Breaking Bad Star Trek fanfiction

For those who have not seen this yet, here is an animated version of Badger's Star Trek fanfiction story from the first episode of the final season of Breaking Bad. It is laugh out loud funny!

Star Trek Google Doodle

For Star Trek's 46th anniversary, the Google Doodle of the day is a Star Trek interactive doodle. Star Trek was first broadcast on September 8, 1966.

More artwork--Captain Kirk

Captain Kirk (E. M. Eckstein 1991).

Here is another piece of artwork that I did in 1991. This one is of Captain Kirk (William Shatner). Like the previous picture, it was done with ball-point pen on newsprint.

Ereaders are here to stay

Not only can you read an ebook in Star Trek, you can write it on a PADD too.

Ereaders and ezines and ebooks are here to stay. I know that it is true. After all, Star Trek wouldn't be wrong about this, would they? The first time I encountered the idea of an ebook was Star Trek. I am not sure what episode. I am fairly sure that I remember seeing Scotty reading technical manuals in ebook (ereader) form in the episode Trouble With Tribbles...but I could be wrong...for the life of me, I cannot find a picture of it on the internet.

But seriously, ebooks and ereaders are here to stay. And engineers will be using them. And we do not need Star Trek to tell us this. The US Air Force is telling us this.

The USAF is currently looking to obtain 63 to 18,000 "iPad 2, Brand Name or Equal devices." And for what? To replace the bulky technical manuals and flight charts that the crews of the C-5 Galaxy and C-17 Globemaster cargo airplanes are currently using. Let's be honest---if the military is adapting these devices, they are sure to be around for decades. And while weight is a consideration in their decisions here on Earth, one knows that when we finally kick the dust of this planet from our heels and slip off into space, weight will be a major reason why there will not be any paper books being shipped to Mars.

Where no chocolate has gone before

Red M&M as Captain Kirk.

The Hamilton Collection has a figurine this season of the Red M&M dressed up as Captain Kirk (about $38 total). I am not sure if I believe their claim that "Stellar demand is expected, so jump into warp speed and order now!" Nevertheless, it will make some nerd's Christmas list.

Star Trek Pizza Cutter

What does every Trekker need for Christmas? A Star Trek pizza cutter. Yes, there is a pizza cutter shaped like the NCC-1701 Enterprise. You know you want one. (Heck, I want one, but my wife says "No." Evil Klingon wife.)

Spock learns to play a game

Even Spock (Zachary Quinto) learns something new every day. In this case, he learns to play Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock game, a rather nerdish game that is played by the nerds on "The Big Bang Theory."

Star Trek Gear

Today, over at the MSN/PC World section of the internet, I ran across a slideshow of Star Trek gear. Am I really this geeky? I have to ask.

Even if I was this geeky I am sure that my wife would draw the line and say no, especially to the mousepad; we are allowed cats, not Kirk in the loo.

Of course, the home remodeling projects are out of the question, such as the home theater that looks like a starship bridge. Even I find that way too much.

And ultimately, I didn't see anything that wouldn't make the wife think about where to stick my dead body.

Pirate Bay Trial

One of the news stories that I have been following recently is The Pirate Bay Trial.

I will admit that as a writer, I have mixed feelings about The Pirate Bay and peer to peer file sharing. On one hand, I do not like the thought that someone could rob me of potential income from my copyrights. On the other hand, there is a lot of junk published in the occult field that should not recieve the dignity of generating income for their creator.

Hopefully, I do not fall into that last category. But I probably do; remember I set the price of one of my works, the Three Officer Version of the Golden Dawn Neophyte Ritual, based on the fact that I figure that I would sell a single copy to a new budding lodge and then it would met a photocopier.

There is also the fact that many of the out-of-print books that I seek out end up going for hundreds of dollars on eBay. If they were really that special, the publishers would reprint them.

Now, I will admit using some torrents for video files. In my defense, I would like to point out that I could not find a copy of StarCops for anything close to a reasonable price.

There is also the fact that the fan generated content of Star Trek Phase II (formerly Star Trek New Voyages) is accessible though torrents. Of course, that is a non-profit operation, so they really don't care about peer to peer file sharing.

So maybe, I am a secret pirate supporter. Of course, this is like being a secret Regardie supporter. Some people understand it; other people will not.

Of course, the big argument behind the Pirate Bay trial is that the Pirate Bay is robbing movie, TV and music companies of income (I don't think that the publishing houses are terribly concerned with file sharing, but I could be wrong).

I am sorry, but the honest truth is that the companies are still not going to get the income even if they somehow manage to shut down all torrent sites. We will just have people doing this in other ways---"Bring your flash drives and I will give you a copy of the lastest season of Prison Break..."

We are living the opening days of a brand new business model (think of the days of rampant copying of other people work during the days of the early printing press). Newspapers, such as the Rocky Mountain News are going to fall due to losing classified ads to the internet, and mass media companies are going to have to figure out ways to sell their stuff on the internet despite the fact that the internet is as secure as an unguarded chicken in the same room as my cat.

Looking into my cracked crystal ball, I can make a prediction: twenty years from now, none of us will believe that the Pirate Bay was a real issue considering the new business model that we will end up with when media creators catch onto how to make money despite the internet file sharing capabilities.