Top Ten Nerdy Moments Part 2

For my final top five, I've thought long and hard. And on occaision had to have a little cry! Not really, it's only stuff that's embarassing to my future children. Bless them. Still, it's not as if there's a big list of my nerdy activities preserved for all time on the internet... oops!

Anyway, on with the list!

5) Making a Star Wars fan film. Sadly, never finished, but definitely involved in the making. Started many years ago, we had costumes and lightsabers and special effects courtesy of our director. See here for the website!

4)Been given a Sonic Screwdriver as a present and then used it in day to day tasks. When I started my current job, my girlfriend presented me with a toy Sonic Screwdriver as a good luck gift. I have since used it remarkably often for light and often as a pen, thanks to the ink nib end. It’s gotta be quite nerdy to be at horse racing and start filling in your betting slips with a sonic screwdriver quite casually.

3) My awesome mug. Everyone (by which I mean every nerd) decorates his workspace with a few awesome bits. I have a Millennium Falcon model and a Captain Picard figure upon my desk at work. But for many, many years, I have had a mug for my coffee. It’s a Star Trek mug. It has the next gen title logo and the Klingon symbol upon it. And it’s a ‘tumble-not’ mug. I believe that’s what they were called. I originally bought this when I was about 17-18 and it’s been with me ever since. I’ve taken it from job to job now, and it’s amused many co-workers. It’s lost the little pad from the bottom and there’s a chip out of it, but dammit I used this mug in sixth form! It’s an unusual shape as well, hence the ‘tumble-not’ sobriquet, as it widens outwards to the base from about halfway down. You can see these mugs on Deep Space Nine, when people have a coffee at the replimat. As far as I know, you can’t get these things anymore, at least not easily. So I rate this as worthy of my nerd top ten by virtue of its rarity, unusual shape that corresponds with in show props and the inordinate amount of pride I have in using this mug for more years than is hygienically advisable!

2)Appearing on TV for being involved in making a Star Wars fan film. Yep, an actual TV show, on Channel 5! They came out, interviewed the 3 if us involved. So I appeared on national TV, dressed as a Jedi, wielding a lightsaber. An interesting subplot to that tale, I’d just started dating a young lady about the airdate of that programme. In fact our first date was to be 2 days after it’s transmission. Except that they’d given us the wrong date. After I’d got everyone I knew and this lovely lady I wanted to date to watch. So that was not massively impressive. Fortunately it was shown the following week and the lady in question was clearly so impressed she’s marrying me next year. So if you’re ever unsure how to woo a girl, try getting on Channel 5 for making a sci-fi fan film! I’ve had 100% success rate with it!

1) Proposed on the entrance to the Torchwood Three Hub. Yep, in Cardiff, by the tower at the entrance to the Millennium Centre. Where the lift is. Where the TARDIS landed in Boom Town and Utopia. That was the spot where I asked my girlfriend to marry me. And she said yes! Which is quite unlikely, as when you read this list you’ll see it’s a frakkin miracle I’ve ever even kissed a girl!!

So, that's what I've done with my first 30 years. What can I do for the next 30? Well, I recieved an early birthday present from work this morning, a PC keyboard, with Klingon characters on the keys!! That's a good start...

Top Ten Nerd Moments in Life. Part 1

With my impending 30^th (5 more days and I’ll finally shut up about it!!!) I’ve found myself in a reflective mood. And as I look back over my 3 decades upon this earth, I find, un-surprisingly, I’ve racked up a few moments of serious nerdiness. I have nerded it up big time! So for this blog, I thought it might be fun to make a little top ten of my nerdiest moments ever. A few of these I did with friends, you’ll see the names Nathan, Nick and Will crop up more than once. Both of those guys would have some pretty awesome top tens of their own!

So for the top ten, I had to think pretty hard. I can list off a lot of nerdy things I do, but I needed ones that would be unusual. To nerds anyway, almost everything I do is unusual to a lot of people. So playing Dungeons and Dragons is nerdy maybe, but will not make the list by virtue of not being unusually nerdy enough. Being in Britain, people are a bit more reserved, so if many other people do do any of these things, they probably wouldn’t admit it. So I’m generally basing these on whether they’re out of the ordinary for people I know of. I wouldn’t claim them to be unique, just unusual. But each thing is certainly a treasured memory in my life as a nerd.

