Trek Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

By Akela Talamasca on April 10th, 2009

Actually, the one leads to the other. Trek Yourself is an interesting little website/webtoy put together by the Cheezit people, who apparently have some money tied up with the Star Trek remake movie. Because nothing says “future technology” like little cheese-flavored squares. When you’re on the bridge and you’re hungry, you ask the food synthesizer for your favorite snack, and of course Cheezits pop out. Personally, I like Cheezits, but I think they’re much more Borg than Starfleet. And now it’s time to actually get on with this article.

The Trek Yourself website allows you to put yourself into the role of one of four Star Trek universe character templates: Captain, Vulcan, Officer, or Romulan. Once you’ve chosen your character, you’ll then upload a photo of your own face to be imposed over the default character face. Then some Internet magic happens and voila! You ARE James T. Kirk, or Lt. Uhura.

Now, this works best if you have a full-frontal photo of your face; the shot I uploaded had me just slightly to the side, so there’s a noticeable crease on the cheek area, but it’s still pretty good. You’re given the option to zoom in on the photo, as well as moving it around the frame and rotating it in either direction. As long as it conforms somewhat to the sample photo, your results should be adequate to the task.

Then it’s just a matter of picking a prerecorded phrase to be spoken, or choose the 500-character text-to-speech option, which allows the choice of a variety of different male and female voices. Boom, an Internet meme is born. As diversions go, it’s not a bad one, and of course the potential for rude and/or naughty use is fairly significant. Go check it out and marvel in the quasi-Uncanny Valley-ness of it all.