Podcasting Insights and Tech Industry News

On this episode of Altered Geek, we'll be talking

about Star Wars, the challenges of podcasting,

Toys R Us possibly getting bankruptcy, and how

husbands may never have to go through a female

store again with husband pods. All this and more

on Altered Geek. The geek of all - and welcome

to Altered Geek. I'm your host, Steven C. Phillips,

and in this episode, I am coming off of being

a guest on another podcast. I'll get into that

in a little bit. So, I'm kind of wondering, guys,

what do you guys think about the GCRN wars tournament

of the 90s to the end? We already got the round

one, part one. Side of the bracket done with

interesting results and we have the Round one

part two bracket going on right now for voting

and it will close on Wednesday evening when we

go to Record the next episode which will be round

two Where we get to see some kind of interesting

battles take place So yeah the The thing I was

alluding to before has to do with a group of

podcasters talking about podcasting and I have

been feeling kind of burnout lately and Which

I know it's kind of odd You would think with

hitting 200 plus episodes that you wouldn't really

feel that way, but surprisingly You do And it

was kind of reassuring to listen to these podcast

professionals sitting in podcasting and their

expertise at it. Granted, I work in podcasting

now, theoretically, through radio, but I also

do this, and... I've continued to learn and hone

my craft and I've continually sought out new

information so that I can provide the best detailed

focused show that I can possibly put out. And

after sitting here doing this episode with these

guys, I kind of came to the conclusion that less

is more. And what I mean by that is I originally

was setting out to do a daily podcast five days

a week and then the more I've listened to How

it would turn out yeah, the ten minute episodes

would give me episode counts, but it wouldn't

necessarily be added value as it were I Still

want to do the twice a week show. I don't have

time for it right now So I'm just going to completely

eliminate that concept until I can Actually dedicate

the time to it. I suspect I should be able to

start that in the next month or so but right

now it's just not feasible and I I had a lot

of fun sitting with these guys. Anyways, I was

on the podcasters roundtable And some of you

might be wondering what is that? Well, it's It

was actually a lot of fun We sat down there were

five of us and We were discussing the momentous

episode 100 that elusive number that some podcasters

never get to and Quite possibly the reasons why

and why some of them keep going when they hit

that monumental number of the triple digit mark

I I had fun talking with Ray Ortega with Daniel

J. Lewis with Dave Jackson and Ryan on this podcast.

And it was a Google Hangout video podcast, but

still it showed me the value of a live show.

It showed me the value of a lot of the concepts

that can be had. and it's kind of interesting

to sit down and just kind of put it all to words

and going back and kind of reminiscing on our

episode 100 monumental occasions and the things

that we've accomplished and how you can sometimes

get that feeling of not having value but all

it takes is listener to just come out of the

woodwork and just reassure you that they're still

getting something from you. That was something

that didn't really register with me until that.

I thrive on the content of other people's comments.

I love it. And then I love talking about a lot

of the geeky subjects. Now, some of it I don't

care as much about anymore, which... Kind of

means I should move on from some of it which

I'm gonna start kind of paying more attention

to A lot of it to try and figure out what I can

cut so But anyways It was a lot of fun. I'm gonna

link the episode in the post on The website so

be sure to check that out. This is the episode

205 So yeah, just be sure to to check that out

So it was very informative So I if you're into

podcasting if you're a podcaster if you're just

kind of curious about a lot of the thoughts that

go through it Definitely check that out. It's

it's it's very worth the time and I would I would

also recommend that you check out all of these

people if you want to know more about podcasting.

They all have their own niche of how -to and

podcasting and I found a lot of their material

very informative. Even while I was brainstorming

to transform this show into something different

and kind of get this soapbox of what I want to

talk about and that I'm enthusiastic about. That's

kind of why I quit doing all of the individual

podcasts on Geocast Radio just because I didn't

feel like I could add something to it and I just

wasn't enthused with a lot of it anymore. That's

why I'm kind of sporadically showing up in Top

100s and GCR and MWIRE and a lot of other shows.

I'm showing up for content I want of course,

but I'm trying to focus my efforts here, although

I might need to focus more effort on all things

Transformers, despite everything, but that's

neither here nor there. So, yeah. So we've talked

G -Seren Wars, we've talked podcasters roundtable.