Here's the first half of the top ten.

I said it might be fun! No promises. In fact, any fun experienced is purely coincidental!

10) Meeting Christopher Lee! Not just meeting him, but queuing up a fire escape stairway with some really irritating girls to meet him. For hours! But this is a guy who was a movie legend before he played Count Dooku and Sauruman! And he has just as scary a voice in real life! Got a signed video copy of Attack of the Clones from it!

And as a side note, the irritating girls were stood behind me and Nick and Will. I’m not calling Nick and Will irritating girls!

9) Making stop motion animation films with Star Trek action figures. Yep, this would have been me about fourteen or fifteen, using the animation feature on the family camcorder. Initially starting with the kitchen worktop and a background from a weetabix box, (back when they did their Next Generation cards promotion) to culminating in my home made shuttlebay set and me and Nathan almost burning down the garage using fire to simulate phaser hits. And if my parents ever read this, that will clear up any remaining curiosity about that very odd Saturday afternoon. I hope my parents don’t read this, I think they’re better off thinking I’m a nerd without knowing the extent.

8) Going to see films in costume. Yeah, due to the Star Wars fan film (see later in the list) I’m involved with, there were three of us with Jedi robes. So we went to see Attack of the Clones dressed as Jedi. Got in the local paper and the Odeon were so impressed by us they gave us free T-Shirts and beer! We did the same for Revenge of the Sith, but to less fanfare and no free stuff. But go further back to the release of Star Trek First Contact, and the local cinema at the time were treated to me arriving in my Starfleet uniform! Early DS9/Voyager style in services gold. I wasn’t the only one doing so, there were three others in uniform too, and we all got in the local paper again! Yep, the local paper loves it’s nerds! Or loves going ‘hey, look at the nerds!!’.

Marvellous addendum to the Star Wars tale, a less nerdy friend was joining us for Revenge of the Sith. At work, he’d mentioned to his colleagues he was off to see it with some guys who were pretty into it. One of his colleagues held up the local paper which was re-running the picture of me, Nick and Will from Attack of the Clones, and said, ‘they’re probably not as into it as these freaks!’. To which my poor friend had to admit that those freaks were us!

7) Recorded audio clips of episodes of the Next Generation to try to create my own answer machine message with Captain Picard. Yep, hours spent with videos of Next Gen and a dictaphone to try and assemble a message from bits of dialogue, that I then played into the answer machine to use as an outgoing message. Oddly my parents didn’t want incoming calls to be greeted by Captain Picard’s voice advising them to contact Commander Riker instead. I know, but it’s really hard to find appropriate dialogue to use!

6)Learning Klingon. Yep, I got the Klingon dictionary, the Klingon language CD’s and even a copy of Hamlet in Klingon. I know there’s a lot of guys who try their hand at learning Klingon, but it’s still a really nerdy thing to do. It’s probably even nerdier if you succeed, but sadly linguistics is not a strong area for me. I can remember how to say, ‘yes’, ‘what do you want?’ ‘stop!’ and ‘where is the bathroom?’ but that’s about as much as I can remember. Though even when I was working on it, I couldn’t remember much more, though I could count to ten.

There we have it, the first 5 of my top ten. Yeah, I look pretty cool now! Well obviously I don't. Some things that didn't make the top ten though...

Nightmares about the Borg and/or Daleks. Pretty nerdy to dream about these things for sure, but I rejected them from the list on the basis that they're involuntary. I couldn't choose whether or not to dream about these things. Had my parents dressed me up in Star Trek uniform onesies when I was a baby, I wouldn't count that as it wasn't my choice.

Creating a Star Trek Desktop theme for my Dad's laptop. It very nearly made it in. You can find Trek-based desktop themes all over the place these day, but this one was all drawn and made from scratch with no internet access! Hell, it was in the early nineties, the internet was not widespread. In fact I only got net access in 1997 I think.

