From the Seattle PI:
NASA releases new ‘head-scratcher’ images of Pluto

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William Shatner made an incredible mosaic of selfies in tribute to Leonard Nimoy

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reminds me of this Far Side classic (although that joke is in reverse)…

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only about another month until the 2015 NW Pinball and Arcade show on the weekend of June 5-7! Apparently this bad boy will be making its debut there….very, very cool!

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Thanks to Ed Fries, I got to play a real Computer Space tonight! Ed bought a Time2000 backbox from me (backbox for a vintage Atari pinball that I had around, it had been intended for a wall decoration for a gameroom that is likely to never get built out in that way, so decided to sell the BB. Ed bought my Atari Space Riders pinball some time ago). So I took the BB out to his house tonight, and in the arcade he recently built near his house in a separate building – lo and behold, a 1971 Computer Space resides.

Here’s the story of his Computer Space. And here’s some history links on the game itself:

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7381 – KLOV
http://www.pinrepair.com/arcade/cspace.htm – Pinrepair.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Space – Wikipedia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nhdu2Jh9cuc – The Dot Eaters (video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esp24NI9ixs – Computer Space making a cameo in the early 70s dystopian Soylent Green

I got to play one of these a few years ago at California Extreme, along with another extremely early Atari game – Space Race – but i honestly don’t remember the gameplay. It was very cool to *attempt* to play this – the controls look at first glance similar to the much later Asteroids (button to thrust, button to fire, two buttons to rotate the ship left and right) but the layout is effectively a mirror image of Asteroids, so hard to figure it out without practice.

One of the things I really like about this game – besides its age and heritage from the dawn of videogames – is simply that it represents a dream. When you look at that wild fiberglass cabinet, you know someone was thinking of science fiction when they designed it. They were thinking of inspiration and imagination, dreams of spaceships and exploration that wasn’t far removed from the Apollo 11 landing only a few years before – dreams that we still have in other forms, but to me, not quite the same, perhaps even a bit more cynical these days.

But when Computer Space came out, it was still at the dawn of solid state hitting both US industry far more broadly as well as the nascent consumer market not long after. For two kids at the local Sunshine Pizza Exchange in Oregon (and the far bigger, always extremely fun arcade down at Seaside, OR) the question was always “Can I have a quarter?” and “can I have another?”….

Thanks, Ed.

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Leonard Nimoy, Spock of ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 83

Spock wasn’t always my favorite character on ST, but he’s certainly among the most if not THE most interesting. And like Shatner, Nimoy wasn’t above making fun of himself despite the somber nature of his most famous character.

Unto the Great Beyond – farewell.

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Other voices:
What Spock meant to an Indo-American girl (link incl. several related stories and tweets from other ST actors)
Buzz Aldrin: Leonard Nimoy, my fellow space traveler

time to sing the Doom song!

It’s official: Oni Press is partnering with jhonenv and nickelodeon for an original Invader Zim comic, arriving this July!

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Got to go to the third day of the Science Fiction Fantasy and Short Film Festival put on by SIFF every year about this time – very cool! The first bunch were the ‘encore’ best of sci-fi shorts from Saturday (Fri night shows horror shorts); then the second session was ‘best of from the past ten years of the festival, including the winner from the very first one (‘They’re made out of meat‘ – pretty weird).

One of my favorites, ‘The Kirkie’ is linked below but i wasn’t able to find it online. Some other good ones are below the pic – click through and enjoy!

time travel lover

time freak (may work, may not)

decapoda shock – may work, may not

RPG OKC

wanderers – carl sagan narration