Retro-futurism and space exploration on Charles G's Blog Space

The Year Is Now: 2010

2010-01-01T00:00:00.014-05:00

I remember seeing "2010: The Year We Make Contact" in a multiplex theater in 1984. A number of classic sci-fi films came out that year: "Star Trek III: The Search For Spock", the ill-fated adaptation of Frank Herbert's "Dune", and James Cameron's legendary "The Terminator".

1984 was the year my family bought its first VCR. I had a VHS copy of "2001: A Space Odyssey" that I nearly wore out watching over and over again, absorbing the beauty of Douglas Trumbull's visual effects and the eerie music score.

"2010" was the sequel to the Arthur C. Clarke book "2001" and the movie by Stanley Kubrick. Some critics slammed "2010" as being a lackluster follow-up to the majesty of Kubrick's "2001".

In my opinion, "2010: The Year We Make Contact" ties up the loose ends of "2001", but it stands on its own as a film from Kubrick's film. Director Peter Hyams created a steely world of space travel in "Outland" with Sean Connery. "2010" has a similar feel, aided with spaceship designs by the visionary Syd Mead.

I also saw the horrific British film "Threads" in 1984, which depicted the aftermath of a nuclear war. "2010" was the opposite vision, where humanity unites to explore space and avoids the destruction of civilization in the process.

By today's standards, "2010" seems hokey and sentimental, but that is forgivable. Not every future has to be as bleak as "The Matrix". Someone has to make films where humans are not enslaved by machines or wander through burned out ruins.

With the beginning of the real 2010, the film and the book deserve to be looked at with fresh eyes. After so many apocalyptic films, I was grateful for a movie that ends with the hope humanity survives beyond the year 2010 and beyond.

When does someone make the book "2061" a movie?

The Large Hadron Collider - A Simple Explanation

2009-03-03T09:23:00.003-05:00

Hello again! I haven't been here in months, but I finally found something that I had to share and this blog is the best place for it.

You probably have heard about the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

Last summer there were wild news stories about the fear of the LHC creating homegrown black holes and devouring the Earth. YouTube users uploaded computer animation of the Earth getting sucked inside-out like a deflating balloon. The LHC black-hole fears were even mentioned on MTV's "The Hills".

Friends asked me how the LHC worked and why were billions of dollars being spent to race charged particles around in circles. I have tried to explain the concepts, but I was still fuzzy on certain details and how to articulate them. Sure, they race energized particles around and smash them together...but where did they get the particles in the first place?

This video on YouTube is the simplest explanation I have seen so far about the workings and goals of the LHC. I find it remarkable that the whole process starts with a simple container of hydrogen gas.

For more pictures of the LHC complex and hardware, check out this story on Dvice.com

The Panic Of War of the Worlds - 70 Years Later

2008-10-31T18:55:00.013-05:00

Photo Source: Wikipedia

This is a monument to a battle that never happened, except in the minds of some very scared radio listeners over seventy years ago. It is located in Grover's Mill, New Jersey, where the first battle of the War of the Worlds took place.

Seventy years ago last night, fear gripped the United States as Orson Welles and The Mercury Theater on the Air broadcast War Of The Worlds as a radio drama on CBS. The October 30, 1938 broadcast was the Halloween episode.

The drama was too realistic for some listeners who were mesmerized by the sound effects and dramatic script. The broadcast led many to believe that martians were actually stomping their way across New Jersey and towards world domination. According to some studies, 1.7 million thought the story was real.

The aftermath of War of the Worlds was an angry public and a new appreciation for the power of broadcasting.

Here is film of Orson Welles speaking to reporters after the broadcast.

We can chuckle today at how 1938 was a simpler time and how easy it was to fool a radio audience with spooky noises and passionate acting.

Disinformation is alive and well in the 21st century and powered by the Internet. The term truthiness is a recent invention. When was the last time you had a silly rumor forwarded to you by email?

Here are some more links about the War of the Worlds broadcast.

Time magazine features a story on War of the Worlds and how disinformation has changed over the years.
Wired.com features a story on the significance of the War of The Worlds broadcast and the hysteria it generated.
Wikipedia has an entry about the broadcast and the public reaction.
War of the Worlds.org details the history of the H.G. Welles story and versions on radio, film, and TV.
The text of the novel War of the Worlds by H.G. Welles.
YouTube.com has audio of the original broadcast. Part 1 is here.

My favorite part is the last words of the broadcast...

So goodbye everybody, and remember please for the next day or so the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Martian, it's Halloween.

On that note,my doorbell just rang. It is the local Trick Or Treaters...I hope.

Happy Halloween.

NASA Turns 50 Years Old

2008-07-29T16:00:00.007-05:00

I was looking at Google's home page this morning and saw yet another one of their clever logos celebrating an event. This time it was the 50th anniversary of NASA.

According to a story on the Scientific American website, NASA officially started operating on October 1, 1958, with only 80 staff members. Today, NASA employs more than 17,000 staff.

The last fifty years have seen the triumphs of the moon landings, the launch of the Space Shuttle, and the exploration of Mars with robotic rovers. These accomplishments also came with setbacks and tragedies along the way with the loss of the crew of Apollo 1, and the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia.

Just last Sunday I saw the repeat of the 60 Minutes broadcast on the new plans for a manned moon landing, the first step to sending a mission to Mars.

Watching footage in the story of actual engines and launch systems being tested was inspiring. The hardware has left the drawing board and is getting ready for the day when world will watch as rockets roar skyward for a new generation of space travelers.

The 60 Minutes story also reported on the risks and costs involved. Critics say the idea of going back to the moon is a pricey project the United States cannot afford right now.

With the shuttle program reaching retirement in 2010, it will not be till 2014 till the first Ares I rockets take off from Cape Canaveral.

It will take optimism for NASA and those who love space travel to face the challenges ahead. I think astronaut Gene Cernan says it best in the 60 Minutes story...

"When I came back from the moon in ’72, [I] stood on my soapbox and said, ‘We’re not only going back to the moon, we’re gonna be on our way to Mars by the turn of the century.' I believed it with my whole heart. But my glass has been half empty for the last 30 years. Now, it’s half full."

NASA's Phoenix Spacecraft Survives To Land On The Angry Red Planet

2008-05-26T13:21:00.007-05:00

I watched the touchdown of NASA's Phoenix spacecraft in the northern polar region of Mars. You don't really get to see the lander itself on TV, only the the people in mission control. It was clear that the lander had landed safely when they stood up and cheered.

The first images from the lander brought back memories of the first Viking Missions in the late 70's, or the days in 1997 Pathfinder mission strained dial-up connections downloading images of dusty red rocks.

According to SpaceflightNow.com, only 50 percent of Mars missions have made it safely to the surface. Others missions, like the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander, reached the planet, only to be smashed into the rocky surface due to glitches with engines or software.

The description of Mars mission failures sometimes feel the planet itself has something to do with the loss of spacecraft, reaching out to swat away the pesky landers like metal mosquitoes.

The treacherous nature of Mars exploration brings to mind an old science fiction movie: The Angry Red Planet.

This 1960 film was filmed in a process called Cinemagic, which was supposed to make the Martian surface seem alive with animated creatures. The trailer boasts how aliens and hungry plants will reach out to get you...IN CINEMAGIC!

The scene I remember the most is when a giant "space amoeba" chases the crew back to their rocketship, then encases it like fruit in a jello mold.

Considering how many space probes have been lost on Mars, the red planet doesn't need gooey blobs to devour visiting spacecraft. The planet is quite capable of doing that job itself.

What Awaits On Mars - 1957 Versus 2008

2008-05-15T11:05:00.005-05:00

When the first space probes sent back detailed pictures of the Martian Surface, years of fanciful speculation by filmmakers, writers, and artists were replaced with cold facts. Mars resembled the deserts of the Southwest United States, not the exotic plains imagined by science fiction. Mars was more Arizona than Barsoom.

Paleo-Future features a fine example of the 1950's vision martian life: a furry creature with an anteater-like snout. Considering this was the era of cold-war paranoia, with drive-in screens offering a barage of hostile communist-like aliens bent on destroying our cities, this fuzzy Dr. Seuss-esque martian looks harmless and cuddly.

On May 25, 2008, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander will touch down on the arctic plains of Mars. The Phoenix Mars Lander will use sensors to "sniff" the soil for chemicals and try to determine whether conditions at the site ever have been favorable for microbial life.

Microbes are not as exciting as the ALF-like creature in the 1950s illustration. Any sign of life on Mars would be big news. If a little creature did emerge from the rocks and waved to the camera, it would be the shock of the century...not to mention a chance for toy companies to cash in selling plush dolls.

Star Trek Enterprise - alternate opening credits

2008-02-03T23:35:00.000-05:00

I watched part of the Sci-Fi channel Enterprise marathon tonight, catching a few episodes I never saw or never got to see all the way through.

Enterprise has a mixed reputation with Trekkies. While some younger fans the enjoyed new characters and stories involving the days before the original series, others hated the scripts deviated from Star Trek's historical timeline.

One common gripe about the show was the Enterprise theme song that played over the opening credits. Earlier Trek shows featured the famous theme music by Alexander Courage, or the rousing orchestra score composed by Jerry Goldsmith for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

The Enterprise theme song was criticized by its detractors as too pop-rock or folksy for a science fiction TV show and out of sync with the Trek universe.

I did not mind the theme song, but I did love the opening image of the history of human exploration and space travel.

Enterprise debuted shortly after the attacks of 9/11. After being worn down by the violent images of the attacks on the Twin Towers on cable news, I played the opening for Enterprise on my VCR over and over for a quick uplift. Anything that celebrated positive human endeavors was a change from images of destruction.

Some YouTube users have re-mixed the opening of Enterprise with new music and new images. With today's digital technology, anyone with a modest computer can remake their favorite TV shows and movies to their liking.

Out of all the Enterprise opening credit remakes I've seen, this one by YouTube user Portland182 is my favorite.

The use of NASA footage and clips from The Right Stuff, along the theme music from the movie Judge Dredd, is powerful, especially as the Enterprise pulls out of spacedock and sheds connecting cables and hoses, similar to the footage of Saturn V rockets leaving for the moon.

I hope the makers of the new Star Trek film are paying attention to all the fine work that Trek fans are sharing online.

Explorer 1 - America's first satellite

2008-02-02T07:36:00.000-05:00

After writing about the loss of Columbia and killer toy robots, I forgot to mention the 50th anniversary of the launch of Explorer 1, America's first satellite.

I love how the announcers for old newsreels read the copy with such dramatic tones. Before 24 hour cable news and the Internet, this is how many average people saw the events of the world.

Along with the news of Explorer 1 on the newsreel is news about Gamal Abdel Nasser and the merger of Egypt and Syria into one nation. Even back in the 1950s, politics and tensions in the Middle East were headline news.

Space Shuttle Columbia...5 years later

2008-02-01T15:26:00.001-05:00

Only 16 minutes from home...

Link to the Official Space Shuttle Columbia Page

Killer robot toys from the 1960s

2008-01-31T10:35:00.000-05:00

Boing Boing features a video of a weird and icky looking robot toy called "Great Garloo". Like something from a drive-in science fiction movie, Great Garloo is shown knocking over bridges and buildings to terrify puny humans.

I can imagine the disapproving stares of 1960s parents when kids asked for this toy. There was probably some mom in horned-rimmed glasses and frosted hair saying "I will NOT let that monstrosity in my house! He'll scuff up my new linoleum kitchen floor! For the LAST TIME...NOOOOO!", then dragging a sobbing kid out of a department store toy department.

While I was looking for the embed code I found this video for Robot Commando, a giant purple robot who fires missiles and attacks tanks. There seemed to be a trend here with kids wanting to drop bombs on peaceful cities and squash their residents. What was it with the kids of the 1960s? Did they harbor the secret wish for a giant robot to show up and stomp all over their hometown? Did the toymakers back then know something about restless suburban tots that the rest of the country did not?

Those wacky kids of the 1960s...what was the world coming too? Can you imagine if those parents had to deal with Grand Theft Auto and Bioshock?

Space paper airplane to soar from space station to Earth

2008-01-18T08:19:00.000-05:00

According to PinkTentacle.com, researchers from the University of Tokyo and the Japan Origami Airplane Association plan to create a paper airplane that can fly from the International Space Station to Earth.

This is not your average paper airplane. This is a plane that has been wind tunnel tested to fly at Mach 7 (8,600 kilometers or 5,300 miles per hour) and made of a special material to withstand the heat, average notebook paper just won't do.

How will they find it when it lands? Most of the Earth is ocean, it could wind up floating in the water.

Homemade Star Wars filmed in glorious Super 8

2008-01-08T18:00:00.000-05:00

The Website @ the End of the Universe features a homemade version of Star Wars shot in glorious Super 8.

Star Wars was inspired by so many sources, from Akria Kurosawa films to old cowboy westerns, it seems fitting that a new generation of filmmakers would pick up a camera and try to re-create it.

What is amazing is the ingenuity of the young filmmakers in re-creating scenes with paper sets and no blue-screens.

Heads up display of the space shuttle Discovery landing

2008-01-03T07:53:00.000-05:00

Spaceships take off and land easily in science fiction films. In the world of fantasy, flying between planets is as easy as flying between two cities on a bargain airline.

Most science fiction filmmakers do not even bother to deal with re-entry in their films. X-Wing fighters and the Millennium Falcon may look pretty on the big screen, but in real life they would burn up in a few seconds of contact with the outer atmosphere.

Every landing of the space shuttle is a dramatic event, sadly underscored by the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003.

