WordPress History, Future Tech, and Comic Book TV News

You're tuned in to Steve Megatron on Altered

Geek. Hello and welcome to Altered Geek, the

show where pop culture and living in the modern

era collide and no topic is considered off -limits.

If it's something you're interested in, then

you're a geek too. I'm your host, Steve Megatron

Phillips, and in this episode, I'll be talking

about some random geekery that's been out on

the internet between some internet history, some

movie news, and some interesting tech that's

out there. So kind of first up is the bit about

WordPress. Since it's 14 years old today, it

was kind of brought to my attention some things

that WordPress did and did not do. Also, it is

older than Twitter and Facebook, and it looks

ridiculous. I don't know if anybody remembers

LiveJournal. But it looks almost in that capacity.

Since the first version was released on May 27,

2003, which I'd never even heard of it until

2008. Maybe I'd heard about it a little bit sooner

than that, but I'm not entirely sure. I didn't

really get into it until I started building in

it. Apparently the name WordPress was suggested.

To a friend of the co -founder, WordPress powers

nearly 27 % of all internet websites, which is

kind of staggering. It's not surprising, but

it's kind of staggering that that much of the

internet is powered by it. And then it shows

by a scale from W3 surveys that Joomla is right

behind it at... 3 .3, Drupal at 2 .2, and then

a bunch of other ones are kind of hiding below

it. But it dominates 76 .4 of the CMS market

share, which, again, surprising. But it is a

pretty easy -to -use, open -source, and free

resource. It's not owned by any company. It doesn't

have a CEO. It powers a lot of multibillion -dollar

companies. A lot of news organizations, too,

because it's just simpler to deal with. Especially

with its 1 .48 billion plugins downloads. That's

insane. Apparently the governments all over the

world use it as well, including schools and small

towns, education. There's more than 50 ,000 free

plugins that are on the WordPress .org. It's

available in many languages, countries. Yeah,

that's kind of crazy. I've been using it since

2008, and honestly, having looked back, it's

a lot easier to deal with than having to custom

build everything. It's quite perhaps made it

a lot easier for me to automate a lot of stuff

that I used to do. by hand. And it took a lot

of time out of me having to mess with a lot of

it between like the RSS feeds, between the having

to place things in a certain way, how to get

certain menus to work. It just took out a lot

of the middle management part of it that I used

to have to do, including posting other people's

content, which was one thing that I never liked

having to do. And I'm sure there were easier

ways of doing it. I just never wanted to try

and figure out how to code it just because it

was too difficult for me. Again, the time consuming.

It's crazy. It's been around for 14 years. I

guess I should have realized that in a sense

because I've been using it since 2008. That's

wild. I remember using a lot of stuff that tied

into vBulletin. or PHP bulletin board. There

were a couple of different, like MK Portal I

used to use, which only made it to like version

1 .1 and then it went defunct. But yeah, that's,

man, those were the days. I don't know if anybody

remembers GeoCities or building with AngelFire,

GeoCities, Homestead. I used to build a lot of

sites and all those different free platforms

before I could actually have a credit card to

buy my own. which back then wasn't diddly squat.

I mean, you were lucky if you got hosting with

15 to 150 megabytes, and now they've got terabytes

of content or gigabytes of content that you can

pay for. It's wild how much technology has changed.

So last week I talked about the digital tombstones,

which I thought were a bit creepy. But I came

across an image of somebody with like their hand

extended and a cell phone kind of spider webbing

itself, attaching at the wrist and the hand while

the hand's grasping it, which I find to be a

bit interesting because of the fact that we've

become such a society that we're tied to these

devices. That if we don't have them near our

hands at all times, we feel a sense of loss or

like part of our body is missing, which has caused

me to want to detox to some degree from technology.

It's kind of really odd that we've gotten so

tied to these. I mean, I remember back in the

day that... We just didn't have this stuff, and

then now it's hard to fathom living without technology,

the Internet, computers, just all these things

that even 20 years ago weren't a big deal. I

mean, they had cell phones. They had pagers.

I mean, that's a bit dated information. I mean,

you've got the power of your computer in your

hand and it's a bit crazy. I mean, that is today's

world. I mean, it's a tool, but still it's one

of those things that we just anymore can't live

without. I mean, you can check your weather,

you've got your map, you've got, you know, you

can check your email, you can do business on

the go. I mean, it's... It's useful. It's very

much a utility anymore. And it's still a necessity,

just like the internet. I wouldn't go as far

as water or food, but it's right up there with

the electrical. I mean, that's very spot on.

