R2-D2 in Star Trek

The contest is long over, but people still ask and argue about it, so here's the last word, and the picture to prove it. Our beloved little astro-droid makes his appearance at the 47 minute, 40 second mark, just after the Enterprise comes out of warp over Vulcan and takes evasive action to avoid debris:


Yep, there he is, plain as day, helpfully highlighted by Jester. Debate over? I think so!

Spelled G Double-E K

My car stereo display, the other night:


All kinds of WIN. Click here for musical inspiration.

One Ring to Find Them...

Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes oh yes OH FUCK YES. At last, at last! Enough repeating! The Tolkien Estate and New Line have settled, thank Eru Illuvitar! Join in the merriment and geek-bashing that is the Fark Thread!

So, why is this good news? It clears the way for the Peter Jackson-produced, Guillermo del Torro-directed two-part over-hyphenated Hobbit adaptation! For those who are only familiar with the Peter Jackson trilogy and not Professor Tolkien's original work, The Hobbit follows the journey of one Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm in the Trilogy) as he and a party of Dwarves travel to the Lonely Mountain of Erebor. Of course, along the way, he happens upon a magic ring that makes him invisible, setting off the events that culminate in the epic War of the Ring as told in the LotR trilogy.

This comes on the heels of Ian McKellan (Gandalf) letting slip the fact that the role of Bilbo has indeed been cast, although there's no idea who it will turn out to be just yet. All we know is, according to McKellan, that people will be very happy with the decision.

So, is it Holm? Does he still have the spark enough to take on the role that made him famous to a whole new generation? I hope so! Holm is a great actor, and one of my favorites of his is the legendary Time Bandits, wherein he appeared as Napoleon. Technology has obviously progressed to the point where we can believably de-age an actor or actress (see Clu in the upcoming TR2N, to be played by Jeff Bridges, or Benjamin Button), so Holm is a viable choice indeed, especially given the techniques perfected in Jackson's films using body doubles.

Whoever it is, though, we'll finally get to see The Hobbit on the big screen in live-action, nearly 75 years after it was first published. Fellow geeks, can I get a w00t!

Whil Whheaton @ PAX Video!

PAX may be over, - and those of us here on the East Coast are gearing up for PAX East 2010 I can tell you - but the goodness is already flowing forth! Even though it's Labor Day, PAX attendees are hard at work processing video and posting it on YouTube for those of us less fortunate due to location. How very geek of them!

Since I'm a total Wheaton Monkey (and de facto co-leader of the East Coast branch of the Super Awesome Monkey Army, w00t!), and thanks to the obligatory Fark Wheaton Link (FT), here's some video of Wil at PAX. Firstly, here he is with his Department of Geek Affairs Proclaimation:

And secondly, as found on Fark, witness as Wil gets totally serenaded by Jonathan Coulton:

This, folks, is why I'm going to PAX East next year. How can you even think to say that geeks don't know how to party and have a good time? I don't care how awesome a party person you are, I highly doubt you could ever keep up with us...

Shameless Nerd Gushing, Vol. 2

I know, I know. You know, I tend to say "I know" alot. Kinda like Justin likes to say "hold on." But yes, I know, yet another weekend where I dropped the ball. Things aren't the greatest in Prophyt World, but I'm working on changing that, and I'll be back to normal soon.

In the meantime, today's Nerd Gushing comes to us from fellow Blogger blog (Blogger blog? Did I just type that? Oh dear...) Blasphemes, via Fark (FT): The pressing issue for the day is Just how long was Luke Skywalker on Degobah with Yoda during Empire? It's since grown into a discussion about the physics and stellar geography of the Star Wars Galaxy (which, don't forget, is far, far away...), and we've even managed to work in some real world math.

Yes, we're nerds. Now go, participate in the Nerdgasm!

Nuts

I know, it's been a quiet week for me, especially yesterday, when (for like the third time in a row) I missed Caturday and will have to make up for it. All told, it's been a slow week here in Prophyt Land.

I was extremely pleased to see Jericho make a return to TV this week. It's a great show, probably the first "Big Network" show I've watched in quite a long time. CBS was wrong to cancel such a killer show, and now that it's back, myself and alot of my friends are quite chipper. As of now, there are 7 episodes in the can, with one aired. Whether or not Jericho will survive after this truncated run remains to be seen, but if CBS is smart, they'll extend it for at least a season or two more.

