Alrighty then, in the fine Trekkies 2 tradition of last minute warnings, the Sacramento premiere of Trekkies 2 (and a celebration of Shawn's very first DUI) will be held Sunday, July 11th. BBQ at 7:30. The movie starts promptly at 9:30pm. Bring your own food, beer, cigars, rigelian brandy and heroin.

As the Trekkies 2 marketing people won't let it play in Sacramento, we reversed some photon waves uhh... that's too Next Generation. I meant, we time Shatnered to the future and uh... basically we pirated it and we're showing it at a home made drive-in (which means, no room for cars in the backyard so bring a lawnchair or suffer the ground, mateys). The 8x8 foot classic screening of Sci-Fi nerds strutting their geekiness to the Avogadro's degree (6.02 x10 to the 23rd, dude).

The official dvd release of the movie is Aug. 31st, and they demanded a soundtrack for some unknown reason so that should be out around then too. As if being trapped in the room with No Kill I playing wasn't bad enough but you still need to drive the roaches out of your apartment.

email for directions because it just seems more illegitimate that way. gornzilla (atty thingy) gmail (dotty thingy) com

Archbishopfully,

--Gorn

I'm dumping toys and records and vintage motorcycle parts on ebay. Someone buy them please.

http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/gornzilla

This is a long email I got from another guy traveling the world. Only he's doing it on a bicycle. If anyone has any suggestions to what he says, email me or leave a comment.

A lot of his suggestions were part of my original idea -> AA pda, roll-up keyboard -> time to work on journal and answer email during "down" time instead of paying at an internet cafe for web access. I've got less than 4 months to figure this out. Are there any AA digital cameras that have a setting to record pictures "for web use"?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hi chimpo13
Just picked up your Slashdot submission about transferring pictures to CD - too late to put in a reply there, so I'll email one. It caught me because I face the same problem, I'm also going round the world, on a pushbike though (bah, engines are for wimps), and I thought you might like some advice from the field.

Basically, like some of the submissions suggested, I wouldn't bother with a specialist device to transfer pictures to CD. Such a gadget would be inherantly fragile, and travelling on a pushbike or motorbike is hell on electronics and anything with delicate moving parts - heat, humidity, vibrations, sand and dust will quickly kill anything not heavily padded and sealed. Also, when packing space is at a premium you don't want to be carrying around something like this, with all it's extra padding for protection, which you will only rarely use, if ever.

My advice, just take more digital film and a couple of USB adapters for them, and a win98 driver and Photoshop or whatever thumbnail software you use on a CD, backed up to a second CD. You will find cyber cafes in the most unlikely places, with usually one or two with USB. If you have a techie background that helps to get in with the guys that run the places, and I've always found them willing to help me load up drivers etc. when I explain my problem. If you don't find a cybercaf then even in the most underdeveloped areas you'll find NGO's, Peace Corps, embassies, foreign businesses etc. with computers. In western Africa it's been at most a few weeks between being able to upload text and a few pictures and perhaps a month or two between major cities with decent speed internet, CD burners and a DHL office. And that's on a pushbike. In your case look at your route, find the longest distance between capital cities, estimate how many pictures you'll take in that time and how many flash cards you'll need, triple that number and you'll be fine.

A couple of other bits of unasked for advice.
Stick to one kind of flash storage, and prefer CF to the others - they're cheaper per MB, you can get them in huge capacities, more robust, and (important for us Slashdotters) no DRM. My digital video, PDA and mp3 player all use CF and I haven't had a card fail on me yet.

Stick to electronics - PDA's, cameras, music, GPS, torches etc. that use AA batteries. Avoid anything with lithium batteries, proprietry battery types, or anything that has to be recharghed directly. Take a fistful of high capacity NiMH AA's and a good quality multi voltage charger. The 2200 maH batteries I use last longer than Duracells, and in an emergency you can find standard AA's anywhere on the planet. I also carry a solar charger for the AA's but have never really had the need for it - it takes days to charge a pair of batteries and I've never been away from civilization long enough to exhaust them all - I can last about 2 weeks before a recharge, and that's about as long as you'll want to be without a shower anyway. The only exception to this rule is the video (no choice, and Sony are a bitch with their funny power connectors), and the GPS which uses AAA's but that also fit in the charger.

