Star Trek

[Valka]

Larger avatars. Just sayin'. 

I recently won an avatar contest at TrekBBS with a Lalla Ward avatar. The person running the contest in the Doctor Who forum decided on a "Companions" theme, and to everyone's surprise it ended in a 4-way tie between Sarah Jane, Captain Jack, Romana II, and Rory. So there was a tie-breaker vote, and my Romana avatar won.

What does she have to do with Star Trek?

Once upon a really long time ago, I started writing a Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover which featured Romana and K-9, but not the Doctor ('cause Romana had already left with the Tharils).

Imagine...

It's the morning after the night before, when former Transporter Chief Kyle had been celebrating his promotion to a new rank and a new job, in the Security division. He wakes up to hear a weird noise in his quarters... he stumbles out of bed, staggers into the main area of his quarters... and sees a blue Police Box.

His immediate thought is that somebody (or rather, a group of somebodies) was playing a practical joke on him. But then the door opens. Someone emerges from the Police Box - an attractive young woman, blonde, and wearing civilian clothing. While he's staring in shock, she smiles at him, says, "Hullo!", and...

I didn't get the story finished, but it's always been something I meant to get done some day.

So yeah, there's a Star Trek connection.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'll have a look at the size options today, no random event triggering, and make it 100x if I can.


[ninja'd]

What does she have to do with Star Trek?

Nothin'.

(First I've heard about Val's fanfic.)

[Buster's Uncle]

Okay - I went 150x, which makes everything in the user galleries instantly obsolete (something north of 2,000 of my work, I think, that didn't size/crop themselves, and some were a lot of work, like the one I'm wearing was), and I don't care for really big avatars - but I ain't running this place entirely for my own benefit, and it's stupid for a place that's co-owned by a big avatar guy to be stuck in the 90s.

Enjoy your voyage. 

[Valka]

What does she have to do with Star Trek?

You may well ask what Enya has to do with SMAC. On the surface, nothing. But she's one of my favorite singers, and music is a part of civilization. And this is the only forum where I use Enya avatars.

My CFC avatars have had a variety of themes over the years, but I've settled on cats, whether photos of real cats, cartoon cats, cat art, lolcats, etc. Back when Neil deGrasse Tyson's Cosmos was on TV, I used a photo from Carl Sagan's Cosmos, in which Sagan was sitting in front of a radio telescope. Apparently there is a whole generation that doesn't know who Sagan was and what he looked like... because one of the people reading that thread asked if that was a picture of me. 

At TrekBBS I enter a lot of avatar contests, have won a few, but I've had the same avatar there for years: a tractor beam.

[Buster's Uncle]

Would you like me to alter that .gif so the smilie is Spud?

[Valka]

I'll have a look at the size options today, no random event triggering, and make it 100x if I can.


[ninja'd]

What does she have to do with Star Trek?

Nothin'.

(First I've heard about Val's fanfic.)

It's the first time I've mentioned it to anybody online (at least that I can recall). A couple of people knew about it in RL and said they'd like to read it when it's finished... but it's one of those stories that got started, set aside, and never did get any further.

Okay - I went 150x, which makes everything in the user galleries instantly obsolete (something north of 2,000 of my work, I think, that didn't size crop themselves, and some were a lot of work, like the one I'm wearing was), and I don't care for really big avatars - but I ain't running this place entirely for my own benefit, and it's stupid for a place that's co-owned by a big avatar guy to be stuck in the 90s.

Enjoy your voyage. 

Thank you!

Are you sure this isn't going to distort the forum? I know that some kinds of forum software can get out of whack if they allow avatars or photos that are too big.

Would you like me to alter that .gif so the smilie is Spud?

That would be cool! I'm not sure I'd dare use it at TrekBBS, though - Camilla (the smiley artist) knows I use the tractor beam smiley there, and she's adamant that people don't alter her images.

[Buster's Uncle]

Put on your Romanna and see - I only saw it was exactly 150x after I changed the limits - it'll run off the right edge of the postbit if it's too big.

(There's a User Gallery trick I just figured out how to use as a reward or something right now...)

I already saved the .gif, and have opened it in GIMP...  (I bet TrekBBS would take the Enterprise smilie as an avatar...  It'll work here, now, I think...)

[Geo]

Three responses to the same remark? Must listen more to Enya to be on the safe side...

[Buster's Uncle]

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-Okay, since Val was gone when I surfaced, I saved her Romanna (filename: RomannaHominahomina.jpg ) and put it on myself, to confirm it fit.  It does, and 150x is close to width limit, I think (maybe up to 200w would work, I'd guess, and tall would only make your short posts tall - no problem). -Then I decided to test the smilie (141x45) - and I think I'll wear that for a while.  Animated .gifs sometimes don't want to work for citizens, but they always do for me, provided they're not too big, so ask if you have trouble with one and I can make it work.

