July 15, 2009 | I can haz Rubik’s Cube

This is just too funny.

I can haz Rubik's Cube?

Thanks for looking at this otherwise worthless blog post. So laugh we all.

July 2, 2009 | Why I Hate Wesley

I have to admit that I bought into the Two Minutes [Plusdoublegood] Decades hate for the Boy Wonder, a.k.a. Wesley “Wes” Crusher, when I watched TNG. In retrospect, I no longer hate Wesley, since Wesley did have some redeeming characteristics (see: “The First Duty“) despite the bad writing on part of writers who didn’t know how to write a teenager.

And what prompted this blog was the following:

O'rly?

And with the line about Ashley Judd, I have resumed my hatred for Wesley Crusher. The damn bastard kissed Ashley Judd. I can forgive him saving the ship when trained Starfleet monkeys or the freaking Tin Man couldn’t do it, I can forgive him for wreaking havoc with his pet science projects, but the bastard swapped spit with Ashley Judd. Frakker.

And could we have possibly procured a more goofier picture of Wes Crusher in the striped sweater? Thank the Gods he didn’t have a scarf to go with that ensemble.

June 20, 2009 | Kill my sex life!

A great clip from Farscape… enjoy.

May 5, 2009 | Reading stars is like reading tea leaves… you can do it, but don’t whine if nothing constructive comes from it.

This is my reply to Mojo’s blog post regarding the regrettably, overly deep analysis that some honest, loving fans have done over the run of B-Star Galactica when it comes to star patterns seen fleetingly in the background. If it passes moderation, you’ll see it as a response to his blog… but without some of the corrections I’ve made after the fact in terms of misplaced commas and the like. Enjoy!

Mojo,

I want to take this opportunity to thank you and the amazing CGI/FX team at Battlestar for the wonderfully consistent work on BSG, despite the hectic schedules and the fast turn-around time that you guys need to meet when working on a television budget. (I do have issues with the CGI for “Daybreak,” but I won’t go into that. I understand that the special effects were finished a day before the episode aired, so I understand it.)

While I understand the astronomy or science buffs for being a bit miffed over the so-called “starfield clues,” they need to understand that the sole purpose of a television show is to entertain and, from a financial standpoint, make cubits for the network. (I believe the field you are in is referred to as the “entertainment business,” and as a business there are investments and the expectation is that there is a return on said investments in the form of recouping the initial investment and, ultimately, profit.) If these fans wanted real hard science fiction, then they could go to the library and look into the works of Carl Sagan, Issac Asimov or other golden age SF writers to read. Further, they could simply watch the Discovery, History Channel and other educational shows. The fact that you guys and gals cared enough to be consistent under hectic television schedules and other stresses shows your true dedication and passion for the art of making a television show.

The sad part about these fans (which are less than 0.01% of us, but yet are the most vocal) is that they have demonstrated a complete lack of understanding about what the people in the entertainment trenches of television production go through. I do not for one minute believe that this disrespect is intentional, but rather out of sheer ignorance and, borne from that, misunderstanding. I really wish the fans could go through what I experienced up in Vancouver when prepping for the first BSG auction before the production wrapped after “The Plan” and “Face of the Enemy,” as then they would have had their eyes opened to what actually goes on behind the scenes. Even my personal minimal exposure to this process has nurtured a greater respect for what EVERYONE in the production staff goes through just to make the show happen! Color me “biased,” but at least my opinion is informed.

I’ve always maintained that there are very few fans who (dangerously) read far too much into things in the show, whether it be the way something is said, or into the minute details in the background. And while it’s easy to say that “people will always nitpick at everything and so you must account for that,” it needs to be understood and accepted that you guys cannot account for these things. The conditions that, again, you’ve laid out in your blog post demonstrate that this is impossible. You will never please all the nitpickers, and it isn’t worth your time to do so.

So, yes, the constellations in the Tomb of Athena were a scientific mistake as Grazier admitted and, yes, Gaeta’s comment about them matching in Earth 1′s orbit were also a mistake… however, BSG is an “elseworld” and should be treated as such. After all, the Cylons don’t exist, there’s no William Adama, there’s no “other Earth” and it is all a work of fiction that miraculously lasted longer than its original source material. So what’s to say that the constellations seen in the Tomb of Athena WEREN’T the constellations over the Kobollian Cylons’ homeworld? Hmm…

Regardless, you all have done well for yourselves. Sure there were mistakes, but as BSG is a mirror of the human condition, this is to be expected… and, in a perverse sort of way, cherished and respected.

To those of us who complain and belabor things ad nauseum (and, honestly, to no point)… Be thankful that we received four seasons, two movies, webisodes and a spin-off. It could be worse. You could be watching Galactica 1980 for four seasons, as we could have a spin-off with just the descendants of the “Super Scouts” jumping for joy as they throw seeds into trenches made by lasers as they sing a space scout chantey.

So say we all and thanks for all the fish.

May 3, 2009 | Screencaps from “Daybreak”

Just like the fans, EJO takes it up his six in the BSG series finale and Ronald D. Moore opus, "Daybreak."

In the vein of keeping with the daily regiment of “blogging,” here are some sweet high-definition screencaps from “Daybreak,” mainly of The Colony and of the attack. These were posted courtesy of “Antartic Fox” on the Battlestar Forum in this thread.

By the way, not sure if anyone noticed, but during the rappelling scene Lee Adama looses the neoprene piece of his helmet as he exits the airlock. It would have been nice had the fruit turned into a nice blueberry in a flight suit, alas no such luck.

