The history of beer is almost as old as human history, and it would be quite true to say that our love affair with the stuff has only grown with modern brewing practices. Given beer’s pervasive place in human history, it’s not surprising that the geeky pastimes of drinkers would eventually rub off on the beers themselves. The result is a veritable cornucopia of nerdy beers, from Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and a few others that fit in quite nicely with your nerdy lifestyle. Like Pizza Beer — it’s more efficient than eating both separately! So sit back, crack open a cold one, and enjoy this astounding and some times mouthwatering collection.

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Romulan Ale (1 of 14)

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The world's bluest beer.

Beer Advocate / Image Source

]]> http://www.geekosystem.com/14-geek-beers/feed/ 1 http://www.geekosystem.com/star-trek-enterprise-coffee-table/ http://www.geekosystem.com/star-trek-enterprise-coffee-table/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:46:43 +0000 James Plafke http://www.geekosystem.com/?p=87458

Etsy seller Barry Shields has constructed this tasteful Star Trek Enterprise coffee table and put it up for sale, for the low (high) price of $3,100. The table, constructed in the likeness of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-C, is made from ash, poplar, and cherry wood, and took Shields one month to build. The glass that makes the tabletop was cut to make it look as if the ship is in motion, and the base of table is made to look as if the ship is in orbit over a planet. The table has a poly finish coat for protection, and the glass dimensions measure in at 34" x 54" x 17" tall. The table hasn't sold yet, so get to buying if you're interested, and head on past the break to check out some more pictures taken at different angles.

Etsy seller Barry Shields has constructed this tasteful Star Trek Enterprise coffee table and put it up for sale, for the low (high) price of $3,100. The table, constructed in the likeness of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-C, is made from ash, poplar, and cherry wood, and took Shields one month to build. The glass that makes the tabletop was cut to make it look as if the ship is in motion, and the base of table is made to look as if the ship is in orbit over a planet. The table has a poly finish coat for protection, and the glass dimensions measure in at 34″ x 54″ x 17″ tall. The table hasn’t sold yet, so get to buying if you’re interested, and check out some more pictures taken at different angles below.

Relevant to your interests

• Star Trek Settlers of Catan
• Star Trek’s USS Reliant in LEGO
• Every episode of Star Trek on Netflix

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While the Enterprise is most iconic of the Star Trek vessels, I’ll always have a soft spot for the USS Reliant which appeared in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This amazing LEGO model of the Miranda class starship by Christer Nyberg captures the doomed ship in all its bricky glory. Nyberg writes that the model took him nearly two years to design and build, and used some 10-15 thousand LEGO pieces. It even has some sweet lighting effects.

(Christer Nyberg via Brothers Brick)

Relevant to your interests

• The USS Enterprise, made in Minecraft
• Star Trek meets Settlers of Catan
• Astounding 19 foot-tall Saturn V rocket, made from LEGOs

You love popular board game Settlers of Catan. You’re also an enormous Trekkie. If these two statements are true, it’s very likely that the above image of the forthcoming Star Trek Catan set your heart atwitter. The game is expected to come out in March of this year, but so far seems to only be slated for a German release. However, fans hoping for a complete re-imagining of the game may be left wanting.

From the information available, the game appears to use the familiar concepts of Catan with a Star Trek twist. For instance, it has large and small stations instead of cities and villages, little Constitution class star ships instead of roads, and a Klingon Bird of Prey instead of a thief. The traditional resources of the game have also been Trekified and are Dilithium, Tritanium, food, oxygen and water.

Even the board itself, which is normally divided into hexagonal biomes, has been altered only slightly. The Trek version opts instead for entire planets, which gives the board a rather cramped look. If it were to represent an actual sector of space, it would surely be a night mare of gravity wells and inhospitable worlds from the interactions of planets’ gravity, but that’s almost certainly over thinking it.

There is one new addition to the game. According to Board Game Geek:

The one new element in Star Trek Catan compared to the Settlers version is a set of character cards, each featuring one of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Scott, Uhura, Chekov, Chapel, Rand or Sarek. Each character card has two special powers that the holder can use on his turn, such as a forced trade.

While some are excited about seeing two franchises collide, others are disappointed by the apparent lack of innovation. This prompted Board Game Geek user Gavan Brown to post the following image, which likely sums up the feelings of the die-hard fans.

(Board Game Geek via Topless Robot, Thanks, Susana!)

Relevant to your interests

• Our extensive and exhaustive coverage of Settlers variants
• The oil spill expansion looks like a lot of fun

This handy infographic from Product Development Technologies illustrates all that and fills in the spots in between, when phones weren’t hilariously huge or awesomely futuristic. If you have a phone, you owe it to yourself to know about it’s ancestors and keep their memory alive. Also, knowing what year Barbie got a cellphone might win you a few bucks in a trivia competition or something.

