Surprisingly, I saw this in the 90's on Super Channel, back when that was still a thing in Canada. It was one of those filler things they put in between movies later at night.

Well, I'm pretty sure I must've seen this one on Newgrounds back when YouTube was but a madman's dream (to quote Ashens).

The Mini Page!

Grandma and Grandpa would send us these out of their newspaper, back in the late '80s or early '90s.

A short clip covering the restoration of the original NCC-1701 shooting model at the Smithsonian, and another after it went back on display.

I'm fairly sure that I saw it in person twenty years ago on a field trip when the traveling Smithsonian exhibition came to town. I distinctly remember seeing the ruby slippers (they aren't as impressive in person, FYI).

I love museums, and I want to get to the real Smithsonian someday.

Incidentally, in these clips the experts do their best with the treknobabble, but they mess up a lot. Or at least they tend to go generic or imprecise. I kept wanting to yell at the screen "go to the Internet and you'll find hundreds of people willing to help you for free!"

The Smithsonian also has a Voyager commbadge given to astronaut Sally Ride.

Size comparison of several scifi ships, done to scale in CG.

Collective nouns for Pokemon

I'm fond of unusual collective nouns for animals in real life (murder of crows, pod of whales, etc.), so seeing that someone has done this for the first generation of Pokemon amused me.

(PS. The page puts "s" at the end of the Pokemon names, I know that we don't do that in real life, it's one Pikachu, two Pikachu, three Pikachu, gray duck. Sorry ;))

Some favorites: a squad of Squirtle (of course), a mischief of Pikachu, a carton of Exeggcute, a fortune of Chansey, a mystery of Mew

The evolution and history of pop cans.

Look, I'm an engineer, so this kind of nerdy stuff fascinates me.

Music boxes are more complicated than you'd think.

So I'm playing Monopoly on Pogo again, and I notice the muted sound icon. You see, there are so many other things to listen to on the Internet than musak. Out of curiosity I unmute for a few seconds to remind myself what it sounds like. Blech.

Then my mind goes to the excellent soundtrack on the 1995 PC game by Westwood. Ah yes, those dark times before widespread adoption of the Internet when you had to play games on CD-ROM. I still own the game of course, although I haven't used it in over ten years. But that doesn't matter, because you can listen to the soundtrack on YouTube!

Westwood had a superb run for game soundtracks, then. This was their 1996 entry.

The Vintage Computing Blog covers '80s electronic toys.

I had quite a few of these things (or at least similar models based on the same concepts), how about you guys?

A Reddit thread invents a game where one poster does a one sentence summary of an episode focusing on the most ludicrous element while still being accurate.

Some favorites:

Captain Picard's ability to count the number of lights that he sees is put to the test. He passes.

Kirk allows oblivious woman to jaywalk to her death.

Major Kira gets really mad at a wimpy filing clerk.

Picard makes some new friends, but Riker disapproves of this and tries to murder him.

Sisko, Bashir, Dax and Kira sing and skip to help line quarks pockets.

Captain Janeway kills a dude in cold blood using the transporter. Why? Because he existed, and his existence offended her.

How It Should Have Ended presents all of Harry Potter in 90 seconds.

Yeah, it's an old video, but it's vaguely fiver-related. "Vaguely" being the operative word here.

LGR unboxes an almost 30-year-old IBM computer.

Talk about nostalgia. Incidentally, does anyone know why the thing couldn't play Commander Keen 1, but it could play CD-Man?

Irish People try Root Beer for the first time.

Apparently I haven't shilled for the Irish People Try playlist over at Facts yet. It's funny to watch them eat food that we take for granted, but they have no first-hand knowledge of.

Spoilers, they didn't like the root beer. Now, who else doesn't like root beer? Someone that we all know?

Hmm.....

(I love root beer, especially if you put vanilla ice cream in it. It's cream soda that's vile.)

A cover of the Palace Theme from various Zelda games that makes it sound vaguely like a James Bond theme.

I'll take Improbable Pop Culture Mashups for $1000, Alex...

The band Five Year Mission does tribute songs for TOS episodes.

These aren't quite musical fivers, but rather sung summaries of each episode, along with commentary on performances, plot holes, etc.

YouTube channel with music videos.

