You are not a Trekkie.
My mother was a Trekkie. She watched the original Star Trek series when it first aired. She followed the early fan-driven conventions and the appearances of the cast elsewhere. She was part of a nerdy movement in the 60’s and 70’s that tried to “keep Star Trek alive” when it was just a cancelled tv show with mediocre ratings.
My ex-wife was a Trekkie. Like many other people, she anticipated the return of Star Trek over many years and stuck it out through that awful first season of Next Generation. She has a host of Star Trek paraphernalia that could easily fit an entire hobby store: Every official novel (yeah, ALL of them), models, TV guide issues, uniforms, fanzines, collector plates and I cannot forget the blueprints: the copious and detailed blueprints of impossibly imagined starships and gadgets. None of these were purchased off eBay after-the-fact, she collected them from that sheer magnetism towards like-minded individuals with a propensity for cult culture junk.
Do you have your own Star Trek uniform? My ex-wife does. What have you got? A couple of common action figures? Toys?
Hey, I think it’s cool to just be a fan (it’s certainly less obsessive and will keep your house less cluttered). There’s also nothing wrong with being younger than the show. But it’s hard to adopt a cult following label if you joined after it was mainstream. It only works if you’re actually, you know– cult-like over it.
Given the examples in my life above, when some speckle-faced kid says he’s a Trekkie or Trekker in a review of Star Trek Online, I do tend to roll my eyes in disbelief. Especially when lacking a dedicated Star Trek blog or some other overt tell-tale sign of Trekkiness.
Next up, someone will review a Rock Band expansion and declare themselves a new Deadhead.
. . .
(Note: Yes, this goes against my usual belief that everyone has a right to self-labelling. What can I say, I’m a hypocritical paradox.)
Windows 7 Audio
This one area is making me consider switching back to XP from Windows 7.
I had complete control of my surround sound in XP. Games sounded great (except for WoW’s awful switch to software mixing, but that was an exception). The stereo-to-5.1 upmixing on my X-Fi impressed the hell out of me when I bought the card. I had convenient control over the volume of each independent speaker.
Just finding the independent speaker levels in Windows 7 is a pain. Some of the options are still there, but under Windows 7 they don’t work as well. Upmixing is inconsistent to say the least, with some sounds muffled and suppressed beyond recognition.
Whether it’s a driver or an OS issue, I’m not sure, but the audio in Windows 7 seems a lot more subject to audio stutters in games and it just doesn’t sound as good to my ears at all. When I was dual-booting during the beta, there was a clear difference jumping from one OS to the other.
Plane crash near us
We’ve see a lot of weirdness and strange accidents, but a plane crash is a bit over the top even for Bridgeport Rd..
Luckily it hit in a parking lot (next to Mobler, near Ikea) and not on the street itself. Our roommate thought it was some kind of large traffic accident, driving through on her way home. We thought the same with the noise + sirens until we could hear multiple plane landings at the airport (I assume they recalled local air traffic?). Now it’s really quiet with no planes in / out of the airport. Police have now blocked off the area.
Update: News is now reporting the small plane crash.
Left 4 Dead Tower Defense?
Just like Zubon, I’m a little Tower Defense crazy.
Left 4 Dead strikes me as ripe for a Tower Defense mod. It already revolves around defending as gameplay, plus it has waves and waves of not-so-mindless zombies ready to go. The AI director could probably be tweaked for it nicely. If I had the coding skills (or at least more familiar with the SDK), I’d start a mod project, but I don’t so here it is as a suggestion.
It doesn’t have to be Towers, just auto-targetting / auto-killing devices of some sort. I’m imagining all sorts of devilish traps that could be placed in some of the narrow corridors and hallways typical for Left 4 Dead maps. Maybe movable barriers too, so the pathing of the zombies could be altered. Then the glorious gibbing of zombies would abound!
This could end up a little more like Dungeon Keeper than Tower Defense, but that’s great, since I’d count Dungeon Keeper as the epitome of build-and-turtle defense games.
Migration complete (sorta)
Update: If you’re reading this from an RSS feed, update your feed links from the website. I’m forwarding the old feed, but that’s just temporary, so please grab the new feeds. Here, I’ll provide convenient links for you: NecroRogIcon posts feed and NecroRogIcon comments feed.
NecoRogIcon is back up and running. =)
I’ve still got some tinkering to do, but things are working and I can make any other changes as I go.
I’m fairly happy with my port and changes of my old theme (still based on Travelogue, although restyled and completely recoded). I’m especially pleased with my comments layout, including Gravatars and threading, it’s all much easier to read and follow.
Feels good to be running so cleanly, a decade of old cruft has been put aside. I’m also enjoying Wordpress again, two years of trying to shove Drupal’s square peg into round holes has made me really appreciate friendlier software.
Moving over select posts
I’m moving over some select posts before I archive all the old stuff. Mostly I’m bringing over the more notable articles I had on sticky, plus the recent posts on topics I’m likely to continue.
This Wordpress install is getting pretty close to where I want it, so after I’ve sorted out the articles I’ll probably set it “live” and set the domains to match.
