CBS Home Entertainment sent GeekDad a clip to show us how nice the new video will look. How does the remastered HD look? Pretty good, in my opinion.

The full series won’t be ready until later this year. But in the meantime, CBS is releasing a three-episode sampler on January 31. The disc will include the feature-length pilot, Encounter at Farpoint, as well as two fan favorites: The Inner Light from Season 5, and Sins of the Father from Season 3. The single disc will go for $21.99.

My baby hasn’t been my baby for a while.

This weekend our firstborn child, Haley, turns 10 years old.

I’ve been arguing with the calendar for months, taking turns with Cindy as we point our fingers to the sky and curse the impossibility. But the months continue to smear our logic with their mocking smiles.

We can argue all we like, but we will never return our faded years. Cindy is cursed with being married to a man who will reflect on moments gone by in excruciating detail, while I am married to a woman who mourns their passing.

Together, we promise to make this birthday wonderfully unforgettable.

Maybe it’s arbitrary, her years moving from one digit to two, but it seems significant to me, and a telltale sign that a wedge of our future that was once so far away is now moving in for good.

When I was younger, the hallmarks of my possible future hung like portraits along the walls in my mind: finishing high school, buying my first business, getting married, having children. Back then, my future was about me, which is where it stayed until I became a man.

I wasn’t a man the day I turned 18, despite what the law insisted. Nor was I a man when I quit high school or bought my first business. I became a man the day I looked at my life’s horizon knowing it would be empty without Cindy beside me.

Then, my future was about us.

My goals were still important, but there was another side to the prism, casting my wants in a clearer light. And that’s where it stayed until I became a father.

Haley changed my life in a second, not the day she was born, but rather eight months earlier when the blue line that didn’t lie reminded me life could be planned but even a perfectly blueprinted house will fall if the sand is soft beneath it.

My future is still about us, all of us. Me and Cindy, Haley and Ethan.

A future that started 10 years ago, 10 years and 9 months if you count the incubation.

Now I’m thinking about their finishing high school, their first businesses, their getting married, and eventually making me a grandfather. Maybe it’s odd for me to be thinking about becoming a grandfather while still knee deep in my mid-30s, but it’s the way my brain works and why I write about time and cycles of death as often as I do.

I cannot help but acknowledge the passing of time, and the week when our daughter turns 10 is the perfect time to take a step back and see it with the awe it deserves.

Yesterday my baby was a tiny peanut. We brought Haley home from the hospital and those first six months flew by. Back then, everyone we met said a different version of the same exact thing: She’s just SO alert!

And she is.

Haley is and always has been an old soul. She is far older than her 10 years, which is one of the things that makes her such an absolute joy to be around, and sometimes difficult to parent. Like her father, Haley has a fierce command of language. And like her mother, a fierce command of her will.

Haley’s first two years were “batteries included.” She was filled with personality –  smart, funny, creative, and over flowing with life. Remarkably observant and the only child in the house, she was relatively easy to parent. By the time she was three, Cindy and I were desperately in need of her batteries. She learned the words NO! and turned into the swirling tempest and creative tornado she is today. 

I look at Haley dumbfounded by the breathing proof of all that has happened to our family in the last decade. I had a partnership before her, but Haley turned me and Cindy into a family and laid the bricks for her baby brother to crawl down 2 1/2 years later.

I am beyond lucky to have such an amazing, articulate, wonderful daughter. And I am proud of everything I have given as her father. I have no regrets, and feel fortunate for the time we’ve had together as a family. Yet as she turns 10 I’ve never been more aware of the passing of time.

It was easier a few years ago. Cindy and I had our preschool and a lot of time with our children. But then Haley went to kindergarten and I became a writer, my new profession quickly swallowed hours without chewing as I did everything I could to keep us afloat.

Time is flying and I am flying by time. I must go faster for a little longer so I can afford to slow down. But I must go faster with the full realization that no matter how much my hard work now will help me afford everything I want from life, I cannot afford to lose appreciation for all I have right now.

Haley’s 10th birthday is a beautiful, and perhaps needed, reminder of what I want from this world and for my family, and what I must do to ensure it happens.

The next eight years will fly by as fast as these have, probably faster. I don’t want to lose them like raindrops drying on the ground. My daughter stands at the lip of innocence, still loving the things that children love. I love that she watches Phineas and Ferb, and that she is trying on new behaviors like they were dresses off a rack. I love that our last Christmas passed with her hanging onto her belief in Santa, even if it was only spiderweb thin.

This year we will lose many of those things, and next year even more.

