Bob Space

The God Effect: Quantum Entanglement, Science’s Strangest Phenomenon by Brian Clegg. A mind-stretching but not torturous discussion of the history and possible applications of one of the weirder traits of the quantum physics world. Clegg takes his time building up the people and backstory so that the reader has a stable foundation to cling to when things start to get really peculiar.

Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin. Portrait of the Artist through the long years to become an Overnight Success, and What Happens When The Sun Rises. Okay, that was pompous enough, but it’s a close approximation. Martin tells the influences that shaped him (for better or ill) over time as a person and performer, with a few fun stories, some very interesting walk-on appearances, and a nice offering of photos from the years BWS (Before the White Suit).

Star Trek: The Animated Series — The Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek (CBS DVD). I actually watched the first episode of this on its original airdate. My two thoughts were “Didn’t mom like a TV show like this?” and “This is SCARY.” I never really watched the shows again, though I very much enjoyed the book adaptations by Foster. Yes, the animation barely merits the word, and the performances are sometimes stiff. But some of these hold up as well as any of the live action … D. C. Fontana’s “Yesteryear” is absolutely brilliant (it’s just as good on Talking View Master discs, if you have any of those classics around, even though View Master had different voices).

Star Trek: The Original Series Season One (CBS Paramount, 2007). The release date there is a clue: This is the fully-restored HD-DVD/DVD release from last year. And while the total overhaul of the visual effects gets the most press, these recordings are rebuilt from original film and dialogue elements, digitally repaired and cleaned up, plus new recordings of the music, sound effects … it’s a ground-up reconstruction of the episodes as the creators would like to have done them if they’d had the budget and tools. The revised visuals are not just for show, but done in a way that serves and enhances the story (especially the new matte paintings to enhance the planetscapes). They’ve even lifted some designs from the Animated Series. It’s just wonderful, and the upcoming Season 2 and Season 3 box sets are even reasonably priced. There aren’t as many bonus features as in the 2004 release — maybe that’s why. Oh, and the box is much more attractive in person than the catalog pictures let on.

Actually, as I write this, we still have 110 minutes before ol’ Sol reaches its northernmost point of transit. But if I try to catch the moment, like I often do at eBay, I’ll be sure to miss (like I often do at eBay). But I can take advantage of Serendipity being smart enough to make the post available on time!

Make a good summer, friends.

Pedal Magic, a remarkably simple but effective means of teaching how to ride a bicycle, works. After a scant 10 minutes of static practice, Eldest (kinesthetic sensory issues and all) was able to cycle without difficulty on her first try. Youngest, alas, has some bad habits related to previous training wheel use that we’ll need to work on. That should amount to a few sessions more of extended practice, nothing tragic or catastrophic.

If I have any complaint, it’s the move from videocassette to Windows DRM-locked video. Mac users like me will have challenges getting that to play. (It’s a minor complaint, as we were using the “first edition” VHS we bought in summer 2002.) (Yes, we’ve been waiting that long for Eldest to grow sufficient spatial awareness.) (Yes, the bike we bought for her then still fits … barely!)

Watching them wheel about was one of the nicer Father’s Day presents ever.

I spent some time loitering on Trek Today’s news pages this evening. A few things strike me:

J.J. Abrams went above and beyond the call of duty to obtain buy-in from the surviving Original Series cast members. Given how the culture and the market work now, it’s nice to have the personal hand-offs of the characters, but be real: the Trek phenomenon will never happen again, not the same way. Movies and TV are just too expensive (and movies too slow) to feed the fandom.

On the other hand … CBS Paramount’s new “open hand” policy with fan productions completely amazes me. In prior decades, of course, and especially after the success of the films in the 1980s, Paramount and its corporate masters were rather fierce about blocking fan creativity. (This didn’t really stop things, though, but merely added the extra savor of the contraband.) Now the new proprietors seem perfectly happy to allow respectful amateur productions of good quality to live and thrive. So that’s very different.

Maybe that’s how Trek will live on. Fan culture kept Star Trek alive through three rough production seasons and the dark decade following until “The Franchise” ignited. Now, perhaps, “The Franchise” has burned itself out, but it has spawned many more diverse lights, point-sources for thoughtful exploration of the universe and of mankind’s future. And technology has advanced to the point where productions easily on a technical par with the original can be mounted with only modest investment. (Having the stories or performances on par, that’s a different problem entirely.)