Last month was the tenth anniversary of the Potter Puppet Pals short "The Mysterious Ticking Noise."

It feels less pointless when a Buzzfeed article marks the occasion.

First, there was "A Modern Major General"...

Then Tom Lehrer turned it into "The Elements Song"...

Then XKCD turned it into "Every Major's Terrible"...

And today I discovered the "Boy Scout Merit Badge Song."

Just in case you haven't gotten your daily reminder that the world is weird.

So today the Nostalgia Critic reviewed the 1974 version of Jack and the Beanstalk, but I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about the images on this page...

Yes, these two characters are from the same cartoon. A girl who looks like she walked out of an Ozamu Tezuka anime and a boy who looks like he walked out of a Dr. Seuss cartoon.

And that's your dose of weirdness for the day.

It's Back to the Future Pop Culture Mashup Day!

Dr. Seuss version: "Oh, the Era's You'll Go!"

Dr. Who version: The Tardis-as-DeLorean is cool.

Ghostbusters/Ecto-1 version

Calvin and Hobbes version

Peanuts version

The always classic Marty McPrime shirt

Mario Kart version

Crossover with ALF, A-Team, Ghostbusters, and Knight Rider

Fun, thanks! :)

Good soundtrack, fun background images, fun little animations on that game. :)

That first Robie looks familiar, though we never had one. My brother did get a black-and-yellow piggy bank robot for Christmas though. And I had a couple of Tiger handhelds (baseball and a frustrating football) and an Empire Strikes Back that was probably Tiger too.

Ex Astris Scientia covers some of the instances where everyday objects were used as Star Trek props.

I especially love the use of floppy disk drive case fronts as textural trim. Ah, the days of 5 1/4 inch floppy drives, when program sizes were in the kilobyte range...

A redditer gives his list of the 20 essential Trek episodes:

ENT: In A Mirror, Darkly, Dear Doctor, Carbon Creek
TOS: City on the Edge of Forever, Balance of Terror, Space Seed, Mirror Mirror, The Trouble With Tribbles
TNG: Q Who, The Best of Both Worlds, The Defector, Yesterday's Enterprise, The Inner Light, Tapestry, Preemptive Strike
DS9: Duet, The Visitor, In the Pale Moonlight
VOY: Scorpion

Commenters put forth missing episodes like Far Beyond the Stars, Cause and Effect, Year of Hell, Drumhead, Measure of a Man, etc.

I'm going to omit my commentary for now, but what do you guys think? Do some of these fit more in the category of "popular" or "got a lot of exposure" than "essential"?

Almost two years ago I shilled for Matthias Wandel's woodworking channel.
(and almost five years ago I posted his domino row building machine without mentioning his name)

Well, he recently hit a million subscribers, so I'm going to link to a few more of his videos to celebrate.

A marble binary adding machine.

A pen shaking machine.

The pantorouter, his pride and joy. He invented the thing, and there's a guy in Japan who sells a metal version (sending Matthias a commission, of course).

Homemade apple grinder. Just in case you have an apple orchard and need to be able to mechanize apple grinding. I know that all of you fall into that category :D.

Giant wooden dice.

Baby-proofing a giant flower pot.

The baby-rocking machine.

Building a better mouse trap.

I've already posted 331Erock, but that was his covers of TV and movie theme songs.

Now behold Mozart Meets Metal!

Someone compiled the different versions of the Sailor Moon title song. Granted, the ones from the actual show are the same song over different video clips, but I didn't know that the video game had a version with primitive CG models of the Scouts dancing while the song plays. I've linked to that part, it reminds me of the Haruhi dance.

And just in case you'd forgotten the Haruhi dance, I'm also going to link to the animated and live-action versions of the Lucky Star dance. Bwa-ha-ha!

Roger Moore died today.

Ouch.

I'll admit that in the ranking of Bond actors he's below Connery and Brosnan (whatever Craig's positive points, he's playing some guy called James Bond without actually being James Bond), but I still liked him. I haven't seen The Saint yet, but my parents liked him in that role as well.

Tribute music video.

Alanis Morissette wrote new lyrics for "Ironic" to better reflect our current world.

Official music video for the original.

Ed Byrne's standup routine making fun of the non-irony.

Once again it's Towel Day!

