Zixar

Hope: Oh yes, saw it opening night. Absolutely incredible. Sets the bar for all future epics. The new king of the hill in special effects. Yes, PJ did take a lot more liberty with T2T than he did in FOTR, but it does work. The interplay between the Warriors Three (Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas) works extremely well. Gimli is not just comic relief, he shows why the dwarves were a major power in Middle-Earth, instead of just a source of midget jokes. Gollum beats Jar Jar/Digital Yoda/Dobby into a cocked hat, as far as all-CGI characters go. Helm's Deep really did make Attack of the Clones' finale look like it was "shot in a barn with hand puppets." One of my personal favorites was the initial collision in the fight with the Warg-riders. That looked GREAT... I'll have to go see it again, but I want to watch the Extended FOTR again right before I go. And Jackson still says this isn't the best of the lot... ROTK must be unimaginably good.

Coming into TWI so late, I really regret never having heard any of these musicians, like PDSTRO, Selah, and Joyful Noise. Sigh.

CKathy: Well, just don't post too much, or else we'll have to have an intervention. God bless! Zix (who registered on GSC2 a month before CK, yet she has nearly 2x the number of posts...hmmm. )

What, you never saw The Empire Strikes Back?

Set phasers to "chicken-fry", Mr. Spock...

Garth: Wesley was sitting beside his mother while Picard was giving his toast. (gag, barf, retch) "Have you considered what you're doing to ME?" Oh, puh-leeze! The previews should not have given so much away, but then again, how else would you sell this to the non-geek masses? The highlight of the evening? Purchasing advance tix to The Two Towers. Hurry, Wednesday!

Now I have successfully overclocked processors with no problems. I had a Pentium III 450MHz that I ran at 527MHz for two years, and a Celeron 900 overclocked to 1.1GHz. You just turn down the core voltage a notch or two to reduce the heat buildup, just in case, and off you go.

I do not recommend changing the CAS latency unless your memory is guaranteed to operate at CAS level 2. Even if it appears to work at first, it can intermittently corrupt data. Murphy's Law being what it is, this will usually happen at the worst possible time. I also do not recommend buying any new computer that uses SDRAM. SDRAM is a sunset technology does not match well with the current Pentium 4 and Athlon XP processors. RDRAM is expensive, but is the best choice for the P4, while DDR is the best type of memory for the Athlon XP. For a good cheap graphics program, Paint Shop Pro 7 does more than most people need, and very well too. If you don't have $600 to spend on Adobe Photoshop, PSP7 is a good all-around choice.

Well, Zixette and I went to see Nemesis anyway. Fortunately, a lot of the painful Brent Spiner-ego strokes were cut. Also the stupid final "seatbelt" scene was cut. It was still overlong, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the last movie. The bad thing is that the previews tip way too much of what should have been surprises. It's worth a matinee, but if you pay full price you might feel a little cheated. Oh yeah, they completely paradoxed the TNG series finale. I guess continuity is just for "lesser" shows... Look carefully when they list the "fleet" (more like a squadron) and you'll see the bone they threw to the latest series, one of the ships is the USS Archer.

Nah, it was actually pretty easy, given the source material. Here's the one that got the most positive response, a take off on "The Andorian Incident".

Yep, Rudolf Karp and Bart Nagy were two scientists who believed fossilized microbes might be found in meteorites. From the obituary at Univ. of Arizona:

TSRTS: Okay, I think I know what you're talking about now. If memory serves, in the book MC goes into the idea that visitors from other worlds would be microscopic in size, due to the efficiency of transporting such a tiny thing. In the movie, Dutton is shown in a flashback drawing a picture of a scientist looking through a microscope with a word balloon from the slide saying "Take us to your leader!" This was taken from a real scientist's theories, and the only two I remember being mentioned in the book were Karp and Nagy. That's where I'd start looking. God bless, Zix "Scoop was built for germ warfare, and you knew it, Stone!"

John: Simple. Open up your paint program and click on the Edit/Paste menu. Then save it as a JPEG.

On a side note, if you like humorous fantasty fiction, do yourself a favor and pick up some of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. Think "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" with "wizzards", trolls, and Cohen the Barbarian.

SocketCreep: Try Grisham's "The Runaway Jury" next. You'll like it.

Never having heard Socks or your Dad, I can't say on them. Elton John, Rolling Stones, The Beatles, yeah, I think they've made music that will still be recognized in a hundred years. Springsteen, Clapton, and Ray Charles, I don't think so. They might be relegated to historical one-hit-wonders, perhaps, modern Vivaldis, Pachelbels, Telemanns, but not Mozarts. Not to take anything away from them, I just don't think they have a large enough body of instantly-recognizable songs to keep them out of a footnote in the far future. Of course, music students will fancy them for their work, but I just don't see much more, in my opinion.

Who do you think among the truly gifted artists of the Rock era will be remembered for their work a hundred years from now? I think one of the candidates would be Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. It's rare that someone is both innovative and successful for an extended period. Who really pushed the Rock envelope successfully, in your opinion?

P-Mosh: Here's a sample, the one I did for the "Terra Nova" episode. You have been warned.

Hey, I found them in my archive files! If anyone missed them the first time around and wants to read them, let me know, ok?

