wrote them. “I can’t believe … *pause* … this is really happening … *pause* … to me!” — I shit you not, this was the most annoying feature of the game, IMO
The very beginning of the game leaves you feeling a bit clueless because you don’t know what to do to get started. Most games will at least give you the right direction. i.e. get this from said person for this to happen, or you need this to gain access to this building.
Moving around in the game is awkward at best — there were several scenes where I had to keep adjusting where the player stood so that it would stop moving the view from one place to another in order to achieve my objective. BIG ANNOYANCE!
My biggest complaint would be the lack of challenges. If you don’t count having to figure out what items to combine for certain events and/or access to sections of the game to occur, there were only 3 puzzles in this game — the answer to one of which was included on a slip of paper in the box.
The game as a whole is way too short, the dialog needs some serious grammar and spell-checking, and IMO they should fire their QA/beta testers for not catching what were blatantly obvious flaws in the game.
Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the Law and Order and CSI games. Those have great graphics, and tutorial levels so you can familiarize yourself with how everything works first. Plus, a major thing they had that Crime Stories doesn’t: realistic looking dialog scenes — the mouth moves only when the character is speaking, and generally matches the syllables and sounds. (Rather than looking like a really bad 70’s Godzilla movie style dub!)
But that’s just my $.02 … and a waste of $20.00.
… I wish I had bought the City of Villains special edition DVD set instead — at least it came with toys!!
One of my lovely guild members sent me this, and I’ll bet several of you can relate to a few of these …
IF YOU WERE A LITTLE GIRL IN THE 70′S …
You had that Fisher Price Doctor’s Kit with a stethoscope that actually worked.
You owned a bicycle with a banana seat and a plastic basket with flowers on it.
You learned to skate with actual skates (not roller blades) that had metal wheels.
You thought Gopher from Love Boat was cute (admit it!)
You had nightmares after watching Fantasy Island.
You had rubber boots for rainy days, and Moon boots for snowy days.
You owned? “Klick-Klacks” and smacked yourself in the face more than once.
You had either a “bowl cut” or “pixie,” not to mention the “Dorothy Hamill”. People sometimes thought you were a boy.
Your Holly Hobbie sleeping bag was your most prized possession.
You wore a poncho, gauchos, and knickers.
You begged Santa for the electronic game, Simon.
You had the Donnie and Marie dolls with those pink and purple satiny shredded outfits.
You spent hours in your backyard on your metal swing set with the trapeze. The swing set tipped over at least once. You owned a “Slip-n-Slide”,on which you injured yourself on a sprinkler head more than once. You had homemade ribbon barrettes in every imaginable color. (Oh yeah!) You had a pair of Doctor Scholl’s sandals (the ones with hard sole & the buckle).
You wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder really bad; you wore that Little House on the Prairie-inspired plaid, ruffle shirt with the high neck in at least one school picture; and you despised Nellie Olson! You wanted your first kiss to be at a roller rink. Your hairstyle was described as having “wings” or “feathers” and you kept it “pretty” with the comb you kept in your back pocket. ~ When you walked, the “wings” flapped up and down, looked like you were gonna “take off” You know who Strawberry Shortcake is, as well as her friends, Blueberry Muffin and Huckleberry Pie. You carried a Muppets lunch box to school and it was metal, not plastic. With the thermos inside!
You and your girlfriends would fight over which of the Dukes of Hazzard was your boyfriend. YOU had Star Wars and H-Man action figures, too! It was a big event in your household each year when the “Wizard of Oz” would come on TV. Your mom would break out the popcorn and sleeping bags! You often asked your Magic-8 ball the question: “Who will I marry?”
You completely wore out your Grease, Saturday Night Fever, and Fame soundtrack record album. You tried to do lots of arts and crafts, like yarn and Popsicle-stick God’s eyes, decoupage, or those weird potholders made on a plastic loom. You made Shrinky-Dinks and put iron-on kittens on your t-shirts! You used to tape record songs off the radio by holding your portable tape player up to the speaker.
You had subscriptions to Dynamite and Tiger Beat.
You learned everything you needed to know about girl issues from Judy Blume books (Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret.)
You thought Olivia Newton John’s song “Physical” was about aerobics.
You wore friendship pins on your tennis shoes, or shoelaces with heart or rainbow designs. You wanted to be a Solid Gold dancer. You drowned yourself in Love’s Baby Soft - which was? the first “real” perfume you ever owned …
You glopped your lips in Strawberry Roll-on lip gloss till it almost dripped off.
Hooooooo-boy! lol
I dunno about y’all, but I’m guilty of the bike, the skates, the knickers — which I hated btw! My mother made me wear those bloody dreadful things!! To this day, my aunt still calls me KnickerBocker, which she thinks is still cute and it makes me want to hurl – the simon says game, the Star Wars and He-man toys, Strawberry Shortcake, Shrinky Dinks, the lunch box, the Judy Blume books (Hell, that’s how I learned everything!), the strawberry roll-on gloss (can you say ‘Tinkerbell’?), and last but certainly not least: the Baby Soft.
Would you believe that I still have a bottle of that stuff!? It’s in a “memories” box that I keep little knickknacks and all odd keepsakes in.
Got this in an email from my friend Teresa, but felt like sharing here because I don’t have access to my personal address book from work, and because I’m a lazybug.