Get a PDA with a good quality keyboard that takes flash storage and that can edit plain text files. The best is the old Psion 5mx, not made any more but you can still get hold of them if you look hard enough. In areas where internet access is slow and expensive (and that's a lot of the world) it's a godsend.

The procedure is as follows:

Go to cybercafe, plug in the CF with the adapter.
Cut and paste all incoming emails into a text file on the CF
(Optionally) save any interesting looking topics on Slashdot onto CF
Leave cybercafe.

Then, in idle moments; sitting in hostels, camping in the desert, waiting for trains etc, reply to your email into another text file, update your website journal, peruse Slashdot.

Next time you're in a cybercafe, just cut and past the email replies and update your website directly off the CF, and download any new emails, Slashdot discussions etc - no thinking time involved, and with a half decent connection can all be done in half an hour.

Once every six months I'll load Mozilla onto someone's PC and download all the emails I've sent and received in that time (my ISP lets me POP3 from anywhere) - this gets burned to CD with my pictures. This clears out the account (important if there are storage limits) and since Mozilla stores emails as plaintext you have a nice portable archive of all your trip emails.that you can peruse on your PDA.

Advantages
- Saves a lot of money at cybercafes
- You can take your time and write some decent emails, rather 'Hi, I'm here, I'm fine'
- Your journal will be higher quality too. I don't know about you but I just can't use pen and paper to write down and organize my thoughts, and I type much faster than I write and I can't read my handriting anymore anyway.
- You don't have to struggle to write a personal email to a friend while worrying about the $6 an hour rate, on a slow connection that could cut off any second, on a strange foreign keyboard while some kid's playing some world war three game on full volume at the next terminal
- There's nothing quite like being able to write to someone that's stuck in cubicle hell, 'I'm right at this moment lying in a hammock wathching the sun go down on the Indian ocean, sipping a chilled pineapple juice just off the tree. So what are you doing?' If you're feeling cruel that is.
- When you're in some isolated part of the world a hundred miles from anywhere, reading and replying to emails, and reading slashdot (hey, once a geek..), helps keep you sane.
- As a bonus, most PDA's will have some kind of spreadsheet (for calculating mileages, budgets etc., contacts organizer (for all the new friends you'll make), games to while away the time etc. These are pretty much optional.
- As another minor bonus, if your PDA and camera use the same type flash you can use the PDA to organize your photos and perhaps view them (the Psion only has a monochrome screen; great for battery life, not so great for pictures)
- As a minus, some PDA's have programming capabilities - the Psion has it's own language and a Perl interpreter available, and I hear some idiots are even trying to port Linux to it. Avoid. Geekitude is something I'm trying to get away from. Hey, hold on a minute, You think it might be possible to come up with a perl scrip to thumbnail jpegs? Damn, damn damn. Like I said, once a geek....

Right, that's quite enough geek talk for now. I'm right now taking a brak in the Catholic mission in Bamako, Mali. I've just spent a couple of tough weeks crossing the border from Senegal - great going, nice scenery, lots of tiny villages along the way - the sort of places you have to talk the chef du village to give you permission to stay, incredibly friendly and hospitable people. But the track was tough, rocky and sandy, I took a few tumbles on the way, it's been very hot - 43 degrees today - and the few nights of sleeping in the bush has left me with some scary looking sting marks. I've also been nearly a year on the road, so I'm going to take my first big yearly break, going to leave Betsy (the bike) here and fly to Casablanca in a few days, then take the train to Spain, find somewhere quiet and cool, and do absolutely nothing for a month or two. Let me know how your preparations are going, feel free to ask anything. Looks like our wheels may cross sometime - I look forward to having a drink somewhere along the road.

Tom
Bamako, Mali

As by popular request that I talk about cats, here I go. Anon Coward would like me to spice up the /. spam reports that sometimes get posted when I stumble in drunk from a bar. The /. email is only available on this site.

Elvis Frank and Monkey.