I shall post the top 5 in the next couple of day. Yep, they get worse...

Nothing of note

That is one of the worst titles I've ever used. That's not drawing people in! What school of Marketing is that from? Maybe if it was some sort of ironic in-joke that regular readers would be familiar with, then it'd be ok, but, and I haven't checked this mind, I'm assuming I'm not exactly writing for an audience of thousands here!

However, it is kinda accurate. Nothing particularly of note has occured that's compelled me to write in depth about it of late. But that's not necessarily anything new, a quick examination of the dates of my posts shows their sporadic nature. I can go weeks without feeling compelled to write. This is something I'm trying to focus on, I'd like to make sure I write something on a more frequent basis, just to make sure I'm writing. It's too easy to let these things slide, it's happened to me with drawing. While I'm not really doing this to accumulate legions of readers, (though I do appreciate anyone who does stop by to see my ramblings, and hope it's at least of some moderate entertainment) I would like to get a regular habit of actually writing something.

So what nerdy things of interest have occured? Well, last week I noticed this news piece
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8302286.stm
I firstly thought it was brilliant that Microsoft announced they were readying a security update to cover vulnerable areas, then mentioned the vulnerable areas! A day before the update! Hey you have 1 day to go exploit these areas! Just seemed pretty irresponsible to me.

So said update goes out on Tuesday. Wednesday, I receive a call from my future in-laws. Their e-mail is playing up. I go round and find that when they run a send/receive, the mail servers cannot be found. I check everything I can think of, we discover that oddly the e-mail is retrieved perfectly from another laptop running XP and from an iPhone. Neither of which had at that point recieved any security update, though it's assumed the main Vista computer had. The problem had not started until late tuesday.

Finally, I hit upon the idea of downloading Thunderbird and seeing if that would recognise the servers. It did. So it was purely a Windows Mail program issue. I cured the problem by updating to the latest version of Windows Mail. While I have no technical proof, it does seem logical that the security update broke Windows Mail! It seems to be a one off incident, I've seen nothing else about it, and another Vista machine with the same version of Windows Mail has no issues with the same mail servers. Still weird though.

Then over the weekend, I heard my Father express his surprise at how impressed he was when he tried Open Office. Brilliant! More people should be trying Open Office and realising how free software can still be great software. Soon they'll all be running Linux, heh heh heh.

I don't know why I added a dirty laugh to that, unless I'm planning to customise my ubuntu version to pornbuntu or something. Which I'm not. However I did pick up a Linux magazine this week too. This is a rare event as they're really damn expensive! Which I thought to be somewhat ironic as it focussed on largely free software. However, it finally hit me, they probably can't sell much advertising space! Why advertise in a magazine largely aimed at people shunning big corporations?

Finally (yes, finally, for a blog where I start by saying I have nothing to write about, I've blithered on for a while now. It's like urinating in a crowded pub toilet. It's really difficult to get started, but once you do, you just go on and on. Probably because you've involuntarily held in the last 8 beers. That's probably just me, and I've probably revealed too much...) my lovely fiancee and I have begun watching The Big Bang Theory. It's a show I've been aware of but only just recently properly watched any episodes. That and Wil Wheaton's recent discovery of it, which quickly led to a guest spot (that probably won't happen to me though) got me keen to see the whole thing. Season 1 arrived yesterday and I've watched one episode, in our breakfast comedy time before work. It's equal parts hilarious and scary as it holds up a mirror to my own character. Like when someone expresses excitment to watch Battlestar Galactica Season 2 again, 'with the commentaries!'.

Yep, it's a miracle I've even kissed a girl, let alone got one to marry me!!

Unforseen problems

I've recently toured the county telling managers of Early Years establishments that I shall be providing them with Broadband dongles so they will be able to get on line. These aren't compulsory, but a lot of these guys cannot access normal broadband facilities so we're rolling out mobile broadband to make sure everyones at least got something. So I have several sessions planned to hand out these dongles and get everyone set up. Yesterday was my first one.

