David Warner died on the 24th. He was 80. Between Gul Madred and Gorkon he has his place in Trek immortality assured. St. John Talbot is a distant third.



A toast to the undiscovered country.
"Don't let it end this way, Captain."
How many lights are there?
Madred is a pitiable man

First trailer for Shazam 2.


I don't like Captain Marvel (Shazam is the wizard and always will be) acting like a kid. Billy Batson is supposed to have the wisdom of Solomon, and Solomon wasn't a dork.



You didn't ask, but I also didn't like Captain Marvel in Young Justice. The Justice League version was better, the Superman/Shazam version was better.



And yes, I don't like the idea of a Shazam family this big. Cap Jr. and Mary Marvel are enough. At the very least the movies could explicitly say that Cap's powers are drastically reduced when someone else is using them at the same time.

Yu-gi-oh creator Kazuki Takahashi died a few weeks ago, but I only found out today. This saddens me, Yu-gi-oh has given me a lot of joy over the years.


The first episode
Dark Side of Dimensions remix of the theme song
First episode of The Abridged Series
Cheap Damage covers the board game
Yu-gi-oh Poker Night

Galidor Documentary


Yes, Galidor, the doomed LEGO product line that couldn't hope to compete with Power Rangers or Bionicle.


I was a member of the LEGO club at the time, so I saw many articles about it in the magazine. I even had a minicomic or two. I never bought any of the toys, as I have a longstanding hatred of construction toys that can only make one thing and nothing else. For those urges I had plastic models, including many Trek starships.

Element14 makes a wifi dongle for a parallel port dot matrix printer.


It makes me smile when people create new tech to keep using old tech.


I did use a parallel port-to-usb dongle for awhile to keep using old printers. I only bought a new printer when Windows 10 got too advanced to support it.

For complicated reasons I found myself on a barbershop quartet kick on YouTube. You really don't want to know...


First up is the Newfangled Four. They combine barbershop with comedy.
Spoonful of Sugar Parody
Hello My Baby if it was written in the style of each decade
Supercalifragilistic-etc. Parody
All Star. This one makes way too much sense as a barbershop song.
Gaston Parody




I shilled A Capella Trudbol last year, but only posted his version of I Want It That Way. Time for more!
I Got Rhythm
Jeepers Creepers (I still associate Hayley Mills the most with this song)
Side By Side (Hayley strikes again!)

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (Yes, someone turned Monty Python into barbershop quartet. What, someone had to!)

By The Light of the Silvery Moon (I associate this song the most with Doris Day thanks to the movie of the same name, today I discovered that there are certain songs that Bing Crosby just can't do properly, and this is one of them).
Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh Theme

You're A Grand Old Flag
There's Always Tomorrow from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (I still think this one is underappreciated, original version)
Istanbul Not Constantinople (bet you thought this one couldn't be barbershopped, didn't you?)

Goodnight My Someone (The Music Man is one my favorite musicals, but only the Preston original. Avoid the Broderick version at all costs!)

Nichelle Nichols died on Saturday. Ouch.


Uhura pwns Mr. Adventure
Uhura fixes the communications board. TOS knew how to elevate unimportant plot scenes by including character work. I refer you to SF Debris' review of "Force of Nature" showing how badly this can backfire. Heck, even "Shades of Grey" did the character work better than that!
Uhura is not offended by "negress"

A breakdown of how typewriters work, and how typewriter tech still dictates keyboard design today.


And the Amazing Thing That I Learned Today is that the carriage return bell isn't rung when you're out of room, but when you're almost out of room so you can plan ahead for split/hyphenated words going to the next line.


I had also never heard of typeballs and how you can use them to change the font you're using.


I also didn't know that at one point there were typewriters that stuck letter-shaped blots of ink onto the paper weakly enough that you could quickly use a piece of tape to pull said blots off and remove the letter.

A couple of Yu-gi-oh players try to imagine what Yami Marik and Yami Bakura's decks would look like in today's metagame and play a match.



I found it very entertaining, and I don't even follow the current metagame. I didn't know that there was that much Ra support, much less Dark Necrofear support.

MinutePhysics tackles Portal physics.


Usually I like his videos, but in this case he's completely wrong. He's somehow implying that portals affect the trajectory of objects moving towards them, but they don't.



Portal portals are transparent, you can see what's on the other side. Therefore we're not dealing with wormholes or other tunnels through space that connect A and B. Instead space is actually being pinched so that A and B are occupying the same point. No speed is being imparted, velocity vectors are just being redirected.



I think he's operating on a premise where it actually is a wormhole that has a certain suction force that expels the object. In other words, the object is being dissolved and reconstructed like a Stargate portal. But Stargate portals are not Portal portals!

July 27th was the 25th anniversary of Stargate SG-1. I'm waiting for the 30th anniversary to start the retrospective, but here's some Stargate links:


Reddit thread where fans celebrate their favorite lines
Gizmodo celebrates the anniversary
Gateworld gives a short history of the franchise
Star Trek and Farscape parodies from the 200th episode

AVGN's top five TV shows. TNG is #3.

Steve Shives does a tribute to Uhura.


Someday I really should go through TOS and try to come up with places where the Trinity could've given up screentime to Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov. I certainly intend to do something similar when I get to Voyager in 2025.

Ashens covers some Canadian food


Some of this stuff I wouldn't even consider Canada-specific.

For some reason I'm in a Chip 'n Dale mood today.


The original by The Jets. I first heard this one during a Magical World of Disney (okay, at the time was probably the Disney Sunday Movie) episode that was shilling the upcoming show.


The actual episode. I forgot that Carol Channing was on the show!



And the music video. Too...much...'80s!


I never knew about this alternate version of the theme, but I can see why they went with the Jets instead.



The cover from the recent show. I don't know how to feel about this one, there seems to be a lack of enthusiasm in the voice and it's a bit too slow. Hip hop should never feel slow.



Can someone explain to me why making a song stutter and adding a drum track is supposed to improve a song?



Jonathan Young strikes again. I didn't know he could play the keytar. I like how the sparkly synth balances the drum.


On a church organ. Now this is transforming a song to match the instrument while still keeping the heart.



A full orchestra almost makes the theme sound cinematic


Like I'd skip the Coo-Coo Cola theme in a post like this


Have I really not posted Of Mice and Mayhem yet? It's a very good webcomic continuation of the show that's able to go a bit darker while still keeping the heart of the show.

rewatching nathan for you (2013-2017). i forgot about the one song where they try to use the smoke detector as a musical instrument:

Orphaned Skies

The Desk of Death Battle tackles the question of whether "James Bond" is actually one guy or simply an alias that goes along with the 007 title.


To me everyone Pre-Craig is the same guy. Tracy married the Lazenby Bond, but it was clearly implied that Moore and Dalton's Bonds were married to the same woman. The references in regard to the Brosnan Bond were more oblique but still there.

EC Henry tackles the fundamental message of TOS


He presents some interesting ideas. I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with it (one could debate forever about the true meaning of the Roddenberry Gospel), but it's still thought-provoking.

The animation from the failed "Saban Moon" pitch has been found.



Yeah, um, that was...something.