osaraba | Entries tagged with fandom:star

Came across this little factoid:

Randy Pausch — Carnegie Mellon computer science professor, author of the “Last Lecture,” and devoted Star Trek fan — appeared in the 2009 movie Star Trek. He died on July 25, 2008, [at age 47] of pancreatic cancer.

(In case you were wondering, he's the crewman on the Kelvin in the very beginning who says, "Captain, we have visual.")

Came across his website here: http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/

And the video of his "Last Lecture", entitled "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams". It's an hour and 15 minutes of inspiration, truth and humor. I listened to it while working, occasionally clicking back onto the page to view the presentation visuals. It's really worth listening to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

SO. I really want to go see Star Trek again. There were several factors which prevented me from enjoying it completely the third time I went to see it. I was super tired; the theater was crowded and VERY warm; I'd just seen it for the second time the night before; I was sitting next to someone who doesn't talk AT ALL during movies. So yeah, I shamefully admit to falling asleep during a lot of it.

But. I'm ready again to see it. In fact, kind of craving it. What I really need is for someone to rec some good hot Star Trek reboot fic!

I also would like to see Terminator: Salvation, despite the fact that it could very well be horrible.

In other news, I finished watching the first season (13 episodes) of Numb3rs. It was entertaining enough. Much like The Mentalist, plots are pretty simplistic (though not as simplistic as The Mentalist plots). I mostly like the dynamic between the brothers, and the mathematics aspect of it. Though it's kind of like many computer/math stories where they use "cool" graphics to symbolize the technical process. Which means, there's a whole lot of substance missing.

It took a few days, but I downloaded all of season 2 of Numb3rs. And I'm bringing my laptop to Johncon, so I will have that for down-times.

Randomly, I came across some info about this place, Stuart Landsborough's Puzzling World. I WANT TO GO SO BAD. IT'S A FUN PARK OF PUZZLES AND ILLUSIONS AND BRAINTEASERS! HOW AWESOME IS THAT?! It's exactly the kind of thing I love!!! Unfortunately? It's in New Zealand. ;_;

In lieu of that, since I don't think I'll be able to get to NZ anytime soon, I will have to make a date to go to the Hall of Science to visit their Ames room. I haven't been there in a good long time, so I think it's time to go back! =D

[edit: I surprise myself by the fact that I, unexpectedly, have already-existing tags for some of the less commonly mentioned items in this post. I'm so organized! ]