Saw this over on Wired and loved it.  It’s a short film by Bruce Branit.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I bought a Star Trek Voyager Season1-7 set off Amazon a few weeks back after wrapping up all my episodes of Enterprise.  I’ve been chomping at the bit for some sci-fi and it took me awhile to decide whether I was going to take the plunge on Voyager or go for Babylon5 instead.  

I thought I’d save some money off the exhorbantly priced DVD set by ordering one of the less expensive copies from an Amazon Marketplace seller.  It was $80 cheaper than the ‘full price’ set, so it was a good deal.  But not ‘too good’ of a deal that I had to worry about it.  Guess I was wrong.

So here are some pictures of what showed up.  There are 6 more sets pretty much exactly like this, shrink wrapped and packed loose into a shipping box.  The packaging is fairly convincing, until you start looking closely.

The other two DVD sets that I had purchased through Amazon (DS9 and Enterprise) both came with the season boxes wrapped together, with a cardboard base.  The fact that the individual seasons were physically seperated was a surprise.  The boxes looked pretty legitimate, but when I opened the first season at work, what I found was a dvd set that was packaged like a piece of $20 software.  I know Paramount hasn’t won any fans with their packaging, but this was good step down from what I was used to so far.  Inside the brown cardboard was a plastic cd ‘folio’ like what MSDN disks used to come in.  Inside that were the disks, and they were out of order.  The left side of the thin plastic ‘disc book’ was all crumpled up from being held in a space where it couldn’t lie flat.  The inset inside the cardboard holder was only wide enough for the disks.

There was no booklet or episode list, which was what really got my suspicion going.

After installing some video codecs and media player classic on my work computer, I loaded up the first disc and the intro screen looked correct compared to stills of voyager.  Disc 5 seemed to have special features on it, so that all checked out.  I mentioned my suspicion to my coworker Armrha, and he noticed that the interior ring of the DVDs indicated that they were pressed just for Star Trek Voyager and were not just burned by a computer.

So then I started checking the ISBN number on the back, and doing some reading.

Here’s what the DVD packaging looks like on Memory Alpha: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/VOY_Season_1_DVD

Region 1 is ‘US’, Region 2 is Europe, UK and the Middle East.  You’ll notice the texture on the case is all wrong, and the front is missing those weird circle things that look like reflective plastic.  That’s because the Voyager DVD Season1 case is supposted to be a plastic slip cover with a orange jewel case inside it, not a glossy paper box.

Here’s a bunch of pictures what it’s supposted to look like: http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=239

If your voyager DVDs don’t look like this, you are either a european, or they’re a bootleg.

Really guys, is it that hard?

Why does my disk 5 say ‘A-0026′ on the bottom?   It’s also missing the episode listing on each disk in a horrible swirling pattern that is completely unreadable.

Here’s what else I’ve learned.  There are no Paramount licensed “import editions” of Star Trek Voyager.  DVDs are supposedly not issued ISBN numbers if they are an entertainment product, however the DVD card for the trekcore gallery above shows some for each season.

The back of the season1 package I recieved says ISBN 0-1832-1623-1   The sham season2 is labelled 0-1832-1623-2, and so on, with the number incrementing by one with each season.  You’ll notice in the pictures above the second number in a 12 digit UPC code format.  It’s almost the same as the ISBN, but they added an extra 1 in the middle: 0-18321-16231-4

The proper version of Star Trek Voyager, Season1 is ISBN 0-7921-7747-9, UPC (actually it’s a UCC-12) 0-9736-15683-48.  If you do some UPC code searching you’ll notice that the first set of UPC numbers on a lot of Paramount products start with 0-973.  This is because they are typically issued in blocks to a publisher.  Compare the search results for the valid product code with the fake upc code.  You’ll notice that the real code comes up in a lot of product results and the fake one comes up only on a few reskins of a single  ’barcodepedia’ website.

