riney.blog v2

Okay, new Star Trek. I liked it – bloody shocker, that. Here’s how it is – It’s TOS, to be sure.

• 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!

My command-line knowledge is pretty passable, but sometimes I screw up in hilarious ways.


imogen:~ riney$ mkdir flonk
imogen:~ riney$ echo "I am the first file" > flonk/1.txt
imogen:~ riney$ echo "I am the second file" > flonk/2.txt
imogen:~ riney$ echo "I am the third file" > flonk/3.txt
imogen:~ riney$ cd flonk
imogen:flonk riney$ ls
1.txt 2.txt 3.txt
imogen:flonk riney$ tar czvf * foo.tgz
2.txt
3.txt
tar: foo.tgz: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
imogen:flonk riney$ mkdir 1 2 3
imogen:flonk riney$ mv 1.txt 1
imogen:flonk riney$ mv 2.txt 2
imogen:flonk riney$ mv 3.txt 3
imogen:flonk riney$ cd 1
imogen:1 riney$ tar xzvf 1.txt
2.txt
3.txt
imogen:1 riney$ cat 2.txt
I am the second file
imogen:1 riney$ cd ..
imogen:flonk riney$ cd 2
imogen:2 riney$ tar xzvf 2.txt

gzip: stdin: not in gzip format
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
imogen:2 riney$ cat 2.txt
I am the second file


Local radio has been getting progressively worse. One of the three remaining decent stations, 100.5, recently converted to a contemporary Christian format. Unfortunately, I can’t stand contemporary Christian music.

The new radio station here in Charleston is called His Radio, so I figured you’d be the one to speak to about it. Why is your radio station, and, by extension, most modern music that bears your name, so terrible?

Sincerely,

John Riney, music-loving heathern

So I figured I’d cough up the extra tenner a month for a music-only XM subscription. My car has the receiver in it and all, so it took five minutes to sign up and get it activated. “It will take 2-3 hours for your subscription to be updated.” Okay! So I did this last night and went to bed.

I awoke this morning, went out to the car to drive to work, and cranked up the satellite. Well, where I previously had one channel, “Preview”, I now had ten. And one of them was all Elvis. So I had nine. I paid for seventy-something. I didn’t want to unlock my house again, so I pulled out my iPhone, logged into their site, and saw a button for “Transmit Update”. I mashed that. It said to leave the radio on, it would take a few minutes. I grumbled a bit. “I gave these tools TEN DOLLARS. And I have to wait for their stupid service to kick on?”

Then I thought about what I had just done. I used my pocket-sized Internet access terminal to make an encrypted connection over a nearly-ubiquitous wireless communications network to a company, who, in turn, routed my request to a ground station, up to a pair of SATELLITES IN GEOSTATIONARY ORBIT, who then beamed a signal down to THE SATELLITE RECEIVER IN MY CAR. I shut up and quit grumbling then, because I realized I LIVED IN THE FUCKING FUTURE.

After about ten minutes, the audio hitched for a second and resumed, all seventy-odd channels enabled. The first song? “Don’t Worry, Baby”, one of my very favorites.