So it turns out that when you have several broadband dongles all trying to access the network at the same time all close to each other, they basically steal each others signal. We could only get 3 or 4 on at a time.

The words 'absolute disaster' were ringing through my head here. I had a whole session planned out where we'd set all the dongles up, show them how to set up free e-mail addresses and walk them through online data submission. And only 3 of them can get enough signal. And that keeps dropping out.

I'd previously toured the training venues with a dongle to ensure signal in those areas. So it's not a lack of signal there, it's just the fact you don't seem to be able to get several on at once. And to be honest, how often will you have 10 or more people in one room all logging onto the same mobile network?

It was a disheartening start to this phase of the project, which has gone so well before. I should have predicted this problem really. It seems so very obvious after it happens, but it never occured to me. I felt particularly bad when I saw two nursery managers at the back of the room waving their dongles in mid air in a vain attempt to re-capture their signal.

So it's back to the drawing board, as I have to re-write the training session to reflect the fact that I cannot use the dongles, effectively turning it from a practical session to a theory. Which is never as entertaining. I try my best, but all my broadband/internet/windows jokes seem to be falling flat.

I feel that maybe my reputation at work as the IT guy has been built up too much when something goes wrong like this. Especially something that seems so obvious that I should have spotted it. But the important thing is to look objectively at the experience and see what I can learn from it. And I have learnt that mobile broadband, while a wonderful thing is not yet enjoying strong enough network coverage to be that reliable, and that Skegness is a frakking difficult place to find your way around. I got lost and barely made it to the session on time.

Is his girlfriend Megatron?

It was a work colleagues birthday last monday. Much merriment ensues, as he's 30 exactly 4 weeks before I am, (makes me feel young!) and the obligatory office whip round and present selection. I was tasked with finding some present choices. (Not in my job description, but he's a nerd, so they have the idea that I would have the best ideas!?) Now this colleagues something of a Transformers nut. Like, crazy obsessive about the robots in disguise. I like transformers as much as the next dude, who is a nerd and was a child of the 80's, which to be honest is a hell of a lot, but this guy makes me look reserved and normal. About Transformers anyway.

So I found an Optimus Prime alarm clock. It's in the shape of Prime's head, wakes you up with 3 phrases of his and project the autobot symbol onto the ceiling. Brilliant!! Sadly it's the new movie version, it's getting harder and harder to find proper Generation 1 stuff. But hey, he's not prejudiced, he likes all of it. So the alarm clock was duly purchased along with a movie Prime bubble bath. Awesomeamundo!

Naturally, like all right thinking humans, he took the actual day of his birthday off. I mean, it was a fracking Monday!!

So yesterday, upon his return, he got his presents. He plugged the alarm clock in at his desk to check it out, and it was as fabulous as the description suggests. So with some glee this morning, I asked him how his girlfriend liked being woken up by Prime?

Apparently she hadn't let him plug it in!!

Oddly, he also stated that he didn't have the right battery available to him to use. Which struck me as even odder than someone not wanting this alarm clock to wake them up. So he's fine to use the alarm clock by batteries, but plugging it into the mains is a no-no? I don't wish to delve too deeply into the domestic arrangements of others, but is this usual? That one partner will claim sole authority over the electric supply and what devices may make use of it? Sounds overly complex to me. I think she was probably relying on him being too lazy to go out and buy a battery.

If he's still not got it working tomorrow, I will go and buy him the appropriate battery! It's what nerds do!

As an aside, he'd also got the most amazing new socks! They're Star Trek socks! A pack has three pairs, red, gold and blue! With the TOS logo on them!! I am getting some!! My fiancée has insisted I don't wear the red pair if I'm doing anything even slightly dangerous! I love her even more for knowing to say it!

It was like meeting my hero! The other night, when I met one of my heroes!