This video of the Space Shuttle Discovery in 2006 shows viewpoint of the astronauts as they glide tons of spacecraft in for a soft landing.

Watching the features of the Earth emerge and the green glow of the heads up display creates a symphony of nature and machine, similar to what Stanley Kubrick filmed in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Arthrur C. Clarke's 90th birthday video

2008-01-02T18:40:00.000-05:00

This video was released by science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke on his 90th birthday.

Clarke's insight and eloquence are still strong after, as he puts it, 90 orbits around the sun. He also expresses a peace with his own mortality and the possibility that this is the last time we may see him.

Arthur C. Clarke has been revered as a writer and a futurist, but this video is very personal: the reflections of one man who has seen a lifetime of scientific and social change. Even for a person as intelligent and learned as Clarke, it must be overwhelming to consider the world he was born into to our present day.

2008 and another great big beautiful tomorrow

2008-01-01T16:10:00.000-05:00

Two years ago I opened an account on Blogger and started this blog. Over the last 24 months I have let this blog sit and gather dust for weeks at a time. But I always come back. 2008 is here and I feel a new enthusiasm for writing posts again.

I originally started this blog as sort of a testing lab for my blogging and graphic skills. It has become more than that. I have made friends that I never would have found otherwise. Technical and creative demons have frustrated me along the way, but I learned to overcome them.

I wished to start this blog off on an optimistic tone. In my first post I quoted the song "A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" from the Disney Ride Carousel of Progress, which dates back to the 1964 Worlds Fair.

Carousel of Progress is representative of the positive view of technology and futurism of the early 1960s, when the space race was on and the moon landing would close out the decade. I was not alive to see it myself, but I still have a soft spot for futurism of the 50s and 60s. I grew up with it in the books and movies that filled my childhood.

I was around for the early days of the 1980s home computer and internet revolution. I saw clunky early computers evolve into the somewhat less-clunky machines that we have grown to depend on as part of everyday life. I have seen the web emerge from blocky graphics and text into search engines, blogs, e-business, and wikis.

I was amused to see Cory Doctrow bring the two together in a recent post on Boing Boing. He writes about the Carousel of Progress and how it has influenced his writing.

He also mentions how the Carousel is sadly in need of an update. The final act of the show features a family using a rather hefty looking computer and playing a virtual reality game with oversize goggles. That was cutting edge stuff in the early 1990s, but now seems as dated as rocket packs and art deco cities filled with flying cars.

While the Carousel's last act looks laughable by 2008 standards, it does echo some current trends with accuracy. The Nintendo Wii features controls that are descendants of the early experiments to mass market virtual reality. The Guitar Hero games also work off a similar idea.
Online shopping and email are so common that it is hard to imagine living without them now.

Visions of the future are warped in much the same way ripples in the atmosphere distort the view of telescopes, the further we try to see the hazier the image.

2008 is here. It is a great big beautiful today.

Carl Sagan remembered 11 years later

2007-12-21T00:16:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the eleventh anniversary of the death of Carl Sagan, astronomer and host of the TV show Cosmos.

I grew up watching Carl Sagan on Cosmos and spending many frozen winter nights looking at distant stars and planets through a telescope. His pop culture appeal helped bring an appreciation of astronomy to a generation who would grow up with space shuttle launches and images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Sagan is memorialized on the planet Mars, where the landing site of the first Mars rover bears his name. Sadly, Sagan died before the first amazing images from that mission were transmitted back to Earth.

I found this video narrated by Carl Sagan where he talks about Earth as the "Pale Blue Dot" and featuring music by Vangelis.

Blogger Joel Schlosberg has posted a vast number of links about Sagan's life.

Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait remembers Carl Sagan and what he learned from him.

Epcot at Disney - 25 years old

2007-10-01T13:49:00.000-05:00

Today marks the 25th anniversary of Disney's Epcot, which opened on October 1, 1982.

1982 was a futuristic year. Schools were offering the first computer classes for kids. Blade Runner and The Road Warrior were two stunning and scary futuristic films destined to become classics. On the same date as the Epcot opening, Sony introduced the first CD player.

Epcot was something that Walt Disney himself had imagined as an experimental community, where people would live and work. The Epcot of 1982 was far from Walt's grand vision. Epcot was more of a World's Fair, offering a glimpse of an optimistic future and a celebration of world culture.

The Epcot that stands today is different than the one in 1982. The World of Motion, Horizons, and other exhibits have been demolished and or modified. Rides like Mission SPACE and Test Track have replaced them.

Several blogs have sprung up to discuss what Epcot has become and what its future might hold. Some lament that Epcot has become more of a kiddie ride than an expo for learning about the future.

One may argue that Epcot is more of a relic than a park, made obsolete by the rise of the Internet. With tools like blogs and Wikis, the amount of information available on the web makes any information a park exhibit might share old news before it even gets off the drawing board.

But Disney has a legacy of inspiring the future. Aerospace engineer Burt Rutan has said he was motivated to pursue a career in aviation, and eventually spaceflight, after watching Disney's Man In Space shows as a child. Tomorrowland left an impression on me that was enough to start blogging. Who knows how many countless children passed through the gates of Disney parks and left to follow creative lives as they matured.

Epcot's identity crisis is a sign of how predicting the future has changed. I jokingly made the slogan of this blog "Until I get a flying car or a jetpack...this will do". Flying cars, jetpacks, space colonies were practically assured to be reality by the time the 21st century came along. Some of Epcot's demolished or retired exhibits were filled with such lofty visions.

The kids of the 1980s are all grown up now. Raised on computers and science fiction, they now face the very real problems of e-waste, climate change, and preserving a fragile planet. All humans are all forced to become futurists now, not just speculating about futuristic gizmos and techno-wonders, but for our very survival.

Epcot has always faced a daunting challenge. How do you get easily-bored kids and their parents, who are paying for a pricey vacation, to go to a place to have fun and actually learn something? Disney parks have been able (with generous corporate sponsorship...of course) to make it work. I will be watching closely to see what Disney's imagineers will do to help Epcot adapt.

The world of Epcot enters its 25th year facing an uncertain future. So do we all.

LINKS

Epcot Central - A blog about Epcot
Re-Imagineering - A blog written by Disney Imagineers and with several entries about the future of Epcot
The Official Epcot Homepage - The Epcot Page on Disney.com
Walt Disney's Original Plan for Epcot - A film where Walt Disney himself proposes the original idea for Epcot
The CDP-101 - The first CD player by Sony. Introduced on this date.

September 13th and Space 1999 - The day the moon was hurled out of orbit

2007-09-13T22:09:00.000-05:00

It's been years since the date of September 13, 1999 has passed, but the moon still orbits the Earth...and is still unvisited by humans since the Apollo missions.

Between the years of the cancellation of Star Trek and the debut of Star Wars, Gerry Anderson's Space 1999 had its own unique style. From the tight-fitting uniforms to the funky opening music, Space 1999 is classic 1970s science fiction.

One of notable qualities of Space 1999 is humility. The inhabitants of the year 1999 do not have warp drive, light sabers, or a federation of mighty starships to explore the vast reaches of space.

The crew of Space 1999 are trapped on Moonbase Alpha, an outpost on Earth's moon flung into space when a pile of nuclear waste explodes and acts as an accidental rocket motor.

The survivors on Moonbase Alpha are cut off from Earth, forced to conserve their precious resources and dealing with the unknown. While rubbery aliens show up at times, loneliness and vacuum of deep space are bigger foes than Klingons or Stormtroopers.

Space 1999 is not as campy as Star Trek. Martin Landau's Commander Koenig is not the scenery-chewing and alien-maiden-seducing Captain Kirk. Disco-dance-floor worthy title music aside, the music score by Barry Gray echoes the somber string music used by Stanley Kubrick for the Discovery One scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. For a science fiction show, the presentation is amazingly mature...even if the computer terminals are occasionally revealed to be made of paper.

Years like 1999 and 2001 used to conjure up visions of a world much different than our own. Commentators and pop culture observers often flog the dead horse of how we do not have jetpacks or flying cars. While we don't have moonbases and Eagle Transporters, today's cellphones are slimmer than the comlink devices featured as one of Space 1999's futuristic tech gadgets.

The interior of Moonbase Alpha is spare and clean, reflecting the look of the 1970s, which has seen a recent resurgence in the appreciation of the fashions and design of that era.

The Eagle Transporters, the workhorse spacecraft of Space 1999, are surprisingly realistic. They are the great grandchildren of the lunar modules of the late 1960s, all grown up and sporting bigger engines. I doubt they could fly through the atmosphere of a planet like they do on the show, but hey...it's a TV show. And they make a great toy for any kid.

Here's the opening credits of Space 1999. Rock on in the 21st century to that theme music!

LINKS

Space1999.net
Space 1999 on Wikipedia
Space 1999 Catacombs - Resource guide
Martin Bower's Model World - Space 1999 spaceship models
Space 1999 tech section - Displaying the stun gun and comlink

TNT's 100% Weird promo

2007-08-30T08:39:00.000-05:00

Back before I could get my favorite old Sci-Fi films by the truckload on DVD, I used to catch them on a show on TNT called 100% Weird.

I found the old promo on YouTube. The music and jingle remind me of old corporate films and ads that sold cars and kitchen products.

I love the part where the TNT logo is wheeled into the psychopathic department on a gurney. What company today would be brave enough to suggest their logo needed to be put into a padded cell and sedated?

The new world of "internet" back in 1993

2007-08-26T22:05:00.000-05:00

I found this video of a newscast talking about the "new computer network called Internet".

How long has it been since I've heard an old phone modem make that buzzing sound?

The Space Shuttle Endevour and sunrise

2007-08-06T10:02:00.000-05:00

An incredible photo from the NASA site as the Shuttle Endevour is stands ready for liftoff. To get a really close-up look, check out the high-res version.

More photos of the Space Shuttle roll-out on the NASA Space Shuttle gallery.

Extinct Disney World attractions live on through YouTube

2007-08-05T00:39:00.000-05:00

During the same trip to Walt Disney World I visited the Sci-Fi Dine-In, I also took a trip to the Magic Kingdom. While most of the park was as I remembered it as a kid, there were some rides that were gone or replaced.

One of them was the 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea ride, where visitors could ride a replica of Captain Nemo's Nautilus and come face to face with a giant squid. It was a cheesy ride by modern standards, but still great fun.

It was gone when I visited the park this time. The lagoon was still there there and still filled with water...but Nautilus was closed for good.

Time does not stand still, and neither do theme parks. The ride would eventually be replaced with some new attraction. Like anything you love as a kid, you feel a twinge of loss when it is lost, even if it was a little worn-out.

A couple years later I was looking through YouTube and found that home movies of the old 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea ride had been uploaded by users. There were was the Nautilus again! Watching the video put me back to my first Disney trip with my parents so long ago.

I found that YouTube had become an archives of old Disney rides. From Epcot's The World of Motion to videos of the original Tomorrowland, YouTube had stored the home movies and memories of countless vacations and images of long extinct attractions.

The video sometimes is shaky and the sound a little muddy, but something has been salvaged that captures the experience more than pictures and words.

For generations who never got a chance to see these attractions while they were around, this will be as close as they get. Perhaps virtual reality or Second Life will mature enough not just to bring back old Disney rides, but the exhibits of the 1964 Worlds Fair and other fanciful places that have met with the wrecking ball.

Until then, some streaming video and mono sound will have to do, but that is enough to bring back memories.

The Sci-Fi Dine-In at Disney-MGM Studios and the worlds of old science fiction

2007-08-04T10:14:00.001-05:00

Over five years ago I took a trip to Walt Disney World. A decade had passed since I visited the park and I was curious to see what had changed.

One of the places I was determined to visit was the Sci-Fi Dine-In at Disney-MGM Studios theme park. I had seen the entrance on my last visit, but I didn't have time to stay and have dinner.

The Sci-Fi Dine-In is a 1950s drive-in movie theater re-created indoors. It fits into theme of the Disney-MGM Studios park's appeal to baby boomer nostalgia for Hollywood's past and retro design.

Visitors to the Sci-Fi Dine-In sit in booths shaped like small cars. The walls are decorated with stars and a nighttime landscape. On the menu are drive-in favorites: burgers, fries, shakes. Clips and trailers from old black-and-white science fiction films play on the screen up front. Even the drinks play up the sci-fi theme, with electric glowing ice cubes.

While I am part of the generation that grew up with Star Wars rather than The Day The Earth Stood Still, 1950s and 60s science fiction was part of my childhood. I saw most of those films on Saturday afternoons on TV. The special effects (and often the plots) were tacky, but the filmmakers and artists who made those films often pulled off amazing visions with no CGI or lavish budgets.

Visiting the Sci-Fi Dine-In made me reflect on how much of my childhood was influenced by design and culture created long before I was born.

I realize the 1950s were not the idealized time that some believe them to be. Read some history and you will know it was not Leave It To Beaver or Ozzie and Harriet. However, the 1950s were marked by an excitement about the future (especially space travel) that is missing from our more cynical times. The events of the last fifty years have insured we will never go back to a state of innocence, yet the music, movies, architecture, and graphic design of that time period have endured.

The films and TV shows of the 1950s are part of my past and continue to inspire me. The Sci-Fi Dine-In is a tribute to the era of tin-pie-plate flying saucers and rubber monsters, and entertaining no matter what era you live in or what age you are.

To see more of the Sci-Fi Dine-In, here are some links....

YouTube videos are here, here, and here.

Photos on Flickr are here.

