Remember this post? Well, today I am doing some recycling…

As you should know by now, I have been working on a new design for one of my under-attentioned sites which I will be relaunching, well, as soon as I can wrap things up, which is getting closer and closer. As of this writing, I am down to thirteen items to do to finish it.

Of course, that number may go up, as it has previously, if I discover things I forgot that I needed to do or if I decide to add new features. Anyway…

If you like reading and talking about science fiction (scifi) or speculative fiction, listen up…

If you like reading and talking about fantasy fiction, listen up…

If you like reading and talking about horror fiction, listen up…

If you like reading and talking about bizarre (bizarro) fiction, listen up…

If you keep tuning into 30 Rock and are constantly disappointed because they apparently dropped John Lithgow and French Stewart and replaced them with Alec Baldwin and Jack McBrayer and moved the show to New York, listen up.

Okay? I will need some testers. People I know. People I can trust. That means you, if I know and trust you and you’re not a complete psycho.

So, if you think that is you, speak up now or forever hold your peace, or at least hold your peace until the public relaunch of the site, and then only if I decide to let you in then. You know. You hesitate and you takes your chances.

You must like to read.

You must have patience.

You probably shouldn’t be offended easily.

You must be talkative (type-a-tive?). Maybe a little overtly textual.

You know where to leave your pledge to be treated like a number and a guinea pig. Oh, no, I didn’t mean in the Halls of Congress. I meant below…

Sometimes recycling can be a time-saver…

Since I can’t put up any new images, here’s another flashback image for you.

It actually looks pretty cool. It’s an MP3 player I made myself. You probably don’t remember it from my “Rock On, Dance Master Ron” post from almost two years ago.

Well, Dance Master Ron never rocked on because I don’t think I ever did that animation I mentioned in the post. In fact, I don’t even remember what the animation was going to be. Maybe it’ll come back to me at some point.

And why was it filed under Science Fiction? Maybe that should be a clue, but it’s not helping.

Above is a photo I took of a rocket blasting into deep space.

Pretty cool, eh?

Well, with the magic of Adobe® Photoshop®, we can pretend that we are watching the rocket launch on an old TV, as if we are back in the 1950’s, watching the dawn of the Space Age.

Where’s Commander Corry when you need him?

Anyway, the whole adventure has to take place in our imaginations, because the original image was not a rocket launch at all. It was simply a plane crossing the sky.

But, you can see how a little manipulation with Photoshop® can turn an ordinary image into something more adventurous.

By the way, if you want to play a little space game I made on Sploder, here is my Space Blaster.

If you didn’t watch LOST this past week and don’t want to read spoilers, stop reading now.

I will not warn you a second time.

Okay, this is your third and last warning…

Seriously. If you don’t want spoilers, go away now.

Okay, here we go. OMG! Everybody freakin’ died!!!

Okay, that last bit was for the stragglers that wanted to complain about it being spoiled for them. The real stuff, for those that watched, is coming up. (Last chance if you don’t want to read spoilers…)

Okay, so this is the umpteenth time I’ve used “Okay” in this post. So, the question on everyone’s mind now is, who is Sayid now?

Well, let’s go through the options, okay? (There’s that word again…)

Sayid is Jacob

This appears to be a popular theory. The Man in Black/Smokie/Esau has been appearing as Locke, so it makes sense that Jacob would come back as Sayid, right? What!? First, note that the fake Locke is not using Locke’s body, as evidenced by Locke’s dead body being found. Since Sayid’s apparently dead body is the same body that came back to life, why believe that he is now Jacob? Even if you want to believe that holding Sayid in the special water was a process for allowing Jacob to enter and use Sayid’s body, consider what Sayid said when he appeared to come back to life: “What happened?” If he were Jacob, why would he be asking, especially when a short time earlier the deceased Jacob was telling Hurley what to do. If we are to believe that Jacob has powers or something beyond the capabilities of a normal person, it would seem that he would know what’s going on, even upon finding himself in Sayid’s body, which, if planned, would increase the odds that he’d know what was going on. So, while a possibility, my current thinking is that Sayid is not Jacob. Remember, Jacob has been interacting (or manipulating) this group since way back when, and I think Jacob’s plan presumably involves something more than using Sayid’s body as a vessel.