So I think I'm going to get into some fun tech

that I came across. And there's... Then a design

on a website. Not sure. I think it was a Kickstarter.

Yeah, it's Kickstarter. Marty McFly's self -drying

jacket from Back to the Future 2. And I kind

of randomly came across this. I knew they were

making like the Air Nikes that are supposed to

like self -lace, which were interesting, but

it was a limited thing. And apparently, I mean,

because they've tried to do the hoverboard and

various aspects of Back to the Future 2, which,

don't get me wrong, is really neat. So they made

this jacket look almost like the one Marty's

wearing in Back to the Future 2. However, the

sleeves don't do that weird extendable thing.

It's designed to look like it, but it still looks

off. The textures aren't there. The arm pieces

aren't. It looks like a cheap version of the

other from the movie. But apparently it's got

wearable tech in it, besides the fact that it's

a self -drying jacket. This new jack also has

adjustable heating and cooling that can give

your body temperature what you want. It also

has a built -in USB port to charge your phone.

So it's apparently got 21 days to go left on

this. It's got 92 backers with $20 ,672 pledged

of the $25 ,000 goal. This is the second version,

it looks like. It's upgraded now with heating

mode, cooling mode, mobile charging, hidden tablet,

and smartphone pockets. I wasn't even aware there

was a first edition of this thing, but it's still

kind of an interesting concept. I was looking

at the video, and it's got a 6000 mAh battery

with USB charging. Stylus pen pocket, retro style

power buttons. The retro style power buttons

are at the bottom by the zipper. One of them

activates the heating pads, the two in the front,

one in the back. There's also exhaust vents and

air amplifiers, which it will blow up the jacket.

Basically, almost like a flotation device or

a life jacket. It almost blows it up like that.

to thicken it up. And I watched the video of

it. It's still pretty wild. But I don't know

if I would actually want to own this thing. It

still seems a bit ridiculous. Not Back to the

Future -ish all the way, but it does seem like

it's trying very hard to be. I don't know. I'll

have to link this because it's quite interesting.

To say the least. And they've got a couple different

colors. They've got this charcoal black, a special

edition, which is supposed to look like the Marty

McFly one, and a metallic silver. But yeah, it

looks like the full -on special edition looks

to be $199. And the other ones are like $189.

And then there's like a $20 discount if you're

an early bird price, like you're getting it while

it's pledged. And you can get the jackets with

no tech in them too, but... Huh. Yeah, that's

interesting. So... And it's even got sizing to

show you how big of a smartphone tablet will

fit into the pockets as well with the... synthetic

jacket. I'll have to check back on this and see

how it turns out when it's all done. I personally

don't get into a lot of these Kickstarters because

one, I don't have the money to go throwing away

into these things. And while I have the nostalgia

for the film, I don't particularly need another

jacket that does all of this. I've got one for

every bit of weather living in Michigan, so there's

that. So Microsoft is apparently going to offer

DNA storage in the cloud by the year 2020, which,

again, is almost disturbing. It kind of reminds

me of the microchip thing in the hand that I

talked about a few weeks back and the digital

tombstone. I wonder why. That's kind of where

I'm at with this. I don't exactly understand

the reasoning behind this. And I'm kind of wondering

what you guys would think about it in the comments

because... They're saying briefly, and this is

on Global Futurist, they're mentioning this,

but it says why it matters is, with the amount

of information on the planet exploding and traditional

storage technologies reaching their theoretical

limits, we need a new way to store the torrents

of data society is creating, and DNA storage

looks increasingly like it's the answer. Microsoft

announced that they're managing to break the

world record and store 200 MB of movies and documents

on strands of DNA. And it says that they're going

to offer the DNA storage as a service as part

of their Azure cloud offering, which is apparently

the world's largest supercomputer. Or they're

attempting to turn Azure into the world's largest

supercomputer. Building the first quantum computer

almost sounds very Star Trek -y in that element.

