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Lexomatic

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  1. Lexomatic
    Given the premise of the show, that's probably intentional - the U.S.S. Cerritos is a second-line ship performing follow-up tasks, not a glamorous explorer-type like the Galaxy class (or thrust into an explorer role, like the Intrepid-class U.S.S. Voyager). But there are also clues that this poster image is unrepresentative of the final product: It's missing some prominent features for the design-era (formation beacons, RCS clusters on the rim, the ship's dang registration number -- no reason to omit those from a cel-shaded CG model) and it's got others that look like mistakes (the flat ventral surface of the saucer, the four indented arcs in exactly the spots you'd expect outdented phaser strips). The pod with the navigational deflector dish is oddly placed, yes (it's a secondary hull, but I wouldn't call it an engineering hull -- the key impulse and warp components are presumably in the saucer), but access isn't insurmountable: long turboshafts along the warp nacelles, or transporter hard-links, or a maintenance shuttlepod. Given the rear-echelon role (of the entire class?), "convenient access during all circumstances, including at-warp and during combat" could've been a low priority in the design.
  2. Lexomatic
    Ooh. As a fan of classic (i.e., <1990) authors (Asimov, Clarke, Niven, etc.) color me interested. Asimov's traditionally difficult to adapt to moving pictures because his novels are talky and idea-based: when there's action, it happens elsewhere. Visualizing Foundation has some of the same challenges of Dune: What does a far-future interstellar human empire that's super-rich but not super-tech (as our computer- and genetic-driven era reckons things) look like? "I, Robot" (Will Smith) is a pretty good adaptation of a bunch of themes from Asimov's "Robot" stories. "Bicentennial Man" (Robin Williams) is okay, but I had no inclination to re-watch it because the title character's decision to adopt mortality is even more schmaltzy on-screen than on-page (hmm, come to think of it, that theme recurs at the end of Star Trek: Picard).
  3. Lexomatic
    Operated by Space Adventures, the "ZERO-G Experience(R)" of 15 parabolic maneuvers aboard G-Force One(tm), a modified B727-200, is $5,400 plus tax, as seen here; here's the city-by-city schedule on the east and west coasts. So among expensive vehicular adventures (cars, submarines, earthmovers, submarines, etc.) this is up at the top. (Whenever I entertain a fantasy of winning the lottery, there's the "few hundred dollars experience", the "several million in a space capsule" experience, and then it takes some effort to find a price in the middle.)
  4. Lexomatic
    "Sky Combat Ace" is an aviation-thrill operator in Las Vegas and nearby cities. One of the three models they fly is the aerobatic Extra 330LC, which is a prop plane capable of +/- 10 G ... although you're not obligated to push its envelope per their FAQ, "Will I get airsick?" (FWIW, that aircraft-specs page drives me batty. Parallel tables, but with different specs, one in metric and the other imperial; and their third model, the Citabria, isn't even listed.) (Since Vegas will soon be tentatively re-opening, but the news coverage has focused on hotels and restaurants, out of curiousity I spent some time checking the pandemic-hygiene policies for the various thrill-companies that have supercars, earth-movers, observation wheels, helicopters, parabolic 727s and hot-air balloons, and SCA came up.)
  5. Lexomatic
    My first exposure to Macross was via the McKinley novelizations of Robotech, and given the catastrophic effects described in prose, plus any reasonable footprint for a 50,000-person city with buildings and road traffic, I inferred that it was spread throughout the entire ship, bow to stern. DYRL has establishing shots that place the city in the left leg, and the 2007(?) toy follows suit -- but at only ~400 meters, that's not nearly large enough. When I finally got to TV show (on Amazon Prime), I paid special attention to episode 18 "Pineapple Salad", in which Miriya and Max have their indoor-outdoor fight while the SDF is in Attack mode, floating upright in the ocean; as depicted, the placement of the hatches is not easy to reconcile with the city in the leg. (Also, gravity control must be working overtime with the decks at 90° to Earth's gravity.) A 1200-meter ship is plenty to berth 50,000 people, but not if they insist on such amenity-inefficiencies as buildings, tree-lined roads, fenced barracks, and a concert amphitheater. I assume the "why" is somewhere between "the 1982 show was a rush job, so we weren't careful with dimensions" and the reason for the oversized interiors of Star Trek Online, i.e., the extra room is needed for the game engine's camera.