I'll try to find some different links from last year...

Someone added some drums for a bit of a funky remix of the theme song...

Someone makes a jacket out of two beach towels so their friend will always have her towel with her!

Making Babel Fish candy!

A different reading of the Guide entry on towels, including background skits!

Banjo cover of the theme. Did you know that the main reason Douglas Adams chose Journey of the Sorcerer in the first place is that the banjo portions of the original version seemed to have a hitchhiking feel?

Bootleg Zones covers R2-D2 toys that are dressed like Batman and Superman.

Apparently I haven't covered Phelous or Bootleg Zones yet. Weird. This time I had to link to him. Look, pop culture mashups are nothing new, but when you give R2-D2 a cape it goes into complete insanity.

More bonkers pop culture mashup bootlegs from Phelous:

The Turly Gang (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Meets He-Man)
iPhone Iron Man
Super Thomas (Thomas the Tank Engine Meets Combiner Mecha)

Perhaps some of you will remember when there was a site about ten years ago called Smash Our Stuff (originally Smash My iPod), who would buy a brand new Apple device on release day and then destroy it in front of the line of people who are still waiting to buy one. They did this for a few different models of iPod and the original iPhone. The site doesn't exist anymore, but last Wednesday a different group took it to the next level.

They attached a Nintendo Switch to a drone, flew it up to a thousand feet, and then dropped it. And the thing (at least the main console and one of the Joycons) worked afterward!

There is an online meme called Nintendium that comes to mind. Remember that Gameboy that went through the Gulf War and still works?

It had to happen...

The recent fidget spinner craze has inspired someone to make one out of gallium...

The shame is that he had to melt down his gallium LEGO minifigs to do it...

If you didn't know already, gallium is a metal that has a melting point of 86 degF/30 degC. Your body heat can melt it if you hold it long enough. And unlike that other "liquid at room temperature" metal, mercury, it's nontoxic. I first heard about it from an Isaac Asimov science article twenty years ago.

PS: Your totally useless, random gallium fact of the day is...
While the official source of the name "gallium" is "Gaul", the old Celtic name for what is now France and some surrounding areas (the discoverer Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran is French), some believe that it also refers to Lecoq himself (Le coq=>French for "the rooster"=>gallus is Latin for "rooster").

By choosing the order in which Tetris pieces emerge, and then placing and clearing out the bits in a certain order, you can "build" sprites of video game characters.

Cool, huh?

This one just enrages me...

Consumerist asks if it's possible for someone to get sued for texting to a driver who gets into an accident because he was looking at the text.

Um, no, it's not. Or at least it shouldn't be. Even if X knows that Y is driving during the time he sends a text, nothing is obligating Y to read the text at that instant.

This comment chain from a video clip from "In The Pale Moonlight" where Sisko and Garak discuss obtaining an official Cardassian data rod made me laugh. You know how much I like in-jokes:

Bobaklives: He should've counter-offered with self-sealing stem bolts, those are always a hot item in the sector.
Paul Engler: Maybe they could find out if he's interested in an authentic Willie Mays baseball card.
landfair123: Maybe a picture of the captain's desk.
Vincent Adultman: I heard the NoJay Consortium cornered the market on those bolts. Perhaps reverse-ratcheting routers?

Adam West died today.

Ouch. I mean, seriously...ouch.

Yes, 88 is nothing to sneeze at, and we're lucky we had him as long as we did, but it still hurts.

It's clip time. Yes, most of these I've already posted over the years, but I don't care.

Bruce Wayne talks to Batman.

The Batusi.

Batclimb compilation.

Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!

Batman, a Batcopter, a shark, and some Batspray.

Adam West and William Shatner costarring in a movie.

Someone built a replica of Mjolnir that only he can lift, because the electromagnet inside won't release unless his thumbprint is on the scanner.

It's funny watching other people try to lift it.

And just for fun, the original "Avengers try to lift Mjolnir" clip. You can never see Thor's face fall when Cap budges it too many times.

To celebrate the life of Adam West 331Erock has done a metal cover of the 1966 Batman theme.

I'm in the middle of another SF Debris marathon, and that led to me to a compilation of funny clips from Stargate SG-1's "Window of Opportunity". Definitely one of my favorite episodes.