But, yeah, it's... Apparently Microsoft's ambition

is to do away with all of their tape archiving

systems, which account for hundreds of petabytes

of archived data storage and take up huge amounts

of warehouse -sized floor space. So it makes

sense. It seems like they're using this as an

effort to beat out Samsung, Seagate, and Western

Digital to shrink computer storage and increase

its density. because they're hitting physical

limits, but the DNA, on the other hand, can store

data at incredible densities because it's saying

that it's got the ability to store over 1 ,000

petabytes or a billion gigabytes per cubic millimeter,

which is insane storage space. So they're saying

that it would let us store all the world's movies

in a storage device no bigger than a sugar cube,

and we could store all the world's information

in a shoebox. And that's today where scientists

are only working with DNA that has four bases.

But they're talking about doing six bases, nucleotide

-based DNA, where they're saying that they could

store all of the world's information on a device

no larger than a grain of sand. That's nuts.

That's almost like Star Trek level technology

here. But they're saying the main issue with

the DNA storage is the cost. So they're wondering

if a Columbia University professor wonders if

Microsoft actually solved this problem or not.

But they're saying that it, yeah. They're thinking

that it's going to Transfer data. Now get this,

this is really the kicker here. They're saying

that they estimate the rate of moving data into

the DNA was only 400 bytes per second, which

if it's to become practical, their statement

needs to be at least 100 megabytes per second.

That would take forever to move. That's, yeah,

that's crazy. What are you guys' thoughts on

that, on them doing a DNA digital storage? I

almost thought that they were going to do something

freaky, like they were going to try and archive

people's DNA digitally, which I wouldn't put

it past scientists or the world to try. But again,

there would be no point in it. But if they're

doing this to kind of create a very Star Trek,

computer uh storage system like what they've

got on on uh there's i can't remember the name

of it but they they have a specific name for

it on um star trek uh i think first contact they

say uh i'm trying to think uh i i know that they

they used like the elkers i'm trying to think

of the There's a specific name that they gave

it for their computerized systems on Star Trek.

I don't know. I'm sure I'll find it after I finish

recording the episode, but it's supposed to be

like this liquid kind of system where it pulls

in all the information and it's kind of like

in a fluid memory system. So this kind of is

very much on that. That same frame of mind, as

it were. So on some slightly bad news, there

was a Comic -Con a couple days ago, like a week

ago, somewhere in that range anyway. And it was

in Phoenix Comic -Con. And they had a particular

individual that was armed. And he was arrested

after he entered and threatened to kill officers.

Jason David Frank, oddly enough. What would possess

this person to be nuts? But I guess he referred

to himself as the Punisher. And he was going

to have a showdown with cops and kill them. And

yeah, he had... 45 caliber handguns, combat knife,

pepper spray, throwing stars, shotgun. Oh, I'm

sorry, three 45 caliber handguns, body armor

under his clothes. Yeah, he had a calendar reminder

on his smart phone saying that he was going to

kill Jason David Frank. And he was referring

to himself as the Punisher, which, what is wrong

with people? It just makes me wonder what is

going through people's minds to where they can't

differentiate between reality and fiction. I

always thought it would be cool to be Batman

or Captain Kirk or something when I was younger,

but there's this realization that when you get

older, you're not actually this fictitious character.

Yes, it would be cool to have the costume or

something, but I don't... I don't know what goes

through somebody's mind to be that mentally unstable

to where they want to harm another person, let

alone go to a Comic -Con. And how this dude made

it to the second floor of a Comic -Con and managed

to bypass security to get to that level, and

then only to have his friend actually turn him

in for being a dirtbag. Like, I just... I don't

know. I can't fathom how... How this happened

in the first place. It's ridiculous. But, yeah.

People today, man. This world is so screwed.

So, kind of getting into some movie stuff. They're

ramping up heavily on Star Wars The Last Jedi.

They're showing off pictures of Rey and Luke.

They're showing off pictures of Rey. They're

saying Rey's... That's officially her lightsaber

now, not Anakin's. They've changed the name of

it even in marketing of Lucasfilm. It's totally

not... Totally not... Anakin anymore and it's

totally Rey. all the way um so yeah and they're

they're teasing like everybody's new weapons

and everybody's new new gear and ships and everything

else and finn's gonna have a almost han solo

blaster type of thing which they've teased uh

lego sets are revealing some new uh resistance

bombers first order destroyer first order assault

walker Various things like that. Then it says

Lucasfilm has no plans for episodes. Had no plans

for episode 8 and 9 after The Force Awakens.

