The Occasional Solipsist

Ok, two items to preface. First, I am unbelievably, inordinately proud of myself. I'll get to why in a bit. Second, your dislike of Star Trek will exponentially impact the amount of shock you will experience when you read why I am so proud of myself.

I'll explain with one of my first visceral memories.

It's the summer of 1979. The sun is shining, and I am going to the movies with my Mom. This is likely my first trip to the movies, and it is certainly the first one I remember. I am 4 1/2 years old, with a mop of white blonde hair and a homemade iron on t-shirt, proudly displaying a now very recognizable starfleet symbol.

I file into the show holding my Mom's hand, smiling the smile of innocent children, pleased as I can be that I get to go out with my Mom and that my then baby sister is staying home. I feel truly special for the very first time.

The lights go out. I suppose there must have been the obligatory previews, but I don't remember them. Probably because what happens next is busy burning itself into my mind for the rest of my life.

I watch the beginning of the movie, the salty taste of the popcorn I am cramming into my face by the fistfuls drying my mouth, but I don't take my eyes off the screen long enough to find whatever drink my Mom got me.

And then I see it.

It is a huge white saucer, flanked by two delicate looking wings, attached to a body by thin spindles. It is beautiful. It is my first spaceship. It is the USS Enterprise and seeing it, I am hooked for life.

Now how many Star Trek fans can actually say that they got to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture at the most critical of influential times in their life? Now sure, there are some anti-trekkers out there that might accuse my Mom of child abuse. haha. But I think that her taking me to that movie was the single most influential thing anyone has done for me in my life. I shit you not.

So, to why I am so proud of myself: I have watched Star Trek, in all its incarnations, for over 25 years. And during that time, watching these shows, I had often heard people using a system of time/date that I just didn't get. I couldn't figure out why they wouldn't just say they date, like we did. Was the future to hold some mysterious method of keeping time that us dullards from the 20th century couldn't grasp? I didn't know.

When I was much younger, I assumed I was just missing something blindingly obvious to everyone else, and so never asked about it. As I got older, and started in on the more than healthy cynicism that I now have, I just figured that it was an arbitrary thing, and meaningless. But today I decided that, in fine geek form, I finally had to figure the Star Date system out.

And I did. Sort of.

Now, I'm not saying that I've got it completely figured out, or that I did it all on my own. One of the main problems with it is it seems that most of the people that have written for the various shows never figured it out completely either, and so a real hard core fan can find holes in my system big enough to fly a starship through. But that's ok. I will however, take credit for coding a little javascript stardate calculator.

Basically it converts the current date into its proportional percentage out of 100,000 by assuming one year = 1,000 units and 1 century = 100,000 units. So 8:00 pm on January 11, 2005 would be 4029.7. The same time on January 11, 2099 would be 98028.3. See how that works?

The only real drawback with this system is that it would reset itself every 100 years. Which isn't quite as useful as you might like. But it's close enough.

Thanks to David Trimboli for developing his system. Check out his stuff here.

So here then, is my brand new online Stardate Calculator. (Sorry, IE only)

And thanks Mom. Life might have happened between that day in 1979 and now, but I'll always owe you for inciting my lifelong love of science fiction in general and Star Trek in particular.

Labels: star trek