A. Four jobs you have had in your life:
1. Billing clerk
2. Waitress
3. Programmer
4. Web Developer
B. Four movies you could watch over and over:
1. Fifth Element
2. F.F. Copola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula
3. Real Genius
4. The Princess Bride
C. Four places you have lived:
1. Mobile, AL
2. Hueytown, AL
3. Warrior, AL
4. Birmingham, AL
D. Four TV shows you love to watch:
1. Animal Cops
2. Myth Busters
3. CSI (the original)
4. Law & Order — original, SVU, and CI
(actually 5, I love Star Trek: OS, NG, and DS9)
E. Four places you have been on vacation:
1. Sacramento, CA
2. Miami, FL
3. Captiva Island, FL (by way of Tampa and Ybor City)
4. Minneapolis, MN
F. Four web sites you visit daily:
1. Mozilla.org
2. Google.com
3. Lunarpages.com
4. Microsloth.org
G. Four of your favorite foods:
1. Tom Kha (Thai coconut soup)
2. Roast beef stew with potatoes
3. Teriyake chicken
4. Anything with potatoes
H. Four places you’d rather be right now:
1. Anywhere but work
2. New Orleans, LA (pre-Katrina)
3. Captiva Island, FL
4. Ireland
I. Four of your favorite things to do:
1. Sing
2. Draw / Design
3. Cook
4. Football
J. Four of your favorite drinks (alcoholic or non….ANYTHING)
1. Sweet Iced Tea (no lemon)
2. Hot Jasmine Tea w/honey
3. Vodka and Coke w/lime
4. Sour Apple Martini
K. Four people who will respond
1. Ben
2. Mara
3. Jeff
4. You?
1. The Prime Directive is just a suggestion. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Enterprise wasn’t as swashbuckling as he predecessor Captain James T. Kirk, simply because he actually wrestled with breaking the Prime Directive instead of ignoring it entirely. The Prime Directive states that humans shouldn’t involve themselves in the affairs of less developed planets, for fear of messing up their cultures with ultra-advanced tech. While Picard often considers the importance of the Prime Directive in his decision-making, he refuses to be bound by it. Lesson learned? Rules are made to be broken.
2. Always shoot first. Every good leader should be willing to do what he or she asks of her team. One of the reasons for the loyalty of the ragtag crew of Serenity, the ship Malcolm Reynolds captains in Firefly, is that Mal will throw himself into battle to protect his team. Whenever he has a crazy scheme or rescue mission in mind, he takes the first plunge. Lesson learned? Show your crew that you’re willing to take a bullet for them, and they’ll do the same for you.
3. Don’t be afraid to hook up with a cute spaceman. We love Leela on Futurama not just because she’s the only person on her ship with any kind of sense, but because she also lets her long, purple hair down once in a while. She’s always tangling with spacemen and getting mixed up with strange alien pets. And that’s one good reason why her goofy crew would follow her to the ends of the galaxy — well, if she had enough beer. Lesson learned? A good leader has to get laid once in a while, and she shouldn’t be ashamed of it.
4. When you’re about to go genocidal, get a second opinion. Admiral William Adama from the new Battlestar Galactica is one of the best leaders we’ve ever seen. He’s gotten a group of a few thousand humans halfway across the galaxy, despite the fact that they’re being pursuit by a group of homicidal, erotically obsessed cyborgs. He’s had to deal with incredible loss and sheer terror, and he always keeps his head. He is also truly humane. How does he keep it together without going all Admiral Cain on everybody’s ass? By sharing his power with President Roslyn as well as his circle of trusted officers and advisers. Without their guidance, the Galactica and its fleet might have turned into a bloodthirsty military fleet, instead of what it is: a mostly-civilian group with a (sort of) free press and even elections. Lesson learned? True leaders do not ever make decisions alone.
5. Just because you have a crappy ship doesn’t mean you’re a loser. Everyone knows that Han Solo, captain of the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, is piloting a souped-up bucket. And yet his seemingly-crappy ship is probably the very best thing for helping out a group of covert resistance fighters like Obi Wan and Luke. Plus, he knows his ship so well that he can totally slam those Stormtroopers in their McFighters. Lesson learned? Every crappy PC is a lean, mean Linux box waiting to be born. Oh, and in case that didn’t make sense: It’s not the tools; it’s what you do with them.
6. Freedom fighters make good teammates. Say what you will about Captain Janeway on Voyager, but she made a smart decision early on to integrate her Federation team with a group of subversive Maquis who got stuck with them out in the Delta Quadrant. Another captain might have kept the Maquis separate from the Federation types, but Janeway integrated them and gave them Federation ranks — much to her good fortune. She got a great Chief Engineer and First Officer out of the deal. Lesson learned? A little subversion goes a long way.
7. There is always somebody out there who can bend spacetime better than you can. In Iain M. Banks’ novel Excession, the Ship Sleeper Service (which is an AI that captains itself, thank you very much) discovers that its amazing, human-dwarfing brain is nothing compared to the “excession,” a phenomenon that none of the Ships can understand. The excession exists in subspace, and looks like a giant something that could be a gateway to another dimension, perhaps, or a ship from the edges of the universe. Meeting the excession, for the Ships, is a very humbling experience. They realize that they are not as omnipotent as they realized, that that there are intelligences out there far more profound than their own. Lesson learned? No matter how in control you are, always be ready for something for which you’re completely unprepared.
This quick posting is aimed at those who love mystery/murder and solve-it based games. 
It’s in a “memories” box that I keep little knickknacks and all odd keepsakes in.
