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Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Klingon Christmas Carol brought to the stage

It is the perfect Christmas present for the avid Star Trek fan: a ticket to the Klingon Christmas Carol.

Klingon Christmas Carol brought to the stage
Photo: PARAMOUNT

A theatre in Chicago is staging a production of the Charles Dickens classic "A Christmas Carol" with a twist.

The entire play is delivered in thIngan Hol, the language of the Klingon race, which was developed in 1984 by linguist Marc Okrand for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

The show features a miserly alien warrior named SQuja', Klingon for Scrooge, who is visited by a trio of holiday ghosts who help him regain the festive spirit so that he can save sickly Tiny Tim.

The story takes place on the Klingon planet of Kronos during the Feast of the Long Night.

Written by Christopher O. Kidder and Sasha Walloch, the show's poster reads: "Scrooge has no honour, nor any courage.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8215826/Klingon-Christmas-Carol-brought-to-the-stage.html


Star Trek’s Holodeck, So Close We Can "Virtually" Taste It.

Star Trek’s Holodeck, So Close We Can "Virtually" Taste It.

Okay fellow Trek Fans, “hold on to yer hats and glasses, cuz this here’s the wildest ride in the Universe!” Star Trek predicts (or is that, directs) the future once again. We just found reports of a functional holodeck. Notice we didn’t say “fully” functional, as it doesn’t have force-field or replicator technology yet, but with the aid of fancy 3D glasses it’s pretty close. …Computer, Arch!

This Holodeck is actually the Duke immersive Visual Environment (DiVE), a six-sided structure that, when sealed, becomes a seamless virtual reality atmosphere built to enhance teaching, research and design planning. The chamber is 10 feet on each side. Each wall, including the floor and ceiling, functions as a large computer screen. Six computers control full-color projectors - one per wall - and a seventh is the master computer.

To use DiVE at its full capacity, users wear stereoscopic glasses made with liquid crystals that provide depth perception. Unlike 3-D glasses with red and blue lenses, the stereoscopic lenses are colorless, so the wearer can see all colors. The crystals also rotate, making the lenses alternate between transparency and opaqueness. That allows the eyes to fuse the 3-D imaging correctly, eliminating the blurry "ghosting" effect when video images double on the screen, Brady said.

Armed with a wand that tracks their movements and helps them navigate the virtual landscapes, users can be immersed in a believable visual fiction.

"Being inside the cube provides a large field of view," Brady said. "This is one of the best ways to interact with computer representations of data."

Now, what we want to know is…how can we get one?!

http://www.subspacecomms.com/content/2010/12/17/star-trek%E2%80%99s-holodeck-so-close-we-can-virtually-taste-it


Star Trek beats ‘Glee’ in google online Top 10

You would think that the highly popular TV series Glee would be a top US search in 2010, but Star Trek rules the day.
With a hit movie out in 2009, Star Trek, the ‘re-birth’ was critically praised for putting the magic back into the fatigued sci-fi series, now on its way up once again in 2010.
In 2003, Patrick Stewart’s last outing in Captain was poorly received and fizzled out of the US Box Office with weak demand, and a disappointing global gross. With the massive popularity of Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk, and the pre-production of Star Trek 2, audiences are demanding more action, and fast paced visuals from the franchise. The reboot has also boosted the popularity of the series and the online star trek games.
As for Glee, Google has placed it 8th in the fastest rising search of 2010 overall with Justin Bieber in 5th place and the pad gadget crushing competition at 1st. In the entertainment industry as a whole, Justin Bieber was America’s ‘Hottest Seat in Town’
Top 10 American TV online searches
1. lost
2. american idol
3. snl
4. family guy
5. the office
6. big brother
7. real housewives
8. star trek
9. 24
10. glee

http://www.filmindustrynetwork.biz/star-trek-beats-glee-in-google-online-top-10/6695

Man Creates Working Star Trek Door

The doors of the U.S.S. Enterprise appear to open automatically and send a jet of air that results in a *shh shh* sound. Of course, each time a door opened on the set of any Star Trek show or movie, a crewman needed to open the door manually and the signature sound effect was added later. An enterprising (heh) DIY engineer from Miami accomplished the task that Scottie couldn't by installing a door in his house that not only slides open like a real Star Trek door, but the compressed air that it uses exhausts out of a vent and provides that awesome real sound. Mark posted pictures and described how he created the door to his bedroom on his blog, but you have to watch the video to see it work.