Waaaay, way way back in my teenage years, (also known as 'the 90's', I was a big fan of the comedy duo Lee and Herring. I found Fist of Fun on BBC2, along with their radio show, then the follow up TV show This Morning with Richard Not Judy. And this was the funniest stuff I'd ever seen. Then and for a lot of it, it's still the best stuff. There's certain comedy that has made me laugh really really hard. Some Monty Python. The first episode I watched of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. Father Ted. Other stuff is funny, but those were the things that have really hit me, really made me laugh and will always have a spot in my heart.

Those and Lee and Herring. I can get a bit nerdy about it (well duh! Look at the blog name!) but I remember the Anthony Hopkins letters, with the masturbatory PS, the Girl who smelt of Spam, the curious orange, the Lord of the Dance Settee and so many more bits. This was my mid to late teens I think. So recently I was quite excited to discover that, through the magic of the internet, I was able to catch up with what Richard Herring has been up to! Hurrah! Turns out he's still a comedian, but for reasons that I cannot quite fathom, he's not got a TV show. Seriously, why not? He's been on the radio a bit, notably reviewing the weeks newspapers with Andrew Collins on 6 music for a while a few years back. But even that was taken away by the BBC, a organisation that I will normally defend vociferously, but in this instance I feel that they've dropped the ball.

Anyway, long story short, Herring and Andrew Collins continued to review the papers each week on a free podcast. http://www.comedy.org.uk/podcasts/collingsherrin/ They also both write blogs, Herrings goes out daily, at http://www.richardherring.com/warmingup/ and Collins is a frequent blogger at http://www.wherediditallgoright.com/BLOG/index.html. Marvellously, I've found a new source of comedy gold in the podcasts and the blogs. Then they came to Lincoln!! Yep, actually to my home town! To record a podcast! They very occaisionally do a live recording and the Lincoln comedy festival was privy to this wonder!! I booked tickets so hard the box office felt violated. So last friday was the eventful day. I took my sceptical fiancee along, promising her this was going to be so funny! She didn't look convinced. It began with Andrew Collins solo bit, where he taught us all 'Secret Dancing'. Which is brilliant. I have literally been doing it since, whenever I hear music. You see me and hear music, just watch me, there'll be hardly any sign of dancing!

Then Richard Herring appears for his stand up session. Though it was previously used material, (a lot of it is familier from reading through his blogs) it didn't matter. Like the best comedians, he can be telling pretty much any story and it'll be funny. That's not to say that his material isn't also brilliant! I won't go too much into detail, in case you get the chance to see him yourselves at another point when he's re-using material, but I certainly loved his very well observed points about the Pink Panther re-make.

Finally, the podcast. As funny as ever, but with more of an atomosphere than I normally get listening to it in the car on my way to/from work. And educational, I learnt things about my town. Like why lincolshire folk call themselves 'yellowbellies'. Not being entirely native, I've never bought into this oddity, but these guys, visiting for one night, had made more effort to research and understand the name than I ever did. There's actually a number of reasons, and most of them are stupid. There was also the great news he's coming back to Lincoln next year with his Hitler Moustache show!

After the brilliant podcast, I had the chance to meet the guys! I got a signed DVD and a picture below! Also a couple of weeks back, I'd e-mailed Richard Herring asking if he would like to stay at my house after the podcast. I also happened to be off to London the following day, so they could have a lift back there if they'd like. He sent me a very polit e-mail thanking me for the offer but they'd already arranged accomodation. He did add he wouldn't want to stay in the house of someone who enjoyed his sick podcast! I found it very exciting. He also responded really quickly, clearly I caught him on a dull day. I did tell him the offer was still open, he said it would probably be inappropriate. Not really sure why, I said surely it's more creepy and weird for a stranger to offer him a room. To share. With Andrew Collins. But I got another 'Pointing at a celebrity beard' picture!

Also, if you go to Andrew Collins blog, in the first audience picture he shows in his blog about the show in Lincoln, you can just make me and my fiancee out! I note that two busy showbiz types were both able to get their blog out regarding that night, long before I could! I ask you, who is the real sick man? Is it me, trying to coax male celebrities into my house, to share a bed, hoping it will turn homo-erotic? Or is it the comedians, who had time to blog on saturday?