1. Battlestar Weékeéheé

The above is a nod to my friend, Shannon/Taser/Doubletap, who kept on referring me by this name whenever she was up in Vancouver.

So, the website is finally back online. Getting all the logistics into place for moving the server took time out of Shane’s and my life, not to mention all the technical obstacles that popped up during our arduous server move. As you can imagine, this endeavor was the largest (and longest) move that we’ve ever made. It isn’t for the feint of heart, and Shane (who did most of the IT heavy lifting), is a trooper. If it weren’t for him, I would have swan-dived off the roof.

All the while we were down, people came forward and offered their assistance. (One of them, in particular, I would like to make a special mention of as they are responsible for our new home when MediaTemple didn’t pan out, but I’m leaving that for its own blog in a more official venue.) Some of them freaked out, which is something that concerns me a bit, but I took the time to assure them that it was a server move that took longer than expected.

I continue to be humbled by the appreciation that people have for the website, and the server move not only cuts costs, but also results in a more powerful server that can handle all the requests that people make on it.

Did you know that the Wiki has over 2,000 unique visitors an hour? That’s with the show no longer being on the air, by the way, which explains why my jaw sort of hits the ground a bit.

During our peak, we had well over 300,000-400,000 unique visitors a month, if not more. The site is tremendously popular and I am honored to have been the guy who began something that’s attracted talent from across the world. At the risk of gushing, it’s really something when a website gets you the opportunity to help create history, particularly with the Battlestar auctions that happened in 2009.

And, as you might be aware, the Wiki has always been the slowest every time an episode airs. Sometimes, the servers crashed. And that sucked, for everyone. Now that we have a powerful server at an economical price, I think we’ve achieved balance there where it won’t crash and burn everytime the Wiki addicts want to look up something.

It will be interesting for me to see what Caprica holds, particularly for the website. I hope the show is of great quality and is around for a while.

Exciting.

2. Mass Effect

On the gaming front, I’m working my way through the first Mass Effect, and I am really digging the game so far. For some reason, I find myself more attracted to Mass Effect than I am to something like Dragon Age: Origins. I seem to have a better handle on leveling my characters, modifying my equipment, affecting the story the way I think it should be played out, and I’m just having fun with it. Given some of what I’ve seen in the game so far, I suspect that there are some Mass Effect programmers and writers who are fans of BSG and Farscape.

With that, I’m really looking forward to Mass Effect 2 based on my experience in this game.

While I know that these RPGs are from the same company and everything has the same basic concept—bionic powers being indistinguishable to magic spells and the same basic general character classes, for instance—I’ve found that I respond better to the science fiction setting. Perhaps because I’ve always found science fiction far more interesting (and with more possibilities) than a realm run by wizards, ogres, dragons and the like. This isn’t a knock against fantasy, since fantasy and science fiction have always been intertwined, but science fiction has its advantages. Particularly if it is well executed. I would go as so far to say that science fiction brings fantasy into the realm of the galactic universe, as opposed to the mystical one. Or one is an extension of the other.

Needless to say, I’m of a few different minds on this…

3. Moving Blah-Log

Keeping up with my blogging has been a bit of a chore for me. However, persistence is key, and I’m chugging along. Some of the blah-logs are probably boring, but it’s a cross-section of what limited interests I do have in this pitiful little life of mine.

One of the things I’ll be doing is moving my blah-log to the MT server that my company (FrakMedia!) has, since I’m consolidating things. Right now, I have three different hosts for various sites, and I want to reduce that number. Same with domain names. I have some domains through 1&1, one through resell.biz (that’s JoeBeaudoin.net) and GoDaddy. Goal is to get all the domains over to GoDaddy within the next few weeks. JoeBeaudoin.net is being migrated now and should be transferred by the 12th, and once that is done, I can implement all the necessary DNS changes and move this blah-log over.

Yes, that was fun to know wasn’t it?

Until tomorrow, good night and good luck.

Sadly, I was not able to take pictures, as that was part of the deal. (Same could be said for the Universe sets that I visited when up there. Destiny‘s sets are truly magnificent, even if it wasn’t fully lit up when I and a few others went to visit it.) With that in mind, I give you a brief insight into the world of Caprica.

Graystone's Living Room (Courtesy of UGO)

While not Galactica‘s CIC, the Graystone mansion is magnificent. Pictures of it can be seen on various science fiction news websites, from Syfy’s Digital Press Tour last year. It is a recreation of the original house that was used in the pilot, and is indistinguishable from it; a testament to the construction and set decoration team on Caprica. The thing has two levels to it (upstairs and downstairs) and you could literally live there, with the minor exception that the “basement”—where Daniel’s lab-office can be found—isn’t really down below the main level at all. Furthermore, I’m not sure where the bathroom is, but I know what’s in their walk-in closets! The view of the water and mountain range from the massive living room windows is tremendous… and a fake backdrop that is, itself, completely impressive in its detail.

All the major standing sets, including the Graystone house, are housed only in one stage. I had visited this stage once before when working on the Battlestar auctions, but at the time it had the Café Diem and other minor locales from another Syfy show, Eureka.

The show uses more CGI than one would assume, and there’s a section of Caprica‘s main stage set aside for that (V-Club and other locales that you’ll see are mainly shot here). Much in the same way that Stage I—I believe it was “I,” I’m not sure though until I review my pictures and notes—that housed Galactica‘s Hangar Deck also had a section for CGI, where they would place the Raptor or Vipers when shots needed to be done.

Serge, the phallic one-eyed Caprican droid, is completely CGI.