Something fun that's, well, it's been fun for

me anyway, is my kids in Legos. I've finally

gotten to this point where they can build out

of Legos and just use their imagination and create

things. Because when I first started trying to

get my kids to play with them, they were making

me do all the building and like, fix it daddy,

da da da. And I didn't have a problem doing it,

but at the same time they needed to use their

own imagination and do it themselves. And I feel

like they finally hit that threshold, that they're

starting to build stuff. I mean... It looks crazy,

but it works sometimes crazy works Optimus Primal

While we were doing the podcast roundtable I

Needed to move my my webcam actually because

it sits on my monitor, which my monitor sits

higher than my chair The hydraulic in my chair

is actually dying because I sit in it so much

it my wife bought this chair you used it here

and say like two years ago and She wheeled at

home, which is The funniest thing in the world

Her wheel in this chair all the way down the

street and the like I said the the The hydraulic

that has it go up and down is shot so it'll stay

up but then periodically just kind of floats

down and I have to To adjust it and re -release

it back to the up position. So I moved my webcam

and I built a My youngest Nolan has these Lego

Duplo which are very thick Legos and I I stacked

up until I had the right eye length with my webcam

and also to go with my green screen behind me

because I was trying to hide my cats and the

mess that they made during the show and Stupid

cat threw up on my desk Yeah, that'll live in

podcasting forever. I'm not editing that so Anyways,

I made this stand out of Lego Duplo to put my

webcam on so it was directly in front of my face

And it worked perfect through the entire record

So I was I was rather rather enthused with that,

but I know my my oldest Ian. He's He's building

like ships boats houses animals cameras like

Lamps just all kinds of random stuff out of Legos,

which is awesome Because it kind of reminds me

when I was a kid and occasionally I'll sit down

and build stuff with them in the morning before

I go to work and It's I don't know it's it's

fun to sit down with Your child and just play

something you enjoyed as a kid that you know

you still enjoy deep down But you don't necessarily

See the value in doing it for yourself anymore,

but for other people and that's kind of how podcasting

is Sometimes I get burnt out and I don't feel

the value of it, but then at the same time I

feel like I'm giving value and It's just something

I'm enthused with I Don't know. I think I'll

be doing this for a long time probably forever

who knows So yeah getting into kind of the web

tech tip app the week territory I recently Uncovered

this site called geek beacon and you might be

asking what is geek beacon and I would have probably

asked the same thing except for the fact that

I saw a random tweet by an old youtuber that

used to be part of revision 3 and used to have

a show called like OS alt and It was Nixie pixel,

I don't know if it ever remembers her she kind

of faded away long time ago And then recently

resurfaced Due to health issues. That's why she

disappeared So anyways, this site is to basically

be a guiding light to all geek all things geek

and they created it So there's like a live on

YouTube. There's the thing where you can join

them on discord and converse gaming stuff, OS

alts on there, and then geeks abroad where they

kind of have this thing where you can set up

to basically let them stay with you and you kind

of give them a tour of your geeky stuff around

town. It's an interesting concept. I thought

I'd bring it up just because I think that the

centralized hub for things geek is kind of interesting

and the sites Almost set up. I mean, it's all

HTML. It's very early 2000s design in a sense,

but they have a thing where you can join their

team and help them out with stuff. And so, yeah,

I enjoyed it. Kind of checking that out. Kind

of gave me ideas of what we... As a geek community

how strong we can be pulling each other up when

we're down, so I'm going to Insert a clip here

because international podcast day is September

30th 2017 and you can get there by internationalpodcastday

.com And and they're gonna have this nice 30

to our live stream going. I don't know if it's

all at once, but they're going to have speakers

talking about the history of the event, the event

schedule, and then how to monetize your messages

while becoming influential voice in the industry,

how some people left their job for podcasting,

process of, and among other things, starting

a podcast, the six Ps of podcasting. You know

what radio can teach podcasters. So i'm going

to check that out. I think it's kind of interesting

So i'm going to place a clip here for that Not

to mention I will have a quick commercial break

after that with a word from our sponsor and then

come back with this week in geek history International

podcast day is september 30th and you can help

spread the word you may be asking what can I

do to get involved? It's pretty simple head over

to internationalpodcastday .com and check the

suggestions. Then use hashtag internationalpodcastday

to join the conversation. You can reach out and

connect with other podcasters, listeners, and

your favorite podcast hosts. Remember September

30th, International Podcast Day, a day -long

celebration of the power of podcasts. For you,

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And we're back. So I'm recording with my other

