I was surfing around a little bit yesterday and I came across a web site with plot synopses for every single episode of Star Trek: Voyager. Now, I was never a particularly big fan of Voyager -- I always considered it to be a rip-off of Gilligan's Island. Still, I retain some ancestral Star Trek Impulse, an impulse that was implanted in me by my parents. As I write this early on a Sunday morning, I can remember Sunday mornings many years ago, when we would sit around and watch episodes of the original series on CBC, and my parents, who have seen every episode three times over would say, "never seen this one before -- must be new".

I stopped watching Voyager years ago, and when I discovered the site, the Star Trek Impulse compelled me to fill in my missing knowledge of that universe. And what a perfect opportunity! Here were one-paragraph plot summaries of every episode. In less time than it would take to watch an episode on TV, I absorbed the whole series, right up to the idiotic finale. The level of detail of the individual synopses was just right, the when strung together they made for a more interesting story than any one episode.

Mind you, most of them didn't describe the dramatic way the crew resolve that week's difficulties. But I didn't care; I know that somehow, they figured something out. The actual solution is usually a disappointment anyway. It did make for entertaining reading though, plot summaries that end with "... and the Voyager and all her crew and destroyed." Presumably a plot twist follows.

I must have been in an inventive mood this week. At random times, I came up with ideas for two bold new inventions for the home, inventions that will radically transform our domestic lives. Read on, and remember that you heard it here first. If someone out there wants to file for patents on these, please include my name. Thanks.

The heated butter knife

When you make toast, you often pull the butter out of the fridge at the last moment. The butter is hard, and the residual heat emanating from the toast isn't always enough to soften it. With delicate, thinly sliced bread, you can often end up tearing the slice to bits in an attempt to spread the butter. In any case, the butter ends up in clumps, distributed unevenly across the surface of the bread.
 
I propose a heated butter knife. The handle hides a small battery that is used to heat up the blade via embedded heating coils. The knife could then melt the pat of butter as it is applied to the toast, resulting in a smooth, creamy buttered toast experience.

 

The chocolate olive

Not too long ago, Nath was introduced to the vanilla vodka martini, made with Stoli Vanil and Creme de Cacao. Now with an ordinary martini, the finishing touch is the olive. What shall we do for the vanilla martini? I believe that some put chocolate shavings on top of the drink. But obviously, what is needed is a chocolate olive, an olive-shaped hunk of dark chocolate with a white chocolate piece in one end to simulate the pimento. It would complete the drink both in taste and in spirit (pardon the pun).

Don't worry. If I had a day job, I wouldn't quit it.

Seven years ago today, Nath and I declared that we were together. Today, we're celebrating the anniversary of a relationship that is still going strong and getting stronger.

I'm not sure exactly what to say here, how to avoid either too much or too little sentimentality. Perhaps I can be indulged a bit after seven years? Nath and I have been a team for a long time and it's going to stay that way. I would say that we've made the transition to our adult lives together (well, the closest approximation to 'adult' that I can muster anyway). I understand Nath (usually), and through her myself. And our future is filled with nothing but brightness and promise. So happy nitrogen anniversary to my true love.

I suppose I should say something about Douglas Adams, dead from a heart attack last week at 49.

When I was but a young, budding computer geek, an older, wiser computer geek named Doug from my father's office placed a slightly worn copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in my hand. I can't remember exactly how things might have proceeded from there. By looking up publication dates and guessing the time period when I might have been hanging around my father's office, I would say this event took place when I was around ten years old. I'm pretty sure I read the book then, though I may have simply remembered the title and found a newer copy of the book later.

Needless to say, the book had a profound impact upon my life, outlook and sense of humour. I went on to read just about everything written by Douglas Adams, though I'm sorry to say that I never read Last Chance to See..., a birthday present from my brother some years back, which I have since misplaced -- sorry!

I re-read HHGG last week, and found it both amusing and highly nostalgic. Was it funny? Yes and no. When I now read the funny bits in his books, the jokes travel down a deep cognitive groove, a neural highway of well-worn paths. These are jokes I have read and re-read, recited, quoted and mused over for almost twenty years. I found that I had to settle for more of a knowing smile than a big belly laugh. Which is presumably a right we earn regarding the classics of our youths.