Here is the official entry on the Sci-Fi Dine-In on the Disney World Home Page.

Design for Dreaming - The freeway fantasies of the 1950s

2007-08-03T20:23:00.000-05:00

I first saw Design for Dreaming on a laserdisc of 1950s short films over a decade ago. I was more bemused than impressed. What the heck was this weird promotion film for GM Cars with a pixie-ish woman being whisked off to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel by a masked stranger?

This was my first introduction to the charm of retro-culture. This film is silly, and somewhat sexist to boot, but it clearly captures the optimism of the 1950s. The cars are classics, especially the Corvette. The stainless steel kitchen with the bubble-domed oven echoes the sleek futurism that lives on in today's modern designs.

The girl and her magical guide ride off in a rocket car (sporting a tail-fin that belongs on the back of a shark) down a glitter-dusted freeway of the space age. The future highways are devoid of traffic jams and happy drivers smile from behind the wheels of atomic-powered luxury cars. After experiencing the depression and World War II, highways must have seemed like futuristic blessings to the adults of the 1950s.

Design for Dreaming is remarkable for the 1950s for centering a vision of the future on a woman's dreams and desires. While she is still expected to toil in the kitchen, she also wants her own sports car.

The giddiness of Design for Dreaming is unforgettable. I still hear that Toooooooooomorrrrrrowwwwwwwwwww song in the back of my mind when I see designs for future electric cars.

I doubt those new cars will have fins.

I dedicate this post to my wife as we celebrate five years of marriage.

July 24, 1959 - The Nixon/Khrushchev Kitchen Debate

2007-07-24T08:52:00.000-05:00

I find the "Kitchen Debate" fascinating because the weighty issues of world peace and atomic destruction were discussed within the placid setting of an American kitchen.

The newsreel footage mentions that the event is being recorded on COLOR videotape, a futuristic technology for the time period, now a standard feature on cellphones and laptop computers.

I love the architecture of the building for the American Exposition. The dome reminds me of the 1964 World Fair and Disney's Tomorrowland.

Who would have thought that washing machines and blenders would provoke such a reaction?

Maybe those color schemes of the 1950s shocked Khrushchev's senses.

Wikipedia has more detail about the Kitchen Debate.

Stars and planets to scale

2007-07-21T13:06:00.001-05:00

You can't help but feel small after looking at this.

One small step...

2007-07-20T18:00:00.000-05:00

Here is the famous TV broadcast of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the lunar surface.

While the moon landing of July 20, 1969 is considered to be a major success for NASA and space travel, there were some tense moments leading up to the landing on the moon.

Wired.com features a look back at the moon landing and fears that astronauts would become marooned.

Looking forward, NASA's home page features pictures and details on the Constellation Program, designed to return to the moon.

The liftoff of Apollo 11

2007-07-16T06:00:00.000-05:00

I found this video on YouTube of the liftoff of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969, the mission that put the first humans on the surface of the moon.

This must have been an amazing sight for those who saw the Saturn V rocket lift off into the skies over Cape Canaveral. I've heard that watching a rocket this big take off is something you see and feel. The engine sound is so loud that it shakes the ground like an earthquake. The fire and smoke plume from the engines are visible from miles away.

When I watch this video, I try to place myself in the moment as an wide-eyed kid watching science fiction become real, or an older person who might have remembered the first flight of the Wright Brothers.

The excitement of the launch started even before Apollo 11 fired up its engines. As the countdown clock marked the seconds before liftoff, viewers had to contemplate that this machine sitting on the pad contained three men who were going to the moon. After years of testing and designing space hardware, this was the day.

I wonder if another generation will ever see a sight like this again and feel the same awe. We are more jaded about the promises of science and space travel. Memories of Apollo missions are sometimes painful, reflecting on the past lofty dreams of space travel with a current humble reality.

But there are still engineers and dreamers who are inspired by the past, and they have plans for their own spacebound ambitions.

One day, I hope I get to see a trail of fire against a blue sky with my own eyes, while the ground rumbles beneath my feet.

The mars rovers need all the luck they can get.

2007-07-07T22:36:00.000-05:00

Today is July the 7th of 2007, which is supposed to be the luckiest day ever. From wedding chapels to gambling tables, many hope the luck of a line of sevens in the date will rub off on them.

Some of that luck is needed on the planet Mars right now. Massive sandstorms are posing a threat to the Mars Rovers. The storm that is brewing right now is so big that it could freeze the rovers and end their already extended missions.

In the film Roving Mars, one NASA scientist said the day would come when the rovers would go to sleep in the Martian night and not wake up the next day. The cold would claim them as they powered down.

That day will come...but hopefully not too soon. The rovers still have a lot to explore.

Wish them luck.

Darth Vader, bad dads, and Father's Day

2007-06-17T08:50:00.000-05:00

It is Father's Day, and here's Robot Chicken's tribute to the one of the worst dads ever: Darth Vader.

Darth Vader has been a looming presence this Father's Day. And Still I Persist features a profile of a Star Wars gift set for Father's Day, featuring figures of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. What kind of message are you sending dad with a gift like this?

Pajiba.com features a collection of clips of the worst movie dads of all time, ranging from Jack Nicholson from The Shining, to Darth Vader, to Rodney Dangerfield in Natural Born Killers.

A lunch break in space - The daily chores of astronauts

2007-06-10T08:44:00.001-05:00

This is a YouTube video from a previous mission of the Space Shuttle Discovery. There are plenty of videos of shuttle available showing the Earth from space. This one I think is unique because of the the background audio.

Mission control is contacting the shuttle during their lunch hour. Mission control apologizes for bothering them during lunch hour, then lists chores and technical issues they have to resolve.

While they discuss their daily duties, the majestic Earth rolls by overhead.

If humans do manage to build space colonies and live in orbit long-term, daily life would be a contrast of constant wonder and the daily grind of work that most of us put up with.

Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey offered a glimpse of this working space-life. The famous shuttle docking scene with the Blue Danube is followed by Dr. Floyd having to make small talk with station officials and make phone calls, just like any business person traveling to Dulles or LAX today.

What did you expect? That space travelers would spend all their time with their noses glued to the window in a state of rapture? There is work to be done.

The view would be amazing, but your boss would still find ways to bother you on your lunch hour, sticky notes would probably be all over your workstation, and as the sun rises and sets dozens of times a day, hitting that SNOOZE button on the beeping alarm clock would start your morning.

Space is the final frontier...and a job.

Make sure to bring coffee.

Atlantis lifts off - Amazing images and the giant pencil sharpener

2007-06-09T09:14:00.000-05:00

STS-117 lifted off last night and is on its way to the International Space Station.

Back before the web, the only information you could learn about a shuttle launch were the few tidbits that fit into a half-hour broadcast. Today, NASA's website offers more detail about all the work and ingenuity that goes into a launch.

One detail I learned this morning was the tool engineers used to repair the main fuel tank, which took a beating during a hailstorm as Atlantis sat on the launch pad.

A machine, nicknamed "the pencil-sharpener", sanded down the foam on the tank's delicate surface.

Right after a launch, NASA uploads huge hi-res photos of the shuttle to their website. Before, you had to buy an special large-format magazine to see such detail.

Now you can see a launch close-up only hours after it happens.

These are the times where I get chills. We might not live in a perfect EPCOT future, but some of mass communication wonders I saw as a kid in science fiction films and Disney Parks have come true.

World War II presented Star Wars style - The circle is now complete

2007-06-06T20:24:00.000-05:00

Today is the 63rd anniversary of the D-Day invasion and the beginning of the Battle of Normandy. Over 3000 allied soldiers died during the start of the invasion.

World War II is now the war of a previous century. The veterans of the war are aging and passing away in greater numbers. Images from the war are preserved on black and white film, a media that looks older than ever compared to video and digital images. Film itself is fading away with time, replaced by the memory card and hard drive.

Here is some video about D-Day.

Last week was the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars. The images of World War II shaped the story and images of George Lucas's science fiction space opera. From the Nazi-inspired Galactic Empire (right down to the word Stormtrooper) to the space dogfights over the Death Star that mimic the air battles over Britain and the Pacific, Star Wars harvests the images of a real war and remixes them with special effects into a cinematic thrill-ride.

Leon Hughes has edited a series of videos called World Wars. John Williams's score from Star Wars plays as backdrop to images of the real battles of the Second World War.

According to what I have read and seen, John William's score for Star Wars was more theatrical and powerful than Lucas had dare to hope for. Play any track from any of the Star Wars soundtracks and scenes from the movies start flickering on a cinema screen inside your mind.

With World Wars, the music of Star Wars superimposes the science fiction movie images over their all-too-real inspiration. The choosing of film clips and music is often clever, sometimes inspiring, and sometimes chilling.

Here is part one of three.

World Wars reminds me that the struggle of World War II still captivates filmmakers and artists today, and will continue do so for generations to come.

You can view part two here.

You can view part three here.

A visit to "Todayland" in Meet The Robinsons

2007-05-21T20:10:00.000-05:00

I saw Meet the Robinsons recently, the first digitally-projected film I've seen in a regular theater. I was curious to see how Digital-3D technology would play in full length feature.

3D has been used as a cheesy gimmick (Jaws 3D anyone?) in other films, or the technology was so ill-used I felt I had been looking through a a stained-glass window for two hours. This 3D movie was easy to watch and the "in your face" gags were kept to a minimum.

Meet the Robinson's is more a kid's film than a Pixar production. There are plenty of gags involving food getting splattered and slapstick to keep the ADD kids in their seats, along with tributes to past science fiction films to satisfy adult film geeks.

One such tribute is a robotic bowler hat named Doris, sporting a menacing red lens for an eye...much like a famous computer from a certain Stanley Kubrick film.

The Disney animators paint the backdrop of Meet The Robinsons from a palette cinematic futures, ranging Fritz Lang's gear-driven Metropolis to fiery towers of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. Even Disney's own The Black Hole gets a nod when Doris deploys spinning metal blades, like Maximilian the killer robot.

The central inspiration for the pastel towers and art-deco curves of Meet the Robinsons are the over-optimistic futures ranging from pulp science fiction covers of the 1930s to Disney's Tomorrowland (Space Mountain and the old Astro-Orbiter make a cameo in a section of the future city called Todayland).

There is clear affection of Disney's creative crew for the futures that tantalized (or terrified) generations from the pulp-scifi of the early 20th century to the cyberpunk worlds of the 21st.

Meet the Robinsons is a kids film at its core. Like the real Disney World, it is meant for kids, but that doesn't mean adults can't enjoy it too, and a refreshing change from some animated films that drop crude adult-oriented jokes in a vain attempt to be hip.

And the 3D didn't give me a headache.

The space shuttle tries again for a launch...and so does this blog!

2007-05-15T19:47:00.000-05:00

Just as soon as I completed a new header for this blog and started writing new posts, I was sidetracked by all sorts of issues, projects, and other distractions.

Sometimes I find myself drifting away from this blog, but like an object with a strong gravitational field, it pulls me back.

The shuttle Atlantis rolled back out to the pad again to take another shot at a launch. Atlantis was supposed to launch in March, then was dinged-up by a hailstorm and had to be rolled back for repairs.

Over the last month I have learned more about blogging and space travel. I was not here typing away, the mission behind this blog has continued.

The mission of this blog originally was just to be a new toy for me to mess with and to post nifty stuff I found web-surfing. I once compared this blog to my own personal Tomorrowland where I would pick the attractions.

Now with the new graphics and new array of links I have added, part of that mission has been completed. This blog has survived over a year and has shed its old Blogger template. Much work remains to be done.

Shuttle launches are often nerve-wrecking affairs. Space travel is dangerous but also filled with moments of heartbreak. People wait for hours to watch a shuttle launch, only to have the mission scrubbed for the day due to bad weather or a leaky valve.

I've had my share of false starts here. There have been times I have planned to go full blast with daily posting and building some traffic, only to get distracted or delayed. Delays happen...but I always come back.

Like the Atlantis launch, I hope this time I don't have to roll back to the hangar for more repairs.

The mission continues.

A new template!

2007-04-16T14:56:00.000-05:00

After using the plain rounders template for over a year, I finally spruced up the template for this blog.

With the retro-futuristic look of the new header, all I need is some Theremin music for the background music, but I'm not cheesy enough to annoy people with a looping sound file.

While I was creating the graphics for this new header, a song that was playing in the background was Telstar by The Tornados.

I found this video on YouTube of Telstar by Ed Miller. The images of early satellites with electronic music reminds me of old science films, the ones that inspired my love of space and the reason I started this blog in the first place.

There is also a new URL for this blog. www.charlesblogspace.com is the new home of Charles G's Blog Space.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 1922–2007

2007-04-11T22:37:00.000-05:00

I just heard that Kurt Vonnegut Jr. has died.

Pilotless Drone - A grammar complaint becomes video art

2007-03-16T15:19:00.000-05:00

Newspaper editorial errors can provoke nasty letters and phone calls from irate readers. One particular phone call featured on SFgate.com about the term "pilotless drone" has taken on a life of its own.

This video by chiefbluefeather from YouTube features several famous robots science fiction history, including Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet and VINcent from The Black Hole.

As a fan of old science fiction films, I can't help but love this video.

My thanks to Abby for the tip.

The Empire as Office Space? Darth Vader mocks an officer

2007-03-13T08:37:00.000-05:00

Members of the YouTube community continue to amaze me with how they can take a piece of footage you have seen a million times, re-cut it, and make it into something completely different.

This ominous scene from The Empire Strikes Back is an example. With a few simple edits, the whole scene changes into slapstick.