Sayid is Locke

Locke was supposed to lead the Others. That’s why the Man in Black/Smokie/Esau took advantage of the situation to get Ben to kill Jacob. Had Locke not been supposed to lead the Others, there would be little advantage for fake Locke to be, well, fake Locke rather than someone else. So, it’s reasonable to assume that Locke is important to Jacob’s plans. Was Locke being dead part of that plan? Or, did he need Locke alive? Of course, it is also a stretch to think that Sayid was manipulated into being part of the group that crashed on the island so that his body could eventually be used as a vessel for a reincarnated Locke. But, maybe Jacob is winging it now. Or, did he plan for the Man in Black/Smokie/Esau killing him. Also, remember, too, that fake Locke told Ben that Locke’s final thoughts were of confusion. And, what were the first words out of Sayid’s mouth? “What happened?”

Sayid is Sayid

Yeah, that’s the simplest to explain. He’s still Sayid, just changed as was Ben when he was saved by the same process. And, if he is Sayid, it’s not unreasonable to think that, if you thought you were dying and not going to live and suddenly found yourself alive and seemingly well, your first thought might be “What happened?”

So, I’m thinking that Sayid is Sayid is the strongest possibility, with Sayid being Locke a close second and Sayid being Jacob being a farther last.

What do you think?

As you may or may not know, because I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it and don’t feel like looking it up, I have been working on a new design for one of my under-attentioned sites which I will be relaunching, well, as soon as I can wrap things up.

So, if you like reading and talking about science fiction (scifi) or speculative fiction, listen up…

So, if you like reading and talking about fantasy fiction, listen up…

So, if you like reading and talking about horror fiction, listen up…

So, if you like reading and talking about bizarre (bizarro) fiction, listen up…

Okay? I will need some testers. People I know. People I can trust. That means you, if I know and trust you and you’re not a complete psycho.

So, if you think that is you, speak up now or forever hold your peace, or at least hold your peace until the public relaunch of the site, and then only if I decide to let you in then. You know. You hesitate and you takes your chances.

You must like to read.

You must have patience.

You probably shouldn’t be offended easily.

You must be talkative (type-a-tive?).

You know where to leave your pledge to be treated like a number and a guinea pig. Oh, no, I didn’t mean in the Halls of Congress. I meant below…

Can a design be sophisticated and cute?

Guess I may find out soon.

Anyway, sometimes I hate teasing y’all, but, you know, there are times I cannot come up with something to write while at the same time I have things to write about but I can’t tell you. Or rather I don’t want to tell you just yet. Which means part of me wants to tell you, part of me says I can’t tell you yet and, since I occasionally listen to myself, all you get is a teaser.

Thus, the image above. Which is a teaser. Though not exactly. It’s a representation of a teaser. Or, rather it’s not related to what I’m doing except in theme. That is, what you see here you won’t see on what I’m working on, except in a completely different way, which is to say the image you see here won’t be seen at all.

And, while you figure out that hot mess, I’ll get back to work.

Oh, and say “Hi!” to Mike Aragona, who is, at the moment, the only one who knows what I’m talking about. And, by that, I mean that he knows slightly more than you do but only slightly. Or more.

Basically, you’re all like Pete’s tiny mushrooms. In which case, Mike would be the big mushroom that’s blocking you from the moonlight, but you’re all pretty much stuck growing in the dark.

You know what would be cool? A glow-in-the-dark mushroom. Oooh. Must add that to my project list…

In a couple posts this week, I’ve mentioned an old cabinet I’ve been cleaning out.

When cleaning it out on Sunday, I found this:

That’s a bag of spice. No, nothing weird. It’s the Spice, as in melange.

Back in the mid-eighties, I was in school and one of the books we had to read for our English class was Dune. Well, as it happened, the movie Dune came out around the same time. At present, I don’t recall whether the movie was being filmed or had already been released. The movie came out in December of 1984. I remember reading this in the spring, so it had to be spring of 1984 or spring of 1985.

Anyway, the teacher tried to tie things in with the movie a bit (so I’m thinking it’s more likely to have been 1985) and one of our assignments was to make our own props. I think this was an exercise in showing how people envision different things they read and that not everyone would interpret the book the same. Probably. Then again, we weren’t special effects and props people, so the things we made didn’t necessarily reflect how we envisioned them but rather how we envisioned them and could fashion them out of things from around the house and without the skill set of a professional prop maker.