  6. Lexomatic
    If you're still wondering what Cristobal Rios's ship La Sirena looks like, it's been added to Star Trek Online. There's a forward 3/4 view at the top of the announcement post, plan and profile in the middle, and an aft 3/4 view at the end -- keep scrolling past the other 23 ships. Under game-style lighting conditions, three rows of windows are visible -- upper edge of the central hull, and along the flanks. (I'm still wondering what function is served by those pontoon/prongs, since they're not the warp nacelles, and are too narrow for cargo.)
  7. Lexomatic
    AFOLs, like any other fandom, can lack patience, perspective and empathy -- an attitude of "somebody might want this, but not me, therefore TLG is doing it wrong". It's been noted that the ongoing Minecraft theme started with several micros before adding minifig-scale sets. Judging by vocal complaints, it seems there exist fans who want nothing but minifigs -- not surprising, given the continuing success of Collectible Minifigures and, more generally, Funko Pops and the entire "character goods" market sector in Japan. Even more generally, I sense an attitude of "my favorite IP hasn't ascended to the pinnacle of public respect unless it gets a LEGO theme and a live-action movie", which explains all the Ideas submissions for video games and movies. I wonder if anyone's ever run a survey of how AFOLs prioritize their desires -- The design of sets? New part-shapes? New part-colors? Parts-packs? Minifigs?
  8. Lexomatic
    Given that orbiting monuments aren't a thing that exists, no reader in any language will immediately recognize the concept if it's named concisely, IMHO. If your priority is congruence with the original Japanese, I suggest appending a bracketed explanation, i.e., a gloss. Scout Ship 209,465 ... a commemorative satellite was placed in that sector of space [i.e., a monument in an appropriate Earth orbit to memorialize the Zentraedi crew] Of course, anybody who understands orbits and rotating celestial reference frames is going to quirk an eyebrow and wonder how that works. When zapped, the two scout ships were on some kind of trajectory from near Luna (not necessarily orbiting Luna) to near Earth. The point in the sky relative to South Ataria Island when the shot was fired would seem to be relevant. Even with OTEC, you can't permanently hang in an arbitrary spot above a planet; you'd either need to thrust continuously, and refuel regularly, or maybe antigravity would work? The "cheapest" solution would be a satellite in an inclined circular orbit that intersects that point in space (in Earth's coordinates), and when it does it does so, it broadcasts a radio ping. "The event happened HERE ... not at these other points in my orbit." The ping would also make it relevant to anybody in the vicinity at the time, because near-Earth space isn't like a harbor approach passage; most vessels will have no reason to be in visual range of the memorial. I wonder if there's a matching memorial at the site of the former South Ataria Island? Which may or may not still be covered with ocean.
  9. Lexomatic
    Look at it this way: A cyber-brain is a combination of original biological tissue, prosthetic hardware, and software. As I interpret the line, the government owns the cyber-brain by virtue of the labor, not because it's commodity hardware into which the "ghost" has been transplanted, and from which it could be evicted. It's analogous to a U.S. government ROTC scholarship, which must be repaid in years of military service. The phrasing is IMHO a bit awkward, but how cyber-technology challenges the traditional "brain/body/ghost" dichotomy is the major theme of the GITS franchise. "I own you, body and soul, mwa-ha-ha" is considered hyperbole until the soul is subject to technological manipulation.
  10. Lexomatic
    That's the in-setting justification for toyetic transforming jets. Now for the SDF-1 -- was any reason ever advanced for it being able to transform? The need is explained as "to fire the gun, there's a gap to be bridged" but there are unrelated elements to the transformation (shoulders, two halves of the bridge/head). If the ship didn't already have giant servomechanisms, then "relocate the reaction heat-pile" would seem to be an engineering task of the same magnitude. (The Robotech explanation of "Protoculture makes everything want to transform" is one of many checks the script writes that the inherited footage can't cash, given the lack of transformation evinced by three generations of Protoculture-using adversaries.) For that matter, is there any document(s) for capital ships comparable to the Master Files for fighter jets? (I'm guessing "no" because such a series would necessarily include the SDF-1, and apart from the increased structural complexity ("do we want to include a map of Macross City?"), it would have to explain the blatant impossibilities of scale depicted in SDFM. --The same way Space Battleship Yamato has a First Bridge the size of a tennis court on a ship that, by authorial fiat, is only 285 meters long. Or else bypass by discussing only the DYRL version.)
