There’s an Aliens Vs. Predator film coming out this August. Directed by Paul Anderson, director of the hugely underrated Event Horizon. Some friends think this is the worst thing since I don’t know what, but I’m actually excited by the prospect. Aliens! Predators! 🙂 I’ve always thought an Aliens vs. Predator film could be good.Continue reading “On the Upcoming Aliens Vs Predator Film”
On a Martian News Release
Passed along without comment. 🙂 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Martian Air Force denies UFO crash Gusev Crater (MPI) – A spokesthing for Mars Air Force denounced as false rumors that an alien spacecraft crashed in the desert, outside of Ares Vallis on Saturday. Appearing at a press conference today, General Rgrmrmy The Lesser stated that “theContinue reading “On a Martian News Release”
On Last Son of Krypton
Yesterday the animated Superman pilot, “Last Son of Krypton,” came out on DVD, and I picked it up at Wal-Mart for something like eight or nine dollars. I never really followed the animated Superman, catching an episode here, an episode there, over the course of its run, so the only extended visit I paid toContinue reading “On Last Son of Krypton”
On Energy Weapons and Kinetic Weapons in Star Trek
This has been playing on my mind for a few days. There’s a problem with Star Trek. It’s a little too high tech. It’s like how everything hovers, when wheels are perfectly good ways of getting around. It bothers me that energy weapons seem to be the rule of the day in the 24th-century. InContinue reading “On Energy Weapons and Kinetic Weapons in Star Trek”
On a Foundation Movie
A recent announcement from Locus: “The film version of [Isaac] Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ trilogy optioned in 2000 by Fox, is moving forward, with a screenwriter assigned, and will likely appear as two films, ‘Foundation’ and ‘Second Foundation.’” You want my honest opinion? I think Foundation is pretty much unfilmable. But I’d have said that about TheContinue reading “On a Foundation Movie”
On F. Scott Fitzgerald and Heroic Fantasy
Little known fact. F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby and coiner of the term “The Jazz Age,” wrote heroic fantasy. Why bring this up? On a mailing list I subscribe to the question was asked, “It’s interesring to note that though Hemingway and Fitzgerald did make it big, they still were miserable andContinue reading “On F. Scott Fitzgerald and Heroic Fantasy”
Allyn's Crackpot Theory: Why Zak Kebron Wears a Gravity Belt
It’s stated in one of the earlier New Frontier books that Zak Kebron needs to wear a gravity belt to function in the lower-than-Brikar-normal gravity (i.e., Earth gravity) environment of the USS Excalibur. That doesn’t make a lot of sense; humans can function tolerably well in the zero-gee environment of low Earth orbit, and theContinue reading “Allyn's Crackpot Theory: Why Zak Kebron Wears a Gravity Belt”
On Episode VII?
I’m sure you’ve heard by now. George Lucas is now contemplating making Episodes 7-9, after saying for the past five or six years that no, Star Wars was only a six-episode story, despite the previous decade where he said, no, it’s a nine-episode story (and that brief stretch when it was twelve). Please. Shoot meContinue reading “On Episode VII?”
On Word and HTML
I won’t heap any more scorn on MS Word as an HTML generator; the flaws of Word in that regard are fairly well documented. If I have a Word document I want to render in HTML, I save the file to a plain-text file, stripping out every little formatting quirk, and then build the HTMLContinue reading “On Word and HTML”
On Star Trek Commodores
Commodore is, in naval history, a title rather than a rank, held by a captain who commands a fleet, essentially like an admiral, but without the promotion, and for a limited period of time. What we’ve seen in Star Trek is that Commodore is a rank. Bob Wesley, in “The Ulimate Computer,” was acting inContinue reading “On Star Trek Commodores”