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A redesigned Star Trek site is live. It is vastly redesigned from the old one, reflecting the design aspects of Star Trek but is (In my opinion) a much better running website. It includes a lot of information on the multiple series and movies, as well as interviews with the cast and crew that made those shows possible.
Yet that isn’t the reason I mention the website. I mention it because you can watch all 70 episodes of Star Trek: the Original Series on it as well as all the episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise. (Love it or hate it, that series has 89 episodes. Lasted longer then TOS.)
Click here to go to Star Trek Dot Com.
And if you re interested in the fictional reality of STar Trek, Memory Alpha is the place to go. It is a great wiki full of all kinds of Star Trek tidbits. From when the various uniforms were introduced to bringing the scattered stories of the Trek universe into some what continuity.
Click here for Memory Alpha.
Very cool.
Do you ever get in one of those moods where you don’t want to listen to that rock track *again?* Tired of hearing Lady Gaga 500 times in one night? Want to see about adding different tunes to your mp3 collection?
Try soma fm.
This site has a bunch of different channels, with music that tends towards the electronic side. It goes from the eclectic to the just…weird. However you sometimes might just feel inclined to want to hear something out of the ordinary. They have a channel dedicated to transcipts of moon missions mixed with music, one covering underground music of the 80′s, one that just plays cover music… The list goes on. Go there and check it out yourself.
Who knows what you’ll find.
I like to listen to chill stuff when ‘ve been in a situation where I am angry. It helps calm me down a bit. I like the selection this website has to offer. If I am not in the mood for one thing, I can easily try something else.
Be Warned: This is more of a rambling mixture of thoughts on The Stand then a review:
This isn’t my first read through of The Stand. Yet I love rereading favorite books; I often find that the way you view a book changes as your life ebbs and flows. In this way I can view The Stand in a little bit different light.
When I read now, often I am not just reading the story but viewing the language and how the writing is constructed. Mr. King has a way of enthralling the reader; pulling him in by his collar and not letting go. I am not sure if he would be considered the best writer of words out there, but he is a really good story teller. As I read through this book I wondered which I would rather be: A great writer or a great story teller.
I think I’d rather be able to tell a good story then write sentences that only academics might conclude are worthy to be called “Good writing.”
But I digress: The Stand is a good book full of harsh visuals and a realistic world. I’d say some of the language used by the characters is outdated, even by the time of the re-release of The stand, I hear people talk like that in every day life.
I like Randall Flagg as an enemy in this book. As I read this, it strikes me that his death in the Dark Tower series was rather anticlimactic: I don’t think he lived up to the characterization portrayed in The Stand.
Then again I’ve never thought the Randall Flagg of the Dark Tower series really resembled the one in The Stand…
I remember liking The stand when I first read it in high school. yet I never cared for the way the book ended. (I read the re-released version, like I did now, not the original.) Not the journey back from Nevada with Stu and Tom Cullen (M O O N, that spells Tom…) but the coda at the end where Flagg is reborn? ON the island with the savages…
I don’t know. That always struck me as a typical “Horror” ending. You know what I mean: After the bloodied group of teens kill the serial killer and are walking away, he pops out of the water, ready for a sequel.
That is what the ending feels like. Something tagged on “Just in Case.” Maybe it is to try to tie The Stand further in to the whole Dark Tower omniverse of the rest of his novels but… Just felt cheap to me.
It still does actually. But I am not the author, Mr. King is and he probably had his reasons.
I also noticed that, despite using God (Through Mother Abigail) as the main “Good Guy” of the piece, there are very few people that actually believe in God in the book. I noticed that when you do have characters that do, they are often portrayed as something more akin to zealots: They believe but they seem to believe because they need something to believe in, not because it is true. Even Mother Abigail , the one person that has a genuine faith in God, seems to waffle a time or two.