In summary, it really looks like bootlegging is pretty rampant out there if you just scratch the surface.  All of the customer upload pictures in the Amazon.com gallery for the complete seasons 1-7 voyager are bootlegs.  Anything from the chosen collection are also blatent bootlegs.    Apparently Amazon also allows Amazon Marketplace sellers to create their own product pages for new products, and these are supposedly rife with bootlegs.  I notice my seller is now selling a handful of used books and a ‘used’ copy of the ‘import’ version of Star Trek Voyager, which of course, has a bunch of pictures of bootleg editions.   I wonder if this is a willfull fraud that has been perpetrated or if it’s someone who purchased a product from an untrustworthy distributor, not knowing that they are selling bootlegs.   According to Amazon policy, I need to give them 3 days to respond to my return request before I get Amazon involved.  From what I read, they will not be kind to the seller when that happens.

SHAMEFULL BOOTLEGS OF SHAME

Looks pretty legit packaging right?  Here’s what one person had to say about it in the amazon forum linked above.

"The Chosen Collection"

There is no such thing as AUTHORIZED import. All BS crap spewed by the sellers. Paramount has NEVER granted anybody rights in China, Taiwan, HK or ANY countries outside North America to re-produce StarTrek series in different regions, let alone Region 0. All StarTrek imports are NOT the official packaging considered to be BOOTLEGs at this time. All ‘The Chosen Collection 1,2,3,4,5′ are all confirmed BOOTLEGS – in low quality DVD5 (4.3) GB only with bad subtitles, no commentary, no extras. Some has blur video, and skips! Buyers beware.

Unlicensed “import”

Why is there chinese writing on these DVD cases?

Good thing they added those glossy stickers to the covers below, it really adds a sense of legitimacy.  Except, for the box not being made out of glossy plastic and everything..

From a dropshipping wholesalers website...

YOU CAN’T FOOL SENATOR VREENAK!

Click here to view the embedded video.

The sad thing is, I don’t really remember this show being all that great, but I really need a star trek fix right now.  But damn if I’m going to pay money for a pirated copy.  No hollywood studio making the money, no interest in science fiction, no new sci-fi being made.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a movie trailer that makes me want to see a movie.  Hit the youtube below if you’re lazy, otherwise head over to the link below for a better resolution awesome version. http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/9/large.html

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s the movie description from the apple site:

A new era in animated storytelling begins on 9.9.09. Visionary filmmakers Tim Burton (The Corpse Bride, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory) and Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Nightwatch) join forces to produce wunderkind director Shane Acker’s distinctively original and thrilling tale. 9 stars Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer and Crispin Glover and features the music of Danny Elfman. When 9 (The Lord of the Ring’s Elijah Wood) first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world. All humans are gone, and it is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the earth intent on their extinction. Despite being the neophyte of the group, 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good. They must take the offensive if they are to survive, and they must discover why the machines want to destroy them in the first place. As they’ll soon come to learn, the very future of civilization may depend on them.

There’s some more stuff, stills and clips over on director Shane Acker’s website.

A couple weekends ago, we had an inter-dojo Taikai tournament for a friendly competition between Portland area kendo clubs, with a few people who travelled all the way from Idaho and Washington.  Less than half of the turnout was from Obukan, so we had a lot of guests and a lot of fun.   The only downside was we only had half the gym, so there was a lot of noise from the open courts on the other side of the divider curtain.

Here’s a match (#8) where I almost hold my ground against Dan Combs from Obukan.  I don’t have the strength to hold him back, but I lasted a lot longer than I expected.  He scores one hit to my kote, and like a n00b I thought the match was over.  It really was, but at least I didn’t let him score two points.  I’m the guy with the white ribbon tied to my back.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In match #10, I was up against a visitor in white.  I don’t know her name, but she stepped out of bounds twice with very little encouragement from me.  Aside from a clean hit to her men at 1:39, I don’t think my Kendo was as good as it was in the other match.  Despite all that, this is the first (and only) tournament match I’ve won to date. 

http://vimeo.com/2188490 – Match #8 – I’m in white, dad is sitting in seiza.
http://vimeo.com/2188651 – Match #10 – I’m in red, dad is under the basketball hoop

Here’s the two matches that my dad was in:
http://vimeo.com/2188234 – Match #2 – Dad in white.
http://vimeo.com/2188351 – Match #4 – Dad in white.