(via ReadWriteWeb)

If you’ve ever wished you could show Spock a little more love at the office, there is a flash drive out there for you. AudioCubes is now offering the IMM Vulcan USB 2GB Flash Drive for $35.99. The flash drive is shaped like a hand demonstrating a traditional Vulcan salute with the palm facing forward, the middle and ring fingers spaced apart, and the thumb extended outward. Perfect for those who want their data to live long and prosper (and really, isn’t that the point?)

(Geekalerts via Technabob)

Thanks to the remixing skills of Dan Bull, Data’s poem “Ode to Spot” from Star Trek: The Next Generation has been transformed into a tight hip-hop track. Yes, it has been done before, but this is the best version yet.

(via Topless Robot | MP3 download link)

There are perils associated with apparently using Google Image Search to get material for your official news broadcast. When a German television news channel, N24, was reporting a story on Navy SEAL Team Six, the unit which spearheaded the operation which ultimately killed Osama bin Laden, the channel accidentally used a fan-made logo for the Maquis, an anti-Cardassian rebel group which originally appeared in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, in place of the SEAL Team Six emblem.

As TrekMovie points out, there are a few differences between the logos: “[The newscaster] didn’t seem to notice (or care) that the skull in question was from a Klingon and included a bolted-on eyepatch. He and N24 also appear undeterred by the emblem’s inclusion of a phaser, 3 Klingon bat’leth swords and the word ‘Maquis.’” He also made on-air comments that acknowledged the Maquis logo and seemed to treat it as the real thing: “And they also have the ‘Team Six,’ that carried out the mission. They don’t have the skull in their emblem for nothing.”

Honest mistake.

(TrekMovie via io9 via Neatorama)

The two-year deal, with an option for two more years, will be the first time that many of the series are available digitally, and commercial free. For fans of the series, it can’t come quickly enough as Netflix has been bereft of all the original Star Trek films for some time.

But careful observers will note that this isn’t actually every series; Star Trek: the Animated Series is nowhere to be seen. You’ll have to go elsewhere to see that.

(Trekmovie via TekGoblin)

Star Trek: The Animated Series, the cartoon that was created to tide fans over from watching Original Series Star Trek until Star Trek: The Motion Picture could be brought to theaters, is now being offered up for instant streaming from Star Trek.com, completely and utterly free.

Which is good, because this stricken-from-continuity, barely animated, too-poor-to-hire-Chekov show, is probably best enjoyed when you didn’t have to pay for it.

But oh, are there things to enjoy.  Here are some brief selections from a google image search for “star trek the animated series.”

There was a lot of fan art of this lady:

I hereby dub this the Kirk of Disapproval.

Hey, it’s the Beast With A Billion Backs!

…CRINGER?!

All 22 half hour episodes of the series, which was animated by Filmation and voiced by all the original cast members (except for Walter Koenig), can be watched here, at Star Trek.com.

(via Blastr.)

Skyward Sword getting “finishing touches” before release (Destructoid)

Welcome to ChatotRoulette! (Dueling Analogs)

Gene Roddenberry’s original pitch for Star Trek (PDF) (Lee Thomson)

Rock Band can actually teach you how to play actual drums (Destructoid)

The Japanese Spider-Man is exactly as intense as you’d expect (YouTube)

How to make 6 different Rube Goldberg machines (Geeks Are Sexy)

Muppets made out of balloons! (Black Cat Balloon Company on Flickr)

(Pic via Cake Wrecks)

I think this clearly opens up the possibility of a Mr. Potato Head-centered Toy Story spinoff, and that’s either wonderful or terrible.

Set to be released at this year’s Toy Fair, a new line of Star Trek-themed Mr. Potato Heads will include not only the highly accurate representation of Captain James T. Kirk and the Klingon Kor (pictured above), but also Lt. Uhura and Mr. Spock. It does not say if Kirk and Spock come with moustaches for their evil counterparts, but surely you still have your old Mr. Potato Head moustache. Somewhere. Surely, you must have known this would happen someday, Star Trek Potato Heads.

Also set for release: The Wizard of Oz and Three Stooges Potato Heads! Am I the only one thinking about making the Stooges the characters from The Wizard of Oz in a grand Potato Head full-length stop motion animated feature now that I’ve received this information? Yes? Okay.

