Virtually Infinite.

As part of my selection of Christmas gifts from Karli, she cleverly picked up a pair of tickets for the award-winning Space Explorers: The Infinite virtual reality event currently being presented in Vancouver. Located at the Rocky Mountaineer Station, The Infinite presents an immersive experience of the International Space Station from a wide range of perspectives and viewpoints. 

Arriving at the location at our appointed time, the event staff set us up with what's essentially the same Quest 2 VR headset that I have at home, with a networked sensor add-on to the front of the unit, a bar code (presumably for the tracking ID) and enhanced earphones.  The experience uses a simple system - the rest of your group appears in VR as a yellow avatar, other guests are blue, and cast members are green.

Once equipped with a headset, you are introduced to a shadowy ghost of the ISS, populated with glowing spheres.  

By touching a sphere, you can activate a virtual reality movie clip showing various aspects of life on the space station, such as donning space suits and working on the outside of the station, along with commentary from the astronauts on the station*.  There are also periodic changes of setting, displaying breathtaking orbital views of and from the station in the overhead area.

To transit the guests out of the VR space, the experience ends with a seated panoramic view of the ISS in space, after which the headsets are returned and you exit the VR environment.

I enjoyed the freedom of being able to actually walk around in VR, something that my home usage hasn't permitted. That being said, it was surprisingly crowded, to the point that it was a bit challenging to avoid other avatars.  I suppose that logically, dumping a couple of dozen people into the actual ISS wouldn't leave that much extra space either.

Sadly, I fell prey to a couple of technical issues that shut my headset down due to heating problems, so I did miss a few minutes of the show.  In both cases I was quickly assisted by staff members, full points for rapid response in a time-sensitive situation.

Although I found The Infinite to be an amazing experience, I would liked to have interacted with a more fully rendered version of the ISS interior.  (Which certainly exists, as per the ISS program that I have loaded on my personal headset.)  However, I can appreciate that the star of the show is the actual VR footage of astronauts on the ISS, both inside and outside - better to see the real thing than a simplified rendering.

Minor issues aside, The Infinite offers a spectacular perspective on the ISS and its daily activities.  If you're looking for a unique opportunity to experience life in space, I would fully recommend picking up tickets to the show - but don't wait too long, it's a popular event, and it's only available until March 19th.   

- Sid

* In one of the clips, Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques comments that the ISS is "like camping in your backyard.  Mars is our Everest."  I'm sorry, David, but at best Mars is a week at a provincial park - let's save Everest analogies for when we eventually get out of our own solar system.

Anangong Miigaading.

Obi-Wan: Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil!
Anakin Skywalker: From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

Lucasfilm has announced that they have come to an agreement with the Dakota Ojibway Tribal Council and the University of Manitoba to release a dubbed Ojibway version of A New Hope, the original Star Wars movie. (If you happen to be a fluent speaker of Ojibway and have theatrical ambitions, now is your chance: you can apply at http://starwarsojibwe.com/)

The producers chose Ojibway because it is one of the most widely spoken indigenous languages, with approximately 320,000 speakers in North America.  The Ojibway version of the film will see theatrical release across Canada, and will eventually be broadcast on Canada's Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.

It's interesting to imagine an indigenous re-write of the entire series, with the Empire recast in the model of a colonial power that has undertaken a program of ruthless conquest across the galaxy. In this version, Anakin Skywalker becomes a Lost Generation child, swept up in the equivalent of the 60s Scoop and stripped of his aboriginal identity.  His romance with Amidala then becomes a double secret, not just due to the strictures of the Jedi code but because of prejudice and discrimination against his indigenous background.

But where do the Jedi fit in this retelling of the story?  It's an easy out to have the Sith stand in for the Catholic Church, but a stark examination of the prequel trilogy makes it just as easy for the Jedi to be guilty of the same sins - let's face it, Qui-Gon Jinn essentially takes Anakin away from his mother and drops him into residential school at the Jedi Temple.  

With the narrative changed to an indigenous perspective, Anakin turns out to be correct when he tells Obi-Wan that the Jedi are evil, and his conversations with the Supreme Chancellor about similarities between the Sith and the Jedi gain a new resonance. The good news is that in the aboriginal retelling, Anakin is no longer guilty of killing the younglings that he encounters at the Jedi Temple - instead, he rescues them.  And after that, it's a whole new story...

- Sid

"As you command."

Every now and then I let myself reference my fandom at work - sometimes you just have to represent.

- Sid

And so it begins.

Spock: V'Ger must evolve. Its knowledge has reached the limits of this universe and it must evolve. What it requires of its god, doctor, is the answer to its question, "Is there nothing more"?

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Welp, I guess all the serious Star Trek fans in the audience know where THIS is going to end up...

- Sid

 

Doctor Who: Time Passages.

As part of the celebration for the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who, the Radio Times magazine interviewed Tom Baker, who played the Fourth Doctor from 1974 to 1981.

When I saw the accompanying photos, I was so surprised by how changed he was from his appearance in the 50th Anniversary Special that I actually spent some time trying to confirm that the shots were legitimate, rather than some kind of AI generated extrapolation of how he would look.

I know that time has its way with us all, and after all, he is a 90 year old man. Regardless, there's a kind of sad irony that an actor made famous by playing a near-immortal time traveller would so obviously fall victim to the effects of days and years gone past.

- Sid

Éire 2023: Gnomic Statement XXI

"Klaatu barada nikto."

- Sid

Éire 2023: Sidebar.