microphone, which is built into my headset because

I was having technical difficulties, believe

it or not, with my other device, my Blue Yeti

microphone. If that thing craps the bed, I will

be so upset. So yeah, I'm going to do the Geek

History lesson, which is kind of amazing. I slimmed

it down a little bit more. I'm still tweaking

the aspect of the show, so a lot of stuff will

change from time to time. And part of that will

be how I operate the episodes and how things

kind of work. Sorry, I tweaked my microphones

so that it would be closer to my mouth. So when

I speak, it will actually project. Um, so yeah,

the, the geek history for the week, uh, September

2nd, 1993, the world's first primitive web search

engine is started known as the W3 catalog, which

kind of makes sense when you consider the W3C,

uh, standards, uh, thing that the W3C is kind

of stuck around. And, uh, so yeah. The search

site lasted for about three years before more

modernized search engines began appearing, such

as Yahoo and things like that. On September 3rd,

1995, eBay has launched its auction web. I remember

auction web, actually. Granted, it was around

96, 97 when I was on the internet to begin with.

But it said that the first item sold was a broken

laser pointer. And it wasn't actually intended

for sale, but rather than test the new site,

it started out as a hobby. So the Amidar who

created it said that he was surprised that the

item sold for $14 .83. And I guess he contacted

the buyer to make sure he knew the laser pointer

was broken, to which the guy replied, I'm a collector

of broken laser pointers, which is hilarious

amongst itself. September 4th, 1998, Google was

filed to be incorporated. And September 4th,

1956, IBM's 350 disk storage unit Model 1 was

announced, which was the first commercial storage

unit to use magnetic disk storage instead of

the old punch card method, which... We're still

using, in a sense, some of this, but the technology

began behind the hard disk drives that we use

today. It's about the size of two refrigerators

and weighing in at one ton. The 350 could store

between four to five megabytes, depending on

how it was calculated. Let that sink in. We can

carry almost four terabytes in almost a pocket

-sized device. So yeah, it's crazy September

7th 2005 Apple introduces the iPad nano which

replaces the mini The significance to it is it

was the the first device to use flash storage

instead of a hard drive Which allowed for a smaller

form factor increased reliability and better

battery life So that's kind of what's projected

to everything today And the last bit of geek

history is, of course, the RIAA sues 261 people

in September of 2003. Yeah, I remember those

days of the RIAA. That's crazy. Yeah, they intended

to sue everyone for the internet peer -to -peer

networks, which was kind of new and revolutionary

at the time because of various... Things like

Napster, Kazaa, and Limewire, Morpheus, WinMX.

Yes, I used a few back in the day. Eventually,

I just didn't care about any of the music or

any of the stuff anyway that was bootleg, so

I just kind of wrote all that off and just didn't

care anymore. Because most of the time, like

even now, I don't even listen to anything on

the radio. I didn't even listen to the radio.

I do for my job. which it's more from a quality

control perspective and because I'm interested

in some of the topics that are in it and some

of the the voices that are on but it's mostly

because of that I personally I can't stand hearing

the same commercials over and over on the radio

or the same Like traditional radio where you

have the music and everything and they play the

same songs at the same time every day and it

drives me nuts and as a Quote -unquote millennial.

I just I don't I don't subscribe to that anymore

I'd prefer just to listen to podcasts and not

have to deal with any of it Honestly, I would

because I can tune into who I want to tune into

I can do it at my leisure and I don't have massive

amounts of influx of repetitiveness I don't know

but maybe that's just the difference between

how I used to be and how I am now I've just I've

gotten older and I just I don't I don't want

any of that anymore it's just kind of meh I don't

radio to me I can't tell you the last time I

listened to the traditional radio. I can't even

tell you. I think the last time I listened to

actual regular radio before I worked in it was

somewhere around 2015. Even before that, it was

maybe 2014. I used to listen because I used to

call in a lot and win stuff on the radio and

then... when I started disliking the programs

and some of the stuff that was going on in radio

I switched to podcasts and select songs or I

have YouTube music playlists that I listen to

at any given point and so yeah that's my two

cents and my opinion on the the RAAA. Anyways,

it backfired on them hardcore because they started

suing 12 year olds and 72 year olds just because

of who was on the internet on the computer there.