(ToyXplosion via Blastr)

(pic via The Fallen Blue)

The world of bad cake decorating doesn’t usually overlap much with the world of geekdom.  So why do we keep a close eye on watch Cake Wrecks, the badly decorated cake blog?  Because every Sunday they showcase a bunch of really well decorated cakes, and frequently this is where the couple behind Cake Wrecks let their readers in on a little secret: they’re big geeks too.

This week they’re showcasing a bunch of television inspired cakes, and we’ve highlighted three more of our favorites below.

Here’s a small edible Stargate,

Buffy (Even featuring Mutant Enemy zombie)

and finally an adorable tribute to Amok Time, the episode that solidified my utterly teenage-fan-girl love for Mr. Spock.

For more, including Kermit, Alf, and Spongebob, and information on how to find the decorators behind the cakes, check out the full Sunday Sweets post at Cake Wrecks.

What happens when you mashup a vintage educational film and a classic episode of Star Trek? Genius. Happiness. Pure joy. A mashup that’s definitely worth your time. File this under “Things I Really Want to Become a Thing.”

(via Miss Cellania via Bits and Pieces)

It’s a Christmas miracle! “A Klingon Christmas Carol,” a live production of the classic Charles Dickens tale performed entirely in Klingon, has made it to Chicago!

In a March post, we covered the fundraising efforts by Minnesota-based theatre troupe Commedia Beauregard to bring its tlhIngan Hol production, “A Klingon Christmas Carol,” to Chicago in time for Christmas. While it looks like their Kickstarter campaign came up a little short, they clearly found the funds and support to achieve their goals.

Performed in “the Original Klingon,” the story revolved around SCuja (Scrooge) who is visited by the requisite three spirits who help him realize that he is, indeed, a worthy Klingon warrior. Tiny Tim is portrayed as a puppet, and since the Klingons have “killed their gods,” according to creator Christopher Kidder, spirituality doesn’t play quite as large a role as in the traditional telling.

The Trekkie involvement goes as far as the creator of the Original Klingon, Marc Okrand, as well as the input of hardcore Klingon linguists and IKV RakeHell of the Klingon Assault Group. It is said to resemble a combination of “Victorian England and a Marilyn Manson video,” and, apparently, “makes no sense as a play.” But when you have the spirit of a dedicated theatre troupe plus all those devoted Trekkies, does it have to? Of course not. It’s Christmas, it’s Klingon, it’s more than likely a blast.

(via Cinema Blend.)

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Beautiful Alternate Thor Poster (Blastr)

(pic by Demiurgic, via Kotaku.)

Star Trek Online has announced a very intriguing contest: starting on December 9th, they’re going to start taking design submissions on the next version of the Enterprise.  One lucky winner will have their idea made into an actual in-game ship.  What’s most intriguing is the implication that this will make their design canonical.

Cryptic‘s announcement states that they are working with CBS to offer the contest, which begs the question: is the new design going to be used in a future Star Trek movie?

Winners will receive a gamut of prizes running from an Alienware laptop to a simple copy of Star Trek Online, kind of making the contest of more interest to non-players than players.  The question of canon will likely not be answered any time soon, as Nerdvana says:

They can say the fan creation will be canon all they want, but that doesn’t mean mainstream Trekkers will accept it as such.

So go forth, doodler, artist, and engineer Trekkies!  We just have one reminder, best put by a STO forum poster:

“Everyone repeat after me: “BATHROOMS”.

(via Nerdvana.)

The above GIF of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Captain William T. Riker have been making their way around Tumblr lately. Among TNG fans, the inexplicable emergence of Riker’s beard in Season Two of the series actually marked a pivotal moment in its history: An Urban Dictionary entry with 125 upvotes and 3 downvotes defines a Riker’s beard as “The opposite of jump the shark, i.e. when a TV show goes from unspectacular/boring/outlandish to completely awesome. It references Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was unspectacular until season 2, when Commander Riker grew a beard. The show kicked ass from then on.” (Another UD entry defines Riker Syndrome as when a person “only looks good with a beard.”)

The full story behind the iconic beard, which basically stemmed from TNG star Jonathan Frakes deciding he didn’t feel like shaving anymore:

Sometime between 2364 and 2365, Riker grew a beard because he was tired of people always telling him how young he looked. (TNG: “The Child”, “The Pegasus”) He also felt the beard was a proud, ancient tradition and a symbol of strength. However, he did not see it as an affectation and would not be opposed to shaving it; he had just gotten used to it. (TNG: “The Quality of Life”) He briefly shaved it in 2375 after he resumed his relationship with Deanna Troi. (Star Trek: Insurrection)

Jonathan Frakes grew the beard during the hiatus before TNG‘s second season as he dislikes shaving. He returned to rehearsal before shaving it. The producers liked the change and asked him to keep the beard, although a fictional reason was not given until five years later.