The Empire from the Star Wars films was supposed to be a formidable adversary to the Rebel Alliance. This clip makes the mighty Empire look like the dysfunctional company from Office Space.

If you compare the Empire to Office Space, does that make Darth Vader the character of Bill Lumbergh, or does that make him Milton? Lumbergh was the boss, but Milton had a red stapler and Darth Vader's lightsaber was red.

The Empire as Office Space? I am sure someone is hunched over their computer making that video right now.

You're gonna play POLE POSITION!!!!!

2007-03-08T20:23:00.000-05:00

While doing some research on YouTube, I found this commercial from the 1980s for Atari's Pole Position.

What strikes me about this ad is how nasty it is. Video game commercials, even back the the 1980s, appealed to a demographic that loved pushing buttons to blow things up...and Pole Position is a racing game where you are supposed to avoid causing destruction.

While this ad might not be as brutal as a session of Quake or Doom III, Atari's marketers seemed to think the way to get the MTV generation (back when MTV used to PLAY music) to open up their (or mom and dad's) wallet to buy a video game was to put a family of stereotype preppies in the the middle of a flaming car crash. Appealing to American kids' thirst for anarchy did not start with Grand Theft Auto.

The family in their Volkswagen looks "nerdy", with the dad and kids wearing big glasses. Ironically, 20 years later geek chic has now become a fashion trend, while the Volkswagen Rabbit has returned as a car aimed at hipsters.

I guess if this ad were made today, the dad would be a trendy looking baby boomer with his kids out for a drive to the local Starbucks in their hybrid SUV.

Considering how much bloodshed goes on in modern video games, I fear that family would wind up someplace very bad if the giant hand came to get them. They would be pursued and devoured by toothy demons or riddled with bullets by feuding urban warlords.

They would not last five minutes on the mean streets of Liberty City.

The Floppie the Banjo Clown hand puppet

2007-03-07T13:30:00.000-05:00

Mystery solved!

Floppie has his own site too.

Floppie is connected to a story that I've already written about, and to say anymore might ruin the surprise for some. If you want to know more about Floppie, you can do some searches on his name and find out.

Besides...clowns kind of creep me out.

Helen Mirren in the movie 2010

2007-03-05T20:48:00.000-05:00

Actress Helen Mirren won an Academy Award recently for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen. Critics have praised Mirren's performance as a monarch dealing with the aftermath of death of Princess Diana.

I remember seeing Helen Mirren in her role as the Russian Cosmonaut and commander of the spaceship Leonov in 2010: The Year We Make Contact in 1984. Mirren is playing similar roles in both The Queen and 2010: a woman who has to face a dire situation and adapting to a world (or worlds) threatening to overwhelm her.

Back then I though Mirren was a Russian actress. Most of the Leonov crew are played by Russians actors, but I was suprised when I found out that Mirren is British. I also had seen her in Excalibur and did not recognize her.

Helen Mirren has Russian ancestors, and her original name was Ilyena Vasilievna Mironova, but she was born in Ilford, Essex, now a part of Greater London.

Early on in 2010, Mirren is the classic stereotype of a Russian woman in the movies during the cold war era: a stern personality as steely as the ship she commands. She's harsh and snippy with the American crew on her ship, who are there to repair the lost spaceship Discovery.

There is a dual conflict in 2010: as an extra-terrestrial presence emerges in the orbit around Jupiter, a political crisis back on Earth could start a nuclear war.

Mirren's cosmonaut reveals her softer side as the tension grows, expressing her fears as an officer, a wife, and a mother. She realizes the events around Jupiter are escalating beyond her ability to comprehend them.

The mysterious monolith has plans to transform Jupiter into a cradle new life, while the Earth spins toward atomic doomsday. In the middle of this, a woman who is used to being in control of her destiny finds herself having to embrace ideas that shatter her familiar thinking and dwarf her authority.

Like the Queen of England dealing with the crisis of confidence in the monarchy in 1997, the commander of the Leonov has to face the situation or be consumed by it...literally.

While 2010 does look more melodramatic nearly two decades after the cold war's end, it is remarkable that a film that came out only a few months after Red Dawn and a year before Rambo II, featured a crew of sympathetic Russian characters.

Space itself becomes a character in 2010. This is not the space of the Star Trek films, where ships bounce between star systems with a push of a button. The giant Leonov (designed by futurist Syd Mead) is formidable looking, yet when the ship has to maneuver into the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, you see how puny and delicate human technology is compared to the vastness of space and the gravity of giant planets.

Helen Mirren has played more dramatic and recognized roles, but I still remember her from 2010, even as she became more well known for her roles in TVs Prime Suspect and now The Queen. 2010 took a beating from fans of 2001 and from critics for not being as cerebral as Kubrick's film, nor as exciting as the Star Wars epics.

As the actual year 2010 approaches, perhaps the success of The Queen will encourage a second look at this film and Mirren's performance.

The Blue Man Group - Disco meets CMYK

2007-03-04T08:00:00.000-05:00

Last Friday I saw the Blue Man Group in concert. I did not sit in the "poncho" section, so I returned home with being splashed with anything, but I was close enough to get a good view of the show.

I sometimes find it hard to lose myself in a show like this, my brain is trying to interpret all the design choices and elements. I find myself asking in the middle of the show "Why did they pick that font for a title?" or "Is that a Stanley Kubrick reference?" This time the analytic side of my brain took a break for the evening.

One part of the Blue Man Group show that did appeal to the graphic arts geek of my personality was the song I Feel Love, where the lead singer wears a dress that flashes on and off in sync with stage lights. The effect was like a cross between the sound meters on graphic equalizer and a Pantone guide. Disco meets CMYK.

Here's a clip I found of the Blue Man Group in action with the electric dress.

The UFO powered car - Can alien technology can stop global warming?

2007-03-03T08:58:00.000-05:00

Yahoo News features a story about a former Canadian defense minister who demands that the governments of the world admit that they possess secret alien technologies, which could be used as an alternative fuel source to fossil fuels.

Are there really UFOs? I have no idea, but this story intrigued me as I tried to imagine what would happen if this former Canadian defense minister got exactly what he wanted.

What if governments of the world admit that they have hangars full of crashed UFOs, then they hand them over to companies who start backward engineering them?

Soon, I'm able to drop by my local dealership and pick up a new sedan that features the latest in alien engineering under the hood. Forget fuel cells, soon we are all driving cars powered by Men In Black style technology.

Steve Jobs would be offering new UFOIpods, offering music and cellphone tech powered by extra-terrestrial microchips. Maybe Microsoft could use UFO tech to make a version of Windows that expands Internet access across the solar system. That would give a whole new meaning to the slogan "Where do you want to go today?"

But wait a second...why would UFOs crash in the first place? If alien tech is so powerful, why do flying saucers keep smashing into the ground? If these bug-eyed aliens are so bright, how come they have had so many accidents that more than one country has a UFO sitting in some secret garage? Are there lemon flying saucers that are more crash prone than others?

If we did get UFO powered cars, we would need qualified mechanics to fix and service them. Would we have to recruit aliens to repair our new cars? I shudder to think what the illegal drag-race scene would do with these new engines.

And what about the aliens? If we use their technology to conquer global warming, couldn't they show up court and demand a cut of the royalties from all those new products? It would be a field day for the lawyers.

What would be the reaction of the public to all of this? Perhaps Hollywood already answered the question back in the 1950s with The Day The Earth Stood Still. Here is the trailer.

New pictures of Saturn from Cassini

2007-03-02T05:00:00.000-05:00

Whoa!

Where's Gamecube?

2007-03-01T10:53:00.000-05:00

Since I posted the ADD Shopping Network by DCLugi, I thought I would post this video too. WARNING...the video game consoles in this video use a few four-letter words. I would say they have dirty mouths...but they don't even have mouths. Viewer discretion is advised.

In a related story, it seems that Gamecube is still alive and well.

Blogging, writing, and the ADD Shopping Network

2007-02-28T09:17:00.000-05:00

For the last month I have been working on other projects and this blog has been quiet. Now that I have more time to post here again, I'm back.

After a month of not posting here, I have to brush off the cobwebs and dust. When one stops posting on a blog, even for a month, it gets old and moldy.

One thing I have noticed is that it is easer for me to write quick posts. This blog has helped me to sit down in front of a keyboard and feel relaxed about writing again. I used to feel a pressure when writing to make every single word perfect, like I was back in school and writing a term-paper.

It is possible to overedit what your write and make blogging more like drudgery than fun. That can be just as bad as being a careless and sloppy writer. A balance must be found between solid editing and being too picky.

This blog has bucked the trend by not dying after three months. Most bloggers seem to move on after 90 days. With so many choices for self-expression available, from instant messaging to MySpace, it is no surprise that blogs are built, then go silent after a few posts.

With Ipods and video game systems transforming from must-have items to garage-sale bargains, technology has never been so disposable.

Blogs are just digital information, sent to the trash with a push of a button, or abandoned by their owners like old furniture on the side of a freeway. With so many blogs competing for attention, readers have attention spans you can measure with egg timers.

There is a positive side to the ADD nature of blogging. The bloggers who are determined to be heard keep posting away like mad, while the casual blogger moves on.

This reminds me of a video I found on YouTube from DCLugi.

Do young people care about space travel?

2007-01-13T14:20:00.000-05:00

The Space Review features a story on young people and their interest (or lack thereof) in space travel.

I contemplated the same issue in blog entry a year ago . Do kids today see space travel playing any role in their lives? Space is part of the subculture of American youth, from Star Wars movies to video games like Halo.

Do kids see space as a real place for human exploration, or is it just a fantasy-land where lasers guns and space fighters get to blow up slimy aliens and hordes of armor-plated bad guys? When NASA talks about going to the moon or Mars, images from pop-culture come close to eclipsing the real thing.

Children and teenagers today were not alive for the first days of Apollo program, or the first flights of the shuttle. For young people in our hyper-competitive culture, space travel might be the new frontier, but more earthy pressures are always in their face.

Little kids learn about science and rocketry in grade school, but by the time they get to their teenage years, it is time to focus on something that will get them into college, then a job to pay off those student loans. A select few might realize a dream of working for NASA or for a private space travel company, the rest are off to grad school or the office cubicle.

This could change if private space travel takes off, along with NASA's plans to return to the moon. When you go to a museum and look at murals of astronauts walking on lunar soil, the idea of space flight seem noble, yet so far away. When you see a rocket launch with your own eyes, everything changes.

Only a few weeks ago, the shuttle took off and flew by my city, zooming past the East Coast after launching from Florida. People of all ages went into their backyards on a cold December night, looking for a fleeting speck moving across the night sky.

Why would they go out on a freezing night to look up to see something so small and, honestly, unspectacular? The shuttle would only be a blip in the sky, not quite like seeing it roar up into the blackness at Cape Canaveral. Why did they bother to look up?

The reason might be they knew that moving star was a group of humans, moving faster than the speed of sound on their way to space. The sight was not nearly as spectacular as seeing the real launch at the Cape, but a bit of the awe of space travel had come to visit them where they lived.

In a time when we have become bored with technology, the idea of humans going into space still make people yearn to be part of the adventure themselves. Space travel can reach into the imaginations of jaded adults, returning the wonder of youth for a few precious moments.

Will someone find a way to harness that imagination? If they do, there will be many who will be ready to brave the cold and watch them go forth, even if it is just bright pinpoint moving against the starry night.

Blogger Vs WordPress - The battle begins

2007-01-13T14:09:00.000-05:00

I've been away for a while, working on some other blogging projects. I have been using WordPress for the new blogs I have been setting up.

Now I get to see what is better...WordPress or Blogger.

WordPress is more of a challenge because the user has to set up the software, the domains, and deal with all the choices that WordPress offers.

A few months ago, WordPress would have been the winner by a long shot. That was before I took the new blogger for a spin. With Blogger's new labeling feature, WordPress does not automatically have the advantage.

I wish Blogger offered a heavy-duty corporate edition that was meant for business and corporate use. I would not mind paying for it if it got the job done.

Like so many things in my life, this was supposed to be fun. Now it is more like work. That is not a bad thing. It just creates more frontiers to conquer.

Happy New Year

2007-01-01T00:14:00.000-05:00

My first post of the new year.

The last post of 2006 and the new Blogger

2006-12-31T22:19:00.000-05:00

This blog is now running off of the new Blogger software. I'm a little nervous about this upgrade. Like the USS Enterprise zooming through some cosmic phenomena, I hope everything is intact and functional when we come through the other side.

2007 starts in a few hours.

Let's try out the label features on this post. I'm going to put this under "blogging".

Happy new year!

Battlestar Galactica Space Alert and Christmas Day

2006-12-25T10:35:00.000-05:00

In 1979 on Christmas Day I found a small box under the tree and knew by its shape and size exactly what it was. It was the game I wanted for Christmas.

The game was Battlestar Galactica Space Alert, a handheld electronic game from Mattel Electronics. Battlestar Galactica was cool in my little kid universe because it featured Cylons and spaceship battles. This game was cool because it featured the Battlestar Galatica name and was electronic.

This was the golden age of handheld electronic games. Graphics and sounds on these games were limited to the power a 9-volt battery or a pack of AAs could deliver. Space combat was reduced to little red dots making beeping noises while colliding with other red dots. Even by 1979 standards, this game was simplistic, but what other options were there? Atari games were just as crudely rendered. It would be another year before I saw a Space Invaders or Galaxian arcade game. On Christmas Day 1979, this was state of the art.

