Der Nerdery

No matter how awesome a show is, there’s always a character or two that bring out a collective groan whenever they (dis)grace the screen. Whether it’s saccharine kiddies or one-note Mary Sues, here are the ten characters of Star Trek viewers love to hate.

10) Neelix from Voyager.

Just so we’re clear, Neelix is the head chef on a star ship equipped with food replicators, and his creations are gag-worthy. He is nauseatingly cheerful and a buffoon. When he does manage to be serious, his smarmy recollections of family reek of insincerity. Half of what comes out of his mouth revolves around putrid leola root, the Great Forest, or jealous rage over Kes. The rest consists of shop-worn diatribes about grief, love, and perseverance.

9) T’Pol from Enterprise.

Look at Spock, Tuvok, Sarek, and Vorik. Tall. Angular. Lean. Giving off the impression of that impressive Vulcan strength. And then look at tiny little Jolene Blalock. No matter how high her heels or how exact her posture, nothing changes the fact that she looks incapable of delivering the Vulcan nerve pinch with any authority. Add in T’Pol’s incessant arguing for the first two seasons and her addiction to Trellium-D (Star Trek’s code word for crack) and you have one highly improbable and unbelievable ‘Vulcan’.

8.) Reg ‘Broccoli’ Barclay on Next Generation and Voyager.

Nervous, stammering, fearful, and reclusive. We’re supposed to believe this guy didn’t wash out at the Academy? While it is true that one, or perhaps even two, of these qualities would be tolerated in a promising student, but all four of them? I don’t buy it. Reg is a bungler who frequently embarrasses himself. While Dwight Schultz does the best he can with the role, it’s exhausting to watch him simper and cower.

 

7) Nurse Chapel from the original series.

Christine Chapel is a beautiful, educated woman who could have just about any single man on the Enterprise. So she sets her sights on… Spock? Yes. She longs for some Vulcan love, despite the fact they intentionally repress such emotions. Chapel even goes so far as to drug him with love potion crystals. Stalker or pathetic? You be the judge. Either way, ick.

6) Captain Archer on Enterprise.

Two words: Quantum Leap. If that isn’t bad enough, Scott Bacula also portrayed the gay neighbor of Lester Burnham in American Beauty. Anyone over the age of 25 is already going to have a hard time with the choice of actor. Add in characterization that makes the captain of the ship either a total tool or a moron, and you’re left with the worst leader to ever command any incarnation of the Enterprise.

5) Doctor Pulaski from Next Generation.

What you get when you put Bones in drag? Doctor Pulaski, the character designed to fill the shoes of Doctor Crusher due to the egress of Gate McFadden. Argumentative and dry as the Sahara, there wasn’t much the actress, Diana Muldaur, could do with the role. Fans were delighted when McFadden returned after suffering through an entire season of Pulaski.

 

4) Benjamin Sisko from DS9.

In a nutshell, Sisko is the Bajoran version of Jesus, but with a baseball fetish. While this may sound hilarious, it is the entertainment equivalent of watching paint dry. The dream sequences and ‘visions’ go on and on, boring the viewer. Faith is a touchy subject. Sci-fi should never be religion-fi, and the line is crossed far too often with Sisko.

3) Chakotay from Voyager.

Robert Beltran hated this character so much, he tried unsuccessfully to have himself written out on at least one occasion. The character is a mix-and-match of different American Indian cultures, and is embarrassed repeatedly by his ex-lover Seska. Once the Maquis settle down into life on Voyager, Chakotay is reduced to being Janeway’s yes-man. Beltran broods very well, and you can tell he despises the role. It just doesn’t work for him.

2) Pavel Chekov from the original series.

With his inaccurate Russian accent, Chekov was added to the series primarily because he resembled then-heartthrob Davy Jones of The Monkees. Unfortunately, the writers chose to leave Walter Koenig omnipresent but largely useless on the bridge every episode.

1) Wesley Crusher on Next Generation.

Poor Wil Wheaton. What did he ever do to deserve this? Wesley Crusher, boy genius, is socially backwards with his peers but is ingratiating and charming to all the adults- even the ones who profess to hate children. Wesley is just so ‘spesh-ul’, no one but the viewers can resist him! Fans found him nauseating and there is even a Facebook group entitled “Wesley Crusher Must Die!”.

 

 

Matthew Warren is a sci-fi fan, wanna-be astronomer and a programmer by day. While not working on Gump Tees and Things Nerds Like he spends time with his two beautiful daughters.

this is a video of me the C@ndy M@n doing a review on NONG SHIM banana flavored snacks. in the video i talk about texture, taste, bang for your buck, and i give it an over all rating of 9.

This is a video of  me reviewing and rating the NONG SHIM octopus flavored chips I got from an asian market in Denver Colorado.

My last post considered how the developments in technology have created a new sustainable model for the economic viability of the developers in the gaming industry. But now I tend to go a bit more tree hugging hippy on you as we now consider the environmental sustainability in gaming.

In quoting my hero, Al Gore*, this Inconvenient Truth of environmental sustainability and climate change is one that has been largely ignored by the gaming industry. The amount of power required to play our favourite consoles is staggering but pales in comparison the carbon footprint of producing and distributing physical media. According to Breed Media, an environmental disc production company, the standard DVD disc creates 13.76kg of C02 per disc.

This is quite alarming when you consider COD Black Ops sold 7 million copies in the first 24 hours. This equates to somewhere around 96 million kilograms of C02 just from the first shipment of a game. Let alone the sheer amount of games that are currently in circulation, that will one day just be thrown away, I personally am not aware of one single person who has recycled a game, console or even a broken case.