This is just one minor issue of many issues (all of varying degrees) with an otherwise mixed bag that happened to be the epitome of damningly love-it/hate-it finales in the history of science fiction television. I may write more about my views of the new BSG in general later on, since I have severely mixed views on the show in general.

Anyway, more later. Back to construction work before I fly out to California tomorrow. Fun times!

August 16, 2008 | Clone Wars

So today Alec and I went to see the Clone Wars movie. It was a nicely done movie, and enjoyable. Obviously, it was your basic Star Wars action flick, and if you’re a Star Wars fan you’d enjoy it.

There’s not much of a story here, and the main draw is the impressive CGI. The actress who voiced Padme Amidala is most impressive, she sounds like Natalie Portman did in the live-action flicks. Of course, the only three actors to actually voice their characters from the live action flicks are Samuel L. “Motherfucking Snakes” Jackson, Anthony Daniels, and Christopher Lee.

There’s not much of a story here. It’s basically Anakin being assigned a Padawan learner who is little older than a “youngling” (oh, how I loathe that term…) during the Clone Wars. Of course, seeing as we all know how things are going to turn out, there’s not much here to really invest your interest in. The story is nothing spectacular, and it really ought to be given the fact that it has the misfortune of being a glorified prequel film.

Otherwise, it’s a decent way to kill an hour and a half, but I would pay to see the early showing, since it’s not a movie that’s worth 12 bucks to see. (Yes, that’s what it costs in Canada: $12.50 CDN.)

August 12, 2008 | In Human-Occupied Vancouver… a belated frakking blog

Yes, I’ve been in Vancouver since the 6th. I can tell you now that it’s very beautiful up here. As with any major city, it’s congested like hell and driving is a bitch. Plus there’s construction happening on basically every other road, it seems. On the upside, I can pretty much get anywhere simply by walking. In my travels, I have seen coffee shops (yes, there’s Starbucks; I can get to two of them if I head east), 7-11s, eateries, sub-shops, pubs. There’s even a pretty cool comic book store within 5 miles of where I’m staying.

Of course, the very nice apartment that Alec Peters and I am staying in is a good 20 minutes (by car) to Vancouver Film Studios, which is where Battlestar Galactica was filmed. (They will be filming the movie up here, and are in pre-production for this.) I’ve met pretty much the main heads of both the art and props departments up here, in addition to the producers: Richard Hudolin, Doug MacLean, Harvey Frand, and others.

I’ve also walked a majority of the sets. Been to CIC, the pilots room, the Cylon baseship set—the hangar bay set was locked down, so we couldn’t get there. Saw the hero Viper Mark II cockpit, Colonial One all in pieces (yes, it comes apart, and they’re breaking it down now to store it, since other shows will start shooting at the stage it presently occupies)… lots of stuff.

Of course, I don’t have pictures of the sets yet. And, to be frank, I probably won’t release some of them until after the series airs, simply out of fear of being spoilery. That, and I signed a NDA, so I deeded over my first born to NBC Universal should I spill something. As I will have access to the final episodes, not to mention the fact that we’ll be having input in the new movie prop and set decoration (“set dec” for short), that was necessary.

And, as part of our job, we’re going to be documenting the breaking of the sets, so those pictures will end up on the Battlestar Props website.

In any event, here’s a picture of the view from the balcony of the apartment, since it’s the only picture I have of Vancouver so far. Yeah, I’m that busy. LOL

August 5, 2008 | Last post in Vero

This will be my last post in Vero Beach, Florida for a while…

I’m very happy that this is the case. That is all.

January 9, 2008 | Wikia Search… bleh.

To much fan fare from the Wikipedians and Wikia, the for-profit service, launched their vaunted human-editable and maintainable search engine a few days ago. Essentially, the philosophy behind it is the same as it is with Wikipedia in that you can create and edit what search engines spew out whenever you search for a term.

Of course, having just tried it, I am wholly unimpressed. Then again, this is the same group of people who are involved in MediaWiki development who can’t give us an internal search engine worth a damn… I have to use Google to look up terms on Wikipedia! Bah!

I know that it is a beta, but there are several concerns which ring the alert klaxons immediately.

The more immediate one for me is this: I don’t trust Jimbo’s Jabronis to tell me what I need to know. Just look at the watchdog group Wikipedia-Watch.org and what they’ve dredged up over the years about so-called power-tripping Wikipedians in high powered positions. Frankly, I find the most ardent Wikipedians to be blood-shot eyed liberal extremists who believe in raping and pillaging information to suit their worldview. It really is like the concepts laid out by The Party in 1984 are coming true! “Neutral Point of View” my ass. It is more a case of “Might makes Right Point of View”.

Now, I must note that the ardent, outspoken bloodshot eyed liberal extremists who comprise Wikipedia and some of Wikia are a small minority of their contributor base. However, they are in positions of power, and thus explains my “might makes right” comment. (Axiom of the day, courtesy of Shakespeare: “There is little choice in a barrel of rotten apples.”)

Secondly, there is a reason why search engine algorithms are hidden from the public. If they were released under GNU or other open software license, spammers and the like would easily be able to manipulate search engine results to produce more garbage. Wikia, which says that its search engine code will be revealed to all, will be exploited ruthlessly by spammers and scammers wanting to make a buck because they know how it works. It’s like telling a thief who wants to steal from Fort Knox everything about the security setup!

To summarize, it’s really simple why Wikia’s Search will fail, and it all boils down to these tried and true axioms:

1. Money talks, bullshit walks.
2. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
3. History is written by the victors.

I’ll leave you with this tidbit from 1984:

Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.

This is the future. Fight it ’til we can’t.

October 7, 2007 | Website revamp

So I’ve gone ahead an revamped the website. Woo-wee!

Let me know what you think guys!