 Stock market down something like 700 points on news that nobody in Congress wants their unpopular political hot potato bailout on their heads during an election cycle.  I’ve personally lost about $65 today out of my paultry IRA & 401k accounts.  Maybe if I had more investments, I would be feeling something other than schadenfruede. 

In related crash notes, my raid array at work is degraded and the rebuild is making it impossible to use this machine at proper internet speeds.

After two months of dragging my feet, the wordpress squid.org is out the gate here.  My company has been in the process of transitioning servers and sites from our Seattle network operations center down to Portland where we have lower expenses and better control over support.  Squid.org was the first site to make the transition, but even since (HI! <–attack of the killer gf!) moving it down to Portland I have still been dragging my feet on releasing it due to a general unsatisfaction with the design.  Either way, it’s out now.

BlizzCon Countdown!
Other than that, it is about 2 weeks until BlizzCon starts, so I’m looking forward to that.  We have three other folks from the Stonecutters who will be in attendance this year, and it will be my third time attending.  I am probably going to purchase a new digital camera for the trip so that I can take pictures and post pictures of things to various web related stuff again.  I am tied to my work iphone for photography right now, and if there is one thing the iphone doesn’t do well it is take memorable pictures.  In my case, that’s somewhat of a double handicap.

Warhammer Online
I am playing Warhammer: Age of Reckoning on the side, but I think I am too old and closed minded to really adopt a new game these days.  It has been somewhat of a struggle to get used to the clunky implementation of pet controls (I have been playing a White Lion).  But mainly there really is no outstanding option if you want to play a dual wield melee character on the side of order.  For some reason the witch hunter has not been a big draw for me.  Overall, it’s a pretty decent game despite its nits, but it takes a lot to drag me away from WoW for an extended period of time.

Vay iPhone Edition
I downloaded a copy of Vay yesterday for the iphone.  It was around $5 and so far has been a horribly cliche final-fantasy style game.  In the end-all-be-all of fantasy cliches, an enemy kingdom attacks yours, steals your bride and kills your parents.  You then set out to find a wise old man…  stop me if this sounds familiar. Ultimately the production quality is good enough for the price, and the story is expected given the genera.  I don’t feel ripped off, and its nice to have some more options when standing around in the grocery store.

Did you ever feel like someone should make a bluegrass cover of the Stonecutters theme song?  I know I have! Who keeps the metric system down anyways?

Check out: Pickin’ on Series – We Do (The Stonecutters Theme).

Once the page loads, hit the play button in the upper right corner.

WE MADE IT! 2007 started off with some white fluffy stuff that made me very excited that I didn’t have school for half a week. Josh spent a week on vacation playing WoW 24/7 while I examined the hairy thing that has made its way back to the guest bathroom ceiling. For anyone who remembers Halloween 2005, “it” is back… longer and hairier than ever before. I should really make a thriller about this.

OMG HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-CJAY says HEY

Ho HUM Click for full view.

So I thought I would get you all in the Halloween spirit with a bit of spooky stuff and all by sharing with you a very spooktacular picture courtesy of the guest bathroom! It’s not every day that I see in the reflection of the mirror a long wadded piece of hair dangling behind me while I try to get ready for work. Please take note that this wad of hair is about 2 feet long and most likely came from the bathroom floor… where it belongs… not on the ceiling. I know we have spiders running around in the house, but geezus, there must be one mega-mo-fo spider running around with wads of hair stuck to its butt!! I get scared every time I walk into the bathroom and see this hanging from the ceiling… like it’s going to reach out and do something bad to me. HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!! -CJ