“Datalore” is a first season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, first broadcast January 18, 1988. It is episode #13, production #114, teleplay written by Robert Lewin and Gene Roddenberry, based on a story by Robert Lewin and Maurice Hurley, and directed by Rob Bowman.The episode establishes Data’s backstory, with Data finding out who created him (Dr. Noonien Soong), an evil brother, Lore, and the Crystalline Entity.

extracted from Datalore entry at Wikipedia.org

I hope the above blurb helps the non-Trekkies among you know a bit more about the origins of the phrase datalore.

Star Trek had an immense influence on me as I was growing up. My first contact with the world of Star Trek began when my friend showed me the schematics of his plastic Enterprise NCC-1701D model. A highly-impressionable 8-year old James pored over the drawings and specifications and imagined an all-powerful starship shooting holes into every baddie it came across. My love for all things Star Trek grew as I did, and so it was quite natural for me to assume something Star-Trek-ish for my online persona when I got hooked up to the Internet.

Data was one of my favourite characters in the Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) series. The notion that there wouldn’t be good without evil, joy without sorrow also appealed to me. However, Data or Lore was perpetually occupied by other netizens. During my early IRC days, I went by the nick of data999. Since then, I have resorted to several variations (data1ore, data.lore, data.1ore) on various occasions, all based off the root name datalore.

With the revival of my blogging interest (and hence this site), for old times’ sake and for the lack of a cooler sounding name, datalore it is!