My original Space Alert game was burned up by a faulty DC adaptor. I found one on EBAY to replace it nearly two decades later. I was surprised to find that it still was a challenge to play. Getting a score over 100 is almost impossible. If you want to give Space Alert a try, stop by Peter Hirchsberg's page for the LED game simlulator.

This holiday season, people lined up in the cold and rain for Playstation 3s and the Nintendo Wii. It amazes me to see how far technology has come in a quarter of a century. It also makes me wonder what is next.

One year of blogging...almost

2006-12-04T22:24:00.000-05:00

About eleven months ago, I started posting on this blog. I was a little nervous about starting a blog and posting my writings this way.

Blogging has become a joke to some people, a sign of vanity and self-absorption in the hands of others.

In some ways I feel let down by falling short of my lofty goals. I have not built the community I set out to create. I have not made the new blog header I started to code. I have not written half the stories I set out to publish.

Good things have happened as well. I have made contact with people I never would have met if I had not signed up for that Blogger account that January evening over eleven months ago. I have rediscovered the joy of writing again, the act of spontaneously typing away to see what takes shape.

I have a notebook of stories and scribbles yet to be made into blog entries. I had hoped to put them live by now, but real life got in the way.

A new year begins in a few weeks, I can start anew then. I have walked away from this blog several times this year. Sooner or later I press the shortcut on my toolbar and fire up the blogger dashboard. My blog goes quiet not because I don't have anything to write about (I feel burdened at times because I have too much to write about), but because I'm off doing other things and the time to blog escapes me.

So far, I have always returned.

Today there was announcement that NASA wants to build a lunar base by 2024. What will our world be like by 2024? Many have fears that humans won't make it that far.

I can't predict or control the future, but someone close to me said our future is created one year at a time, one day at time, one step at a time.

One year has passed. I'm still here. NASA has big plans for the future.

So do I.

Kiwi - Animation by Dony Permedi - Putting the heart back in CGI

2006-11-16T22:05:00.000-05:00

Every week it seems there is a movie with CGI animals making wisecracks and pop culture references. CGI animation used to be something I saw at art cinema animation festivals, now it is sold on DVDs by the ton at Wal-mart.

Then I found Dony Permedi's Kiwi on YouTube.

This digital short makes me remember back when I saw early Pixar films in the late 80s and early 90s, such as Red's Dream and Geri's Game.

Pixar is the top studio for CGI animation because their films feature a warmth and humanity that is often lacking it other CGI films. Kiwi has that spark that made early Pixar into the animation powerhouse it is today. It takes talent to turn a squat bird created in a 3D program into a character with charm and personality.

I hope as a new generation of computer animators emerges, they remember to put some heart into their work along with all the rendering and modeling.

Dony Permedi's website is http://www.donysanimation.com

Web 3.0? A new internet that guides users?

2006-11-11T19:16:00.000-05:00

According to the New York Times, researchers are working on Web 3.0.

What does this mean? Is Web 2.0 old and busted already?

According to the story, Web 3.0 means this "new" web will act more as an adviser than a collection of links and pages. The web applications would assemble information in ways that would give more rewarding results.

An example used in the story is vacation planning, where person runs a query looking for a packaget within specific budget, a warm location, and allow a child to travel too.

I know a query that this Web 3.0 can do for me.

Respond to this query: "Give me my e-mail without the spam!"

The five sins of blogging - The Charles G edition

2006-11-10T20:11:00.000-05:00

I found this article on Webpronews.com about the five sins of blogging.

Pretty simple stuff. I've always thought of blogging as something similar to throwing a house party. If you invite people to your house, you should treat them with kindness and respect. It helps if you stock up on ice too.

Guests should be careful that they don't spill wine on the rug or steal the silverware.

I'm going to the kitchen now. Anyone want ice cream or beer?

While I'm gone, here are my five sins of blogging.

1. Sloppy unfocused writing - I've seen bloggers rant on for pages and repeat the same points over and over again. Sometimes after five or more paragraphs I just cry out "I GET IT! NEXT POINT PLEASE!" Some bloggers write in a form of stream of consciousness. That's fine. But if you are writing a post about Star Wars: Episode I and spend 10 pages bashing Jar-Jar...just let it go. If you have a point, make it. Then move on to the next point.

2. Rotten spelling - I find typos in my blog all the time. It frustrates me, but it happens. This isn't the New York Times. I fix them as soon as I find them. I have a high tolerance for spelling errors, but I wish to inform some of you that there is a difference between allowed and aloud, and between here and hear. If you have problems with this, please go over to Amazon.com and buy a basic book on grammar. I do not think that is asking too much. I hope we will see fewer spelling mistakes thanks to Firefox 2.0, especially in my own posts. I also recommend the Clusty Toolbar with its right-click access to a spelling dictionary. Google also acts as a dictionary too.

3. Background music - I know background music is big deal on MySpace, but it still annoys the hell out of me. MySpace is...well...MySpace. Certain sins can be forgiven there. I still shudder when I remember back to the bad-old days of the web, when every page thought it was clever to have MIDI or WAV files as background music. Oh boy! Bad to the Bone rendered Casio Keyboard style! When I go to a blog and suddenly have Linkin Park or Evanescence blasting out of my speakers at top volume, I reach for the volume first and the back button second. Let your words speak for you. I know you might love Coldplay, but put it in your profile, not as a slow-loading MP3 file.

4. IM speak - I use instant message short hand all the time...when I'm on IM. An occasional WTF or OMG is fine, but try to speak in complete words. You are on a blog. You have time to compose your thoughts and write complete words before you press POST. When U rite like this I h8t it! It's teh suck! PWN3D! :P Hey, it's your blog. Write anyway you want. Just don't expect me to take you seriously if you end every sentence like this. :)

5. Excessive amounts of images in posts - Most people who want to share images set up Flickr accounts. Show me one or two images of your hot girlfriend, your cool car, your sick computer gaming rig, or your new baby. Just one or two is fine. If you want to show me more, give me a link to a seperate site where I can scan thumbnails. If you pack ten or fifteen huge images into a blog entry, even my cable modem slows down to a crawl. I end up staring at blank pages while the images load.

That's my five sins of blogging. Go in peace. I'm out of ice cream. Sorry.

Disney's The Black Hole - A new trailer for an old retro scifi classic

2006-11-06T20:35:00.000-05:00

Jusu, a YouTube user from Helsinki, Finland, made this trailer for the 1979 Disney classic The Black Hole.

I've written before about The Black Hole on this blog when I found some cool homemade animation, but this video is worth a second post on a film that amazed me as a little kid.

The Black Hole, was one of those films that I grew up with. I am still fond of this film in the same way I am fond of my Battlestar Galactica toys. I might have outgrown them, but they are relics that I cherish from a less than happy childhood. I keep The Black Hole on my DVD shelf the same way I keep old Star Wars toys next to my computer.

What makes this film stand out in my memory? I suspect it is because The Black Hole is an film that feels warped and pulled in many directions, much like the nature of space and time in a real black hole. As Disney's first PG-rated film, The Black Hole is filled with strange imagery and content that puts the film in a netherworld between being too intense for kids, but not hip enough for teens or adults. The Black Hole tries to be traditional Disney film in one respect, then a laser-blast shoot'em up in another.

The Black Hole reaches back to the style of films like 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, but incorporates elements of Star Wars as well. The result is a pulp-style space adventure with memorable and odd moments.

One weird scene is when idealistic scientist Dr. Alex Durant is killed by the wirling blades of the menacing robot Maximilian. In a reversal of his role in Psycho, it is Tony Perkins' character who is murdered by sharp blades.

Another notable aspect of The Black Hole are the mechanical effects used to create space scenes. In the making of the Star Wars films, space battles were fought against blue screens filmed by robot cameras, then matted into starfields later.

The Black Hole features space scenes where ships are filmed against starfield backdrops live in-camera. This old-school method of filming effects turns space itself into a character. The stars in these shots are not the standard glowing white pinpoints against a field of black. In The Black Hole, the backdrop is a luminous blue nebula. The effects feel dated in an age where Hubble Telescope images shape our view of the cosmos, yet manage to create amazing widescreen vistas.

The lead ship, USS Cygnus, looms and glows in a mystical Disney blend of the Haunted Mansion crossed with the rocket-spires of Tomorrowland, creating a haunted rocket park of a far-flung future.

Suprisingly realistic are early shots aboard the spaceship USS Palomino. The cramped, Apollo capsule-like Palomino is not the Enterprise, or even Han Solo's Millenium Falcon. Astronauts are crammed into a living space that offers little privacy, designed for computers and equipment instead of people. Everywhere humans are confronted by buttons, keyboards, and viewscreens.

Until the crew lands on the cavernous ghost ship Cygnus, there is no artifical gravity. People float in the zero gravity (sometimes with wires showing) aboard a ship that twists and rotates around them. The viewer is forced to adjust to space the same way an astronaut would, with no up or down as the camera simulates a spinning ship dragged by the cruel gravity of a black hole, echoing directionless interior shots Apollo 13 depicted years later.

The crew is forced to land on the Cygnus to repair the oxygen supply. The USS Palomino is not the warhorse spacecraft of other Sci-Fi films. After being mauled by high gravity, the Palomino is crippled in the same way the command module of the Apollo 13 mission was. The Palomino, for all its gear and technology, is a delicate metal shell barely protecting the crew from harsh deep space.

Later on in the The Black Hole, bad science takes the helm and creates campy moments. Meteors roll down ship corridors like bowling balls. People float in airless space harmlessly without a helmet in sight. Yet for the first half-hour, The Black Hole has some strong space geek appeal.

Jusu's trailer is way better than the original trailer that was released in 1979. It clearly demonstrates editing is an art that can restitch an old movie, taking a film you have seen a billion times and transforming that movie into a new tapestry of images.

...now if only V.I.N.cent the robot did not look so much like a toddler's toy.

BEWARE! Google watches us all!

2006-11-03T09:02:00.000-05:00

According to The Guardian newspaper, Google is becoming a database of human activity that tracks where we go and what we do.

Google stores all of our searches (gulp!), it caches our web pages and our blogs, it can even alter search results according to your wishes.

The real problem is not Google. Google is just a machine. The problem is what we choose to do with that information.

We long ago gave up our ability to travel a distance and be unknown, and in many ways that is a good thing. Criminals are followed by their computerized records no matter where they may lurk. An electronic society moves faster and offer more opportunity than a paper-based one.

Another mixed blessing are data-harvesting services to track your past and present. It's great when you are trying to pay a bill or get credit to make a big purchase, but a horror if your information falls into the possession internet bandits.

Now what you express verbally on the Internet can be stored and tracked, even years after you wrote or uploaded it. You leave a trail every time we speak out on a message board, write a blog post, or post our photo on the web. Google now sniffs it out and stores it. Our friends and allies can see it, but so can internet trolls or cyberstalkers.

Your potential employers can track your opinions too. For those of us who use blogs and social networking sites, we have to now make a serious decision on how much of our real life we let into our online life. I know I had to make this choice before I started this blog.

How many people are going to be forever haunted by their MySpace profiles or blog posts? Usenet already has a database that goes back to 1981. Two decades of conversations, arguments, rants and innuendo are there. Google now serves that up for public consumption.

Perhaps we will have to get used to the idea that humans are forever in flux. I'm not the same person I was last month, or last year, or last decade. You think you can know a person by what they posted on a blog last year, last week, or a decade from now?

With Google Earth and mapping services being added to the mix, people may soon be physically tracked by search engine services. Celebrities already have a problem, bloggers share where they are eating or walking with a snooping public. Will we all soon be ratted-out by our cellphones and Google accounts?

Like #6 from The Prisoner, we are not numbers, we are free people. The real question is as powerful tracking and search engine technology comes online, do we care if people watch us and read our blog posts as we act on that freedom?

Planet of the Vampires - Cheesy retro science fiction and inspriation for Alien?

2006-11-02T21:34:00.000-05:00

One of the reasons I started this blog was to write about old science fiction films from the 50s and 60s, so when I found the trailer for Planet of the Vampires on YouTube, I had to write an entry about it.

If you have seen Alien, the plot of Planet of the Vampires might seem silghtly familar. It makes me wonder if Alien screenwriter Dan O'Bannon saw it and took notes.

The film begins when a traveling spaceship picks up a distress call and lands on a spooky planet. Upon landing, strange entities start driving the crew into a killing rage and taking over their minds.

Like the slimy xenomorphs in Alien, human bodies are warm places for creatures to seek refuge in, although there is a lot less splatter in this movie. It was the 1960s, and it would be another decade or so before an audience could withstand scenes where creatures tear and claw their way out of a human torso in a spray of red innards. The world was not ready for HR Giger's creatures yet.

There are other striking Alien-esqe similarities. In one scene, two astronauts explore a wrecked spaceship from a distant civilization, discovering a fossilized creature still at the controls.

Even shots and camera angles from Planet of the Vampires have a certain similiarty to Alien, especially as the crew leaves the their hulk of a ship, walking by the claw-like landing gear, or as the mothership lands on the planet, decending on a plume of exhaust through the wispy clouds.

The costume design of Planet of the Vampires looks like a cross between a flight attendant's uniform from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Cenobites from Clive Barker's Hellraiser. Here space travelers are decked out in latex jumpsuits and medeval looking rubber helmets. If Helmut Newton ran the space program, it might look like this.

Alien, of course, leaves this film in the dust when it comes to special effects and creature design. But for all its silliness, Planet of the Vampires features a few good "boo" moments, similar to the type Alien executed with lethal precision.