  11. Lexomatic
    LEGO Masters episode 1.6, 11 March 2020, "Need for Speed; Super Bridges". The remaining six teams play a quick "Pinewood Derby"-like mini-game to gain extra time for the main project, which is seven hours to construct a weight-bearing bridge between two standardized abutments. (Who among us remembers the balsa bridge event of "Science Olympiad"?) Judging criteria are: (1) a flat road surface even with the piers, (2) load-bearing capacity, tested to destruction, and (3) aesthetics. The immunity-granting Golden Brick is back in play. One team is very smug to reach nearly 500 pounds (which surpasses the producers' expectations and supply of kettlebell weights; they have to improvise by borrowing sand bags(?) from the camera crew), and then two teams attain an astonishing 1000 pounds. Technic sophistication is outmatched by a whole lot of System bricks. Several teams are clearly outside their expertise, with no intuition about the lack of shear strength in tall stacks of bricks. Jamie and Amy explain the "locking together" technique of vertical plates SNOT'd orthogonal to stacks of bricks. The test rig is equipped with a plexi sheet on one side, so the ABS collapse-explosion (and falling steel weights) is directed away from the contestants (and toward the hosts, who are standing at a safe separation). https://www.fox.com/lego-masters/ https://www.fox.com/watch/039922b2ce1fa7698aeb0c6aed2033db/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/legohaulic/
  12. Lexomatic
    Progress report on replicating M'Kyuun's Variable Glaug ... the 3D latticework of this thing is a work of mad genius, with some really clever use of clip-bar connections to secure subsections in one mode or another. But you thought people were unhappy with the structural strength of die-cast swing-arms in the official toys? Try building one from a dozen elements concatenated with click-hinges and ball-joints. (So, if Overtechnology revolutionized threaded connectors, what did it do in the toy industry? ) My next project, I think, will be to simplify the design -- same transformational topology, less of an emphasis on replicating the contours of Kawamori's design, hence fewer-part/more-solid subsections. No disrespect to M'Kyuun's original, but the proportion of single-stud connections isn't to my taste. That's one of the few elements I don't have on-hand, so I've already substituted a 1x1 Technic brick and towball-pin. And there are a couple of swing-arm elements I probably own, but they'd be mixed with my Bionicle/CCBS stash instead of neatly organized in the Technic drawers.
  13. Lexomatic
    Since the model is at least (counting...) 80 studs long, and 20 studs wide just for the fuselage, it's (estimating...) 32,000 cubic modules, with a mix of elements (more estimating...) at least 3,000 parts, most of them in fairly common shapes and colors, so ... it's a $300-plus chance. Theoretically less if you used non-LEGO elements (the sheen of the plastic looks rather Mega Bloks-ish), but I'm not aware of a BrickLink-type secondary marketplace for clone bricks. At least in the U.S., and the U.S. is one of TLG's biggest markets. But a Big West-licensed kit made by one of the other manufacturers and sold somewhere else? By way of precedent, there were Mega Bloks-branded Pokémon and Evangelion sets in 2007 (I saw them in a Toys "R" Us in Kobe in 2007).