Last time they tried to fuck with it, CBS ended up with 20+ tons of nuts on their doorstep.

One of the main reasons I haven't been posting is bandwidth clogging. When I'm running particular apps, they tend to suck up most of the available bandwidth, leaving my browsing (even with my beloved Firefox) to suffer some serious lag time. Took me five minutes to load a page from Boston.com this morning, for example.

Another problem has been my as-of-late poor health. Angel, Teddy and I have pretty much been circulating colds and other ailments amongst ourselves for the past two or three weeks, and it hasn't been fun. At first, my sinuses refused passage to anything, thereby making breathing a fun new Olympic sport. Then they dried up, albeit too much, and it felt like I was breathing through a steel tube for a while. Since then, I've been in "hacking up fun gelatinous gunk" mode, coughing up phlegm every so often.

At least I'm not alone, though, because Wil's been sick, too. He's had it much worse, though, requiring surgery to clear up his sinus troubles. Get well soon, Fearless Leader!

I'll make up for lost Caturday time later today, after I get a good chunk of my other stuff taken care of. One of these days, I'll get a blogging schedule happening. But for now, chaos is the order of the day...

On A Dark Desert Highway

Praise be unto Darwin, who, in his stuffed monkey wisdom and grace, has blessed us this day with teh goodness and hawesome. Ahhh, man.

And there was much rejoicing (yay).

The Audio from Wil's performance is up and live on teh Intarwebs (which is a series of tubes), and there are several ways for you to get your hands on it. I won't type anymore so you can get to downloadin':

• Directly from Pulp Gamer, who was kind enough to record, encode and release it (41.1 MB 128K MP3)
• As a backup, Wil has posted a copy available on WWdN:IX itself (41.1 MB 128K MP3)
• A Rapidshare Link, provided by WWdN:IX Reader Patrick G
• And two torrents: One on The Pirate Bay from WWdN:IX Reader Michael S
• And the other on Mininova courtesy of yours truly, The Lost Prophyt

I reccomend the last route, since I'm seeding that puppy as we speak, and will continue to do so as long as I have the uptime. That might be a bit shaky right now, though, given the fact that, six feet in front of me and through not much more than brick and glass, there's one hell of a high wind session going on.

The usually sullen and rather rare creaking of the sign for the office below us is now a batshit crazy pendulum of constant "hit me with some WD40" noise, and looking out the window reveals lines swinging like a double dutch rope.

Good times in Central PA...

Update: My update color is never the same, but that's not the update. The update is thus: I hope Lawyer Mama doesn't get too jealous, but for my torrent effort, I got name-checked over on WWdN:IX. I'm still seeding, and we're up to four total seeders now, with just one peer as of 2:20pm my time. On the bright side, I've tossed up enough for two copies, so my part is done :D

Scalzi Talks Up Fearless Leader

Writer John Scalzi has his "A Month of Writers" series sights set on Wil today, and what preceeds Blue Light Special is an interesting side story for those of us who follow Wil's work. It's a wonderful piece that really touches on the central theme of both Wil and his writing. For those interested, there's also a Fark Thread under the Geek Tab.

What got me, though, was the comments section, where a few folks have just discovered Wil through John's post, and ordered books based on his entry alone. Kudos to Wil on that windfall! New readers via word of mouth (word of blog?) are often the best readers of all, and it ain't shameful to admit that it's because the advertising is free.

It also works both ways, as I'll be adding John's blog to my list of reads. Man, my RSS folder is getting rather chubby...

Update 12/13: Oh, you knew that there was going to be a post over on WWdN:IX about it. Come on, like that wasn't going to happen...

"I need to make a 3D scanner." "Got Milk?"

Yeah, OK. So this guy, he builds a 3D scanner out of LEGOs, Milk, a Webcam and a Bowl. Now that's some creative stuff right there. Think I'm insane? Well, here's a vid of how it's done, and the obligatory link to the orignal article...

Jabba The Fuckin' Hutt

Try not to blow your Pepsi out of your nose on this one, mmmmkay?