[Valka]

Three responses to the same remark? Must listen more to Enya to be on the safe side...

The first I heard of her was when she was associated with Clannad - the group that did much of the music for the old '80s TV series Robin of Sherwood. Then later, I saw one of her music videos ("Orinoco Flow") and it just blew me away. The next song of hers I heard was "Only Time," and I was hooked.

On a more sobering note (sorry, no pun intended), "Only Time" became one of the pieces of music associated with CNN's coverage of the September 11 attacks. I watched a lot of Larry King Live back then, and he often had musical guests - people who performed classical, uplifting pieces (although Charlotte Church seemed not to understand what it was all about and did some bizarre rendition of one of the songs from "Carmen"...).

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-Okay, since Val was gone when I surfaced, I saved her Romanna (filename: RomannaHominahomina.jpg ) and put it on myself, to confirm it fit.  It does, and 150x is close to width limit, I think (maybe up to 200w would work, I'd guess, and tall would only make your short posts tall - no problem). -Then I decided to test the smilie (141x45) - and I think I'll wear that for a while.  Animated .gifs sometimes don't want to work for citizens, but they always do for me, provided they're not too big, so ask if you have trouble with one and I can make it work.

I disappeared long enough to watch my soap (General Hospital). I have to catch it fast on YouTube, as Disney has begun enforcing its geographical-based copyright rules and blocks Canadians from viewing videos from any TV show they own (current ones, anyway; I seem to still be able to watch older episodes if they're from years ago).

[Buster's Uncle]

It's all good in the (Federation) neighborhood, Ms 'Dur.

[Buster's Uncle]

Here's a User Gallery problem I stumbled on a few years ago - two tech avatars, one 100x violating the 80x size limit, and one I forgot to resize when making that the forum software didn't, either.  UG-installed apparently bypasses the size limit.

Now, this suggests that I can upload big-as-will-fit avatars into a User Gallery folder called "Use only by permission" (this is the part I only just thought of) for rewards, and enforce w/ my mighty owner powerz...

[Geo]

The first I heard of her was when she was associated with Clannad - the group that did much of the music for the old '80s TV series Robin of Sherwood. Then later, I saw one of her music videos ("Orinoco Flow") and it just blew me away. The next song of hers I heard was "Only Time," and I was hooked.

I like Celtic-styled music too. Besides the two you mentioned, I have a McKennitt CD too.
I once made a SMACX aquatic faction with some of their basenames borrowed from Clannad song titles.

[Mart]

Just found this old (from 2011?) article about ST:Voyager.

6 Reasons Star Trek: Voyager Never Really Worked

Some of the points, I do not agree with them, some, I agree.
Voyager is the series I like rather more than DS9, though there are excellent DS9 plots.

Anyone has read it before?

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm really put off by the failure to distinguish ST from all the TNG-era stuff - not liking that tendency is the main reason I've soiled so much of this thread with bad-mouthing TNG, etc.

Sites that post this six-parts-on-seven-pages-list stuff always take too long to load - obviously, I'm live-blogging as I go...

Okay, I think point one is dead wrong.  Janeway didn't work because they wrote her as a man's idea of a tough woman, not like an actual tough woman is.

The writer is only half-right about Torres.  Roxann Dawson passed for a decent actress in that low-bar crowd, and was more charismatic than most; the writing staff failed to do anything interesting with her, not Dawson, who was at least never less than decorative.  -She was also the only character/actor who had any chemistry with Choky.  Choky sux, BTW - I'm definitely going to see him trashed before this is done...

...Aaand there he is.  Okay, correct points.  -But they left out what a limp actor, and at the heart of the failure to commit to the Maquis stuff of the premise...

Disagree completely with almost everything in the fifth page.  Neelix was a millstone around the show's neck, the Doctor was doing the Pinocchio bit Data already had -and they ran it into the ground at warp, which Data had also already done- but they were right about the Paris/Torres relationship sucking.  I would have liked to have seen Jeri Ryan in a bodysuit in a well-written part on a competently-written show, but instead we got Pieces of Eight on Voyager.

Full marks on page six.  (As someone said on TrekBBS over a year ago, Voyager was ALL ABOUT missed potential.)  I'm regaining my will to live.

True on the last page.

They left out a lot, but the show, for all of a lot of energy I missed on the previous Bermanverse shows, could have been SO much better.

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Valka, I haven't forgotten about TractorSpud...