P-Mosh: I was the same way about B5 at first. Catching it here and there, I just didn't see what the fuss was about. My friend Chris nearly had to put a gun to my head to make me watch the whole thing, because it's hard to realize all the little bits of backstory being fed to you piece by piece during the first season especially. It really starts to pick up in season 2, and Seasons 3 and 4 are, in my opinion, the best television sci-fi yet filmed. Season 5 sucked, because they were forced to wrap up the 5-year storyline in season 4 due to impending cancellation. Warner Brothers is releasing the whole series on DVD now, with Season 1 on the shelves. If you can find the time, push your way through the whole thing. You'll be hooked soon enough. Humans and Minbari, Narn and Centauri, Vorlons and Shadows...so much going on, and yet it all fits.

Kay: To each, his own. I just never got into Voyager or DS9, and I gave up on Enterprise 3/4 of the way through Season 1. (Wish those parodies I wrote of the first few episodes were still up here...oh well.) Hey, I really like Patrick Stewart. He's a fine actor that I've always enjoyed. The sappy scripts he was given just killed Picard for me, though. Say what you like about Bill Shatner, but you have to admit that no one chews scenery like he does. Fictional heroes need to be larger than life to give the audience an ideal to aspire to. Picard as a Captain was just too bland, too stilted. I think Stewart played Picard more like an Admiral who would have been quite at home in all the political machinations of the upper echelons. Courtly Shakespearean themes of the 23rd Century, that sort of thing. Kirk was more of a heroic captain who never hesitated to get his hands dirty. I'm surprised they didn't show Picard getting a manicure! If you want a good insight into the line between commanders and just officers, check out the Bill Paxton/Matthew McConaughey characters in U-571. Gold braid does not a leader make--remember Commodore Stocker in TOS' "The Deadly Years"? Or, if you want to see the right way to make characters interesting and interwoven with the right amount of conflict and camaraderie, watch the first four seasons of Babylon 5. (Well, to be fair, Sinclair did have a major stick up his arse the first season, but viewed as a whole, the series is still a masterpiece.) It's a shame it took so long to get going, but in hindsight, all the clues were there, built up piece by piece. I didn't watch B5 when it was originally on, I only caught the reruns on TNT. Turned out to be better that way, seeing the incredible 3rd and 4th seasons one day at a time instead of a week was fantastic. The only other halfway-decent sci-fi series of the past few years (barring X-Files) is the surprising Stargate SG-1. They took a forgettable B-movie, added some great non-stereotypical characters, and revived the alien-of-the-week genre. For some strange reason, it does not suck. (Unlike all the other Showtime original SF series...) But, like I said, to each, his own. God bless! Zix

Yes, he is that bad. Think about it, is anyone in any of the spinoffs competent to hold their positions in Starfleet? How many plots were resolved by: a) Technobabble "reconfiguring" of some piece of ship's technology that wasn't built well enough to take care of it in the first place, but the crew can redo the whole thing in ten minutes? B) Politically correct or maudlin feel-good happy thoughts, despite howlingly bad tactical judgment? c) Data grows a new power and is annoying about using it? d) insert your favorite peeve here... All plot is driven by conflict. Since all the crew have a big group hug and sing Kum Ba Yah when they get off duty, there is nothing left to drive plot among the crew. Remember Spock vs. McCoy? That's how you keep the characters interesting. Next Generation's Enterprise is The Good Ship Wonderbread. Sound familiar?: Picard: Prepare a full spread of mayonnaise torpedoes, Mr. Worf. Worf: Why? They never do any damage any more. Picard: Prepare to fire on my mark. Worf: All I have to do is punch this button, why don't you save the dramatic pauses for sometime when hesitating won't get us killed? Picard: Wait for it.....Fire! Worf: You were supposed to say "mark!" Picard: Wesley, get out of that airlock! Wesley: Hey, this isn't a holodeck...(whoosh) Worf: Full spread of mayo torpedoes hit! But were totally ineffective against their (insert buzzword here) defense. Picard: Perhaps they just need a hug. Counsellor Troi, shake your boobs at them. Riker: Ooh, ENGAGE!

The fellow at Gibson in the 20s was Lloyd Loar, and if you have one of the F-Style mandolins Loar built in the 20s, it's worth $60 thousand plus. Loar was the Stradivarius of the mandolin.

Yeah, he went from Benign to Before, since he's a pre-Lore/Data prototype. ... Sorry, I had to repress the heaves there... We'll never see Avery Brooks(Sisko) or Robert Beltran (Chakotay) in a movie as long as that moron Rick Berman is the tumor in charge of the Trek franchises. They can't stand Berman and what he's done to Trek. With Riker, Troi, Crusher, and Data gone, all you have left is Picard, Worf and Geordi still on the Enterprise. That may actually be progress, but you can bet that Berman will fill the spots with even lamer characters. He can't help it, it's just the medication.

SocketCreep: True. Andromeda Strain was a fantastic book, especially for, what, 1969? I must have read it twelve times. Jurassic Park and its sequel are the only ones that are in the same league as TAS. The Lost World was a bad movie, but a fantastic book. The second half of the book was totally different (and infinitely better) than the stupid ending that Spielberg bolted onto the movie. TSRTS: No, I don't know the exact reason he wrote TAS, but he did write it right out of medical school, and Robert Wise optioned it for the movie immediately.