So Captain Kirk is going into actual space... What a time to be alive.

My latest render… background painted by me in photoshop, ship from vanishingpoint.biz, postwork in photoshop.

I remember my dad absolutely loving Star Trek. I grew up hating it. This was back when television was so analog you had a small handful of channels and if there was breaking news or the President wanted to address the nation you literally had no other options. My brother and I were the remote control and if you wanted your brother to leave your channel the hell alone you simply pulled the knob off the tv set. (didn't work since a pair of pliers also worked)

Captain Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Lieutenant Uhura, et al were a staple in our house. I grew up during the syndication so it always seemed to be on. When the first movie came out in 1979 we, of course, saw it in the theater. I barely paid attention and in fact the most remarkable thing about seeing that movie for me was the horrific previews for The Shining. Omg... that was nightmare inducing and disturbing.

Dad loved Scifi though and when Star Wars came out and he wanted to see it we balked. Omg! Not another space movie! We wanted a Disney movie! (Ironic, eh?)

Fast forward a bit and it turned out Dad wasn't quite so wrong. Star Trek was f'ing fantastic! Lieutenant Uhura was a role model, Captain Kirk was... well.... Kirk and I began to realize that when your genre is scifi there is literally no limit to what stories you can tell. Hell, you can defy the laws of gravity if your story calls for it! How cool is that?

Reality has made leaps and bounds since the 70's. I remember doing the math on how old I would be if I made it to the year 2000. I was too young to see the USA set foot on the moon first, I watched the Challenger disaster in high school, and I've seen and heard the landscape of Mars from the Mars Rover. I've watched the photos of our universe get better with technology to the point where it almost feels like you're out there. And now... my artwork is dominated by scifi. (look at my gallery) My favorite fandom is Joe Mallozzi's Stargate Atlantis My writing attempts are Stargate Atlantis fan fiction. I absolutely love science fiction. Who knew?

So yeah, the man... the show that was the beginning of my love of scifi... going into actual space is pretty amazing. I plan to make sure my dad (who is the same age as William Shatner) is watching. (psst.... don't wear the red shirt Bill!)

"You know the greatest danger facing us is ourselves, an irrational fear of the unknown. But there's no such thing as the unknown — only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood." - Captain James T. Kirk

Drawing of my daughter by an artist at the old Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton just before it closed.

Deep Space Contemplation

15 hours of rendering and then a bit of postwork in photoshop. I love this new character but I have to say, the Daz PA who created it needs someone else to put his final product together. There's very little help with regard to which textures belong to which geo shell and his thumbnails are no help. One texture even tried to pull from a file that only exists if you have one of his other characters. I had to create that file folder and copy everything over to it just to get it to work. Very, very sloppy. He creates great scifi characters and I'll probably purchase again but Daz is just as sloppy considering they've received complaints about him and all they do is shrug it off and say that he doesn't respond. Daz needs to implement a bit more quality control.

It's finally beginning to feel like summer is ending. Layers are definitely needed up here with mornings and evenings dropping down to the 40's and the middle of the day reaching up to the high 70's. My arthritis is definitely feeling it. I woke up yesterday to pain in my knee (the new one), my right hip and my hand. Last winter was difficult so I'm not looking forward to this one. We're putting in a little putting green next weekend... sadly just in time for colder weather since the caldor fire interrupted our attempt to install it in August.