  14. Lexomatic
    Under "what are the writers thinking?", TrekMovie quotes a lengthy statement by producer/showrunner Michael Chabon in which he explains the show's treatment of violence and aspirational-future. The comment thread immediately asks "where's the evidence that you successfully implemented any of these ambitions?" https://www.instagram.com/p/B8zgFwsA25r https://trekmovie.com/2020/02/24/star-trek-picard-showrunner-michael-chabon-responds-to-more-fan-questions-plus-frakes-interviewed-and-more/
  15. Lexomatic
    Bad news, I won't be attending Bricks Cascade this year. (I like to play tourist when I visit a city for a con, and Portland's not at its best in late February.) Good news, I've started building M'Kyuun's Variable Glaug MOC. I haven't used Stud.io in-depth previously, and I had to contrive how to interpret the not-divided-into-steps model, i.e., flay it layer-by-layer using the "hide" tool as I circulate between my PC and brick supply. Is there functionality to show the description of an element when you rollover it? That would be faster when elements are partially obscured and ambiguous (is it a bow or inverted bow or slope-with-notch?). EDIT: Yes, but it's not rollover; you have to click the element (which makes it incompatible with "click to hide" mode). The description appears at the bottom of the model pane.
  16. Lexomatic
    "LEGO Masters" (U.S. version) on FOX, episode 3, 19 February 2020 -- The challenge: tell a story by extending a non-LEGO seed object that has been cut in half (telescope, diving helmet, etc.). Build time: 12 hours. Special guest: None. Focus on technique: None. Bottom team: "Brothers Who Brick" (Travis & Corey of New Jersey). The two teams that had melt-downs in Ep 2 ("Sam & Jessica, Flynn & Richard) have regained their groove. Of the nine seed-objects, there was contention for only one, the cuckoo clock. "Brothers Who Brick" didn't realize their concept was too large to build in the allotted time (I presume that pace-intuition is stymied by the need to repeatedly move between supply wall and build-table). Some judging principles are becoming apparent: Finish your model. It must speak for itself; you can't do a sales pitch. Build a coherent shape that's apparent from a distance, rather than a miscellany of vignettes that must be microscopically scrutinized. If using a "seed part", don't conceal it under your own ideas. Make the model solid enough to move to the review area. I'm paying attention to clothing, and the interspersed "emotional reflection" segments are the same outfits in each ep, which are not the outfits worn during the ep, which implies they were filmed all at once post-events. See also: https://www.fox.com/lego-masters/credits/ https://www.brothers-brick.com/2020/02/25/leaving-lego-masters-an-interview-with-the-second-team-to-leave-feature/#more-198900 https://www.brothers-brick.com/2019/12/22/lego-masters-reality-show-announces-teams-including-some-familiar-faces-news/#more-194075
  17. Lexomatic
    Certainly, TOS TV-Starfleet was a uniformed service, heavily armed, with military-style discipline and justice -- but the Enterprise seemed to do a lot of exploration, diplomacy and planetary relief. (Which might be "let's give the characters something interesting to do" more than "we have a coherent vision of Starfleet's charter".) By "overtly" I refer to the more formal uniforms, and Dr. David Marcus's poor opinion of them. Lest we retread old ground: https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/2fxpg9/what_is_starfleet_military_paramilitary_or/ https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet#Military (The Genesis Project wasn't under the auspices of Starfleet, was it? That implies a UFP-parallel to the NSF, or at least a subcommittee of the Federation Council. They did have assistance from Starfleet's Corps of Engineers. Are there private firms that can hollow asteroids? Either (a) security reasons, or (b) writer Harve Bennett et al couldn't think of a name for such an entity.) This might be attributed to a change in directors, to perceived demands of feature films vs. TV, or some kind of UFP geopolitical shift in the decade-plus between the TV's "five-year mission" and TWOK.
  18. Lexomatic
    IIRC, the more overtly militaristic take on Starfleet was introduced in Wrath of Khan by director Nicholas Meyer. The original series wasn't clear on Starfleet's mission, or whether it had peer organizations within the Federation with complementary functions, and later productions haven't improved things -- so people (writers, audience) tend to fall back on contemporary analogs. Is the Enterprise like the U.S. Navy, or the U.S. Coast Guard, or the research voyages of Captain Cook or the HMS Beagle from the British Navy? Or some novel combination that lacks single-planet parallels? The UFP might be like the UN, but the UN doesn't charter research ships. (This is apart from the common mistake of conflating Starfleet, the Federation, and the Federation's central government. Pike's line from the 2009 movie, "the Federation is a humanitarian armada," is the worst of the lot.) Gene Roddenberry had dementia in his last years, and some directives delivered by his lawyer may have been initiated by his lawyer. That's a whole other sordid kettle of fish.
