Love Star Trek: The Next Generation?

If you do, but wished that TNG was just a little bit sillier you might enjoy some videos from jandrewedits (youtube or their own site channels are available).

Collected droppings from other citizens of the web

Or some interesting links, if you'd rather be polite. I apologise in advance for those who might have already seen some of these links already appear on planet sysadmin.

  • Visualizing DTrace is an interesting and amusing talk from Bryan Cantrill at this year's LISA conference. Take the title with a pinch of salt as he also delves into the infamous Shouting in the DataCentre video and a whole load of other intersting things.
  • SysAdvent 2009 has just started. Last year's was great, this year should be just as good.
  • Robert 'RSnake' Hansen has posted an informational video on DNS Rebinding, and using it in conjunction with session pinning. Worth watching if you're a system or coding guy.
  • If you're into your metal then I can recommend checking out Maylene and the Sons of Disaster. I saw them last weekend at the O2 Academy in Bristol, along with Everytime I Die, In Flames (who pulled a lucky guy out of the crowd to film from the stage) and Killswitch Engage. All were amazingly awesome, but Maylene I'd not come across before. They had a great set, extremely crisp sound (in fact the best of the gig, despite the other bands being arguably more experienced). If you've got a chance to see the remaining bits of the Taste of Chaos tour, then do so.
  • If you run a business in the UK watch out for the VAT switch back on Jan 1st 2010.
  • Microsoft are running a R2 Haiku competition. You might be able to grab a home entertainment system complete with Xbox. They don't exactly stipulate that the Haiku has to be Windows Server orientated, but it's probably expected!

Jonathan Coulton, Paul and Storm at Bristol

Sunday night, thanks to the magic of the Ents24 iPhone application, I had the privilege of seeing Paul and Storm followed by Jonathan Coulton at Bristol's newest venue, The Tunnels. Holy crap was it awesome, and I'm glad I went.

The venue was great, although a little small, I would happily recommend that you go there if someone interesting is playing. Just watch out for the 430-ish super bright, sound activated, LED array behind the stage.

Unfortunately the iPhone sucks so much as a camera, and I have no useful shots of anything other than darkness and aforementioned blinding light. It's the first time I genuinely wish that I still had a proper digital camera.

I'm also a little hoarse today after singing along. Although it might equally be some sort of nasty cold..

Gamers at Top Gear?

I've been mulling over whether or not this is blog worthy. Probably not, but it is geek related.

Whilst watching Top Gear Episode 6 of Series 13 one of my housemates (Phil) noticed a familiar sound. From fifty five seconds to one minute into this episode you can hear the same noise/siren that the viral detectors make in Prototype.

Star Trek

Ok so I'm quite late to the game on this one. In order to maximize my enjoyment of the film I'd gone out of my way of consuming anything about this film other than the trailers, and from these I wasn't holding out much hope; It seemed to be more action than Trek. Having come from a Trekkie family and being a Trekkie I must say that I wasn't disappointed, much to my surprise.

If you've not seen the film, then now is the time to stop reading as I might spoil a few things (I'm trying hard not to). But still; Go and see it and then come back.

The writers clearly knew what they were doing. In a single piece of epic comic-book-esque retconning they managed to breathe new life into the Trek franchise. One of the few things I'd heard about the film was the time travel. I had a few issues with that - it was badly done in Enterprise's Temporal Wars, and badly done in earlier series - effectively ending with a Dalas style "it was all a dream" (yes I'm looking at you Voyager writers especially). I'll conceed that there are a few issues, like all the characters we know and love just who happen to be on the Enterprise by the end of the film. However, it provided a fantastic platform that can now sustain the franchise for quite some time.

If you're a hardcore TNG fan then I can see the new Trek film being a bit of a let down (in terms of the apparent lack of meaningless over-the-top and unneccessary pseudo-technical babble), but I do feel that it was the right way to go. It was an exciting film and I didnt get bored or feel like it should hurry up and finish. If you've ever watched the original series then you'll have seen the nods. The characters were spot on in a lot of cases, which is precisely why it all worked. If you're going to alter the timeline, then alter as little else as possible so that it's less of a jarring experience. Karl Urban plays a brilliant Bones, which beside Zachary Quinto's Spock (which was equally as good) I feel may become, sadly, underrated. I think I'll reserve judgement for Simon Pegg's Scotty until the character progresses further.

All in all, I hope there's another film. I can't see the updated universe working on the small screen - yet. If you've still not seen it then I hope you do before it leaves the big screen. It's definitely worth it.