The alien planet in Planet of the Vampires does not even attempt to look realistic, with multi-colored lights and fog right out of a carnval's haunted house ride and styrafoam rocks from Star Trek.

The low-budget effects are part of the fun with a film like this. It is matinee fare at its cheesiest...and we are in on the joke. We know the ship is a model on the end of a fishing line. The rubber wounds on the actors look like they were bought from a dollar store. The dialogue is crummy.

Planet of the Vampires is bad science fiction meant for drive-in audiences. Perfect for a late night with the lights off and a healthy supply of junk food.

My type of movie.

You Tube and the howling basenji - Watching the home movies of the world

2006-11-01T21:56:00.000-05:00

I found this video of a Basenji named Lucy on YouTube recently. If you have watched the video, you can tell Lucy does not care much for the harmonica. This is one of the countless videos people have put on YouTube, many of their pets doing silly tricks or just acting cute.

Since YouTube (or GooTube as some people now call it since being purchased by Google) started pulling down videos from Comedy Central and other parties miffed about copyright infringement, I now realize that most of YouTube is home movies. These were videos that might have sat on the family shelf, shared only on VHS tapes in one family. Now anyone with a camcorder and a little Internet savvy can upload their videos for the world to watch, or wince at.

This Basenji video brought back a flood of bittersweet memories. My family once had two Basenjis. They grew up with me and were special dogs who I still miss even today. If you have ever owned a Basenji, you know the challenges that a headstrong dog can put you through. They are funny and aggravating. Watching this video made me remember moments I had not thought about in years. I admit, I got a bit teary-eyed.

That made me realize the power of YouTube in a way that ordinary TV has never replicated. Video that people shoot themselves for YouTube are of all types. You have animal comedy, but you have more serious fare as well.

YouTube users have uploaded video of visits to the World Trade Center, shot just weeks or days before the twin towers were attacked and destroyed. Their vacation footage has turned into an historical record. You see the towers and their view of New York City through the lens of a tourist's camcorder, never imagining what they were recording for future generations to see.

If YouTube stays up, or simply morphs into something else in Google's desires, it could become a giant collection of human experience rendered in video. If it lasts for years, people who shot those videos will grow up, grow old, and die, leaving their digital legacy behind for Internet users everywhere.

I can surf through YouTube videos for hours, like flipping through a thousand scrapbooks. I do not know the people, but I can see their lives of friends, family and pets. I see things that take me back to my own memories.

What is perhaps worrying for many owners of large media companies and network owners is that most of what is on YouTube is actually more entertaining that the recycled sitcoms and reality shows that they try to get us to watch. YouTube is the ultimate reality show channel, made by and starring real people.

We will have to see how Google uses the service they paid a hefty sum for. I could quote the overused Andy Warhol quote about 15 minutes of fame, but now it is more complicated than that. People can be as famous as long as they have bandwidth to burn.

There are hundreds of annoying and crass videos on YouTube too. I am just glad I was able to remember two beloved dogs that left me over two decades ago.

That was no Martian...It's Halloween - NASA's new plan to outer space

2006-10-31T23:26:00.000-05:00

On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles terrified radio listeners with the Mercury Theatre presentation of The War of The Worlds. Because of Welles's dramatic script and some clever sounds effects, many listeners thought slithering aliens were loose in New Jersey, frying humans with their heat rays and beginning their conquest of our pale blue dot of a planet.

It was years later that space probes showed us the red planet up close. What was once feared to be the home planet of invading martians was revealed to be a barren world. Mechanical rovers left their tracks in the red sands of Mars. Computers used digital scans to recreate deep martian canyons in CGI. We now look at Mars as a curiosity, not a threat.

It is fitting that almost to the day of the famous Welles broadcast that the Hubble Space Telescope was given a new lease on life. Like the War of the Worlds Martians of the famous book, radio play and George Pal movie, the Hubble was facing extinction in the cold realm of space.

If all goes well, brave souls will travel to the Hubble in May of 2007: the same month that a famous science fiction film lit up movie screens 30 years before.

For this overgrown kid, the Hubble announcement was a treat sweeter than any sticky candy.

This Halloween, as trick or treaters arrived at my front door, I watched one of my favorite bad science fiction films: Plan 9 From Outer Space. Plan 9 was produced during the paranoid 1950s, when some thought our neighboring planets teemed with wriggling lifeforms plotting to destroy us, fears about the spread of communism expressed through rubber monsters and plastic spaceships.

It also reminded me of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie, where a silly spaceship crashes into the Hubble and sends it to a fiery death. "Farewell sweet Hubble!" sobbed Crow T Robot.

At least for tonight, that scene has been delayed for a while.

Here is the planet Mars as seen by the Hubble. As I look at these images, I hear the voice of Orson Welles and his sign off from the War of the Worlds broadcast.

This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character, to assure you that The War of the Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be; The Mercury Theatre's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying "Boo!". Starting now, we couldn't soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night, so we did the best next thing. We annihilated the world before your very ears and utterly destroyed the CBS. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn't mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody, and remember please for the next day or so the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Martian, it's Halloween.

Blogging - Taking the red pill

2006-10-17T08:08:00.000-05:00

Yikes! I haven't posted in over a month! Where did I go?

I guess you could say I went down the rabbit hole.

I know it's a lame Matrix reference, but that's the only thing that quite describes the last month or so.

I keep my real life off this blog, so I won't go into too much detail. I can say when I started up this blog back in January, it was more of toy than a serious venture.

Now it has proven to be a gateway to much larger things...and a window on to what is really going on with the Internet.

I've been using the web since the mid-90s, before I even had my own computer. I remember how clever I though I was when I coded my first crude HTML page.

I knew a little about the programing, search engines, graphic design, etc. Enough that I managed to create web pages and use the Internet for my own needs. I read blogs, used E-commerce sites, and bought stuff on Ebay. I used the net and I thought I knew how it worked. I considered myself an expert.

Since starting this blog, I realize that my self-confidence was a joke. The online world I used for commerce and recreation was filled with strange interworkings that I has scarcely explored. I knew about things...but rarely used them for my own purposes. Blogging was one such thing.

Over the last few months, I have researched topics such as blogs and the blog culture, search engines, social bookmarking, and CSS. Now I have found that ther are countless ways I can use these tools to expand my creativity.

Many of these tools have been around for years. but only now have I really immersed myself in it and started to use them.

This experience is both amazing and disturbing. I'm disappointed in myself that I haven't seized on these opportunities sooner. Like Keanu, I feel a little lightheaded after waking up and wiping the goo out of my eyes. I now realize where I am and what is going on.

The difference is for me, the machines are on my side.

Whoa.

September 2006: Stanley Kubrick and taking back 2001

2006-09-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

There were no strange monoliths dug up on the moon in the year 2001. No missions to Jupiter. No glowing star children looked down from orbit upon the blue orb of Earth.

2001 was far from the "2001" of Stanley Kubrick's monumental film and Arthur C. Clarke's novel. I wasn't even alive when "2001" premiered in New York City in April 1968, only a few months before construction began on the World Trade Center.

I saw Kubrick's 2001 on TV as a child. It was too much for my childish brain to absorb, but I didn't care. The spaceships were cool.

So was the idea that I was going to be in the prime of my life when the real 2001 arrived. Maybe I would grow up to be one of the crew of a giant space station, or fly shuttles to distant moonbases.

But as the first space shuttles lifted off in the 80s, I knew already that reality would fall short of the sci-fi movies and novels. Moonbases and manned missions to Jupiter were still to be distant fantasy. But who cared? Real life was going to be exciting anyway.

Space probes sent back pictures of erupting volcanoes on the moons of Jupiter. The home computer was becoming a common tool. The Internet was promising a new frontier.

When the real 2001 arrived, I wasn't flying space shuttles or living in space, but I had built a good life. 2001 wouldn't be "2001", but we still had plenty of century to use. Who knows what might happen?

A day in September 2001 took the year away from Kubrick and Clarke. We did not have to fear insane computers in the real 2001, insane people were enough. Space seems safe compared to Earthy perils.

The year 2001 now belongs to images that conjure fear, not hope. Five years later, a button seems to have been pressed that has frozen many of us in time, like a magical stopwatch from the Twilight Zone. Time moves on, yet so much seems to be held prisoner to 102 minutes that keep looping forever.

I have had my share of fear and anxiety during the last five years. As September 11, 2006 arrives, I have decided to take back the year 2001...and all the years to come.

I remember how the year 2001 began, with the acts of creative pranksters, not thugs and terrorists. Brave and creative people are my heroes, and I will make it my mission to seek them out and celebrate them.

I also came upon this rare video of Stanley Kubrick at the "2001" premiere on YouTube.

As I write this, the space shuttle Atlantis is on its way to the International Space Station...part of that "2001" that was dreamed of by a child who was up way past his bedtime.

Man meets puffer fish - Don't mess with things that are round and prickly

2006-08-09T20:52:00.000-05:00

I guess this diver thought that it would be fun to taunt a swollen puffer fish.

After the lovable Bloat made puffer fish look cute in Finding Nemo, it is easy to forget that they have sharp bony teeth.

They also have short tempers with anyone who likes to tease them.

The best thing would be to heed the advice of an old Saturday Night Live sketch. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball!

Is your blog's sidebar drooping in Internet Explorer? Here's the fix!

2006-08-07T18:47:00.000-05:00

Earlier today I was messing around with a template in Blogger. I made some graphic changes and realized to my horror that sidebar of my blog was "drooping".

I use the Firefox web browser for my default browser and my blog looked fine. When I looked at the blog in Internet Explorer, the sidebar section with the links was set far down the side of the page. No matter what I did, it stayed there.

So after some extensive searching I found a solution. It took some trial and error, but I managed to fix the problem.

I found the solution on Jon Aquino's Mental Garden, which is filled with useful information on web design and software.

The solution was to alter the CSS positioning of DIVs in the blogger templates. It took some tweaking, but it seems to have fixed my issue with IE.

If you're new to the whole CSS positioning game, check out Max Design's tutorial on CSS floats.

If you have no idea what CSS is or what the heck a DIV is, go read this tutorial at W3Schools.com.

Coming Home

2006-08-06T17:47:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted a blog entry for a while. I fell out of the habit of regular posting. I have been reading and doing research, much of which I will share here as time permits.

Much has happened since I last posted. The shuttle went up and came home safely. Another launch is planned soon. The world has become much more dangerous due to the situation in the Middle East.

Sometimes I feel that I can't find anything positive to write about or inspire me. Yet every so often I find something that I just have to share. One such thing was a music video I hadn't seen in years that I found on YouTube, featuring incredible space footage set to a catchy beat.

A perfect song to start this blog anew with.

Asteroid flyby - No fireworks...thankfully

2006-07-03T09:38:00.000-05:00

An asteroid zipped past Earth orbit on Sunday night.

What is it with space debris and holidays? First we have a comet breaking up around Memorial Day, and now an asteroid zooms past near July 4th.

Hopefully, the shuttle will launch this Tuesday.

Google Alerts - Surfing less and reading more

2006-06-26T19:58:00.000-05:00

I recently read that Ridley Scott, one of my favorite directors, is going to be directing a new film about the Gucci family.

I also found three sites with technology news.

I read one of my college professors is publishing a new book.

The nifty part about all this news is that I never had to search for it.

Google Alerts is probably the most useful tools that Google offers. Properly used and configured, you stay informed every time you open your e-mail.

Alerts have been around for a while, but it was not till recently that I sat down and tweaked the settings to make sure I get the right information.

Part of the trick was using the advanced search operators to narrow my results. By using quotes on certain search terms, I get news about Ridley Scott, not everybody in the whole wide world named Scott.

I've routed my alerts to an e-mail address that the spammers haven't discovered yet. Reading mail from this account is like finding a stack of articles printed out by my own personal assistant.

There are days the articles retreved are ones I've seen before and I delete more links than I read, but that is worth the effort when I find sites and information that would have taken me hours of searching on my own.

China plans to land on the moon by 2024

2006-06-19T21:10:00.000-05:00

Is this a new race to the moon?

Maybe this will get things rolling over at NASA?

A 2000 year old computer?

2006-06-19T19:54:00.000-05:00

Rachel sent me a link to an article about an ancient device that might be one of the first computers.

Called an Antikythera Mechanism, the true nature of the artifact remains a mystery, but experts suggest that it may have been used to calculate the movements of the planets.

Like modern computers, it appears to have had lousy tech support.

There more on the Antikythera Mechanism over at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Rachel for the link.

Discovery to launch on July 1st

2006-06-19T19:32:00.000-05:00

STS 121 is scheduled to take flight on July 1 on a mission to the International Space Station. After last year's STS 114 "return to flight" mission, and nervous moments concerning loose foam falling off the shuttle's main fuel tank, this mission will be watched closely.

On a personal note, I am happy to know the shuttle sits on the launch pad and the countdown clock is running.

Big meteor spotted over Norway

2006-06-10T16:49:00.000-05:00

A meteor big enough to make a loud crash was spotted over Norway.

A second chance for the Hubble?

2006-06-10T14:12:00.000-05:00

MSNBC's Cosmic Log is reporting there maybe a second chance for a Hubble rescue.

The six hour spacewalk

2006-06-03T07:08:00.000-05:00

Two astronauts aboard the Internatonal Space Station completed a 6-hour spacewalk to make repairs and collect science experiments left outside.

I know that the modern spacesuit takes care of an astronaut's biological needs when they are in space, but what about that annoying urge to scratch an itch on one's neck or back?