I don’t yet wish to ponder the year after that.

My baby is turning 10, and it won’t be much longer that I’ll be able to cuddle her like I do and tickle her with abandon, and it won’t be much longer before she stops wanting me to.

Now we curl on the couch and I hold her close, and while I know there will always be some version of this perfect comfort between us, it won’t stay the same for too much longer.

While it’s easy to look at this 10 year anniversary of becoming a dad with slight sorrow at a decade gone, I’d rather stare in the eyes of all that is good and acknowledge how lucky I am to have a daughter like Haley, even if I cry as I write this.

As a father, I could never hope for more.

Haley, I love you way past the moon and all the way to the furthest star. You’re my baby girl and you made me a daddy. If possible, you made me love your mommy even more. You are turning into the most beautiful, articulate, creative, compassionate, wonderful person I could ever imagine. We will spend the next 8 years getting to know each other better, and follow it with another lifetime after that.

A very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to you. You are everything a father could hope for from a daughter, and a galaxy beyond. Thank you for making me Daddy, and starting off the past 10 years of my life. 

I can’t wait for the next 10.

xoxo

Dork Tower #1021 by John Kovalic

Read all the Dork Towers that have run on GeekDad.

Find the Dork Tower webcomic archives, DT printed collections, more cool comics, awesome games and a whole lot more at the Dork Tower Website.

Having read Jonathan Liu’s post on the Cars 2 AppMATes toy car controller for the Cars 2 iPad game, I’ve been itching to try my kids out on it. Having spent a weekend watching them play with it, I was impressed at how this simple toy car controller changed the way they interacted with the iPad completely.

I expected it to be a lot of fun and for them all to want to get involved, but I hadn’t realized how good a fit this would be for the youngest gamers in our family (my 4 year old son in particular). Bigger fingers were less suited to controlling the diminutive cars because you have to hold the cars by the passenger and driver windows to steer them — my big stubby fingers were a bit too inaccurate at times.

AppMATes Cars 2 Encourages Collaborative Play

My youngest son actually got on better than his older siblings. While they had a problem now and again getting the AppMATes cars to register on the iPad, a combination of his little fingers and instinct to move the car around more seemed to do the trick for him. He was chuffed that we had to ask him to get it started from time to time; usually it’s the other way around.

AppMATes (half price on Amazon at around $15/car) hook into how he instinctively wanted to play by enabling him to control the Cars 2 iPad game by simply whizzing the car along the surface of the device. It works well. I could tell even after watching them for a few minutes they were lost in an imaginative world where their sound effects and extension of the actual game was as real and engaging as anything the designers may have intended. (Although, I suspect the game is designed to be loose enough to encompass this sort of open ended driving world play.)

To play the game (which is free) you need to purchase the AppMATes cars. Download Cars 2 AppMATes (iTunes) on your iPad and start the game, lay it flat on a table, place the AppMATes car in the center and place it in front of your child.

Without any direction or interference they will be able to explore Radiator Springs, go on missions, races and collect hub caps. You can use a virtual “paper model” as an alternative to the toy cars, but this really misses out on a big part of the fun.

AppMATes Cars 2 Vehicle Switching

While not perfect, controlling the game with a real Matchbox sized car removes the complicated language of buttons and sticks, and replaces it with interactions that my kids use everyday in their imaginative play. The game tracks the movement of the car on the surface of the iPad and draws the world around it. Move forward slightly and it accelerates, sweep left or right and you can turn.

The clever thing is that rather than try and replicate a traditional racing game, Cars 2 AppMATes lets the player jump, spin, slide and twist the car without it causing a problem. This makes the game feel much looser than a stick or wheel controlled experience, but that is no bad thing as it accommodates really young players.

Beyond the basic novelty there are some very nice touches. You can view your toy car in a drive through mirror to see what power-ups and upgrades you have — this further blurs the boundary further between the toy and the game. When it’s nighttime your car projects headlight beams onto the road in front of it, and the lights on the toy car also light up. You can switch your car to a different model and the game responds instantly, just like Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventures.

Read my full review of Cars 2 AppMATes for iPad to find out more about how they got on.

AppMATes are on sale on Amazon from $19 to $40.

Screenshots from To-Fu and To-Fu 2

To-Fu and To-Fu 2 – free, with in-app unlocks

To-Fu: The Trials of Chi is a funny little game in which you play a block of tofu. A ninja tofu. You stretch him out in a particular direction, let go, and fling him across the room, collecting chi and eventually going for the lucky cat fortune cookie. You stick to most walls, rebound off metal walls, and slide down glass walls. There are tons of obstacles, like spikes, moving platforms, doors and switches, and giant spinning blades. For each puzzle, you have three goals: make it to the cookie, collect all the chi, and pass the level within a certain number of steps.

