This is the video I made at DragonCon last year. I never posted it here. It might give you an idea what a big science fiction convention is about. Or it might give you an idea how weird my friends and I are. Or it might give you some other ideas altogether! Best of luck with that. It’s probably what you’d call “not safe for work”, mostly due to cussin’.

Second, here’s a neat video wherein I play with thermal conduction. It’s just *slightly* more interesting than it sounds.

From E3 today, a teaser trailer from Portal 2:

Something that always blows my mind about Valve games is the excruciating emphasis on storytelling. The *first line* of this trailer tells you a number of things about the game – “It’s been a long time.” GLaDOS, as we all know, is Still Alive – and she sounds dark. Angry. Serious. This is gonna be a helluva game.

Other E3 goodness – a new Kid Icarus! A new StarFox! A new PilotWings for crap’s sake! By any definition, Nintendo killed it in their announcements today. Epic Mickey, alone, might sell me a Wii.

We’ll be switching to a sturdier mail provider soon enough, but for the time being, I decided to rig ActionMailer to load-balance between four accounts. So there’s a few different ways you could pull this off.

• Monkeypatch ActionMailer. I try to avoid patches like this if at all possible.
• Randomize ActionMailer’s user_name setting before each use. Well, AM’s settings hash is a class global. Changing it every time, especially when others might be poking at it, seems in poor taste.
• Something else.

“Something else” turned out to be hacking the settings hash itself. Ordinarily, when you set it up, it looks like this:

ActionMailer::Base.delivery_method = :smtp

ActionMailer::Base.smtp_settings = {
   :address => "smtp.gmail.com",
   :port => 587,
   :domain => "mydomain.com",
   :authentication => :plain,
   :user_name => "somebody@mydomain.com"
   :password => "mypassword"
}

Instead, I did:

ActionMailer::Base.delivery_method = :smtp

smtp_settings = {
   :address => "smtp.gmail.com",
   :port => 587,
   :domain => "mydomain.com",
   :authentication => :plain,
   :password => "mypassword"
}

SYSTEM_ACCOUNTS = %w[system@mydomain.com system2@mydomain.com system3@mydomain.com system4@mydomain.com]
ActionMailer::Base.smtp_settings = Hash.new { |h, k| SYSTEM_ACCOUNTS[rand SYSTEM_ACCOUNTS.size] if k == :user_name }.merge!(smtp_settings)

The useful part is the employment of the version of Hash.new that takes a block. If a key lookup fails, the block is invoked, and is passed the hash and the requested key. It’s basically “method_missing” for hashes. So, when ActionMailer looks for :user_name, the block picks a random entry out of the SYSTEM_ACCOUNTS array. For lack of a better name, I called this approach an “untrustworthy” hash – as one generally expects to get the same key-value mapping from a hash every time.

This wouldn’t work in all cases – for example, has_key?(:user_name) would fail. I’ve got a more generic solution in mind, that being an add-on for Hash that lets you insert key/proc pairs as well as key/value pairs. More on that soon.

saturday:
* got monarch henchmen shorts and a new top to match
* shipped swords to Marriott
* cut mask, lenses, and buckle; painted mask and buckle (awaiting belt shipment)
* cut wings (awaiting paint and mounting)

awaiting: balaclava, tights, belt, boots for henchmen, dry-cleaning for 88

todo tomorrow: assemble wings/mask/buckle, get gloves, get new antennae, look for belt pouch, find backup source for balaclava (henchmen); braid cords, find weapon (wing kong); straighten backup mask, clean ties (88); laundry (everything),

Also, catching up on posting older vlogs:

• There is no stately Picard-style diplomacy up in here. There is, however, a fair amount of shooting people in the middle of the face.
• There are people running through at least two outdoor adventure sets, although there’s no Gorn (but it’s close!) and no battle music (“dun dun DUUUUUN DUUUUN DUUUN DUUUN DUUUUN”).
• There are jokes.
• There are lots of things getting blowed up, including redshirts.

It is most definitely Star Trek with some of the corners rounded off to appease non-fans. Also, I am told that the new Spock is hot.

I can’t really speak to this, as I was a bit distracted by, um…

… and, er…uh…

… what was I saying?

Oh right. Kirk’s a douchebag in this one.

The important thing us nerds need to remember, though, is that Captain Kirk was always a douchebag. Kirk is the guy that kicked us in the groin and and took our lunch money in elementary school. He became a nerd icon to be sure, but make no mistake – the guy cheated on his Academy finals, screws around, and punches hoes in the face from time to time. And that’s just in established canon! And the new one is even worse. The way he douches his way into the Captain’s chair is particularly galling. But it works.

Characterizations are generally right-on. Sets are great. Battles are good. Camera work is straight from Serenity/BSG.

Overall, recommended. It’s fun. It’s Star Trek. It’s supposed to be fun dammit!