Lisa Katayama

Send us your best mommy tech stories

Sunday is Mother's Day (don't forget!) and to celebrate, we're looking for fun stories about your mom*--her gadget addiction, tech disasters that put her in a bind, how a newly discovered gadget helped make her life better, easier, or funnier. Email your stories to mango [at] tokyomango [dot] com with the subject line: Mom Story by this Thursday. We'd love to hear them, and we might even post them on BBG.

Update: Accompanying photos would be awesome!

*Or wife, or sister, or baby mama. Any mom will do.

Steven Leckart

Best worst Star Trek parodies

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Maybe.

Jim Carrey as a geriatric Kirk. Sillier, but in many ways, funnier than In Living Color's previous Trek sketch: "The Wrath of Farrakhan"

More after the jump...

READ THE REST

Steven Leckart

Star Trek replicas that actually do something

Why settle for a $20 first-gen phaser that only looks cool, when you can build your own fully-functional Blu-Ray Laser Phaser for just $100?!

[via Instructables]

A collection of other functional replicas after the jump...

READ THE REST

Steven Leckart

Star Trek: a complicated rainbow coalition

In the Star Trek universe, there are 200+ nations teeming with thousands of various ethnicities, gender(s), religions, languages and artificial intelligences. So why is it dominated by so many darn white dudes?

Many a scholarly essay and book has examined race in film and TV, but as one of the longest-running and varied franchises, Star Trek is ripe for deconstruction*. After all, since its inception, the series never shied away from tackling blatant racial issues. Exhibit A: literally "bi-racial" characters like Lokai and Bele (pic above). Nevertheless, considering race both within and outside the story is where it starts to get really interesting, imho.

This site hasn't been updated since 2002, but it provides some interesting figures from the series' formative years all the way through "Voyager."

40% of principal characters have been non-human, or partially non-human... 33% have been women... 28% have been played by non-white actors... Of the 42 principal cast members, eleven (26%) can be classified as racial minorities

And the ethnic identity of the characters adds a layer of cultural complexity:

In some cases, the actor's race did not relate to the character's race. For instance, Tuvok played a dark-skinned Vulcan. But it was not correct to call Tuvok an "African-American Vulcan," because, although the actor was African-American, the character was not. There is no Africa or America on the planet Vulcan. Also, although Torres had a Hisanic last name, her Hispanic ethnicity was never addressed on "Star Trek: Voyager", because the conflict between her human and Klingon backgrounds was much more important. Worf was also played by an African-American, but his character was simply a Klingon, and was not a "black Klingon."

...Chakotay's character is very much a Native American (from South or Latin America) who devoutly subscribes to many of his culture's traditional religious beliefs and practices. The actor himself is of Mexican descent. So he does have Native American ancestry, although he is mestizo, and describes himself as Hispanic or Mexican.

I'm off to see a screening of the new Star Trek tomorrow (woot!), and can't wait to see whether these figures/percentages hold true. In theory, they should, since it's a prequel. BUT, already we've been promised Captain Robau, played by the first-ever Middle Eastern/South Asian actor to play a major role in Star Trek.

[image via HeroSpy]

*If you want to dive in deeper, check out Race in Space: The Representation of Ethnicity in "Star Trek" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation

Steven Leckart

Star Trek characters who Tweet

There's a lot of them.

Captain Kirk
Sample Tweet: "One of the advantages of being a Captain is being able to ask for advice without necessarily having to take it."

CaptJamesKirk
Sample Tweet: "Ariel is half-fish, which is kind of hot, but I can't figure out how it will work. Mulan is too manly. Belle is too bookish."

Commander Spock
Sample Tweet: "Without followers, evil cannot spread."

Gay Spock
Sample Tweet: "wait a sec...Sulu is gay?? WTF?? How come noone told me??"

Mr. Spock
Sample Tweet: "Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them."

Many more after the jump...

READ THE REST

Xeni Jardin

BB Video: ARPANET turns 40, and Vintage Computers in Slovenia

(Download this video in MP4.)

This year marks the 40th anniversary of an important milestone in internet history -- the development and successful link of the first host-to-host internet connection.

On April 7 1969, Steve Crocker of UCLA circulated around a memo entitled 'Request for Comments, the first of thousands of "RFCs" documenting the design of ARPANET and the Internet. A few months and many memos and experiments later, in October, 1969, Charley Kline at UCLA sent the first packets on ARPANET as he tried to connect to Stanford Research Institute. Below, a copy of the transmission log.

Boing Boing Video is celebrating internet history in the months to come with a look back at the people, devices, and places that are part of our shared internet history.

In today's episode of the show, we revisit an episode hosted by monochrom's Johannes Grenzfurthner, in which we explore the "Cyberpipe" museum of internet history in Slovenia, where computers and networking devices from those early years can be found. Cyberpipe is hosting related retro-tech exhibits throughout 2009.

Closer to home for our viewers in the US, the Museum of Computer History in the San Francisco Bay Area offers a world-class repository of exhibits, and their website includes a helpful timeline of key events that led to today's web.

RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video. (Special thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic).

