Star Trek (2009) To Be Available On Collector USB Flash Drive

In my closet at home I have two boxes full of old collectible plates with images of the old Star Trek series on them.  Once you have finished laughing and making snide southern country boy jokes at my expense I will point out that they were investments, not love affairs with the franchise.  Still, today when I saw a post over at Everything USB mentioning the upcoming release of the new Star Trek reboot will be available on USB stick I was intrigued.

Apparently starting November 17th you can get a special collectors edition USB key in the shape of a Star Trek logo that holds on it a standard definition DivX copy of the movie.  It is DRM encrypted and can only be played on up to five different computers but apparently you can also burn it to DVD.  Read the whole article to find out more, but they make a good point that the movie is only taking up around 1gig of the 4gig flash drive, so it would have been possible to throw out a Hi-Def version if they had wanted to.

Unable so far to find this available in the USA, but Amazon and other stores are preselling the Star Trek 2009 DVD and Star Trek 2009 Blu-Ray already.  Looks like you get far more on the discs than you would with the simple little USB key so my money will probably be going for the discs.

The Lighter Side of NASA

Yes, it's a real patch!

NASA and space travel have always been fascinating to me.  I remember as a kid going to Space Camp and dreaming of one day being an astronaut.  Obviously that never happened (too scared of heights for one thing) but I still have a collection of old NASA mission patches that I started collecting back during my impressionable youth.  None of them are nearly as cool as the patches that Wired.com managed to find in an article they recently posted on their web site.  The three part article shows many of the more humorous mission patches (both official and unofficial) that have been used over the decades of manned space flight.

My personal favorite?  That of the C.O.L.B.E.R.T, the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, made to honor comedian Steven Colbert for whom the space station’s treadmill is officially named.

Free RedBox Movie Rental Codes

I have an addiction to those RedBox movie rental machines that are popping up all over the place.  Every time I go to the grocery store or WalMart I see them on the way out and have to stop and see what is available.  At only one dollar per rental they are really cheap, but I am even cheaper than that.

Thanks to my very frugal wife (who has saved our family of six over $2500 this year by using coupons) I found that the Free Redbox Codes page on the  Inside Redbox web site actually has an up to date list of free video rental codes for several different stores.  Another site named retailmenot also carries a list of regularly updated Redbox Codes for free one day rentals.

You can also find the occasional free Redbox code in other places as well.  Simply by signing up for SMS messages on the Redbox web site you can opt in to their weekly emails and get a free redbox code directly from the Redbox company itself.  Other stores often post free Redbox movie codes in their local weekly ads to entice you to come in and browse around the store a bit.  It kind of makes me wonder if at some point grocery stores and others are going to get smart and put the Redbox machines at the back of the store (like they do with the milk and bread) to make you browse through all the other stuff on your way to pick up your free Redbox rental.

Time For Fun!

This blog is intended to be a place to store all the cool gadgets and ideas that I hear about that don’t fit into my established blog and web site over at MusicEdMagic.com. I hear about so many cool things that have nothing to do with music and I want to share them in some way or another so this is it!