The apps are free, with ads along the bottom. When I first downloaded it, I got the entire game for free, but at some point they made the additional levels a $.99 upgrade. There are tons of puzzles, and To-Fu 2 introduces new types of blocks and a super-charge power for you. It’s a fun combination of puzzle and dexterity, and has kept me busy for a while.

Trees of Doom has a couple outfits and "skins" to play with.

Ninjatown: Trees of Doom! – $.99 iPhone, $1.99 iPad

Ninjatown: Trees Of Doom! is a make-it-as-far-as-you-can game, but instead of running horizontally, you’re a ninja climbing up between two trees, bouncing between the trunks, flinging yourself up from branches, and bouncing off mushrooms. The game uses the ninja from Shawnimals, and everything is incredibly adorable, from the little round ninja to the Wee Devils to the weird mustache thing that gives you a boost when you catch it. Classic lets you climb as far as you can, and Timed makes you hurry to get to the next checkpoint before time runs out.

You can collect new outfits from time to time for your ninja to wear, and you can play on a regular level, a sketchy level, or winter. In addition, the sun sets when you get high enough and you climb at night — the graphics are really great there. One really nice touch that I appreciated: once you hit 1,000 meters, a little smoke bomb appears at the start of the level. Grab that, and you instantly jump to 1,000 meters, getting into the action without having to play all the beginning parts first. Do you get one at 2,000 meters? I don’t know, I haven’t made it that far yet. Even though it’s no longer free, it’s a lot of fun.

Jaws – save the swimmers!

Jaws – $1.99 iPhone, $2.99 iPad

Jaws takes the draw-a-path game and adds the familiar duh-DUM sound track; instead of directing boats to docks or planes to runways, you’re getting stranded swimmers to shore or picking them up in boats. Oh, but don’t forget about the giant shark that comes around every so often to munch on anyone left in the water! You start each level with some swimmers floating about, and additional people will drift in from the edges. In some levels you just get the people to the beach. In others, you have to direct boats to pick them up.

Of course, you have to do this with the threat of Jaws looming. There’s a danger meter at the bottom — when the fin reaches the right, the shark makes an appearance, swimming toward one of the swimmers. If you don’t get them out of the way quickly enough, you’re treated to a gruesome attack. Lose too many swimmers and you lose the level. Occasionally you’ll have access to a gunboat, which doesn’t kill Jaws but makes him abandon his attack until his next pass. There are only 10 levels in the campaign (plus a Survival mode) so there’s not a ton of variety, but it’s a nicely done app if you don’t mind a bit of gore and screaming. The last level actually does have you killing off Jaws, using the famous bullet-to-the-tank, but the gameplay there seems more tacked on and not as great as the bulk of the game.

And now, for the other side of the story…

Jaws Revenge – free (w/ ads and in-app currency purchases)

Now, if you’re more the sort who wants to cheer for the shark, then you’ll want to get Jaws Revenge. This one is still free, though it’s not as great as the Jaws game. It actually has similar mechanics to Mighty Fin (reviewed here) — you press to dive, let go to jump. The deeper you dive, the higher you jump. But instead of collecting bubbles, here you’re eating fish, birds, swimmers, boats, hang gliders, jet skis … even military helicopters. This is all accompanied by a lot of screaming and blood, and it’s a bit more graphic than the original (though the animation of the people is pretty rough). You can upgrade Jaws with currency that you earn by completing objectives, or you can also pay real money to add in-app currency, but I’m not really sure why you would.

It’s been a rather Skylanders-filled week. There was the appearance of third wave figures on Amazon yesterday which I followed up with a meet the Skylanders guide to different characters. Then today a kind commenter sent me scurrying to investigate new gold editions of Skylander figures.

It transpires that, in a similar fashion to the super limited edition Silver Skylanders (which reach up to $40 on Amazon because of their scarcity), a new series of gold figures have been winging their way to store shelves. Just like the silver toys, the novelty here is solely in their unusual appearance.

Gold Chop Chop (image credit: Jeremy McIntire)

Whereas the Legendary Skylanders offer boosted stats and look different in the game, these gold figures (like the silver ones before them) have the same stats and look the same as normal when brought into play. The biggest novelty is that you have to find these figures in shops as they are sent out at random. If you get lucky enough to find one (like one of our commenters) you need to then decide whether to sell it online or add it to your collection.