Space is dangerous. Cosmic radiation and space debris are hazzards that come with the territory. But, I imagine space walks could be downright annoying if you are trying to scratch an itch, then discover the only thing you can scratch is the outside of your spacesuit helmet.

Giant meteor crater found in Antarctica

2006-06-01T21:04:00.000-05:00

Space.com has a story about a 300 mile wide meteor crater, found by NASA satellites under Antarctic ice. Scientists suspect the meteor hit over 250 million years ago, causing twice the impact as the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs.

People were freaking out over chunks of a crumbling comet just a few weeks ago.

Why be scared of comet fragments when you can worry and fret over something the size of Ohio crashing into your house?

I'm joking. No hate mail please.

GTD or Getting Things Done...or you never realized how sloppy you were!

2006-05-24T19:06:00.000-05:00

David Allen's Getting Things Done is a book that changed my life. I do not say that lightly. Most of us have had to deal with gushing reviews of feel-good books from co-workers and friends, who hear about them from talk shows or late night TV.

Getting Things Done is about getting things out of your head. All that clutter in your head about what you have to do, what you should be doing, what you forgot to do...it all has to be taken out of your brain. Once that happens, you are free to work and be productive. There is a process involved, which is flowcharted by Allen, that is shockingly easy to follow.

I read about Getting Things Done (or GTD) on several blogs and websites, so I gave it a try. For a while, if you have been reading this blog you might remember, my computer room and my life were chaos as I put the GTD plan into action. So far it seems to be working. My blogging and my other projects are proceeding. If I am frustrated, it is only because I wished I had done this sooner.

I just discovered how much of a GTD following has grown on the web. I do not consider myself a big joiner, but I am intrigued by how many people are following and blogging about GTD's advice. I am slightly bothered how Wired Magazine called it a "A New Cult for the Info Age".

I guess as long as I do not start jumping on couches, I will be OK.

Disney's The Black Hole - Retro science fiction lives again!

2006-05-21T13:12:00.000-05:00

While surfing YouTube awhile back, I found this stop-motion video by Matt Gorden. I thought it was a clever use of space toys and desktop video editing. With a desktop PC and some software, anyone can do special effects that would have cost millions to produce only a short time ago.

One of the guilty pleasures in my DVD collection is Walt Disney's 1979 film The Black Hole, the first Disney film to be rated PG and an attempt to cash in on the boom in science fiction films started by Star Wars.

The Black Hole is no Star Wars, but I remember it because it was one of the first movies I saw in a Dolby Stereo theater and featured elaborate special effect sequences.

The Black Hole also features early CGI in the opening credits, as the camera whirls and twists over a green grid floating against a luminous starfield.

The USS Cygnus, the lead spaceship of the movie, is a massive hulk of a ship constructed from metal girders. Looming in cold space with a sense of awe and dread, the Cygnus is Disney's Haunted Mansion meets the Battlestar Galactica.

The robots of the film often convey more emotion than the actors. From the kid-friendly, orb-shaped VINCENT and OLD BOB, to the evil Maximilian with his angry red eye and spinning blades. They look goofy (no pun intended) in a way that clearly carries the Disney stamp and made them destined to be sold as action figures.

Finding this video brought back some old memories. Thanks to Matt Gorden for letting me share his work.

Invasion - The finale

2006-05-18T06:47:00.000-05:00

Wednesday night was the season finale (and probably last episode ever) of Invasion. Inavsion met mixed reviews and ratings, and now ends with a cliffhanger unlikely to be resolved.

I personally liked Invasion. It was slow and melodramatic at times and clearly took inspiration from Invasion of the Body Snatchers and X-files, but did add unique twists and surprises to an old formula as the town of Homestead, Florida is infiltrated by alien "hybrids" following a hurricane.

Some aspects of Invasion may reflect the cultural climate in post 9/11 and post Hurricane Katrina world (although I believe most of the season was filmed before Katrina made landfall.)

One aspect that I've written about before is how one character, Dave Groves, is a blogger. On Invasion, there are no plucky scientists or FBI agents to unravel mysteries. The person seeking out the truth is an overweight 30-something former apartment manager who writes a blog from a local coffee house. He even does podcasts.

Dave is humored at first as the local goofball who sees conspiracies and extraterrestrial critters hiding behind every palm tree. By the end of the show it is clear he was right all along. Dave never trusts the explanations from local authorities or media. Like many real life bloggers and webmasters, he takes it as a given he is being lied too. If he wants the truth that is out there, he will have to do his own reporting. In the final episodes, Dave was videotaping a documentary about the events in Homestead.

Another character, Larkin Groves, is a TV reporter, a member of the mainstream media. She discovers her local TV station is less than supportive as she seeks out story behind strange happenings in Homestead. It is remarkable that a network TV show would use skepticism and distrust of the media as such a prominent plot point.

In the world of Invasion, the human inhabitants of Homestead have to cope with their neighbors and friends becoming hybrids. The alien takeover divides families. Tension grows in the town as people take sides and form alliances based on their biology.

In 1950s sci-fi, all humans are united to fight slimy alien invaders from taking over the planet. Now the lines blur as people are absorbed by aliens, yet retain their human form and memories. The aliens themselves are divided on how to proceed, facing their own moral choice of learning to co-exist with the humans, or to conquer everyone and convert them.

The most chilling aspect of Invasion is the powerlessness and silence of the goverment. Again, it is strange to see this in a mainstream TV show.

In old 50s movies, such as Invaders from Mars and War of the Worlds, the military defends citizens against the martians and their death rays. In later films like Close Encounters and The X-files, the government covers up the presence of aliens to keep a fragile civilian population from panic, or to forward a shadowy secret agenda.

On Invasion, the goverment knows there are aliens and hides the truth, but even they cannot stop the hybrids from plotting and taking action. The military is unaware how much of their power has been compromised by the the aliens. The leader of a hybrid army is a former secret agent, following his own agenda like an alien Mr. Kurtz. The town sheriff is a hybrid, who finds his loyalty torn between his family and his new species.

Only at the last minute does the military defend the public against attack, and then it is because a private citizen (Dave the blogger again) sounds the alarm.

Invasion ends with a tragedy, and the sense that the alien conspiracy is now out in the open. The X-files teased us with the possiblity of an alien conspiracy going public, but ended most episodes with the truth buried yet again, letting the world go about its business. The end of Invasion leaves the impression that the secret is out and a traumatic conflict is to follow.

Unfortunately, we will probably never find out what really happened. We will have to imagine it. Like Dave the blogger, we are on our own now.

Finding the time to blog

2006-05-17T19:02:00.000-05:00

Yikes! Another week has nearly slipped by and I have not posted anything.

It is funny how guilty I feel when I do not post every 24 or 48 hours. I have been busy lately and before I think of a topic to post about, the blog is stale as bread left on a forgotten corner of the kitchen counter.

Time to get back to work!

The battle of Linux - Chapter 2

2006-05-13T22:00:00.000-05:00

After several more days of fighting with my computer, I have discovered to my horror that my system and Linux have a failure to communicate.

So I decided to try and older Pentium II machine.

SUCCESS!

I now have SUSE Linux 10.1 running nicely. It took some tweaks to get my monitor and video card to display the resolution I wanted, but that was a small task compared to the frustrating week I just went through.

What I have learned is that Linux is finicky. I cannot quite figure out why it did not boot correctly. Maybe it was the BIOS, or the brand of microchips on the motherboard. I will have to do more research.

For now, I have a running Linux machine, and it is time to get to work. Once I managed to get past the install process, SUSE has proven to be very user friendly.

I plan to learn the BASH shell, which is the way I can use my machine from the command line.

I also want to code web pages using Bluefish.

There is to much to describe in one post. For now, I have a new toy.

The battle of Linux - Chapter 1

2006-05-13T07:48:00.000-05:00

Over the last week, I have been trying to install Linux. I have a Windows machine that I use for my day to day work, but I wanted to give Linux a try on a second computer I have.

The goal was to install Linux on my second computer, get it running so I could surf the net, download software, and see how much of my daily work I could get done without using my Windows machine.

So far...no luck.

Linux lovers claim that it is more stable than Windows and a superior operating system....once you manage to install it and get it running without major glitches.

I know Linux has an excellent repuation in the server room world, but as for a desktop OS, it is giving me a headache.

Here is the toll so far...

UBUNTU - Described as "Linux for human beings". Does this mean that regular Linux users are spiny xenomorphs who bleed acid and lay eggs? I managed to get Ubuntu to install, but then it would not boot unless I disconnected my CD ROM drive cable. Once I did that, it booted into the main OS. I thought I was home free. Then it would not find my Internet connection and made a very strange noise (a drumming sound...no kidding) that looped over and over again till I turned off the sound. It did find my sound card, I'll give it that, but I need an internet connection. I decided to try...

DEBIAN - Debian installed pretty easily, but then it would not boot into the desktop I needed. I had a nice server if I wanted one, but I want a desktop PC. Next up was...

SUSE - I had heard good things about SUSE. I had to download 5 ISOs (which are the files that you burn to CDs to install) and I thought I was ready to go. I put in disk one. SUSE started to load the installer, then asked me to "Insert Disk 1".

Huh?

For some reason, it will load up the installer, but then it keeps asking for Disk 1, which apparently it cannot find in the drive.

The score for this week.

Linux 3
Me ZERO

I consider myself fairly computer literate. I build and repair my own systems. I know how to install Windows, tweak its many functions, and deal with its problems.

Linux is kicking my butt. I am no Microsoft fanboy, but I can see why Linux has not caught on in the desktop market. Maybe it does not like my computer, but I cannot help that unless I buy a whole new computer.

Thankfully, there is a vast Linux community out there. I will consult with some message boards I found and see what happens. There are many distros of Linux. As long as I have blank CDs, I can keep trying.

I know by writing this I am in danger of getting a blizzard of hate mail for expressing my frustration with Linux. So be it. I am just calling it the way I see it. I cannot get this OS to run properly on my system. I will just have to keep trying.

To be continued.

No UFOs - The truth is not out there

2006-05-08T19:04:00.000-05:00

According to a report from the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence, there is no proof of alien life forms.

The 400 page report does not just say there is no proof UFOs are spacecraft piloted by aliens, but that there is no proof that they are even solid objects.

For those of you who do believe in UFOs, there is some good news. There seems to be nothing in the report challenging the notion that aliens could show up in vehicles shaped like police boxes.

And for those who did not read my other post about UFOs over Norfolk, Virginia...the photo above is not a UFO, but just a picture I made in Macromedia Fireworks.

694 Million people are online

2006-05-08T18:59:00.000-05:00

According to this story in Search Engine Journal, 694 million people are online.

And soon almost all of them will have three or four blogs that they never update.

Star Wars 1.0 - On DVD at last! Han shoots first...again!

2006-05-04T12:34:00.000-05:00

Here is the first trailer for the first Star Wars movie, a very restrained and modest promo by today's slick standards.

It was announced recently that the original versions of the Star Wars movies will be available soon on DVD. Star Wars purists are celebrating because the only DVDs available have been the "special editions" which featured revised effects shots among other changes...such as the infamous "Han shot first" scene.

There has been a campaign to get original trilogy available on DVD for years, which seems strange to people outside the plastic-lightsaber wielding world of fandom.

Why would anyone want to see the old version of Star Wars, trading seamless digital spaceships for special effects that seem as dated as a wood grain Atari game console?

Although the new Star Wars 2.0 is sharper, faster, and more Dolbyized than the 1977 version, it is not the same film that a generation grew up with.

For those who waited in line in 1977, and again in 1980 and 1983, the old Star Wars is like a cherished toy that you once played with as a kid, with yellowing plastic, chipped paint, and peeling stickers. You could chuck it and buy a new one, but it would not be the same one you once so excitedly brought home from the store so long ago. You have outgrown toys, but this was the one toy you kept to remember your childhood as you embraced maturity.

This Star Wars, not the special edition, is the film that gave George Lucas stress related high-blood pressure as he struggled to finish shooting, fighting off the studio executives who believed it would be a late night TV curiosity in a matter of months. This Star Wars inspired wide-eyed youngsters to grow up to be artists, writers and filmmakers.

The original Star Wars is loved because of its flaws, like a toy worn by the years, but earning the status as a treasured keepsake.

Comet breaks up - No need to worry

2006-05-02T21:46:00.000-05:00

This is an image from the Hubble of comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 breaking up. Icy fragments are tumbling apart and creating a fireworks show in deep space.

NASA says on their homepage that there is no danger of the comet or its fragments hitting the Earth. Look here for a more detailed photo.

The NASA story says...

There will be no tsunamis, firestorms or mass extinctions to spoil your Memorial Day weekend.

Although the Internet is rife with speculation that a fragment of Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 will strike the Earth on May 25, neither the main comet nor any of its more than 40 fragments pose a danger to Earth.

It would seem a bit silly that NASA has to make a statement that we are free on a May weekend to eat burgers and hot dogs, get too much sun, go see crappy early summer movies, and still feel safe that we are not going to get pulverized by falling space debris.

However, this is the age of the Internet, and anyone with a blog or free homepage can start spreading stories.

Comet-related news also stirs creepy, decade-old memories of a certain group of science fiction fans, who happened to share the name of a historic movie flop, that took the arrival of a comet a bit too seriously.

I guess in the post-Katrina era, those in authority have to try even harder to reach the public and calm fears.

Here is to a Memorial Day where the only falling ice will be dropping into tall drink glasses with funny umbrellas.

Don't panic.

China and NASA working together?

2006-04-27T07:31:00.000-05:00

A story on the New Scientist website says that NASA is looking into the possiblities of cooperating with the Chinese space program. NASA boss Michael Griffin is planning to visit China later this year.

