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Let Me Share These With You

Sunday, November 11th, 2012

From a very secret source, I managed to recently obtain the following:

OMG! It’s a factory sealed box of Star Trek trading cards all the way from 1991! Isn’t it strange how the TNG card says ‘Patrick Stewart’ and the TOS card says ‘James T. Kirk’?

Oh well, let’s look inside:

ZOMG! Exactly half the box is packs of Next Generation cards, and half is Original Series cards. Such organization! (And yes, that’s my desk visible behind… note the coaster AW)

Here’s a closer look at the two different types of packs:

I opened exactly one of each type (the ones in the above shot, actually). Here’s the very first card I pulled from the first pack:

Gadzooks! A nifty hologram of the Enterprise! I imagine these are ‘rare’, and I was very lucky to get one in only the first pack. I wonder how many others are available in the packs in this box?

Here’s the rest of the cards from the pack:

Yep, they look next-genny enough. Nice pictures, lots of words on the back. Real fanboy (or, fangirl) stuff here folks. Here’s front and back detail of a card most fans would treasure:

Lovely stuff!

I ripped into an original series pack as well. Some real delights in there! Here’s a standout card:

Good old Tiberius himself! (Or is that a doppleganger?)

At any rate…

Let me share a few packs with each of you 🙂

I realized, upon buying this magnificent bounty of endless entertainment, that posting about it on the blog would lead to feelings of jealousy and despair amongst many of you. To fend off such things, you can have some packs for free! But there is a very small catch…

To get some free packs of Star Trek cards, simply complete the following sentence in a comment:

“The true and honest reason why I believe every single Star Trek episode is better than every single Doctor Who episode is…”

Depending on your reply, you may find your Christmas parcel stuffed with a few extra Roddenberrian goodies this year:

Posted in Art, Blog, Books & Comics, Family, Miscellaneous, Movies, Trading Cards | 6 Comments »

Connecting iPad to a wifi network

Friday, November 9th, 2012

(This post is for Dad, so he can refer to this on his vacation.)

Connecting your iPad to a new wifi network couldn’t be easier!

Start by going into ‘Settings’ and selecting ‘Wi-Fi’ on the left:

On the right, under ‘Choose a network’, you’ll see a list of available networks:

Connecting to a network is as simple as selecting it from the list. The one you have selected has the tick next to it (check mark, for Americans). Once you select one, it will take a few seconds before the Internet becomes available.

If there are many different networks in your list, ask your friend for the name of his.

Once you’ve selected a network, you may be prompted for a password if it is locked. This is not your Apple password; this is a password for the network. Ask whoever owns it if you need a password 🙂

If you still have questions/problems, give me a call!

Posted in Family, Tech | Comments Closed

Poster Boy (part two)

Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

Earlier this year, this post caused a few chuckles. Who doesn’t love terrible old photos?

Certainly not me! So with pride, two more:

Lovely aren’t they? Thanks to my brother for fishing these out of an abyss 🙂

Now, some analysis. Obviously these two photos were taken at the same time as before, and painful as it may be to admit, the calendar dates it as 1987. The bottom picture (these were taken in my room) shows bits of the same posters as before. But there is now more to be seen, so much more!

For starters, in the top picture, in which I’m pulling off an early Monkey D Luffy look, the wall behind me is plastered in vaguely homoerotic art. Most prominent above me is a Depeche Mode poster (circa 1985), but I can also see Duran Duran, U2, Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw and (dare I admit it?!) Wham. Can anyone decipher any of the other posters?

Ignoring my outfit for now (and frankly, for ever), let’s investigate what I hold. In my right hand is my yellow (yes, yellow) Sharp QT12 cassette player. This may have been my second favourite possession in those days. In the other hand? Well, lets just say this poster is proof for anyone who doubted this post (specifically the third-last paragraph).

But, as much as you’ll guffaw at the photo with me in it, the true gem for me is the lower of the two photos. Here we see a very rare example of my artistic skills of the day! On the dresser and back of the door you can see four pictures that I drew. The one partially cut off is an Alphaville picture, possibly the cover of Forever Young. The other three show my renditions of the following…

The white dragon from Caverns Of The Snow Witch:

The cover of Afternoons In Utopia, done in a very minimalistic style:

And a ‘Mezzodaemon’ from Fiend Folio:

If you look very closely, you can also see gamebooks in the little bookshelf in the lower left (under a statue of Mary)!

I love this photo. All the same sorts of things I rave on about now are right there – 25 years ago. I just love that I was drawing massive drawings of monsters from gamebooks and sticking them on my wall.

Next time I see some college nerd strutting his stuff, I can say with confidence “Let me tell you kid, I was drawing mezzodaemons even before you were born!” 🙂

Posted in Art, Blog, Books & Comics, Family, Gamebooks, Games, Miscellaneous, Music, Otaku, Time | 2 Comments »