While we're doing Game of Thrones quotes, this is one is a favourite - and so TRUE.

- Sid

"I'd buy that for a dollar!"

Heritage Auctions just notified me that my remote auction bid of one dollar made me the winner of a Star Trek: Generations movie poster in their weekly Sunday Movie Poster Auction.

The dollar price quickly becomes an illusion, as the house tacks on a $29 USD auction fee, but I have no regrets, it still feels like a score.

- Sid

(UPDATE:  And as of six months later, they have yet to charge me a shipping fee, which I feel DEFINITELY makes it a score.)

 

It's only a paper moon - or is it?

With just over a month to go until the release of the new Barbie film starring Margot Robbie in the titular role - the role that she was so obviously born to play* - it occurs to me that if Barbie Land exists, that posits the existence of a larger shared universe of Mattel toys - the Mattelverse**, as it were.

With that on the table, if there's a moon in the skies of Barbie Land - and we know that there is - then what would we find there?  Obviously, there would be a thriving lunar colony commanded by none other than the Mattel's Man in Space himself, Major Matt Mason.

Tom Hanks has mentioned his eagerness to star in a movie version of the Major's adventures, but given what we've seen in terms of how Barbie will address the dichotomy between the perfection of Barbie Land and feminism in the real world, how would a Major Matt Mason movie define itself in comparison to character studies like Disney's Lightyear?  Hopefully in the same way that Barbie will, by showing that imaginary characters can have their own worth in terms of the values that they offer to real people - and vice versa.

- Sid

* She does a pretty good job as Harley Quinn as well, actually - and if you want to discuss whether or not someone has range as an actor, these are the roles that you want to use as a yardstick.

** As opposed to, say, the Hasbroverse - Transformers and GI Joe - which already has a motion picture presence.

My girl Lydia.

If you know, you know.

- Sid

I, robot.

Yesterday I failed the I'm not a robot test on my iPad.

No matter what I did, it refused to accept my tapping finger to check the box in the window, but, inexplicably, Karli was able to complete for me without any problems.  And then she gave me a long, thoughtful look...

- Sid

 

AKA "Exploded".

"Rapid unscheduled disassembly" - if they weren't talking about the destruction of a $90M USD rocket, that would actually be a pretty funny way of saying that it blew up.

(Which looked like this:)

The SpaceX team considers the launch to be a success, and I can understand their position.  These are unmanned test flights, and as such having the launch vehicle explode (or rapidly disassemble, if you prefer) provides them with crucial information about their design and how it operates in practice - that's what testing is all about.

However, at $100M+ for the combination of rocket and launch, it's a bit of an expensive hobby.  Let's hope that Elon Musk is prepared to stay the course in order to ensure that future rockets don't disassemble when there's a crew on board.

- Sid

Putting the "fun" in Dysfunctional?

 

I am pleased to announce that, following a return visit to the innergeek.com Geek Test, I have leveled up.

My new score took me from being a Major Geek (with a score of greater than or equal to 35%)  to a Super Geek - greater than or equal to 45%.*

These may not seem like high scores, but given that the top score that can be achieved on the test is Dysfunctional Geek, with a score of  ≥75% I can only imagine what a full 100% score would look like - Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory, perhaps.  And, let's be honest, as well crafted a character as he is, Sheldon would probably have a very short career in the real world.

- Sid

* If you're curious as to how I had increased my score, upgraded responses including naming a pet after a literary character - don't forget, Jack the Cat's full name is Jaqen H'ghar - and indexing a personal collection, among others.

Reading Week 2023: Toyoda.

I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
Where it bubbles all the time like a giant carbonated soda
S-O-D-A, soda
I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said, "Yoda"
Y-O-D-A, Yoda
Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo-Yoda

“Weird Al” Yankovic, Yoda

I appreciate the degree to which fans in Palm Springs wear their hearts on their sleeves.

- Sid

"Blame it all on Larry Niven."

In other news, the state of Massachusetts has put forward a bill that would give convicts the opportunity to reduce their sentences by donating organs - essentially, trading body parts for time.  

As often happens, science fiction, in the person of author Larry Niven, has already anticipated this macabre concept and its long term implications. Larry Niven's 1967 story The Jigsaw Man, originally published in Harlan Ellison's revolutionary anthology Dangerous Visions*, posits a future in which the organ banks are always hungry, and as such, the slippery slope that starts with prisoners donating bone marrow ends up with even the most trivial legal offenses  - in this case, parking tickets - leading to the guilty party being broken down for parts. 

Niven uses this concept in a number of stories, including one from The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton in which people who have been cryogenically preserved in hopes of a future cure for their ailments are harvested for their organs - "waking up in pieces", as one character describes it.

In his postscript to the story, Niven makes the following comment: 

The organ bank problem used to scare me.  The internal logic seems so rigid. But if it were that obvious, the Red Cross would have been finding its blood donors on Death Row, five quarts to a donor, since 1940 A.D. That has not been happening.  Perhaps I'm making a big deal out of nothing.

Maybe it only took someone to point out the advantages.  In which case, blame it all on Larry Niven.

Well, Larry, it's good of you to take the blame, but I suspect that Massachusetts came up with this idea all on their own - as might have been expected from a science fiction story, all you had to do was to wait for the future to catch up. 

- Sid

* Although, to be honest, if I were Ellison, I wouldn't have put The Jigsaw Man in Dangerous Visions, given the collection's New Wave mandate - it's such a standard Niven story

I feel you, girlfriend.

 

- Sid