Further Assimilations

"Very much what I imagine a small college town with crappy weather would be like, back on old Earth." - Captain Vanderdecken, Space Rogues

Yes, we've got nice thick fog, accompanied with that fine, voluminous rain that coldly soaks everything in no time.

I may not find my way to the con without leaning out the car window and yelping sonar pings into the blankness.

At least I feel pretty decent this morning. Yay getting up just before the end of the continental breakfast.

While watching the 2005 season finale of Doctor Who with Rain the other day, something struck me. The Doctor carries a tool he calls a "sonic screwdriver". About the size of a regular screwdriver, this tool emits sonic (and perhaps other) waves which can manipulate small mechanical and electronic objects. It's most commonly used as a lockpick, but it's been shown as a welder / unwelder, circuit modifier, computer reprogrammer, medical scanner, and (on rare occasions) a screwdriver.

He started using it in the Sixties, in his second incarnation, and continued well into the Eighties, when it was destroyed by an enemy of the Fifth Doctor. Sources in the BBC production team revealed that the device was causing the writers trouble when they wanted the Doctor locked up or otherwise frustrated by mechanisms. While I can't remember if the Eighth Doctor used one during his movie, the Ninth and Tenth do so regularly, and I think with good reason. Someone at the BBC seems to have realized a fact:

Locked doors are boring story telling.

The sonic screwdriver is in fact a boon to the program: when there's only 45 minutes of story, it's a wise move to get past the locked doors and computer codes, and move on to the part where the Doctor must deal with other people and nasty decisions.

Besides, since the tool's never too clearly explained, you can always have the door that the sonic screwdriver just won't open.

(Brion Fields of Space Rogues keeps a sonic screwdriver in a pocket of his jumpsuit. Where he got it, I don't know; and it was intended to be a subtle in-joke, not fill half the frame in an early scene.)

All three completed Space Rogues episodes, plus the blooper reel, have now been posted on the movies page of my website. Yes, they are QuickTime, and yes, they are huge files so you'll need broadband. I tried MPEGing them and DivXing them, and they didn't get smaller either way. One day, I hope to generate new movies from cleaner originals.

I've only been meaning to post these for years.

Researchers at IBM have developed technology which uses dents in thin plastic film to store information. It's a bit like the punch cards of computing history, except the dents are 10 nanometers in width. (A nanometer is one-millionth of the width of a piece of paper-clip wire.)

The researchers estimate that with this technology in practical use, a common multifunction digital wristwatch could contain 15 gigabytes of data... that's about 23 CDs, or 2 or 3 DVD movie discs.

"I've backed up the ship's computer core in this small MDM memory chip!" Brion Fields, Space Rogues

For those who wanted to know, the online version of the first episode of Space Rogues can be found on my Movies page.

It's in two parts which add up to 90 megs of Quicktime, so don't try this on your 28.8 modem.



Which Space Rogues Character Are You?