It's time once again to test the usefulness of thingo in my life. That's right, I'm writing another paper. Although bits and pieces of this paper-to-be have been floating around in my head for a while, it's only today, after dealing with a hundred lesser duties over the past few weeks, that I have really begun to collect my thoughts and emit them as text.

One of thingo's primary functions is to keep the writing machinery well-greased for research papers. Of course, the extent to which it fulfills this function is predicated upon a certain measure of discipline on my part. When I let the frequency of new entries drop below a threshold, I lose my momentum and have to start from scratch. I'm currently stuck at about one entry every five days, which is too low to maintain any level of writing quality and downright uncommunicative in any case.

Now in my defense, I've said several times that the drop off in entries is probably a good thing; it betokens steady progress in my research, which I am loath to interrupt. And it's true -- I have gotten a lot done in the past few weeks. But as a consequence my writing abilities have suffered and I need to rebuild them. I'm hoping to bring the pace of thingo back up a couple of notches as I start writing this paper. I tend to need more frequent breaks when writing, and with luck I'll spend some of them here.

As an historical note, I was writing entries steadily in the period before my last paper. Although I complained at the time about the writing being difficult, in hindsight it was a positive experience. The draft I submitted required almost no editing to bring it to its final form. That certainly hasn't been the case with any previous papers.

I've never been very good at starting these papers. I'm much better at editing my first draft, no matter how awful the draft or how far it is from the final incarnation of the paper. Perhaps I should start with someone else's paper as my first draft, or even ten pages of random words. More likely is that I just need to sit down, start writing, write, and finish writing. Not necessarily in that order.

It appears that my hosts' web server was down almost all day, which explains why you weren't able to access the Stale News. Everything seems to be working once again. And yet, as a reward for your constant dilligence in checking the site for updates, you are offered nothing more than this perfunctory message. Please, as they say, stand, to coin a phrase, by.

Yesterday, someone sent me an email asking me to please send them my email address. Excuse me?

This takes me all the way back to sixth grade. I was in French immersion classes back then, and so it was a common occurence for the lot of us to be grasping for French words in class. When intellect failed, we would resort to asking the teacher "comment est-ce-que tu dis", meaning "how do you say", followed by the English word we were interested in translating. That French looks downright wrong; feel free to correct me.

Asking for a word became so commonplace in my class that the question itself became a fast, stylized "commenskudee". Of course, when all the meaning leeches out of the request, it can turn around and bite you from time to time. Indeed, the reason this memory was sparked from receiving that inane email yesterday is because of the time Ruth asked "comment est-ce-que tu dis 'how'"? It would not surprise me one bit if the Mme. Fournier had then called her an "espèce de macaque plumé" under her breath. Those were the days.

Yesterday, we went to a party celebrating Cinco de Mayo. The party was held at the house of some friends who live two doors down from us. Also present at the party were friends of theirs who live on the floor below them, and another friend from across the street.

When you add all these people together, you get something very unusual: neighbours. This is something that I have always wanted to experience, but that has eluded me for more than ten years. Not since I was wee and living on Canterbury Place have I been this friendly with my neighbours. Maybe it's because I spent all of college moving every four months that I never got to know the folks living on my street. More likely it was the lack of an appropriate social context in which to get to know them. In this case, Nath works with one of the hosts of the party. It's only by chance that she lives on our street.

Sometimes I feel as if modern big city life tries to squash serendipitous social interaction. You conduct little formalized transactions with the automata around you and work to maintain a widespread network of meaningful friends scattered around the city and country. Of course, I'm a participant in this environment, and this feeling is probably in part a projection of my own failure to create neighbours out of strangers. But cities are just so big and full of people competing for resources that it's ludicrous to try to gather your friends around you in one community. Pity.

It's like that old song -- "If you can't be with the one you love, then love the one you're with". Until I can create the gated community of Thingo Heights and stock it with my family and close friends, I'll count my blessings when I manage to discover new friends in the anonymous buildings around me.