It was just something that happened when they

noticed that it was going to work. And then apparently

there's going to be another Star Wars spinoff.

Which will be decided sometime in the next several

days to a month. It's going to be in June anyway.

So, yeah. I think that that's... I'm wondering

if it's going to be the Obi -Wan Kenobi prequel.

Like before A New Hope. Somewhere between 3 and

A New Hope. Because I think that that would be

the ideal. I think that's really the only prequel

that I would actually care about. Like Rogue

One was good. It was ultimately a throwaway because

none of the characters lived. The best part of

it to me was Vader at the end. That was, to me,

the icing on top. It was neat knowing the stuff

of the Death Star, but it didn't matter to me.

But yeah, I'm pretty pumped for that. And then

there's some other stuff. floating around um

such as like the original star wars revenge of

the sith ending had padme founding the rebel

alliance and almost killing anakin which probably

would have been better than that crap ending

that we got um it's yeah it's i'm I can't wait

for the new movie of Star Wars. I'm going to

go see that in theater, but it's a bit insane

and overwhelming to think about all the crazy

stuff. Plus, I'm looking at seeing Luke in action

again, which I cannot wait. So, I will be getting

to the Justice League details in a future episode

when I have Michael Powers on, hopefully. If

not, I'll probably cover it in one of the next...

Two to three episodes. I'm just waiting for more

stuff to drop on it. Before I really. I want

to have more to talk about. When I actually dive

into it. Than. Just saying. Hey. Zack Snyder

steps down from the Justice League movie. Due

to tragedy. And Joss Whedon's finishing. Because

that's really all we're getting. Just in variations.

So. Getting into television. They have several

new comic book shows coming to, or, yeah, in

TV in 2017, 2018. So you get Marvel's The Defenders,

which are all of the Netflix Marvel shows. They're

basically Avengers of lower magnitude. The Gifted,

which is supposed to be on Fox, which is going

to be, in a sense, uh, like an X -Men type of

universe or a, um, somewhere it's, it's hard

to read, but it's going to be something in Marvel's,

uh, cinematic universe. Um, almost, almost X

-Men -y. I'm not quite sure, but it's not something

I'm going to really tune into anyway. Uh, Marvel's

The Inhumans, which again ties in with like Agents

of S .H .I .E .L .D. Then you've got The Punisher

on Netflix, Marvel's The Runaways on Hulu in

2018, Black Lightning on The CW, which is more

interesting to me than anything I've read so

far. Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, again, something

I don't really care. Titans, don't really care,

but it's going to be on DC's new Untitled streaming

service, which I'll check it out on that account

alone, especially if it's going to have Nightwing.

Then there's Marvel's New Warriors. And Krypton.

Which is supposed to come on SyFy. As you can

see, I'm not much of a Marvel fanboy. I'm more

of a DC. So if it's DC related, I'm going to

pan in that direction. I don't really spend much

time watching a lot of that stuff anymore. But

some shows still grab me a little bit. And I'll

check them out for a little while. And then I'll

kind of let them go. Krypton is supposed to be

set two generations before the destruction of

Krypton, and it's going to follow Superman's

grandfather, the House of El, and he's going

to fight to redeem his family's honor and save

his beloved world from chaos. And so it's going

to have Seg El, and then Lita Zod, and Val El,

and... various characters you know zods and l's

and vex and people like that so i'm not exactly

sure what it's going to be about it's apparently

there was a uh a pilot ordered sometime last

year and it's going to be between 10 and 13 episodes

uh the interesting thing about this whole thing

is that there was a trailer leaked uh sometime

in the end of april And it was taken down shortly

thereafter because a network spokesperson saying

that neither SyFy or Warner Brothers intended

for it to be made publicly available. And it

wasn't greenlit at that time, but it's pretty

much greenlit. I think it would be interesting

if I could see the trailer for it to see if it's

even something I would care. But I would have

to get my hands on it, and I don't even know

how that would be possible, especially when there's

really no way to find it anymore, if you catch

my drift with all the copyright claims out there.

So, getting into some of the listener feedback

from the last episode, I... Again, the thing

about some of the shows coming out. And King

of Con says, not really a fall show, I think.

But Black Lightning looks great. Super happy.

It will make up for the loss of Flash during

the summer. So that makes me happy. Which, again,

that's something I'm looking forward to. Just

because it will be an interesting show to tackle.