The show uses CGI in ways you did not expect either. A notable instance that took me aback was being told that Serge, the gray and white Apple-esque phallic rolling droid at the Graystone house, is a complete CGI construct. I had assumed that they had a full-size electronic version, like they have a full-size electronic version of the U-87 Cylon prototype. Of course, I know now that this is not the case: the production uses a cardboard stand-in when they need a visual marker for the actors and digital effects team, which is the same thing they did for the Centurions in BSG. (They also have a cardboard stand-in for the U-87 for the CGI sequences.)

I would say more, but most of what I’ve seen is stuff that hasn’t been aired yet, so I’ll keep that to myself until the time is right.

Look for Caprica to begin airing on January 22nd. It’s not Battlestar, but this piece of “blue-sky” science fiction should prove interesting… and it does pose this question: Does BSG have the ability to become its own little science fiction franchise or not?

And when I call it crap, I use the word “crap” in lieu of the word “pure garbage.” The other crap is good crap. However, the axiom of “one man’s garbage being another man’s treasure” applies here. If you like your crap, then I don’t begrudge you your tastes. You did buy it after all and I hope it means something to you!

Now when we geeked out, we still did some pretty creative things. We had a photo shoot of us in uniforms, with the photos taken by our SoCal local photographer, Lee, who is awesome. If I can find those photos, I’ll post a few; we shot them very late at night, so we had the “33″ effect going on, which fitted nicely into the gritty feel of the series.

Regardless, what prompted this entry was a photo I was sent by my friend and former Propworx co-worker, Erin. Steve, Thom, Erin and I had devised this little thing before my little dance with temporary insanity. It’s a graphical chart depicting the whole “all this has happened before” junk that Ron Moore stole from Peter Pan.

The "cycle of time" illustrated on a white board.

I’m quite proud of it. Even if there should be another red arrow between “colony” and New Earth… Or maybe we added that later?

Yeah, we added that later. Just assume we did.

Addendum: See? We even expanded upon it! I knew I wasn’t imagining this!

The expanded special edition of the whiteboard layout. Oh, and Roslin, our whiteboard was bigger than your puny one. How do you like those New Caprica apples?

See the following one-sentence paragraph? Not an addendum. Just a carry over during the revision process:

So, ahem, enjoy!

So let’s begin. I awoke this morning to find that a core theme of mine manifested itself. I’ll give you five cubits to figure out which theme it is.

One was in the form of a private message from the Quorum, The Colonial Fleet‘s message board; I received a message from one of the kind prop replica makers there, who went out of his way to thank me for creating the Battlestar Wiki. It made my morning when I read it, if only because it is a testament to a resource that I and many, many people worked on over the past five years to create and maintain.

The second was the discovery of a very interesting fact. It is a fact that was revealed when I posted yesterday’s blog about the Battlestar schwag—Dr. Kevin Grazier was never given a copy of the Battlestar Galactica Cast & Crew Yearbook.

It is a discovery that disturbs me a bit, seeing as I had received one with thanks to my friends at NBC Universal, Propworx, and the former Battlestar production office in Vancouver. When I received my copy, I had been informed of the following: it was one of the last copies up in Vancouver not given to anyone, and that everyone who worked on the series received one. Given this information, I’m a bit distressed to just find out more than a year later that Kevin seems to have been overlooked. Honestly, my involvement on Battlestar is not to the extent of Kevin’s and, let’s be honest, he had far more to do with shaping the show than I (or anyone connected to the Wiki, really) ever did.

So before I received a copy, Kevin should have received one. That would have been logical, fair, and… look, the human factor throws all that out the airlock. Whoosh!

I’m not blaming anyone for this oversight, because these things do happen. However, since we know that the issue is present and I feel that it should be corrected, I’m going to at least open my mouth about it—if only in the hope of the right person at the right place, and at right time, becoming aware of this and having the power to fix it.

So, for those of you who read this and have any worthwhile connections at NBC Universal, please make it so that a book ships to Dr. Kevin. There might be an extra one lying around somewhere. Also, if someone is thinking of selling their copy, please strongly consider sending it to Kevin.

Let’s make this happen. Call it a late Christmas present, if you’d like. So say we all.

The book that (at one time) went for over $3,000. Believe it or not.

There are some very cool pieces of Battlestar Cast and Crew schwag up on eBay, all for charity. The stuff is authentic as 1) it’s been confirmed by Aaron Douglas on his LJ blog, and 2) since I have some of it.

The best thing to be auctioned off is the Cast & Crew Yearbook that is awesome; I would use the term “positively awesome,” yet since “negatively awesome” is a contradiction, there’s no need for the unnecessary modifier. Although I don’t think it’s worth the $700 that is being asked for, charity or not. This book has become, more or less, the cornerstone of my own personal collection, yet it pales in comparison to the information I procured about the series while I was working on the BSG Auction via the scripts, continuity materials, and all that good stuff that will never really make the light of day, if NBC Universal has anything to say about it.

I’d be interested in writing a book on it, if there were any people interested in reading it.

Oh, and the nitpicker within me was just summoned to inform you that the yearbook does not come with a DVD. It’s a CD, the “Best of Battlestar Galactica” CD that was first made for this thing and then later given out by Bear McCreary and his Battlestar Band for those who participated in his search for a web designer of his band’s website. You can follow them on Twitter, although they don’t tweet much.

Should you happen across this book, while you’re listening to the aforementioned CD, do feast your eyes on the “Whom Frakked Whom” tree… that’s just pure hilarity. There might be a picture or scan of it available online, but I couldn’t be bothered right now to look for it.

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.

It puts a smile on my face to know that the long work of loving, dedicated fans is noticed by the folks on the higher planes of existence.