Elvis Frank is a black, medium haired cat taken into my ex-girlfriends pet hospital. The person who brought it in said, "I found this feral bobcat. Please put it to sleep". Elvis is the friendliest cat I've ever seen, but they still made her declaw it when she adopted it.

When we drove out from Cape Girardea, Missouri, he roamed around the car. He also enjoys riding on people's shoulders, walks on the beach, and McDonalds french fries. For some reason, he prefers the McDonalds version over any other fry. He's a mooch and a mook.

He ate my gecko Dave. He left the other gecko, also named Dave, alive but terrified. She-Dave wouldn't come out of her box anymore so I sold her to a co-worker. I tend to name all my pets Dave, so I'll remember there names. The cats are an exception.

Monkey is a paranoid nut who spends most of his time hiding or climbing the screen door. He likes eating bugs and clawing at your mouth when you're sleeping. I wanted to name him Guttenberg, but that got shut down right quick.

Elvis likes humping Monkey even though they've both had their nuts cut off. Nutless homo cats. Who woulda thunk? I'm sure I could google up a site about it though.

Where are they going when I leave? I have no idea. Probably a burlap sack and a trip to the river. Or I could give them to the homeless guy who hangs around outside with his face completely tattooed. He can eat them.

By the way, the face tattooed homeless guy, isn't the homeless guy that had loud sex under my porch last week with the homeless girl. Man, is she cute in that homeless sort of a way. I wonder if she'd eat the cats?

On the other side of shilling:

Today, the Trekkies 2 people called me up. They want to put out a Trekkies 2 soundtrack. They've never put out music before, and seemed actually surprised that I've dealt with labels. Oddly enough, No Kill I has members (including me!) who've been in crappy things like Rolling Stone and NME and have dealt with labels before. Most of us have the "fuck major label" stance pretty well ingrained. The label they want is the Warp 11 label. Their own vanity label.

The guys from Warp 11 were originally in a dotcom. They, of course, flopped. Had 15 seconds of fame until Lucas got bored with them (according to their made up propoganda). You can find information about looking up their T&A "Kiki". She was a whore for big money. Now they want to make money from a Star Trek band. That makes no sense to us. Star Trek bands are for fun. There's no money, or hope of money, involved. It's the "dotcom" thought of mind that would go from "well this didn't work, let's try making money from a Star Trek band". What the hell?

Anyway, this should be interesting.

There's a slight chance for Ducati sponsorship for my trip. Hopefully I can show up a dealership and get a beer and a shower. Actually, it'll probably be free labor if I'm lucky. I don't know if they'll okay it though. I'm not a motorcycle racer, and I'm completely unknown in the motorcycle world. But, it's not like Ducati is sponsoring their own Star Trek punk rock band.

My one-way ticket to Sydney is for Oct. 12

I've been thinking of doing short movies while I'm gone. That'd be more stuff to bring though, but it'd be interesting if I can edit it correctly.

* carnet

* List of vaccinations (check to see what I'm missing) - appt. 6/1

* Start selling everything on eBay - gornzilla

* Learn to change tubes/tires on old Italian motorcycles

* water purification device? Maybe wait until Japan to find one.

* Download & fiddle with movable type. no, find some other movable type device

* flash card to cd w/o computer. man, what a pain in the ass to find.

* buy used Aerostitch suit

* helmet with a flip-top face

Well, I've seen Trekkies 2. It's nice seeing myself on 12 feet tall on a giant screen. By "nice" I mean horrifying. I always thought I sounded more like Mr. T and not Mike Tyson, but I was horribly wrong about that.

I'm trying to hunt down a good cheap textile motorcycle jacket and pants. I don't want to try the rtw tour in leathers. I don't want to get sued by Mad Max for copyright infringement. Got any?

I also need an MSR wisperlight international stove and a good 2 person tent. Oh and a good set of tire spoons.

Marshmallow Peeps - Peep Off VIII - 2004

http://peeps.nokilli.com/

The Official Dennis Gross Memorial Sacramento Peep Off!