  19. Lexomatic
    Episode 5, "Stardust City Rag" (written by Kirsten Beyer, directed by Jonathan Frakes) I definitely found it more engaging than Ep 4. But let's get this out of the way: an opening scene of <spoilered because it's gross> UGH UGH UGH. Was this too much network interference ("we've got a TV-MA rating, we have to be edgy!") or too little oversight of a bad decision by Frakes? Who do I complain to at CBS? Icheb, you may recall, was one of four juvenile Borg rescued and re-socialized by Voyager, The other three were eventually fostered out to local species, but he became Seven's protégé, had aspirations to join Starfleet, and courageously donated his cortical node when hers failed. In this ep, Seven calls him "the closest thing to kin I will ever have" (fair 'nuff, since she didn't manage to de-assimilate her parents) and "son" -- but I had always interpreted their relationship as more younger-sibling. Seven ultimately kills the killer of Icheb (using the phaser setting "reduce to a bloody mist"), but arranges the final confrontation in a way "not to disillusion [Picard]". Mentor-Janeway would be so disappointed -- or would she? She's a more vindictive type than Picard, and Icheb was part of her crew/family. Re: Bruce Maddox and protégé Agnes Jurati, and the way she described their relationship when she first met Picard. "Romantic?" the audience immediately guessed. "A male-female relationship in drama doesn't have to be romantic," other people said. Turns out <sigh> yes, it's romantic. But at least milieu-appropriate cute (Jurati reviews a home video in which she's flummoxed by Maddox baking cookies from replicated ingredients). Jurati surreptitiously kills Maddox while alone in La Sirena's sickbay. She clearly doesn't want to, but she's absolutely terrified by unknown-something shown to her by unknown-somebody -- presumably she can't allow him to continue his work in Synths, because Ragnarok, or something. On other boards, people wondered if the flamboyant disguises had any social meaning ("has Federation fashion become more sober in the wake of several decades of war, and Stardust City is a counter-reaction?") and if so, is that meaning too subtle (given our limited knowledge of UFP civilians)? Nothing so nuanced. It's specifically an affectation by the disreputable go-betweens known as "interfacers" ("facers"), as concisely explained by Raffi. Separately, Raffi tracks down her estranged son and his pregnant Romulan wife Pel, who are at a fertility clinic. This is one of the few instances in onscreen-Trek to imply that interspecies procreation requires some assistance. (In VGR, Tom and B'Elanna also needed help.) It might be the same sort of edge-of-legal place that performed the genetic resequencing of young Julian Bashir.
  20. Lexomatic
    I've seen the first ep, out of curiosity I jumped to the fourth, and it just didn't hold my interest -- not past the banter between Jurati and Rios. "Turns out, space travel is really boring." (I finally subscribed to CBSAA via Prime, only to discover it's prohibited from playing on my Xfinity X1 set-top box. Apparently there's a new CBS-Comcast agreement in the works to resolve that, "later this year".) I'm bothered by the number of glowing blue engine apertures on La Sirena. That's a very Star Wars aesthetic, whereas on a Trek ship, you've got (a) the photon spill apertures for the warp nacelles, and (b) the impulse exhausts, which are usually two different colors and pointed in two different directions. I'm also bothered by the tiny size of the La Sirena-logo comm pin. A classic TNG combadge is big enough to plausibly contain a battery and transceiver suitable for ground-to-orbit, but something the size of a tie tack? This seems to be part of a trend with the wardrobes, starting with DSC's "make the rank insignia nigh-invisible braille-dots on the edge of the Starfleet chevron".
