Sunday, November 18, 2007

Boldly go back to where we just were

As a follow-on to that last post, here are a couple of links if, like me, you are inexplicably obsessed with the look of LCARS (either you know what that is or you don't) interfaces and their omnipresent Okudagrams. Well, what drives the obsession is probably not so much the visual appeal as opposed to just trying to pretend I'm living on Star Trek. You know, where I would be a total bad-ass with cool technology instead of being a huge pussy who blogs.

Here is a site that's a bit light on content at this point but still has some decent stuff that could end up as background wallpaper. On this page's "Download Gallery" section there's all kinds of cool shit, such as LCARS images, starship images, and (my fave) LCARS animations (some including sound!).

Dorks with cash

So someone recently put together a home-theater setup designed to look like the bridge of the Enterprise-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation. It looks pretty decent, but for the size of the room their screen looks pretty small. And I've got some reservations about the seats that are behind the tactical rail:


All I can say is that I'm not getting stuck sitting back there.

The additional Trek-inspired bar and lounge areas are a nice touch, but still nowhere near as cool as Rob Zombie's pirate bar at his house (couldn't find a pic that did it justice, unfortunately).

While this is a pretty nerdy thing to do, some points are lost because

“We initially considered the original Starship Enterprise, NCC-1701,” says Hoover. “With a more updated look, Enterprise NCC-1701A was selected as it depicted a grander version of the ship.”

As I already mentioned, that's the 1701-D, not the A. I don't know if the owner of this installation looked over this article before it went out, but still, there's no excuse for that.

I'm sure I linked this before but in a similar vein there was a guy a ways back who re-did his flat in a Next-Gen theme. To me that looks pretty awesome, if for no other reason the Okudagrams all over the place. The style and design choices are pretty decent although questionable in some places. My biggest issue is that everything is so fucking dark.

Unfortunately for this guy he started a company to do conversions like this for other people but ended up going bankrupt. Probably just as well, the last thing I need is that temptation floating around out there. Of course, with enough money you can do pretty much anything you want, but maybe fortunately I'm not at that point yet.