Didn't even matter if it was the correct person,

they just sued them anyway. So eventually they

brought a suit against at least 30 ,000 people

and the RAAA intended to reduce the amount of

music being shared but instead generated a public

backlash against the established recording industry

which Kind of setting into a tailspin from there

And then you had like players like Amazon and

in iTunes jumping into the mix and so it's just

the whole markets changed Or evolved in a sense

So yeah, I don't know it's it's it's a little

different So yeah, I kind of want to get into

this a little bit right here. I kind of I caught

wind that that Birdman is entering into For those

of you that that keep up with Mike the Birdman

Dodd And believe me I've been I've been wanting

to get him back on the show I've just been trying

to figure out the show before I I re -enter co

-hosts onto this and and I think I've got it

figured out how I want to do it and with segmenting

certain pieces. And I've been kinda asking for

a lot of commentary on social media, and for

instance, one of the questions I posed on Twitter,

and I figured, and I'm gonna start doing this

more often, but I'm gonna start putting Twitter

polls throughout the week, and... the little

24 -hour polls daily and kind of using those

for topic pieces. So if you want to get involved,

I'm going to put those up throughout the week,

Monday through Thursday, maybe even Saturdays

too, and then keep track of the polls and use

those as topic points for parts of the episode.

But anyways, I used, what do you want more of

in Altered Geek? And this is going to cycle back

around to Dodd, don't worry. I said, if other,

reply with what you'd like to see. And so I gave

opinions or topical, tech, comics and superheroes,

or other. And while there'll be a influx of superheroes

and comics when some of those come around, when

it's not time for that news, and yes, had to

take a quick interruption because my son came

in screaming about his brother who bit his finger.

No, it's not like... the videos of Tommy bit

my finger. So anyways, the poll kind of, it's

got a couple hours left to conclude and I'm recording

this really late on a Friday. But it would be

75 % of you said opinions and topical for more

of the more of the segmented pieces and 25 %

comics and superheroes, which I think... I'll

probably sprinkle in some more tech too from

occasion and some gaming. And like I said, if

I do the second show during the week, I'll probably

split more of the newsy stuff to that and then

do no news whatsoever on the Friday show. So...

But that's kind of the general consensus there,

so... We'll see, we'll see. I know I want to

get Booth Ninja back on. I've got a few other

people I want to get on the show. I might try

and get like Movie Revolt, Dan. I'm gonna try

and get Blanchard back on at a point. I'd really

like to get Dodd on again and it's partially

because I want some perspectives on some gaming

stuff that I'm not necessarily attuned to but

there's there's aspects to that i would like

to cover and uh... uh... yeah i i i i i don't

know i just miss chatting with them and part

of it was i was trying to clean up the show and

it's it's no knocks against him or anybody else

i'd just i'd find it easier to wrangle in stuff

and not have to do as many hardcore edits if

it's just me And so that's part of why, that's

part of why I've kind of deviated from having

the co -host at the moment. I do want to start

trying to get into other people too and maybe

do some interviews and some other kind of concepts

that I've not really done in the past. There's

a lot of evolution thoughts going on here. But

yeah, Dodd is officially entered into a weight

loss program as of Monday And the program expects

a lot out of him and it'll be a challenge to

meet it all Lifestyle style changes and you know

a lot of commitment. So Mrs. Birdman is helping

him Through this this course and so I just asked

that everybody would just kind of be there for

Dodd. He needs it all the friends and all the

people that have kind of been influenced by him

over the years. I know I was personally influenced

by him back in 2008. When I first, because I

was a year off of like six months off of doing

podcasts. I hadn't been doing them for six months

at that point because I was doing them in 2007

for TF wire. And then In 2008 I was sitting there

and it was like early August. I had started All

Things Transformers. I'd started Twitter. I met

TFG1 on there because he was following Birdman

and I was following Birdman and somehow I found

him. And then I started listening to Birdman

on CRNC 91 FM Niagara. I'm sure I messed that

up somewhat, but I'm pretty sure I'm close. He

would correct me. I know his CRNC. Anyways, I'd

stream it through iTunes and listen to the show

with him and Steve Saylor. I listen to those

guys just kind of riff and go back and forth

week after week in listening to them and the

professionalism and just the way that they conducted

themselves and the topics they covered. I was

like, man, this is awesome. So I would interact

with the show week to week through Twitter or

email and talk to them. And they would mention

it on the show, which was awesome. So, yeah.