(via Duned)

While we don’t doubt his mastery of the storytelling arts, we’re not sure how helpful LeVar Burton would be at a shuttle launch.

Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge, on the other hand…

He encountered at least three serious coolant leaks in his career, successfully handling one caused by collision with a quantum filament and one that happened during an alternate timeline battle with Klingons.  However, on his watch a coolant leak sustained after the USS Enterprise-D’s shield modulations were betrayed to enemies through surveillance of his own VISOR did lead to a full blown warp core breach, destroying the ship.

For the above paragraph we are deeply indebted to the Star Trek Memory Alpha page on, we shit you not, Leaks.

(via Urlesque.)

Obama will appear in an episode exploring the ancient Greek myth that scientist Archimedes was able to set invading Roman ships on fire using reflected, focused light.
From the White House official release:

“Did Greek scientist and polymath Archimedes set fire to an invading Roman fleet using only mirrors and the reflected rays of the sun?” a press release for the show asks. “Will Adam and Jamie be able to pull this off, or will they have to report back to the president that they failed?”

Note that the MythBusters have already gone over the myth of the Archimedes death ray twice — once in 2004, and again in 2006. They were only able to achieve temperatures of 280 degrees, not enough to burn any ship; Jamie even stood in the concentrated beam at one point, and he’s still with us today. It’s doubtful that they’ll undebunk one of the world’s oldest scientific myths, but we hope there’ll at least be cool demonstrations and a Presidential one-liner or two.

(via NYT, Deadline)

This is presently at the top of Reddit, so apologies if you’ve already seen it, but it’s incredible enough to be worth the reshare: YouTube’s halnicholas has used the wondrous sandbox of Minecraft to create a 1:1 scale model of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Enterprise-D. Keeping in mind that every block in Minecraft has dimensions of 1m^3:

The original Enterprise is 642.5 Meters x 467.0 Meters x 137.5 Meters. This is about 3m per deck. Sadly, with the 1m deck you have to walk on, that only leaves 2m left over for hallway space. As your character is only 1.7m tall, you will be bumping your head around a lot. I decided to make the ship 22% bigger, so I could have 4 m per deck. That puts the final size @ 785m x 570m x 168m. I made my “pit” 800x600x180 to fit all 42 decks and almost made a critical error. Even though there are 42 decks on the enterprise, the 2nd deck is split into two half-decks, making actually 43. I made the pit bigger than she ship so I could have a little wiggle room and just missed making it too shallow. In my testing, the halls can get a little cramped. The current decks are just a guideline and framework. They don’t call it “Creative Mode” for nothing.

The halls are going to be sand-obsidian-sand (To give that light brown look with the black touch panel in the center) I’d show a demo, but Minecraft is down. I would like to mod my server so that sand doesn’t fall. That would bee cool. I also don’t know how to fly yet, will be making it much easier to work on the ship.

There’s still work to be done, though: For one, this ship wouldn’t fit in Minecraft Alpha (!) and is currently hosted on a creative server, so Alpha would have to up its maximum game depth to allow it into the wild; for another, halnicholas needs to “model and import the warp nacelles, just so I have the framework there” and cut out some of the Adminium [bedrock]. Last but not least: An anti-griefing policy to keep this remarkable work from turning into rubble.

See also: 21 amazing Minecraft creations.

(via Reddit; h/t RPS)

As geeks who occasionally have to function in non-geeky parts of the world, we are always on the look out for items that function in both places.  Things that let us preserve our secret identity while at the same time telegraphing what’s really going on to anyone in the know.  This hoodie is right in that niche.  For when it’s zipped up, it seems fairly normal.

But if you adjust it just a bit:

We find it fascinating.

(Threadless via Fashionably Geek.)

Excellent video illustrating the evolution of the Star Trek warp jump as seen in every Star Trek movie since 1979 via Gizmodo. For my money, the coolest is the jump from KHAAAAN! Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), depicted above.

See also: This Star Trek warp speed calculation chart.

(via Gizmodo)

Story time!  The best Renaissance fair costumes I’ve ever heard of was a bunch of people who showed up to a Ren fair dressed as an away team from Star Trek.  According to the person who told me this, the fair’s performers played right along with the Federation crew members fervently trying to adhere to the Prime Directive.

Thank you for participating in this particular story time.  Click below to watch How It Should Have Ended‘s take on the 2009 Star Trek movie.

(via Geeks Are Sexy.)