All this equates to some amount energy that would seem to be too much, especially as the new technologies allow for far lower energy consumption. You may be thinking, how does downloading digitally save energy when one has to connect to the massive server farms that generally hold all the data for you to download? This is a question I don’t know the answer to. But that’s the beauty of the natural progression of technology, as time goes by, the servers, TV’s and consoles will decrease the amount of energy they need to run and hopefully the energy supply will become much greener.

This is mostly wishful thinking, but the switch to digital distribution can only be a positive move as far as the environment is concerned, and if the server farms of OnLive are anything like the press releases say, I think they could be unintentionally hitting a niche demand square on the head without intending to.

My next article will make an attempt at explaining how companies like this should go about changing the perceptions to accept digital distribution as a viable replacement for the physical media that we have been so used to and have loved for decades now.

*not actually my hero

Andy is a keen gamer and fan of all things nerdy. He is currently working for a company that makes amazing Silver Jewellery or follow him on his Twitter

The enormous success of the Nintendo Wii made it clear that consumers are ready to get up off the couch and enjoy a more active approach to video games. Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony have long been the kings of the gaming market so it comes as no surprise that Sony and Microsoft weren’t far behind Nintendo with their own motion controlled systems. While it is debatable whether Sony’s PlayStation Move will find its way to the top of the market, it is certainly going to be a contender.

Playstation Move Pricing

Cost of the PlayStation Move will vary depending on what you already have. If you’re starting from scratch, then the most logical option will cost you $399, and that includes a 320GB PS3 Starter Bundle (more on this in a second) and a motion controller officially called the DualShock 3 pad. The Starter Bundle includes the motion controller, required PlayStation Eye camera, and the Sports Champions game. The Starter Bundle goes for just under $100 and is probably the smartest choice if you already have a PS3. All of these items can be purchased separately but bundles will save you money. Sony has also released an alternative control listed at $30 but it is not interchangeable with the motion controller and only a small selection of games enables the use of both simultaneously.

Playstation Move Hardware

Motion controlled gaming requires the PlayStation Eye camera, the PlayStation 3 itself, and the handheld controllers mentioned above. The Eye and PS3 have been on the market for some time now. The controllers are very comfortable and, other than the  45-degree counter-clockwise twist of the command buttons, simple to use (even that feature won’t give you too much of a problem). Each controller is wireless and has the four symbol buttons that will be familiar to anyone who has ever used PlayStation products. A t button is on the underside of the controller and the butt houses two ports: one for charging/syncing and an extension connector. Motion tracking is on par with the competition and initial calibration isn’t too much of a hassle.

Playstation Move Games

While Move’s pricing or hardware doesn’t disappoint, it doesn’t blow the competition out of the water either. Because of this, the success of Move will depend largely on games made available and their playability. Its initial lineup seems to be a positive sign. Move’s flagship title, Sports Champions, is a collection of six sports: Disc Golf, Gladiator Duel, Beach Volleyball, Archery, Table Tennis, and Bocce. Sports Champions can be compared favorably to Nintendo’s Wii Sports and Microsoft’s Kinect Sports. The gameplay seems to improve on the Wii, particularly with table tennis. Other  titles include SOCOM 4, Tiger Woods 2011, R.U.S.E., and Heavy Rain. If the quality of gameplay and apparent commitment to market a wide variety of titles remain consistent, Move will remain a major force in the motion controlled video game industry.

About the author: Diane Johnson writes about a number of her interests including fourwheeling, shopping, online colleges, and traveling.

We all love gaming, so we all want this favoured past time of ours to continue into the future. It can only continue by the ongoing investment of publishers who hope to recoup this initial outlay at the time of release. Sales of new games would traditionally be the only return the publishers make and with more and more retailers giving an increased shelf space to pre-owned titles it has required the industry to be clever and consider new ways of thinking.

In many ways, the video games industry has tried to emulate the other forms of entertainment in the way it hopes to make a return on the investment. This business model has its faults and as the games industry has developed to more than just the whiny younger brother of the two more established mediums, striving for attention, the whole system needs to be re-evaluated.

It’s well documented that as new generations of consoles come out, the cost of developing games for these consoles is increased, this in turn puts more pressure onto the developers and designers as the publishers have to put much more than their neck on the line. We have started to see a new take on continual returns with DLC, micro-transactions and the less than ideal “project ten dollar” by EA. But it all highlights the direction the industry needs to head in order to escape the heavily saturated physical media market.

Being able to create on-going revenues, the developers can once again start to take the reigns by being able to reinvest into future projects and the ongoing funding from the previous titles will therefore help to shift the power back to developers and once again allow them to spend the money developing games how they want to develop them.

The good thing is, not much is going to change. The development of games isn’t going to nosedive on quality as a sub-par game will still receive sub-par reviews, the impetus still remains firmly with the consumer.

The new forms of digital distribution with Gaikai and On-live will sure test the limits of the consumer and will be a good starting point into what new models can be adapted, and most importantly, will be accepted. If these new consoles start to see a great success with the model of digital distribution, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the consoles streamlining their attempts to create a more digital market.

There are many underlying factors when it comes to implementing developments in the console industry with more politics, hissy fits and backstabbing than you may realise. The great thing about this industry is the power of the consumer, great games succeed, as people start to realise the benefits of digital distribution and companies don’t just use it as a money grabbing technique (*cough* EA *cough*) we will start to see a re-balance of power and a fruitful future for developers.

Andy is a keen gamer and fan of all things nerdy. He is currently working for a company that deals in Level Measurement and Pressure Transmitters or follow him on his Twitter