I just ask that you guys just kind of be there

for Dodd, let him know that you care, let him

know that you're around. So, yeah. His journey

is beginning and coming from, like for instance

my wife, she was obese at one point and managed

to lose all the weight just by, I mean she wasn't,

she didn't need to go to the hospital for it

or anything but we probably would have never

had kids if it weren't for the fact she lost

all the weight. And then she worked her butt

off of the personal trainer. for a long time

and then she still goes to the gym even now and

she lost all that weight back and started losing

it in 2009 and here it is 2017 and she's still

losing weight which is amazing. Mostly maintaining

but yeah. Meanwhile she's got her husband who

seems like a mutant as it were. because I can

eat my heart's content and I don't gain anything.

I barely gain anything. I fluctuate a little

bit, but I stabilized pretty much around 162.

Somehow in the last month, and I started noticing,

and this is a really weird thing, I started noticing

my pants were getting thinner. I kind of mentioned

it to my wife after I went and actually checked

the scale. for myself at one point, and she's

like, what are you talking about? And I said,

I'm pretty sure I dropped some weight. And then

I showed her in my pants, and I'm like, I could

probably almost fit my kid in there. And she's

like, how much did you lose? And I'm like, she

says, The only way you could have lost weight

is because you don't have all the junk left in

the house, and she's right, because I ate it

all. Over the course of the last six, eight months,

I had a lot of junk food and candy and stuff

that was left over in the basement, and I've

gone through and raided it. There is nothing

down there. Everything in the house is pretty

much healthy, and I have no junk food left. Occasionally

we'll get some, but it's not, we don't keep it

in the house anymore. because neither one of

us have self -control when it comes to food.

And I'm not saying this, this has nothing to

do with that, it's just me at this point. So

I went and checked the scale and I dropped 20

pounds in the course of a month. And I didn't

realize why I dropped 20 pounds, because I work

from my home in my desk. and I should have by

all means gained weight and I didn't and I eat

like a horse. She brings me like, I'm fortunate

enough that I work from home and my wife brings

me my food for lunch so I don't have to physically

take a lunch. I can eat while I'm working and

it's a nice convenient thing and I appreciate

my wife like no other for that. It's very helpful

on her behalf. I'm kind of glad about that. She's

like, you need to gain some more weight. So I

sat down and I've actually been eating more of

her cooking to try and get my weight back to,

because I was in the 140s range and I kind of

felt sickly a lot and hungry. I've been trying

to make an effort to eat more food to try and

get my weight up. I'm pretty sure I'm back around

155, which is about normal for me. But still,

it's nuts. So yeah, I've gone a little bit on

that tie rate of kind of touching on interesting

topical realm in of itself. Yeah, I'm going to

jump into some of the little bit of the news

that I was alluding to. Toys R Us is under a

400 million debt -examining potential relief

options, including bankruptcy protection, because

apparently they're having some financial troubles,

which that's kind of almost every box store at

this point. The major retailer, one of the major

retailers for Transformers specifically, has

engaged in legal counsel because their debt's

around $400 million at this point. So they're

looking into it. They're hoping to resolve it

by the beginning of 2017's holiday season in

early 2018 by some toy shopping. Which I suspect

around Black Friday and Christmas, they'll counterbalance.

At least pretty close to being balanced. Just

because. But it doesn't help when you've got

a lot of the stores that are dilapidated. And

even the picture on this, it shows like... Now

mind you, I've never seen an immaculate looking

Toys R Us. They're all dumps. All of them. Any

more are dumps. This one looks pretty nice, but

it's in... It's got to be in Canada because it

looks nice, on the outside at least. They got

it from CNBC, this particular article. I got

this news from Tformers. Yeah, so that's got

to be from Canada. Anyways, this store, it's

got a blue covering on it and it's very colorful.

And every Toys R Us though usually kind of looks

like a dump. They're usually like gray on the

outside, at least all the ones in Michigan. That's

a little bit of alarming news though to see a

toy store specifically having financial issue.

The only other things that I kind of want to

touch on are you got another director leaving

Star Wars? Colin Trevorrow is no longer directing

episode 9 and there a Lot of the news sources

are making a bigger deal out of this and it has

to be It's just it could have been simply, you

know difference in in perspectives. It could

have been irritation between Kathleen Kennedy

and Colin Much like it was with the Han Solo

film. It could have just been He didn't want

to work on it anymore. Maybe he found something

he wanted to do more that was you know more freeform

and and You know so Rian Johnson is probably

going to be doing the the ninth film now unless

they court someone else And they're saying episode

9 they might be returning to a familiar planet

in that of Jakku Just like the Obi -Wan movie

that might be going back to Tatooine so We'll

see So yeah, among other things, it's just...