Lisa Katayama

JJ, you popped my Star (An open letter to JJ Abrams about losing my virginity to the new Star Trek)

Dear JJ Abrams,

You don't know this, but I lost my virginity to you last week.

Let me begin by saying this: I don't watch movies or TV shows with "Star" in the title. I have never seen Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Starship Troopers or even Rock Star. They weren't readily available when I was growing up in Tokyo, and when I tried to watch Star Wars: Episode One at a movie theater upon arriving in this country for college, I fell asleep within the first half hour. When my boyfriend watches Battlestar Galactica on TV, I always end up picking at my fingers or pulling feathers out of the couch. It's nothing personal. I guess I just don't have enough points of reference in the imagined future that allow me to enjoy them. Or maybe I'm just wired differently than Star movie watchers. After a while, I just lost interest.

Then along you came with this new "Star" Trek movie. And it confused me because as much as I wanted to hang onto my pure Star-free existence, a part of me was curious, too curious, about what it would be like. So when someone offered me a free ticket to the press preview last week, I decided to go for it. I'm a dedicated Lost fan, and decided that if I was ever going to lose my Star virginity, I should lose it to you.

So I did it. I watched your Star Trek movie.

READ THE REST

Steven Leckart

A history of Star Trek porn

From Sex Trek: The Next Penetration and Deep Space Sixty Nine to SexyTrek.com, a fetish site [NSFW], the galaxy of Trek porn has continued to, uh, grow.

io9 compiled a fascinating guide with vids, pics and links [again NSFW]. Some flicks do a relatively-clever job of tweaking original plot lines and character names:

The adaptation of "The Man Trap," "The Man Eater," is also pretty faithful, including the fact that she's Doctor McJoy's former fiance, and she can transform herself to look like anyone. Except instead of sucking the salt out of people, she sucks the...

Prediction: JJ Abrams' prequel will affect this genre of porn by instigating a call for better special effects and dialog.

Lisa Katayama

From ONN: Why Trekkies are bashing the new Star Trek

From the Onion News Network, a fun clip about why hardcore Trekkies are complaining about the new Star Trek.

Lisa Katayama

USS Enterprise webcam

This Star Trek-themed USB webcam is a replica of the USS Enterprise.

[via Everything USB]

Steven Leckart

Star Trek creator's wife spends $4m for their dogs!

Before her death in 2008, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's widow Majel set up a $4 million residential trust to care for her dogs*.

TMZ reports:

A domestic employee named Reinelda Estupinian -- the person who cared for the pups -- gets $1 million and the right to live in the mansion with the dogs... Majel claimed Reinelda deserves the massive stack of cash because she "did an excellent job of caring for my animals (giving them comparable or better care than that which I gave them during my lifetime)."

I'd love to see how the Roddenbury pootches are living (my guess: LARGE). If you're reading, Reinelda: please set up a few web cams or even a Flickr stream using a few Pet's Eye View cameras.

In related news...

Although she passed away in Dec. 2008 after battling leukemia, actress/producer/petlover Majel Barrett/Roddenberry will reprise her role as the voice of Starfleet Computer in Star Trek. That fact alone got me even more pumped to see the movie. RIP, Mrs. Roddenberry.

[image via Lisa Knapp's Fabulous Pugs via Costume Dogs]

*The pug pictured above is not a Roddenberry. The family seemed to prefer the company of larger, less dolled-up canines like German Shepherds. Here's Majel with Orion.

Steven Leckart

BBG on... Star Trek

Today on BBG, we transwarp our way through the Star Trek universe. In honor of the new film (counting down: ~60 hours on the west coast), we'll be posting about the series(s), films, and fans throughout the day. You'll get to read Lisa's open letter to JJ Abrams about losing her "star" virginity, the Roddenbury pet trust, tribbles, functional replicas, why Trekkies think the new film will suck, and Trek porn.

[image via STDW]

Rob Beschizza

Rumor: Apple to Buy Twitter. God help us!

Owen at Gawker has it from an anonymous source: Apple shall buy Twitter for $700m. But what does it mean?

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld

Recently on Offworld we looked at length at Infinite Ammo's Paper Moon (above), the most recent game on Blurst (the web-portal from Minotaur China Shop creators Flashbang) and saw how even it's planar-3D platforming worked perfectly in a time-limited high-score setup: imagine a monochrome silent-movie paper-cut-out Mario that you'll want to play five times in a row, and you're getting close.

We also saw our unabashed iPhone love Eliss get reworked with a smoother difficulty curve and additional levels, after -- it seems -- most everyone was subtly abused by the original, and played both the first demo for the now-officially-released long-anticipated Plants Vs. Zombies and a text adventure based on what it's actually like to attend the Game Developers Conference.

Elsewhere we saw the most horrifying version of Mario 64 ever captured on film, remembered what it was like to compile computer programs by mail (!), dug up early plans to make a CD-ROM addon for the NES (!), and wished we were in Montreal for this 8-bit/chiptune showcase and Kokoromi member game jam.

Finally, our quick-serve 'one shot's for the day: a belated birthday wish from the creator of a game about restrained gentle-lady catfights, and Polytron's Fez, deconstructed, found while guest blogger Tiff Chow dug up these adorable hand sewn and huggable handhelds.