And being in that universe. Gotham. It's gotten

interesting with everybody getting the basically,

in a sense, hate plague from Transformers is

my only recourse for saying what it is. And they're

like Catwoman's having her evolution, the Riddler,

the Penguin, like everybody's had their evolution.

The only one still yet to go through it is Bruce

Wayne, who's going to be meeting with. Ra's al

Ghul soon. And he wants the Batman costume from

the Court of Owls storyline. If he's going to

play the have the costume picked. That's the

one that he likes the best. David Muzows. I don't

even know if I'm butchering that name or not.

He says he really likes the Ben Affleck Batmobile.

So that would be interesting to see on there.

I doubt we're ever going to see that until a

couple years down the road, him actually wear

the Batsuit. In that case, too, it will be the

pre. I'm having a feeling it's going to be the

one with the gloves, the purple gloves and all

that from the new 52 if we're going to see it,

I think. So yeah, they've already got the Mad

Hatter, they've got Poison Ivy, they've got the

Riddler, they've got the Penguin, they've got

Mr. Freeze, the Court of Owls. I mean, pretty

much every villain is in the show now, other

than having the hero Batman, which they're grooming

him for now. So it should be interesting. And

Supernatural, they did this on all the CW shows.

They pretty much killed off at least one. key

character from every show um or one version of

them and those people will not be returning uh

as either series regulars in the next season

or when in the case of superhero shows they'll

be doing a different order um like supernatural

they killed crowley in the the season finale

and he's he's not returning he's done uh basically

his character sacrificed himself to seal lucifer

on the other side of this alternate dimension

type of thing and uh yeah then they had castiel

get blown away too which he'll he'll be back

and uh yeah so they've managed to kill at least

one character in every show or they haven't shown

who they've they've killed off yet And they're

teasing other stuff pertaining to The Flash.

People are wondering if they're going to have

a city of speedsters in Season 4 and have Barry

Allen be the kind of mentor to them all with

the way the Flash lightning bolts came down in

the season finale of The Flash, which I've really

enjoyed, and I liked how they kind of wrapped

it up. There's not really much else in the TV

world other than the movie world. Apparently

there is a Jetsons movie again. They've been

talking about this on and off again for years.

And they're saying that the movie nabs the Sausage

Party director. Which I'm not thrilled about.

Because I really don't want any of that garbage

in. the Jetsons movie so I'm hoping I'm hoping

that it's not because like sausage party was

rated R I know it's not gonna be like in that

I hope that there's no jokes from it carry over

type of stuff um I didn't even watch it because

it's rated R I just didn't care about it um so

yeah it's it's supposed to get a little Bit of

a new modern take, apparently, like everything

else does. But Warner Brothers has been dying

to adapt the show for the silver screen since

the late 90s when they made their live -action

versions of the Flintstones and then Viva Rock

Vegas. And, yeah, they... They're going to keep

it on the animation track because of the fact

that they can't seem to figure out how to do

a live action one, which I honestly would like

to see them try with today's technology. There's

no reason why they couldn't do it. But I'm wondering

what they're going to do with this. And I hope

that they get some of the returning voice actors

to play the characters instead of getting famous

people to do it. I know that famous people are

the draw for the money in the box office, but

people that remember the Jetsons will actually

go see it. And I've been wanting to see one.

I just don't know if they're going to actually

go for it. Hollywood can be a bit stupid at times.

There's no reason why it's taken them this long

to get another Jetsons in the movie here. But

anyways, that kind of wraps up a lot of the content

I had for this week. I have some topic stuff

planned coming up. I'm just not quite sure what

topics. And I do have my recording with Mike

the Birdman Dodd coming on Friday. This is the

Wednesday edition of the show. The Friday edition

will be a discussion. It will be with Birdman

talking about the state of collecting in modern

day and how it used to be as a kid. So it's going

to be kind of a fun conversation to partake in.

Being that we've all been there to some degree.

I'm going to cut this episode short. I hope you

guys have a great week. I will catch you on the

next episode. And until next time, get altered,

get geeky with the Altered Geeks. And please

leave some iTunes feedback or send an email.

Just get a hold of me and drop some feedback.

Good, bad, otherwise. Questions, suggestions,

always open. So until next time, Steve Megatron

signing out.