Star Wars is just having some bad luck. We'll

get fewer wipe transitions than any other Star

Wars movie in there, so... At least that's going

for us. No lens flares though. So yeah, the only

tech thing I wanted to cover... I'll get into

some of the gaming stuff another time. I'm not

gonna mess with that right now. I'll probably

do it next week. because it's not really pertinent

information. Two of the things though I thought

were kind of cool, 20 terabyte hard drives are

going to be coming out and they're going to be

made of glass. It's kind of insane when you think

about it. I would have never imagined a hard

drive being made out of glass. Extreme Tech had

this article and it says, past few years the

rate of hard drive density improvements has dropped.

significantly while Seagate and Western Digital

have both pushed ahead with larger hard drives

so they're saying that they're pushing for these

20 terabyte glass substrates which they're saying

could be a critical component and they're saying

right now only laptop drives use glass substrates

which I didn't even know that But they're saying

several advantages over aluminum. First, the

glass is more rigid than aluminum, which allows

the platters to be thinner and lighter. And glass

substrates are smoother and flatter than aluminum,

which allows them to be packed together more

tightly. And they expand less than aluminum under

heat, which makes it easier to cope with thermal

expansion. They're saying the amount of energy

required to spin a glass platter at a given spindle

speed will be at least slightly slower than if

the same platter was made of aluminum due to

the latter's higher weight. But a Japanese company

is believing that the current HDD manufacturers

will adopt its glass discs for 3 .5 inch drives.

Glass is already used for 2 .5 inch laptop drives,

which that probably explains why laptops are

significantly slower than if you're on a desktop.

Even if they have the same specs in theory, they

should operate about the same because my laptop

I have a core i3 dual core both in my tower and

in my my laptop I have eight gigs of or I have

six gigs of RAM on my laptop and I have 12 in

my PC Which I know that makes a difference But

even when I had the the regular hard drive my

500 gig as my my primary My hard drive in my

desktop was still faster, like my computer was

still faster even when I had eight gigs of RAM

or four gigs of RAM. And then I switched to solid

state in my desktop and I would never look back.

I need to look at my laptop, see if I need expansion

ports so I can put a, I have an extra SD, or

solid state hard drive. I want to get a bigger

solid state for my tower because I really love

editing on that, it's really fast. when you have

a solid state. But yeah, they're working to get

this whole standard available by 2020, so we'll

see what happens. I always like to see hard drive

innovation. It kind of makes me happy when I

see stuff like that. And then the other thing

I saw, Business Insider had, and I thought this

was kind of interesting, like I mentioned at

the start of the show, the husband pods. How

many times have you been waiting With your significant

other When they're going into a store that you

don't necessarily want to go shopping at and

they are like I'll be back in like 20 minutes

and it's like 20 30 minutes depending on the

person anywhere from like 10 to 20 minutes 30

minutes, so Ingram has created the ultimate gaming

computer workstation a few of these chairs have

been placed in malls in China marketed as husband

pods and it is literally like a It's almost set

up like a stand with like a scorpion tail that

goes over the top with a triple screen surround

and There's a mouse and a keyboard on a table

that slides in place kind of like a like a doctor's

office tray thing dentist office tray that slides

in front of you and you can sit there and in

game PC and Honestly, I could see myself sitting

there doing that, but it would depend on the

cost and what you get out of it. Honestly, it

wouldn't have been having one of those in my

actual office because then you'd be leaned back

like you're laying down and kind of just chilling,

playing surround sound or surround video, computing.