And that will probably be to the good. After all, Star Trek originally told stories that were mainly relevant to the 1960s (with a reasonable dose of universal themes to hold it all together). The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine did the same for the 1980s and 1990s. We can use a Star Trek for the dawn of the 21st century. I don’t know if the Abrams movie is going to be it, or start it, or if there will be something else totally different and not called Star Trek. But it’s time.

It’s about 11 months to the new movie. That’s an eternity in internet years, or fan years.

Should I go?

I spent a bit of time this weekend (triggered by Mr. Pook’s review of the preview adventure) debating myself whether or not to buy the new D&D core books.

(Obligatory suspenseful pause. Suspenseful, isn’t it?)

I’ve decided against. I’m still very curious about it. It sounds fun enough. But if I ever get the chance to game again, I’m not going to want to deal with that volume of rules or detail. Even the stripped retro-clones (Labyrinth Lord, Mutant Future), tho’ nicely done, just don’t zing me. And I don’t want to pay the bucks for something like Mongoose’s Traveller when I still have the MegaTraveller books (and Far Future reprints of the Classic rule books).

So, this bit of soul-searching doesn’t really change anything for me, but it does remind me where my interests lie and the games that will be part of my future: Fudge (namely my very own, dear-to-my-heart EZFudge), and games built on the Prose Descriptive Qualities (PDQ) engine by Chad Underkoffler. (After all, those are two of the three that didn’t go into The Boxes In The Garage. The third? The Fantasy Trip. I can’t box my first love, though I can leave it on an indoor shelf and ignore for years on end.)

I graduated high school. The day was cool and gusty winds came up in the afternoon.

Today was much prettier.

I ordered my GO Box launch controller from Pratt Hobbies last Friday. Alas, on the very same day the Pratts got news of a death in the family and they’ve been out of the shop. So I’m still waiting for the confirmation of receiving the order itself … let alone the launcher, which I did ask for in a variant configuration that may take a little extra work to set up. Oh, well, it’ll get here.

And I’ve resolved that next week I will order my Aerotech Mantis launch pad. That’s the last major piece of flight gear I’ll have to buy. Anything else I need, I plan on building — be it launch rails for the club (PVC pipes are your friends!), or a switchbox to let the GO Box control a launch rail.

And of course building lots more rockets is in the plans, but rocket kits are reasonably inexpensive. Motors … well, I do need to restock on the B6-6s I like for my duration challenge flights. Motors and supplies average about $3 per flight, so that’s still quite reasonable.

I’m going to have to sit still sometime soon and get my Astra-Plus two-stager designed in RockSim to make sure my fin templates are big enough. I know they’re big enough to assure tumble recovery — but are they big enough to assure stable flight in the ascent configuration? I think you’ll agree that’s a rather important question.

While baking the third batch of brownies for the Girl Scout picnic … and no, I’m not baking younger scouts, I’m baking chocolatey treats … and transferring some recordings from DVR to Mac mini for editing, I became dissatisfied with one of the visual elements of my “TV listing fetcher” report.

(For those of you coming in late, I’ve subscribed to the “Schedules Direct” TV listing service. Once a day my eMac retrieves a week’s worth of TV listings, processes that against a list of actors, shows, and keywords I’ve given it, and then it makes me a report. Then it does it again for Renee’. The data is in XML format, the processing is done by the Java-powered Saxon XSL processor against an XSL template of my own design, and the output report is HTML styled by a CSS sheet, again to suit my preferences. The output report has buttons on it so that my wife or I can send me program reminders.)

And now, back to the dissatisfaction, which was cured by changing two lines in the XSL template and adding one element name to the CSS stylesheet.

I love this stuff! Or rather, I love that with my own hands and brain I’ve been able to craft a tool that saves me having to personally scan 7 days of TV listings for a hundred channels to identify the things I might be interested in saving. This is completely worth the $15 a year I pay for the listing service. Y’all can keep your TV Guide, or TitanTV, or Zap2It. This is what I call labor-saving.

Yesterday’s NASA Picture of the Day was a lovely photo of First US Spacewalked Ed White, with the Gemini IV capsule reflected in his visor.

Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is a time-lapse double exposure with ISS and Discovery tracks in it. Very interesting.