I know much of this is done for story and pacing, but I also realize that you cannot write something as long as the Stand without putting some of your own beliefs in it. I wonder if King ever grew up around the tough Christians I have: The ones that believe in God even if a storm just tore down the house. The ones that, even if they don’t believe in premarital sex, wouldn’t shun a pregnant girl just because she wasn’t married. Those that help people just to help them, because it is the right thing to do.
Of course that type of person could be dead in this world: You deal with what you deal with when a plague hits. And these are only thoughts that crossed my mind as I read this tome. It seems to be a major subtext in this book is “Where was God when this all went down?”
And maybe it is hard for Mr, King to write about something as pure as God because he is merely human: Instead it is easier for him to concentrate on Flagg and the destruction he causes.
I say all this because I really do like the book. It is one I have read multiple times and will read again in the future. Although King’s writing style has change some what in the last ten years, this book will always stand up as one of his better accomplishments.
Even if I wonder about the motivation of everyone within and without…
The art of the 18 classes at least.
This one is probably my favorite 
You can find the rest by clicking here.
I’ve heard much about the IPAD in recent months. How cool it is. How it can do five million things. How it washes your dishes, raise your children, and bring the dead back to life. I’ve heard from many people that love the Ipad, but I’ve had my reservations. Yes if I were given one I’d love to play around with it but…
I don’t know if it’d become something I’d use all the time.
Anyway I thought it was interesting to find someone that has *stopped* using it.
“So you’re an early adopter?” I heard this far too many times when people found out my wife and I bought an iPad. A partial inference being we were willing to accept problems as a trade-off for having something cool.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The writer ended up buying a netbook. I just find that interesting, because I don’t think the IPAD is a bad product, but it isn’t for everyone.
Is it for me? Give me one and I’ll let you know Read the rest of that article by clicking right here.
Welcome to the reboot of Trials and Demolitions, our column on playing the limited trials or demonstrations of full games that companies drop from time to time. I Know not all of us has the money or the time to play every game, so playing a trial or a demo is a good way to spend some quality time gaming while not paying a single red cent.
I can’t say that I’ve only recently heard of Deathspank, but it has only been in the last week that I’ve given the game much thought. To me it looked like another try at a humorous game, a try that seemed destined to fail. The art style didn’t really appeal to me and I’ve played a ton of Diabloesque action role-playing games in the last year.
Then the name Ron Gilbert grabbed my attention. After that I knew I had to play the game.
The demo is quite large, for a demo. It is more of a Trial then a demo, coming in at a little over a gig of data. It dropped on the Xbox Live Arcade, so there is an option to unlock the game at any time. It took me a bit to download, but when it did I was ready to play.
Let’s get this out of the way: The game is a Diablo like action RPG clone. You kill lots of things and get lots of loot. You have four slots for weapons, which range from beat ‘em up sticks to ranged. You can block. You can perform feats of Justice that do different things, like stun all surrounding enemies. You collect cards when you level up that effect your stats and help you. It feels like your typical Action RPG, if you only look at it from a pure gameplay perspective.
But the humor! Oh the humor takes me back. Listening and reading the dialogue starts sinking me in to the ocean of time… I’m a teen again, playing The Secret of Monkey Island, Space Quest, and so many other Lucasarts and Sierra point and click adventures. Though the game-play is different, I am killing hordes of ducks, dragons, daemons, and what not, the humor and the spirit of these games is wrapped up in this gig of downloadable content.
Then it hits me: 30 minutes. That seems to be the defacto time limite for these trials at the moment. I’ve seen it on a few other demos on Xbox live recently. There are other ways the demo locks you out: High quality weapons can’t be equipped and certain quests can’t be triggered.
But the demo has done it’s job. I want this game. I want it as soon as possible. Although ti really seems like a game that would be more at home on a PC then on a console. It has the old spirit of gaming packed in it, a spirit I am glad to see still alive and well.
Download the demo and judge for yourself. Check out the official website by clicking here.