Alistair McMillan
alistairmcmillan.bsky.social
Alistair McMillan
@alistairmcmillan.bsky.social
I build stuff, but mostly I fix stuff. When I’m not breaking stuff.
If you are talking about the rectangular things surrounded by thick yellow and thin red boxes, yeah, reaction control system (RCS) thrusters.

I'm talking about the objects on the wedge shape between the pylon and the nacelle. Pretty sure they're not thrusters.
February 10, 2026 at 11:46 PM
They wrote these for the writing staff in the 80s and 90s. You'd see copies for sales at conventions back them.

There must be some kind of technical guide for the staff of the current shows. Some little PDF sitting on a cloud drive somewhere. Just waiting to be liberated.
February 10, 2026 at 11:42 PM
Clearest photo I've found is from MarvelPhx's photos of the six foot model. Never defined in the show, but definitely looks like something more than just positional lights. myenterprised.com/the-six-foot...
February 10, 2026 at 11:25 PM
Not in an episode, but Okuda & Sternbach did explain it in the Voyager Technical Guide, page 12. And I have vague (possibly wrong) memories of it being mentioned during on-screen and magazine interviews at the time.
February 10, 2026 at 11:18 PM
I’m on the fence about the detachable nacelles. But all it would take is a line of dialogue or a technical manual to bring me firmly onboard. What problem were they solving? It’s like if Voyager had introduced the variable geometry warp nacelles but never given us a reason for them.
February 10, 2026 at 9:42 PM
Don’t the outboard sides of the long wedges between the nacelles and the pylons of the Ent-D have some windows and what looks like an airlock? That implies a maintenance area of some sort from day one of TNG.
February 10, 2026 at 9:37 PM
Trump wants people to stop talking about Epstein. And he’s willing to start World War III to do it.
January 19, 2026 at 6:50 PM
Fucking ecstatic!
January 8, 2026 at 11:27 PM
Same with writing code. The fewer lines of my own, potentially buggy, code running on production servers the better. Delete, simplify, and what was hell were those lines even meant to be doing. 😁
December 24, 2025 at 2:34 AM
Didn't realise what I was building for today's puzzle until I'd built it, but this is cool. #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/4
December 4, 2025 at 11:38 PM
Cars (though not many) on Buchanan Street before it was pedestrianised.
October 15, 2025 at 7:35 PM
I’m confused. Isn’t Fiona Higgins the whistleblower? Who is elected, and still a councillor.

I find it interesting that the Herald fails to mention that she’s a Labour councillor. And similarly Fiona doesn’t mention it on her Twitter profile either.
October 6, 2025 at 11:26 AM