Valve’s Free Game Releases Tomorrow (Joystiq)

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Mega Man Universe Stop-Motion Trailer (That Videogame Blog)

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Bluewater’s Next Bio Comic is Justin Bieber (Comic Book Resources)

Star Trek Saves Lives (Geeks Are Sexy)

The NYT Talks About Memes (The New York Times)

New Wonder Woman Meets Tim Gunn’s Approval (Newsarama)

Goodbye HDMI? (Digital Trends)

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Author Accidentally Gets 700,000 Facebook Fans (Urlesque)

Lt. Cdr. Worf as You’ve Never Seen Him Before (Joshua Flynn)

Turns Out You Also Wouldn’t Like Him When He’s Drunk (Twitter)

Steampunk Ghostbusters. That Is All. (LeagueOfSTEAM)

(image via Super Punch.)

It was revealed yesterday in the New York Times, and now we’ve gotten the official word from The Source: Wonder Woman #600 releases today, with a new costume and a new backstory.

Well, it’s a new backstory in the same sense that Star Trek was a restart.  Literally.

The Gods, for reasons of their own but which may have something to with their survival and perhaps the survival of Earth itself, have changed the timeline. In the new timeline, years ago the Gods removed their protection from Paradise Island, and left it vulnerable to attack. And attacked it was. Led by a dark figure, a veritable army descended upon the Island, equipped with weapons that could kill even the Amazons. Outgunned, doomed, Hippolyta gave over her three-year-old daughter to a handful of guardians who spirited her away as Hippolyta led one last desperate battle against the forces that had come to destroy all she had created. In that final battle, she and most of the Amazons were killed, though some managed to escape.

Because Superman‘s origin was just so awesome we decided to give it to Wonder Woman too.  Also, can we just stop saying “the Gods” or “the Spectre” or “Superboy punching the space time continuum” and say the writers instead?

Here’s the new costume in full:

Wait.  Is that… nail polish?

NO.  Focus.

We asked our sib blog Styleite to lend us their expertise, since this is one of the few areas where we overlap, and it’s so important to keep up those family ties, you know? Ruthie Friedlander, senior editor of Styelite, had this to say:

Well, it’s always really difficult to redesign an iconic outfit — be it Wonder Woman’s costume or a classic Chanel tweed suit.  I’m all for modernizing a classic, but putting a great and powerful woman in American Apparel leggings and a cheap looking bustier seems frankly unoriginal.

I, too, am skeptical of drastic remakes like this, since there is a reason the classic looks stick around so long, but over all… I don’t hate it.  It appears much more armored, although you probably shouldn’t be able to roll up the sleeves of your armored jacket, but how else would we ever see your gauntlets.  It covers a lot more skin, though your presumably bulletproof chestpiece should probably, you know, cover your chest and heart, but I guess the gauntlets may also be the answer to this one.  Speaking of which, you should take note of the W’s on her gauntlets, because, in defiance of all that is Mythbusters, they leave their marks on peoples faces.

Says Friedlander, with intentional pun:

The clothes alone should leave their mark — there shouldn’t have to be some sort of branding mechanism.

My tastes run towards a more regal Wonder Woman, but frankly the new origin story bothers me much more.  Setting aside its unoriginality, this movement away from the pacifist ambassador to a war-torn world and towards an urban commando is pretty jarring.  I feel like there are already plenty of urban commandos in the DC universe.  In every comic book universe, actually.  But we don’t have a lot of regal diplomats from a utopian island who live and breath Greek mythology.

I’m not too outraged, because I’m pretty confident that the changes won’t stick around too long.  The story of in the first arc seems to be Wonder Woman trying to figure out why the gods changed her history (that she doesn’t remember) and how to or whether to turn it back.  But I’m disappointed, because it feels a lot like this new, more action-y, Wonder Woman is a move towards a more male oriented Wonder Woman, which is understandable, but too bad.  Jim Lee, DC co-publisher and the designer behind the new costume, told the New York Times:

Wonder Woman is a strong, dynamic, vibrant character who should be selling in the top 20, and I’m going to do all I can to get her there.

As long as Wonder Woman comics are written for women they are not going to make it to the top 20.  There just aren’t enough women reading American super-hero comics to support a book at that level.  So the choices are: make the book historically incredible so that it appeals to all, which is, of course, difficult (for those of us who can’t make a book historic by repeating, against all evidence, that the book is totally historic you guys); or orient it towards the majority of your audience instead.

Will this female reader of American superhero comics pick up a copy of Wonder Woman #600 tonight?  Probably not.  I’m going to wait and see if it reviews well, and then maybe I’ll pick up the trade later. If I remember.  It’s really too bad.