"I always wanted a piece of Star Trek and the Disney Monorail in my house, and one thing they have in common is that they both have automatic sliding doors," Mark wrote. "It would be the perfect, most geek-ified entryway for my bedroom. Only one problem: I was still in school and still lived at home with my mother in New Orleans. I had tried to convince her for years that installing a Star Trek Door would be a good idea, but it never happened. It wasn't until we were renovating our house after Hurricane Katrina that she finally caved in. There wouldn't be a better time to do it."

I salute you Mark, not only for the technical chops that it took to make this door work, but also for making the sound a huge part of how it functioned.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/105897-Man-Creates-Working-Star-Trek-Door

JJ Abrams' Star Trek Continues in Starfleet Academy Book Series

After a false start last year with ultimately unpublished novels taking place after the events of JJ Abrams' Star Trek, Simon & Schuster has begun publishing young adult novels set during the Starfleet Academy days of Kirk, Uhura, McCoy and the rest.
"Teens like reading about their peers, and the Starfleet world is made up of characters who are their peers," Kara Sargent, editorial director of the Simon Says imprint explains to Star Trek.com. "These are great characters in a very cool setting. Using Kirk as an example, Starfleet Academy Kirk is pretty much exactly as you would imagine him to be, given your knowledge of Kirk the grown man and captain of the USS Enterprise. Starfleet Academy Kirk is this brooding and sexy guy at a new school, in a super-competitive environment with lots of rules and regulations, and this rebel is thrown in and has to navigate his way around. All the while he’s having incredible intergalactic adventures, training to be a Starfleet Commander, and, of course, picking up girls, hanging out with his friends, pulling pranks, and picking up some more girls. Who wouldn’t love reading about this guy? The whole process of coming up with stories in this setting really wasn’t tricky at all. It was a lot of fun, and it never felt forced. It seems like a really natural direction to go in."



Book one is Rick Barba's The Delta Anomaly, published on November 2nd. Says Sargent, "I love this story. At its core it’s a mystery about a serial killer. Early on in the book, the killer targets one of the Starfleet cadets—a friend of Kirk and Uhura, in fact—and the reader is immediately drawn in to this very fast-paced, very chilling mystery. All the while, there are fantastic side stories going on. One involves Uhura and a special assignment she gets from her favorite instructor, Commander Spock. I’ll just say there’s some serious chemistry between those two and leave it at that! Another side story involves a big Starfleet assignment Kirk is involved in that pits him against his nemesis at the Academy. There’s lots of adventure in that one. And, my favorite side story involves Kirk and a beautiful young co-ed he meets at a coffee shop. Her name is Hannah, and Kirk has his work cut out for him because Hannah actually doesn’t swoon at his feet the first time she meets him."

Book two, Rudy Joseph's The Edge, will be published on December 28th. Of the plot, Sarget notes, "The Edge focuses on the stress of life at the Academy. The story opens with a competition and Kirk realizes that some cadets seem to have an edge that he doesn’t have. One of the cadets is the girl he’s interested in. Some mysterious events and even a death occur, leading Kirk to investigate what’s going on, and he uncovers a really dark world of illegal activity."

There are plans for at least one Star Trek: Starfleet Academy novel per season.



http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/scifimediazone/news/?a=25330

NASA Launches A Home Version Of Star Trek's Stellar Cartography

NASA Launches A Home Version Of Star Trek's Stellar Cartography

Watching "Star Trek: Generations", who hasn't wanted their very own version of Stellar Cartography. Thanks to NASA, it's now available. Called "Eyes on the Solar System" and developed by Caltech & JPL, it's a 3-D environment full of real NASA mission data. According to the "Eyes on the Solar System" website you can explore the cosmos from your computer. Hop on an asteroid. Fly with NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft. See the entire solar system moving in real time. It's up to you. You control space and time.

Also available on the "Eyes on the Solar System" website is your chance to follow the EPOXI mission in real-time. EPOXI is a combination of two missions and embraces NASA's mission to explore the origin and history of our solar system by understanding the composition and diversity of cometary nuclei and the properties of other planetary system.

http://www.subspacecomms.com/content/2010/11/06/nasa-launches-home-version-star-treks-stellar-cartography