  21. Lexomatic
    I've been separately following discussion on TrekMovie and (more civilly and cogently) Tor.com under KRAD. (I've screened the first ep, free on YouTube, but I'm waiting to binge on CBSAA-via-Prime.) People have intuited what the show is trying to say, but I'm wondering if (a) the production staff doesn't have the chops to do a story of this kind, in this medium; and (b) there's hero-worship of Sir Patrick which prevented necessary criticism (see also: "you want to drive a truck? sure!" from Nemesis). Michael Chabon has "created by" and "executive producer" credits (there are 21 producers of various stripes). He's mostly a short fiction author (ISFDb) and his TV credits are sparse (IMDb) -- did anybody actually ask "do the talents of one translate to the other?" ST:DSC s1 similarly has a lot of junior writers. (Have any of us actually read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2001) or The Yiddish Policeman's Union (2007)?) Is the show trying to be an allegory for our times? Yes -- Trek has always done that. Is it doing so in a ham-handed way? Apparently. There's a recurring tension in SF, when worldbuilding collides with allegory -- you may have created circumstances in which the a simply-framed allegory doesn't ring true; instead, you have to adjust it in some way. (Like splicing together musical motifs without transposing to a compatible key.) A comment on "haves and have-nots" will be less convincing in a world that is otherwise presented as post-scarcity. A comment on a society fallen from its ideals has no resonance if we've never actually seen that society at its reputed best (and 90% of Trek has been about the microcosms of starship crews).
  22. Lexomatic
    "Shinji, deploy the Adjustable Spanner of Longinus!" "Sure thing, Misato -- as soon as I stop tripping over my own skirt-plates."
  23. Lexomatic
    "LEGO Masters" (U.S. version) on FOX, episode 2, 12 February 2019 -- The challenge: build a space-themed model that can shatter dramatically in slow-mo when dropped from a height, struck by a "space"ball bat, or detonated from within. (Insert Macross 7's Gavil cackling, "the beauty of fragmentation!") Special guest: Mayim Bialik (Blossom, The Big Bang Theory). Strangely, nobody (host nor contestant) used the term "piñata", nor did any contestant admit/gripe "this is the opposite of the usual design goal" -- but maybe the challenge is precisely that nobody has any practice in this direction, so the teams are on equal footing? Under "will we learn anything about technique?" (as you often do on cooking-competition shows, or Syfy's Face Off), the two judges (Amy and Jamie) introduced the term "SNOT", but there was no close-up of suitable elements. If you're worried about "manufactured reality-show drama", team guy-with-flower-in-mohawk had coordination problems ("I think you don't actually understand LEGO") and host Arnett had to do some couples-counseling, and a second team simply had a stress near-meltdown. My mother is getting suspicious that the teams were picked for "interesting personality" appeal rather than talent. (We don't know how many applicants there were, but "pool of AFOLs who have talent, are accustomed to building in teams, and who can sacrifice up to seven weeks of time" can't be too abundant.)
  24. Lexomatic
    On the flip side for Voyager, if you can enjoy it for its own merits rather than get hung up on "too much of the same, too soon" or "how are they resupplying on photorps and shuttles" or "Kazons are bargain-bin Klingons, har-har!", it's got a lot of solid, character-driven storytelling. Veteran Trek author Keith R.A. DeCandido has recently started a series re-watch on Tor.com. Naturally, it's a lot easier to skip the dreck in our modern streaming era than in ages past, when we necessarily consumed the series via linear-TV, VHS or DVD.
  25. Lexomatic
    Why does the warship Macross (TV version) have the onboard manufacturing capability to build Macross City, supply 50,000 civilians, and maintain/improve its fleet of mecha? Was that an intended capability, or did they spend a few weeks salvaging/relocating the factory district of space-frozen South Ataria Island before embarking on their interplanetary trip? (By a similar token, "rebuilt Macross City during the two week Hikaru/Minmei vacation" is more plausible if the city itself was largely prefab and could be popped apart, relocated, and re-assembled, rather than poured concrete and welded steel. Everything might be fiberglass-coated steel panels (like the "unit bath" found in every Japanese business hotel), but that quality of fit-and-finish wouldn't be apparent in '80s-resolution animation.) If I recall correctly, the Macross (movie version, before DYRL was re-contextualized as "an in-universe movie filmed with later-generation ships and VFs") is designed as an emigration ship, so it's already equipped with a more sophisticated urban center (with such amenities as gravity-inverted freeways). FWIW, Robotech (TV) doesn't address this either, but Robotech (novels) is explicit that the SDF-1 is Zor's lab ship, and it not only carries critical gear for protoculture-based engines, but also "the equivalent of an industrial city packed into a few compartments".
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