My kids actually prefer the normally-painted versions, although where we have two of the same kind we have used a Silver figure to help distinguish between them. It was interesting to see the kids on the playground before school with them, though, as a flock of other kids came running to see these strange new Skylanders.

I’ve been putting together a guide about the different Skylanders figures and when they are being released. So far we have the following Silver Skylanders:

• Silver Dino-rang
• Silver Boomer
• Silver Eruptor

Which are now joined by the following Gold Skylander:

• Chop Chop

Combine this with the various waves of Skylanders releases and and it looks like a most interesting year for anyone looking to perfect their collection in 2012.

Skylanders figures are available from $7.99 on Amazon. Sought-after editions can reach in the region of $40.

The reactions some men have to this integration, especially the call for more three-dimensional characters in gaming and comics, can best be seen in the comments to “Nerds and Male Privilege” an article at Kotaku.

The article is written by a man who’s seen the pattern of rejection of valid complaints over and over, to the point where he predicted exactly what comments his subject would receive.

One of the major objections I’ve seen over and over is “well, why should women care about games or comics meant for men?” and that one is in the comments to the article as well.

There’s nothing inherently male about wanting to game or indulge in a  superhero fantasy. They both offer a chance to do something adventurous and out-of-this-world.

And I always wonder exactly what those who object think will change if the women become more three-dimensional and less prone to sexualization and being reduced to only a sex object. Would that somehow ruin the game?

Is sexualizing and marginalizing women an essential element of superheroes or gaming?

I can’t see any reason why it should be and I can’t see how making the women as fully realized characters as the men will harm these things. It’s not as if Hermione being a strong character somehow ruined Harry Potter or having Sarah Conner in the Terminator movies ruined those.

But there’s another reason this attitude of “hey, it’s just for me and you should find your other stuff” bothers me and it’s one I didn’t realize existed until recently.

It’s because this male gaze that views women more as sex objects than people filters down to the kids, even to the instruction books for children who want to draw comics. This has to change.

Read the rest of Corrina Lawson’s post and comment over at GeekMom.

The latest offering from Moonbot Studios is a gorgeous homage to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis bundled up in a children’s story about a world where the alphabet has not yet been invented, and everything is communicated through numbers.

Moonbot has gone directly to their film-making roots with this production of The Numberlys. It opens with amazing landscape tracking shots of the Numberly city, a visual and audio spectacular that provides an animated industrialism and uniformity of which Lang would approve. The narrative is cute and whimsical and delivered in an upbeat generic European accent. In the opening of the app, the narrative appears as written text which is read by the narrator in-between these epic scenes of an industrial city, workers marching through dense city landscapes, working in factories, creating numbers – cogs turning, hammers hammering, conveyor belts moving numbers along the production line. The setting is clear:

Nobody had a name. They had a number. There were no Ralphs or Pamelas. Just 27. Or 6011. Everyone liked numbers. They had nice shapes. And kept things orderly. And everything added up… so life was sort of… Numberly.

The opening of the app is gripping and quite dark (which makes sense given the inspiration), so it is unlikely to really capture the attention of pre-schoolers (I say this because as you’ll read later I have a hunch they are partly considered a key audience). It is in a black and white, slightly sepia tone and harks back to the type of animation that is aiming to appeal to both adults and children – though here it probably will be of greater interest to children of elementary school age and older.

As the story progresses, you may begin to wonder why Moonbot had chosen to present this story as an app rather than a short film. The narrative is great and it feels very much like a short. There are touches of interactivity where the audience is required to touch a red light to make the conveyor belt continue, or feed the workers during their break; however this type of interactivity doesn’t add much value to the app overall. In some ways just feels like it interrupts the flow of the story.

Moonbot’s very successful The Fabulous Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore worked in this way because it was presented to feel more like a book with text and images on individual pages, some animation but taking on more book form. Interestingly, and appropriately, Morris Lessmore was also was produced as a short film. But, given that The Numberlys is more filmic in quality, leaning on traditions of early cinema to tell the story, and the navigation and interactivity seems to halt the compelling storyline. This is also true when characters start to talk with each other and we are required to touch a light bulb to get the next sentence. We don’t even have a choice of two or more touch points, just one – so it feels rather pointless. This is disappointing given the high standard across the rest of the app. I’ll admit I might be being a little harsh, but as we move into 2012 we can start to have increased expectations about interactive elements in apps for ourselves and our kids.

