Trek

  • April 9, 2021

    Are You a Grammarian?

    I’m going to go in a different direction here with my usual pithy and challenging brain teasers. In today’s challenge, answer the following 7 Grammatical Questions correctly. And if you do, you will be a Grammarian! 1. Which of these sayings is using the correct pronoun? This is I, Hamlet the Dane! It ain’t me, babe. 2. Which of these is grammatically incorrect? Different to Different from Different than 3. Which is these is correct? The Californian Poppy is the state flower. The California Poppy is the state flower. 4. Which is ungrammatical? Telephone Television 5. What is the error in the popular Star Trek overture: To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before. Fractured infinitive particle Wrong use of a determiner They are both subjunctive clauses 6. Which of these is a grammatically incorrect phrase? A book well worth the read A path well worth the walk A meal well worth the eat 7. Why isn’t it Bill’s and Ted’s Excellent Adventure? Only Ted had the adventure It’s a compound possession—only one apostrophe is needed. There you have it! Did you get 7 out of 7? If so, then you are a Grammarian! If not, then I highly suggest you read this book! LOL!
  • April 15, 2020

    IDIC Personified

    Today’s Progressive Pioneer comes from far away—not a galaxy far, far away (that’ll be in another TenthSphere.com post)—but from far in the future, about 300 years. Yep! That’s right. I’m talking about the one and only Mister Spock! A Starfleet captain before his retirement, a United Federation of Planets Ambassador to the Romulan Star Empire, and a lauded scientist. Ever since Zefram Cochrane’s first contact with the Vulcans on April 5, 2063 (A.K.A. First Contact Day), humans have been in awe of their outstanding scientific prowess that stems from their almost completely logical minds. Born on Vulcan in 2230, Spock son of Sarek son of Skon, had achieved the level of accolades in the sciences as well as in other disciplines few in the Federation have been able to match. Half Vulcan and half human, Mr. Spock is truly a Progressive Pioneer. Here are some of his more notable accomplishments during his time as first officer of the USS Enterprise (NCC 1701, NCC 1701‐A): Made first contact communication via the Vulcan Mind‐Meld with a remarkable alien species known as the Horta Successfully implemented the Cold Matter/Anti‐matter startup equation saving the Enterprise from certain destruction Successfully plotted time‐travel slingshot path around the sun bringing Humpback Whales back to the future to save Earth Solved inter‐dimensional space crisis rescuing both his commanding officer, Captain James T. Kirk, and the ship Reconfigured Warp Drive engines on refitted Enterprise to enable ship and crew to intercept the VGER threat to Earth Built a quantum computer out of antiquated 1930s technological resources in an effort to restore the prime timeline Survived encounter with giant Space Amoeba in order to take vital readings that in turn helped save the ship and potentially the galaxy Devised a way to beat an attacking rogue Klingon Bird of Prey’s...
  • This week’s Progressive Pioneers  will focus on two very special “other worldly” people who tirelessly worked behind the scenes the make the world a better place. I’m talking about none other than Tia and Tony Malone. And now thanks to WikiLeaks and the Freedom of Information Act, we know the full truth about these two amazing beings, which will blow your mind! Their story is a rich and complicated one that has taken four documentaries to tell! Escape to Witch Mountain Return from Witch Mountain The Blair Witch Mountain Project Race to Witch Mountain And though Digital Batman cannot fully do justice to their story, I’m going to give you a glimpse into their contributions to our society. Escape to Witch Mountain & Return from Witch Mountain documentaries can be currently watched on Disney+. Endless movies and TV shows. Always ad free. The best of Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic. From new releases, to your favorite classics, and exclusive Originals, there’s always something new to discover. Race to Witch Mountain documentary can be currently watched on Netflix. Watch Netflix movies & TV shows online or stream right to your smart TV, game console, PC, Mac, mobile, tablet and more. The Blair Witch Mountain Project documentary can be currently watched on YouTube (embedded below for your convenience). Tia and Tony Malone come from a binary star system some 3,000 light years from Earth. Their world was in the late stages of climate and environmental collapse (much like where our own world is headed). They were part of an advanced group of alien colonists seeking to find a way to reverse the self-inflicted damage done to their planet by studying our own in the early stages of exceeding the nine planetary boundaries. However, things did not go as planned. In 1975, their ship was damaged upon arrival at Earth and the two children were almost...
  • In the battle of the Virtual Assistants (VA), it seems like everything else, there are too many choices. Alexa, SIRI, Google Assistant, and Cortana are practically household names at this point. While each has their particular set of benefits, no one AI (i.e. Artificial Intelligence, because that’s what we’re really talking about here) can fulfill every request made of it. With next year’s pending launch of my company’s (PTC) flagship PLM platform, Windchill (integrated with Microsoft Azure’s cloud solution)—facilitating manufacturers’ efforts to rollout NPIs (i.e. new product introductions)—I thought it would be interesting to explore some aspects of where VAs/AIs are these days in a practical sense from home to business. I’d venture to guess that most homes feature more than one VA. The Digtal Batman household runs both SIRI on our iPhones/iPod and AppleTV 4K, and we run an Echo Dot featuring Alexa. It’s interesting to note the significant differences for our needs. For example: Alexa comes in handy when playing music from Amazon Music Unlimited and radio broadcasts over IHeartRadio. Whereas, SIRI dials our phone numbers, reads our texts, provides us with navigation, and helps us search/navigate our Apple TV 4K streaming device. Conversely, like most PTC employees running Windows 10 on their laptops, Cortana can easily be enabled. But I think it would be a little weird if everyone in the open seating at Seaport HQ started talking into their computers all at once! Though I haven’t used “Okay Google” in a while, it does come in handy for general searches and navigating the plethora of online/cloud‐based productivity, calendar, and meeting tools available—especially if you’re using Google Chrome. And what’s really interesting is now each of these separate VA platforms are starting to work together: organizing calendars across different devices (like cell phones), providing email from multiple...