Hello, my name is Matthew... and I am a geek. No, not the traditional meaning of geek (that being the circus performer who bit the heads off live chickens, but the modern definition of "geek"... meaning the epithet hurled at one when they are considered to have a wealth (or even an area of expertise in,) and area considered by some to be useless information.

Modern "geeks" come in all sorts of variations... Movie geeks (who know FAR TOO MUCH about either a certain movie or all of them combined,) History geeks (who revel in knowing a lot of info about certain areas or, indeed, coveralls of events historic,) and specialized geeks (like "computer geeks", "Star Trek geeks", "Star Wars geeks", etc.)

I've even blogged about embracing one's inner-geek...

I'm a little of all of them, I'd like to think... consider me a GEEK OF ALL TRADES... and master of very few...

So, on todays "Thursday Thirteen", allow me to share...

Sorry, no "citations" available as these are TRULY off the top of my head... feel free to check my facts... hey, I'll admit when I'm wrong and if I am, I don't mind at all being corrected!

To low-level format an MFM or RLL drive in an IBM PC (XT or AT) using a standard controller card using DOS 3.1 - 6.2, the command is/was...

Dalek Thay, Dalek Caan, Dalek Jast, and Dalek Sec are the names of The Cult of Skaro.

George Lucas was a touch paranoid that people would only remember the move Star Wars as the movie where the guy banged his head on the way through a door. (A blooper slipped into the final edit.)

HOWZ THIS FOR CAVING IN EARLY... By request by a doubting Thomas from YouTube...

(Watch the second guy coming through the door...)

In the movie Quadrophenia, two scooters were used in the last scene where Jimmy drives it over a cliff... one with a windscreen and one without... but we are led to believe it was only the one scooter.

FOR THE SAME DOUBTING THOMAS as above...

Watch the faring... Bonus points for noticing the tracks from the previous attempts to shoot the scene...

Canada is responsible for 80% of the world's maple syrup production.

Robbie Burns probably never wore a kilt. He was definitely never seen in one.

CALLED OUT BY AN ANGRY SCOT... but, sad to say, I knew I remembered this tidbit for a reason...

The correct anatomical name for a whale's penis is "dork".

SEMI-CORRECTED... It's ONE of the words for it.

Speaking of this, Johnny Depp used to book himself into hotel rooms under the name "Mister Donkey Penis" and request wake-up calls. I don't know if he still does, but he did.

Roger Moore has done two horrible, horrible things to me in my youth... one of which was his fault, and one of which wasn't. The one that was came from an interview on "The Tonight Show" where he explained why Britain's drive on the left-hand side of the road, (apparently because of them wishing to be different than the rest of what, way back when, they considered to be papist Europe,) which set up a life-long trek of discovery to find out about other insignificanti... and the other thing that he inadvertently did because I wanted SO much to be like James Bond in "The Spy Who Loved Me", is got me started smoking... Seriously. Of course, this was not his fault as stated, but indirectly, it was the idea of James Bond as gleaned from his acting. (I've since quit the nasty habit... of smoking, not of wanting to be James Bond.)

In Star Trek, the original series, The Enterprise (NCC-1701) was supposed to have been built in "The San Francisco Yards" circling Earth... in the Next Generation, The Enterprise (NCC-1701D) was supposed to have been built at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards near Mars.

There was a historical figure named "Captain Fudge" in the 1600's who had a reputation as a bit of a teller of tall tales and exaggerations. It is from him that we use the term "fudged" as a reference to a lie or exaggeration.

The concept of infinite multi-parallel universes in quantum physics is as simple concept... think of literally any action you take... and in that decision you made, another universe was "created" where you made a different decision. "Turned left instead of right", "Had chicken instead of beef", some even think it can be as minor as "Breathed at X second instead of Y." Every turn of every atom causes a new possibility... and some assume that possibility must exist and carry on. Rather daunting, isn't it?

"America's Sweetheart", in the silent movie days, Mary Pickford, was really a Canadian girl named Gladys Louise Smith from Toronto.

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