The reason for presenting The Numberlys as an app becomes clear in the second half, which turns from pure story to a narrative game. The games are focused on a collection of five delightfully crafted characters who set about attempting to make their world more interesting. Seeking something more than numbers, they go about inventing the alphabet. And, suddenly the Numberlys get all Letterly and we engage in a series of interactive games that help the characters to build and shape every letter of the alphabet from A to Z. The games are cleverly designed in terms of visuals, but are not particularly groundbreaking in regards to game dynamics, and after a while the games start to repeat themselves. We don’t get 26 individual games for each letter of the alphabet.

After this section, we come to a narrative conclusion, which is most satisfying as it again captures the whimsy and wit that Moonbot Studios does so well.

Moonbot Studios is amazing. They have the ability to tell stories that are as good as the best of them. The concept and execution of this storyline is damn good and I take my hat of to the creativity of the concept. The animation and their visuals alone make this app worth the purchase and I understand why they chose to go in the direction of creating the app in the way they have with the ABC element. But as an adult reader of this app it was disappointing and as a child development researcher I think this app misses the mark in a way that many apps aimed at children do.

Let me explain.

The Numberlys is effectively an ABC app bookended by an amazing narrative opening and closing inspired by the work of Fritz Lang. The issue for me was that the ABC section of the app was way too long, it is a narrative black hole. We know that after we play the D game, then there will be E game and I found myself wondering: “Do I really have to do this all the way to Z?” The ABC games are great for younger children: they have appropriate prompts and the audio celebrations of the characters and the little animation sequences between the games would appeal to pre-schoolers who are usually your target market for ABC apps. The games may be a little complex if children get to that section of the app (I’d have to do some testing to be sure). But, I’m not convinced that three and four year olds will appreciate the story enough to get to the section that seems to be designed especially for them. They will be clicking the home button and heading elsewhere because the witty narrative and brilliant animation won’t impress them. And on the other hand, a six year old who may engage with the opening narrative won’t particularly find the game dynamics or learning their ABCs that enticing.

I love this app. I love the concept. I love the inspiration. I love the look, the feel, the humor and the charter development. But, like so many apps this is a case of user interface and design not matching the content of any one particular audience. I’m stuck wondering exactly who the audience is for The Numberlys. It feels like this is a great story and fantastic concept that needed an early childhood adviser or educationalist to say, “This probably won’t work for children.” And, if that had happened, maybe the ABC section could be shortened or changed. We could have gotten more narrative and another arc to the storyline, I’m not sure, but I know that this great story doesn’t quite work in terms of its structure because it has an ABC app stuck in the middle of a delightful story.

What Moonbot Studios and other developers can learn from this app is that interactivity is more than touching things on a screen; it is more than inserting a game in the middle of a narrative and the story alone won’t carry an app with mediocre interactive elements. As we move forward, the expectations of children and adults are going to increase and it is my hunch that they will pay for the improved quality we are seeing in apps compared to two years ago. I’d love to see Moonbot Studios join forces with Snow Castle Interactive whose app Hogworld: Gnart’s Adventure gives us a taste of true interactivity in this new film-book-game mashup genera that is iPad apps for kids.

You need to check out The Numberlys. It wins on so many levels; it just falls short in defining exactly who it is meant for and who it will appeal to. Sections of it will appeal to different audiences. So, maybe parents can watch the opening, give it to their preschoolers to finishing the ABC section and settle in and watch the conclusion together. That would work.

And, Moonbot will no doubt continue to create apps and tell fine stories that push the boundaries. I look forward to all of them. This one, however, only gets three quarters of the way there.

Cost: $5.99 (and well worth it) on iTunes.

Wired: Gorgeous story. Gorgeous Visuals. Lovely homage.

Tired: Who is the audience for this app?

Note: GeekDad received a build copy of this app for review purposes.

Image: Courtesy of Chris Fenton

Back in August of 2010 the NYC Resistor blog had a post about Chris Fenton’s a 1/10h scale Cray 1-A Supercomputer. Chris built the scale model to great detail, including wraparound pleather seating, a popular design feature of the ’70s.

The problem Chris faced was where to get genuine software to run on his creation. According to a post on the NY Resistor blog, that problem is one step closer to being solved: Chris was able to get his hands on a copy of a Cray Operating System backup disk. Chris is asking for help reverse-engineering the disk and has provided the recovered code to anyone who wants to help him get this up and running.

So if any GeekDad readers have reverse-engineering skills and a desire to see a cool project taken to the next level, they should head over to Chris’s blog and get the lowdown on the project and the code.