NASA wants to go back to the moon. China wants to go to the moon.

This could be big.

Cat in zero gravity

2006-04-26T15:47:00.000-05:00

I have shown this video to several people. Some think it is funny. Others think it is just plain mean. You decide how you feel.

Either way, it is interesting how a cat reacts to zero gravity. Cats have the instinct to land on their feet, twisting themselves in mid-air to land paws first.

But what happens when there is no "down"?

Apparently this causes havoc with a cat's internal sensors, making them spin around in loops as they try to find which way to land.

If I were in space, where one small hole in my spacesuit could cause disaster, the last thing I would want in orbit with me...is a cat.

I did not make this video, nor did I post it on YouTube...so no hate e-mails please.

Roving Mars

2006-04-24T19:20:00.000-05:00

I went to see Roving Mars this weekend, and was pleased to find it the best IMAX film I have seen since The Dream is Alive. It also played to a large crowd of people who turned out on a rainy day to see it.

The audience was suprisingly pulled in and awed by the science content in the film. Films that feature NASA scientists explaining things in detail usually make people, especially kids, get sleepy and shift in their seats. Because the content of Roving Mars is well edited, the drama of discovery is intact. When a NASA scientist tells us why they think Mars once had surface water, the visuals and the science talk work together, sharing the knockout moment as decades of work and research pay off.

Although I loved every minute of the movie, there were two parts that stand out in my mind.

When you see the Mars Rovers close up in IMAX, you can appreciate how complex they really are. On TV or in small images, they look pretty simple: solar panels, wheels, shock absorbers, a robot arm, and other assorted gadgets.

Up close, you see that they are teeming with wires, cables, and mysterious boxes filled with high-tech gear. These are not toy robots that a teenage gearhead could cobble together in his dad's garage with a soldering gun; these are very delicate and complicated instruments that no one person fully understands. To see the workmanship up close makes you appreciate the engineering prowess of NASA's geeks.

The other part that connects with me is seeing mission control on the day of the landing. Computer graphics show what the landers went through on their way down: the fiery ride through the thin Mars atmosphere, the landing airbags expanding like a space-traveling puffer fish, and the bouncing landing on the red soil. No earthly camera could capture that, so we see it through CGI.

But the cameras do capture the people in mission control. The men and women, with their headsets and computer screens, know all too well that it only takes is one missed signal, one malfunction, and all their work goes flying off into space, or is smashed on the martian plains. When a tiny purple line appears on a readout monitor, only then is it confirmed the rovers have reached the surface safely. Cheers and applause fill the room as the first pictures from Mars scroll on the main screen. The joy of this moment in the control room gives some human warmth to a movie about a very cold planet.

Star Trek - The Comeback

2006-04-22T09:27:00.000-05:00

Star Trek is set to make a comeback in 2008 with a new movie.

As someone who grew up with Trek, and still has his models of the Enterprise that were build as a pre-teen, I have mixed feelings.

Part of me cares, and part of me has moved on.

As I re-organized my sloppy computer room, I found many old science fiction books and neatly ordered them on my shelf. I do not own many Trek books, and the ones I do own are mostly about the production and creation of the series.

I did find that I own lots of old school science fiction, like JG Ballard and Philip K. Dick. I also own the newer stuff (newer as in less than 30 years old) by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson.

I bought most of these books when I was in my late teens and early 20s. Some I read, others I just kept to read when I got around to it. Now that I am older and have more life-experience, I look forward to reading them with a new perspective.

I find that I mostly gave up on Star Wars and Star Trek when I got old enough to vote. I found myself drawn more movies like Blade Runner and Aliens, which reflected a much harsher and less-idealistic world of the future.

The Star Trek and Star Wars universes belong to a benevolent federation and a Jedi Order, where good and evil are clearly defined.
I still watched the shows and movies out of curiosity and appreciation of the sets and special effects, but they seems more like childhood relics, like the models that I built and painted as a kid. The world of Neuromancer or Snow Crash is our current world of corporations, rapid-fire technological change and moral quandaries.

Star Trek aired in the late 60s, when America was torn by social strife, war, and the fear of nuclear annihilation; quite a contrast to the Trek portrayal of an idealized future. Space travel was the exciting new science of the time, so the idea of humans zipping between planets several centuries from now did not seem so far out.

Now we have a much more science-literate audience who have grown up with the Internet and the Discovery channel. It might be harder for Trek to pull them in as viewers, since some of the future-tech in the show seems kind of cheesy compared to what we know today. Then again, young researchers at NASA were inpired by Star Trek to create the ION engine for space probes.

The really big question is do people really want to watch new Star Trek now? With all the talk of global warming, some are begining to doubt that humanity might be around for 30 years, much less 300 years and the time to develop warp-drive.

Who cares what happens 300 years from now? I care in the sense that I do not want humankind to be wiped out by plagues, pollution, comet impacts, or grey goo. It is one thing to hope humans explore the stars and create a circle of intergalactic pals, but right now so many earthly matters are in our face.

Can I really empathize with people who don't use money anymore, live to be in their 100s thanks to medical wizardry, and have perfect bods to fill out those pajama-like uniforms? They live in their perfect 23rd century while I'm stuck in the era of identity theft and global outsourcing.

Star Trek has been strongest when it took on controversial issues in a way even non-geeks could relate to. Like Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, Star Trek could use its science fiction veneer to allow writers to take on thorny topics, like race-relations and nuclear war, without irritating network censors or twitchy sponsors.

Maybe the writers and producers can pull it off. Like I have said before on this blog, we could seriously use some optimism about the future, even if it is a tad silly at times.

Whatever they do with the new Trek, I would like to see them use the designs of Matt Jefferies as a reference. He was the designer whocreated the design for the orignial Enterprise and gave the sets their unique look.

2001: A Space Ipodyssey

2006-04-21T09:15:00.000-05:00

I always thought there was an unsettling similarity between the black case of an Ipod Nano and the famous monolith from a certain Stanley Kubrick film.

I guess I wasn't alone.

Scott Crossfield 1921 - 2006

2006-04-20T20:07:00.000-05:00

I just heard the news about the loss of Scott Crossfield, the first pilot to reach Mach 2 (1,320 mph) and who flew the X-series research aircraft.

There is more about Scott Crossfield's life and career on this page over at NASA.gov.

As I was reading the official press release on the NASA site, I noticed that Crossfield was involved with the reliability engineering and quality assurance for the Apollo command and service modules and Saturn V second stage.

That part stands out for me because I think how mind-boggling it must have been to break the Mach 2 barrier and fly the X-15 plane to the edge of space and be part of putting humans on the moon.

What an extraordinary life...84 years...ended too soon.

Space age bowling alleys and coffee shops - Why I love Googie architecture!

2006-04-19T19:20:00.000-05:00

Space Age Lodge - Gila Bend, AZ - Postcard photo from Greg Ottinger

What is Googie? I could spend hours trying to describe it, but the front page of Chris Jespen's Googie Architecture Online does it so well.

Googie architecture was born of the post-WWII car-culture and thrived in the 1950s and 1960s. Bold angles, colorful signs, plate glass, sweeping cantilevered roofs and pop-culture imagery captured the attention of drivers on adjacent streets. Bowling alleys looked like Tomorrowland. Coffee shops looked like something in a Jetsons cartoon.

Why do I love it?

If you have read my previous blog entries, you know that I have a soft spot for the era of Tomorrowland and the dreams of the space age.

Rocket to the Moon - Disneyland

I was not even alive during the age of Googie, but I feel a connection to its quirky vision of the future that never was.

Googie to me seems to be an attempt to create a sense of the future in a time that was still far away from the year 2000. In the 50s and 60s, space travel was still a technological marvel. Computers were giant and mysterious machines. Color television was nearly miraculous.

There were hints of a world to come, where these new wonders would be as common as the telephone, that was nearly a lifetime away.

Googie reflects an optimism of a time when the future and technology were still new and exciting, offering a sense of adventure that awaited us. It was cheerful when nuclear war fears were now looming over a nation.

Seimons Pavilion - 1964 World's Fair

Now we are used to computers and space travel. The future that Googie teased us with has come, and like a child who gets the shiny new toy on Christmas day, now that we see it out of the box, we are slightly disappointed that it is not everything we have hoped it would be. It is often difficult to be optimistic as we read headlines about global warming and bird flu. When we look to the future now, it scares the hell out of us.

The Pine Room - Cecil Motel, Manitoba, Canada -Photo from a postcard

Googie has made a comeback of sorts today. Retro furniture and the designs of the 50s, 60s, and the often mocked 70s are being rediscovered by a new generation.

For younger people who were raised with laptop computers and threats of terrorism, an age when civic centers, bowling alleys and diners looked like spaceports seems kooky.

Kooky is what we need a little of right now in our day to day lives. Most of us live in an identical landscape of stripmalls, office towers, and housing tracts, which cover an ever growing cookie-cutter America.

While we love our big box stores and coffee houses, it is a rare space (no pun intended) that has its own unique identity.

Googie is playful and often unique. In the world of Googie, an everyday place for eating, shopping, or entertaining is a trip out of our everyday world. That why Googie lovers mourn the passing of a bowling alley or a coffee shop that is plowed under: each example is usually one of a kind.

Perhaps that is why Googie is being appreciated over half a century later, because everyone could use a little space age whimsy: where even a common storefront can be a new frontier and where a brighter tomorrow is served up with pie and coffee.

Satellite Shopland - Katella Way, Anaheim, CA -(Near I-5 Freeway and Haster St.)

A very special thanks to Chris Jespen for his pictures and his amazing site.

Back to work!

2006-04-14T06:50:00.000-05:00

After a solid week of organizing, putting it off some more, then organizing, I finally have my workspace in order. Now I can get back down to blogging.

I have not sat down with a book that was not related to school, computers, web design or buisness for a long time. It has been too long since I have read a book for fun.

I am also shocked to discover that I have not read many books by writer Philip K. Dick. After reading about his life, I am ready to dive in and read his works.

A whole shelf of classic science fiction, that I bought back when I was teenager, awaits. These are books I meant to read, but never got around to it. They have been waiting, like a hidden treasure, for me to re-discover.

Cleaning house

2006-04-06T21:31:00.000-05:00

I've been tearing apart my workspace lately. You do not realize how much stuff you own till you have to move it around.

I have come up with some great stories to blog about, but now I have to put back my collection of paperback books in its proper order.

I also discovered that I own a copy of Spacetime Donuts by Rudy Rucker: a very rare book.

Once my computer room is back in order, I can get back to work.

3 months of blogging...and still here

2006-04-02T06:58:00.000-05:00

I have read that most blogs are abandoned after three months. Some bloggers have the will and the drive to keep posting. Others find that real life eclipses their blogging and stop writing.

I have not written as much as I would like to. I wanted to be an everyday poster, but it has not worked out that way.

I am still here after three months. Let us see what the future holds.

That was no martian...It's April Fool's Day

2006-04-01T07:19:00.000-05:00

I know the CBS radio broadcast of War of the Worlds does not really count as an April Fool's Joke, but I am listing it here anyway. It may have happened on Halloween, but the echoes of Orson Welles drama can still be felt in the internet age. You could say that Welles was the first "troll".

For a list of other April Fools Day's hoaxes, check out this list at the Museum of Hoaxes.

The official sites for Star Trek and Star Wars post April Fool's jokes yearly.

StarTrek.com is announcing their "new redesign". Yuk Yuk!

StarWars.com is announcing a new chapter of the Star Wars trilogy called The Shadow War Chronicles. Before you get your hopes up, be sure to look carefully.

Space Walk - A video by Josh Thomas

2006-03-30T20:46:00.000-05:00

While searching through YouTube and discovering the Aliens video, I also found this video by Josh Thomas, featuring his music.

No pulse rifles. No xenomorphs. Just images of the cosmos and music.

This video makes me think back to when I would go stargazing on cold winter nights, looking through the telescope at the distant rings of Saturn, or the bright stripes of Jupiter.

Special thanks to Josh Thomas for his video.

Jill Carroll is free

2006-03-30T07:36:00.000-05:00

American journalist Jill Carroll is free, after being held hostage in Iraq since January.

I was hoping for some good news to counter all the gloom and doom I have been reading lately.

LET'S ROCK with Aliens!

2006-03-29T22:04:00.000-05:00

I have been busy lately, so I have not been blogging as much as I would like to, but something has been on my mind that I wanted to blog about.

This summer it will be over 20 years since the movie Aliens was released.

I plan to write a special blog entry about the impact of James Cameron's masterpiece of slime, guns, and long, sharp, pointy teeth. That will be coming later.

For now...check out this music video featuring rapid-fire scenes from Aliens and the techno-version of O Fortuna.

I love these YouTube clips!

A lost space age is found

2006-03-25T19:21:00.000-05:00

Rachel from Babayaga has sent me this photo of space age wallpaper in an old house, with an amazing backstory.

It's the scanned photograph of the vintage 'space' wallpaper I told you about. One summer while hiking, I found this wallpaper adorning the walls of a child's bedroom in an old abandoned house in a secluded region of this province. The entire area has never had access to electricity and this house had never been wired for power or phone service (and still hand a hand-pumped water well). Can you imagine the life of the children who had this wallpaper on their walls and no doubt grew up reading novels and comic books by candlelight (or oil lamps etc)? This 'futuristic' vision must have seemed far away and completely inaccessible to them. These were kids who probably had to travel to "town" to see the first moon landing on a television set in a local store.

My thanks to Rachel for the picture and words.