I could so totally see doing that and getting

a nice space scope for Star Trek Online or playing

BF1. And seeing that so what would you guys think

about that? I honestly would like to see that

and it would of course depend on the the price

tag But yeah, I thought it was kind of interesting

to to tackle at least so Today funny enough Star

Trek is celebrating Star Trek's 50th or 51st

birthday There's on ArtGames .com, which is Star

Trek Online, one of the players, ZeFilms, did

a Ships of the Line video using Star Trek Online

with the classic Enterprise A, C, D, E, Voyager,

DS9, Defiant, the Star Trek Enterprise, Enterprise

NXL11, the Kelvin Enterprise, and then the Enterprise

F from Star Trek Online. It's kind of a cool

video to watch. But I find it funny that now

that Star Trek's coming back into television,

we're almost getting this golden age of sci -fi

TV. And what I mean by that is Star Trek has

a lot of knockoffs again. Because if you think

about it, think back to the 90s. We had Babylon

5, we had Andromeda, we had Stargate, which theoretically

was still going on even now. Among other shows

anyway, and then we had various Star Trek series

like all running concurrently. Well now we have

like, I forget what that Yahoo show was called,

it was like, Yahoo, it was like, it was exclusive

to Yahoo, it was a space, other space, that's

what it was called. And it was kind of a parody

joke type thing, and I thought it was kind of

interesting, although it wasn't that good. I

thought it was kind of interesting. So Yahoo

had that. Black Mirror is doing an episode that's

kind of Star Trek -y. The Orville is a Star Trek

knockoff. People have gotten to review it already

saying that the pilot's uneven but promising

homage to Star Trek itself. I'm more so looking

forward to Orville and that's just because it

looks very Galaxy Quest meets Star Trek, the

original series. I'm very, very excited to see

that. I hope that my excitement doesn't pale

by comparison to what the show is, and I hope

that the jokes are pretty tasteful and that family

guy's stupid. But from what I've read, it doesn't

seem to be. It seems to be a pretty good homage

to Star Trek. So yeah, so let's look at that.

So I'm going to take another quick commercial

break, and we'll be back after this. And we're

back. So I'm going to kind of get ready to close

it out here. I think we've had a pretty successful

episode for the most part. I haven't had any

listener feedback this last week, but yeah, if

you guys would like to comment on the show post

on the website, please do so. You can email us,

feedback at alteredgeek .com. No new iTunes reviews,

although I'd love some. It's been a little while,

been a little while. Of course, get a hold of

us by going, connecting and going, hashtag what's

geeky to you and what you're geeking out to this

week. I always love seeing that on the social

media. So I did do that and Blanchard goes, anything

on Geekcast Radio. I just laughed at him. I'm

like, dude. Seriously. But he's right. Go check

out GeekCast Radio. We've got GCR and Wars going

on right now on the second side of the bracket.

And so I was also talking to Scanner51, a longtime

friend of the show. And so anyways, he says,

not much right now. What's geeky to him? He says,

but soon it'll be filled with DC, Batman, Superman,

and Star Wars DVDs. And figures. And DC posters.

Because he just moved. So congratulations on

that. I always loved moving, saying that facetiously.

I hated moving with a passion. I moved... every

year on the year for a good six, seven years.

And it was annoying. I hated it. I hated it.

With a passion. So, yeah. I can totally understand

his disdain for having to move. I was not a fan

whatsoever. But he says yeah, just moved into

a new house wife and all his stuff He's put all

his stuff in the garage also in boxes. So unboxing

next week gonna put up a small TV, too He says

it's a second house. I'm like I said, I'm sorry

because I was not a fan of Unpacking at the first

house that I have right now. I'm not wanting

a second house Honestly, I'm perfectly I like

this house, but if I was going to move, I'm still

open to moving. It's just not in the cards at

the moment. He shows me a picture and it's pretty

cool. He's got stacks and totes, which is awesome.

of signed comics in the lower part and then signed

figures in the boxes in the top and says People

complain about how much California's hard to

live in says nope learn how to play the game.

You'll win every time And then I told them that

you know, Michigan is Easier to live in because

of the cost of living is lower But it depends

in any state where you live like if you live

in a big metro area, you're gonna pay up the

wazoo of the amount of cost of living, so I just

happen to live in a somewhat stable yet low,

lower, I live close enough to Flint, Michigan

that it's not a big deal, but if I lived any

further than where I live, it would be out of

my price range too, so. But he says, yeah, it's

all about the cost. Friends, move to Arizona,

brag about cost if everything's cheap. They get

paid five bucks less there too, you know, or

then here. in California so yeah it's all relative

it all translates and just you know kind of crazy

so yeah I think I'm gonna cut this episode down

though I think that's about all I'll do some

topics next time I again some of this was just

trying to find material to to converse about

and I think we kind of nailed it pretty well

so Yeah, until next time, get altered, get geeky,

with the Altered Geek! Altered Geek. And you

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