I'm not Just Born, I'm the 2nd Coming. This years Peep Off is held, like usual, on the 1st Saturday after Easter. Saturday, April 17th. I say I'll start it at 2pm (but it'll probably start at 3pm). I'll at least have the BBQ going at 2pm. And sadly, once again, it'll be at my place in lovely midtown Sacramento (basically 19th & Capitol). Call any time day or night: 916/447-4528. Oh, and though I love giving interviews, I won't be interviewed by any Sacramento area media chumps. I don't want the Peep Off to get so huge I need permits.

Holy Christ on a crutch, this is the 8th Peep Off in a row. I'm not sure if I'll be in the USA next year though, so someone might have to cover for me. I'd like it to be held in the Sacramento Grid, but if I'm not around, how can I be picky?

This year, I'll be making some wasabi ice cream and there will be chocolate peep fondue. Some guy from New York said he's flying out to do a documentary. Don't forget to bring a diorama! Costumes are nice, too! Oh, and I'm getting hitched to Donna so I'll have medical insurance for when I try to ride round the world on a motorcycle later this year. If I get croaked, the insurance will pay off her house, so she should be wishing for my death.

Please send this around to people who might be interested.

Thanks,

--Archbishop Dave Smith

Well alrighty then, April is the busy month at the monkey lab so that shouldn't be fun. At least I'll get a monthly check that's good for $250 an hour. That's the standard US wages for hosing monkey shit you know.

and zombie monkeys...

A couple months ago, the night dj on KDVS (www.kdvs.org) was playing movie soundtracks. Around 3am she played "the Hunt" from Planet of the Apes. It's the part when the apes are chasing Bright Eyes through the corn. Although in that part I suppose Heston's name would still be Taylor. I turned up the truck radio really loud hoping the outside monkeys would take the hint and uprise. That didn't work, so I called her to complain. She played part of the theme from Escape from the Planet of the Apes, but the monkeys didn't do anything for that one. I think there's defective monkeys there.

Last night, I kept screaming at the monkeys "Tetsuo!!!", which, as everyone knows, is an Akira reference. Still nothing, although I hope Akira makes his presence known and Kaneda will try to stop Tetsuo's manic rise to power (again). I'm sure Tetsuo is secretly kept at the secret monkey compound in a secret chamber. Probably in the buzzing brain room.

It's like my secret peek at PETA (or MST3K) because there's a bunch of depressed monkeys with giant implants glued into their brains through their skulls to measure brain waves. I wear a tinfoil hat when I go into that room. Something about the air pressure in that room makes the door buzz, so you walk in that hallway and you hear "Bzzzz" and the monkeys try their secret monkey voodoo mumbo-jumbo to bend spoons and predict the future (George Clooney marries Rosemary Clooney). I haven't seen Kaneda since I've been working there (only since April 2003) probably because he's secretive.

Actually, I know there are defective monkeys there, because they never laugh at my Superman/Christopher Reeve jokes. I know that if they just thought the jokes were insensitive, they'd just complain (which actually means "throw poo at me"). And so far, after 9 1/2 months, no monkey poo has been thrown on me. Although a monkey peed on me, but that was because I insulted his mother.

I've been playing Resident Evil Veronica X so instead of driving around the monkey compound listening to punk rock and washing monkey shit out of cages, I'll start freaking out about zombie monkeys coming to eat me.

Ah, a +5 funny for saying I have a 5 year old. Now, to go kidnap me a 5 year old so I don't disappoint anyone on slashdot...

Saturday, Nov. 1st at the Distillery (on L between 22nd & 21st). I think it's 5 bucks. Come up the guy in the green lizard suit and say you read about this on slashdot and he'll buy you a drink.

It's with The Trouble Makers and The Pumpkinseeds. The Pumpkinseeds play 80s metal with spandex and long hair wigs. They're pretty funny even if you didn't go through a metal phase (like me).

Well alrighty then, I'll try to talk like a human being. That's since the complaints about my last comment. No, I'm just kidding. No one on slashdot cares about 1980s Sacramento level punk rock. No wait (pun)k rock. Okay, go with that one, willya?

Here's the article about our show filmed for Trekkies 2.

The comments in the Warp 11 board were pretty good after the shows. The manager was pissed that we had more pictures on the Trekkies site. Dang, it's a Star Trek band. Who the hell cares about stuff like that? It's just a joke.