So, one of my props was the spice. I made mine from sugar, cinnamon and (I think perhaps) a bit of nutmeg. It’s been 24 years, so I don’t remember for certain, but I’m pretty sure that’s what’s in there.

Evidently, I still have the spice. And here it is.

I also made a Fremen dagger, which was supposed to be a sandworm’s tooth. And also the dunes of Arrakis with a sandworm.

And they let us into school with that. I bet these days you couldn’t carry a bag of spice and a sandworm tooth dagger into school without landing yourself in trouble.

I received this Star Trek: Enterprise NX-01 miniature display model on Monday. It goes nicely with my Phoenix display model which arrived on Friday.

I’m reasonably pleased with how the photo turned out for this one. I took the photo with the model against a dark background. Then, with the magic of Photoshop, I created a starfield background and then used a radial blur to create the illusion of motion. Warp Factor 5, Trip!

If you want your own, you better act fast! It looks like this must be a popular one. I bought mine for $16.95 but, at the time of this writing, it is $24.95. I guess I should have bought two!

It’s incredibly detailed for such a small model. Quality-wise, I think it is better looking than the Phoenix model. On the Phoenix, some of the seams are noticeable when looking at it up close. On the Enterprise NX-01 model, there are only a couple spots (on the supports behind the saucer section) where you notice the seams when looking at it up close. Otherwise, the seams are very well hidden in the design of the ship.

The display model comes in three pieces. The Enterprise itself is one piece. No assembly required. The display stand is two pieces: the stand and the mounting arm. I’m not too crazy about the mounting arm. It has a ball joint so you can position the ship in a variety of ways, but I find that it doesn’t adjust as well as it should. Best bet is probably to position it the way you like it, then never touch it again. I don’t know how well that ball joint, which is just plastic, would hold up to continual adjustments.

Overall, I like it a lot. Both the Enterprise and the Phoenix are plastic models, but they are done so well that they look like pewter models. And, because of their small size, they make it easy to put together a collection of your favorite ships that look nice but don’t take up a lot of space.

You have no idea what this is.

That’s okay. I have no idea where my story is going.

Let me rephrase that. I know where the story is going. I know how it begins, though a lot remains in flux. But, there is a whole middle section that is a complete blank.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I had an idea of how I was going to transition from the beginning to the middle, but I’m not sure how the beginning ends.

And, that’s where I end up stuck every time I look to work on the story. I keep refining the details, getting portions of the backstory to work better, but that beginning is generally elusive.

I sometimes wonder if I picked the right character to make the focus of the story, but I keep coming back to the conclusion that I have. The tough part is developing the character with his personal struggle against the storyline.

Take Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, for example. The storyline was Indiana Jones battles Nazis, but his personal struggle is developing a relationship with his father and that personal struggle is really what the movie is about. The Holy Grail and the Nazis are really secondary.

So, that’s basically where I’m stuck. I know the storyline (i.e. the Holy Grail and the Nazis part of my story) but I keep getting stuck on the character’s personal struggle. I know what it is, but I remain stuck on how to illustrate it.

This is what arrived in the mail yesterday:

What is it?

Well, it is a Battlestar Galactica Hasbro Titanium Series 4 Diecast Mini Cylon Raider [Classic].

I’ve wanted one of these since I was a kid. My parents took me shopping, or, more likely, they went shopping and dragged me along. Anyway, we went down the toy aisle, and there were two things I wanted, but I could only pick one. I wanted both! I guess you can figure out which one I didn’t pick…

I suppose that sometimes you remember, and still want, those things you couldn’t have. So, ever since then, I’ve wanted a Cylon Raider. Of course, nowadays, those “classics” sell for big bucks, especially if you want them in good, like-new or new-in-box condition.

So, I was buying some stuff I needed and I came across this miniature. That’s nice because it is (mostly) what I wanted, and it’s a miniature which is a plus because it won’t take up a lot of room and it’s pretty low-cost as well which is a definite bonus these days. Sure, I probably shouldn’t have bought it, but the 30-year desire to own a Cylon raider culminated in that moment.

Of course, someday, perhaps when I’m rich, I may come across the actual model I longed for oh so many years ago, new-in-box, and I will grab that one up too.

Until then, I have this little guy.