Archive for May 19th, 2008
Steve Ballmer over the news after man throws eggs at him. He also says advertising is the new bedrock of Microsoft. And now we are hearing more and more about the cloud. Cripes. Microhoo gets back on track with alternative deals suggested. Child porn laws affirmed by the Supreme Court. Latest Pew survey about the Internet and American Life has to be totally wrong.
Click to listen:
In the past, you could download tasty Battlestar Galactica content from iTunes the day after it was aired. Then NBC and Apple had a pissing match in the iTunes sandbox, and NBC pulled all it’s content… grrr.
So, at the beginning of the season, you could watch new BSG episodes at the Scifi.com website streaming… first just at noon EST, then every hour on the hour. All was good in the universe. Then, without much warning, they started only showing the first ten minutes. You can imagine just how annoying it is to get settled into an episode of Battlestar Galactica only to have it quit, ten minutes into it… GRRRR…
Then Hulu.com came around and once again you could get tasty Battlestar Galactica content the day after it was aired. That lasted until this week. Saturday, as rabid BSG fans hit refresh over and over again waiting for “Guess what’s coming to dinner?” to post up, we were informed that Hulu.com will no longer be showing tasty Battlestar Galactica content one day after it airs. In fact, you get to wait a whole week.
Hmmm… SciFi, NBC, and all the other networks. Please listen, I am going to type slowly so you can keep up. Why do you think it is good idea to pull content off of your “controlled” environments where you can place ads, and make money, and do all the wonderful goodness you need to do to keep the content coming and then FORCE people to go to their favorite bit torrent site to keep up with the show.
OK Network guys, let me explain something to you about bit torrent. About 45 minutes after you air your show, a high quality, commercial free version of that episode is live and being downloaded from bit torrent. People have proven that they were willing to wait, even a whole day, to allow you to spoon feed it to them with commercials and all. They will NOT however wait for a week. You know this. Yet you still continue to make poor decisions like this to drive your viewing audience to the bit torrent world.
Well, then… You reap what you sow.
Since we have been going on and on about TV shows today, we thought we would post something up for you to actually watch the TV shows on… Samsung is unveiling the ultimate TV to watch the Galactica jump into Hyperspace. So, spool up your FTL drive and check this bad boy out.
Samsung will showcase the first 82-inch LCD TV panel with an ultra-definition (UD) resolution at a 120Hz refresh rate. UD is 3,840 x 2,160 pixels which is significantly higher then 1080p. The UD resolution is at 120 frames per second in an attempt to minimize the blurring that is sometimes experienced at 60Hz. A red/green/blue LED back light has been added to raise true color saturation to 150 percent, which is based on the [ NISC ] standard of 100 percent.
“This 82-inch LCD is large enough to cover all viewing angles with ultra-definition resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate that will allow viewers to watch motion pictures as if they are really in them,” said Sang Soo Kim, executive vice president of the LCD Technology Center at Samsung Electronics. “It is the optimal display for future TVs
Samsung is also looking out for our educational folks with “e-board” a multi-touch screen, which is destined to replace whiteboards and beam projectors. It reverts back to a 60Hz LCD panel with built-in UD resolution and is , to date, the largest panel of its kind with a multi-touch screen. Granted your local public elementary school will not likely see one of these installed any time soon, I am in process of trying to convince my boss that is the perfect addition to my office.
No luck yet.
I have been trying to get caught up recently on my Tivo collection, which keeps getting bigger and bigger, and I came across trailers for J.J.’s new show coming out called Fringe, and I am eager to get this added to my Tivo list.
Here is the official synopsis :
When an international flight lands at Boston’s Logan Airport and the passengers and crew have all died grisly deaths, FBI Special Agent OLIVIA DUNHAM (newcomer Anna Torv) is called in to investigate. After her partner, Special Agent JOHN SCOTT (Mark Valley, “Boston Legal”), is nearly killed during the investigation, a desperate Olivia searches frantically for someone to help, leading her to DR. WALTER BISHOP (John Noble, “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King”), our generation’s Einstein. There’s only one catch: he’s been institutionalized for the last 20 years, and the only way to question him requires pulling his estranged son PETER (Joshua Jackson, “Dawson’s Creek”) in to help.
When Olivia’s investigation leads her to manipulative corporate executive NINA SHARP (Blair Brown, “Altered States”), our unlikely trio along with fellow FBI Agents PHILLIP BROYLES (Lance Reddick, “The Wire”), CHARLIE FRANCIS (Kirk Acevedo, “Oz”) and ASTRID FARNSWORTH (Jasika Nicole, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”) will discover that what happened on Flight 627 is only a small piece of a larger, more shocking truth
I know this sounds very X-Files’esq, but I don’t think so. It certainly carries the same theme, but that is a pretty broad area, and J.J. will certainly put a different spin on it as he does with all of his work. Anna Torv certainly reminds me a lot of Jennifer Garner, and her role in Alias, but this is a good thing. I would definitely love to see Garner and Abrams work together again, and he does well with strong leading female roles.
The other great thing about this show is that it is written by the same guys that brought us Alias, Transformers and the new Star Trek Movie [ Alex Kurtzman ] & [ Roberto Orci ].
OK.. so here is the trailer :
The answer, in this geeks opinion is both. I think that Smallville started out as a quirky teen drama with the super hero twist. The story mostly centered around Clark’s obssessive love of Lana, which really got annoying, and Cloe’s secret love of Clark, equally annoying.
The show turned around when Cloe found out Clark’s secret, and they got rid of Pete. No offense to Sam Jones, who I think is a great actor, but his character was weak and doomed for removal. The show got even better when they stopped focusing on Lana, and brought Oliver and the other Justice League Characters. I really wish they would either start focusing on those characters a bit more, or do a spin-off series with those characters. They are AWESOME!
Last week Thursday we saw the season finale of season 7, entitled “Arctic”. Lex goes to the Fortress to fulfill his destiny, while Lana awakens from her coma and Chloe is arrested by the government.
Best part of the episode … Lana wakes up, and says a digital goodbye. Again no offense to Kristen Kreuk who is both a gorgeous woman and a fantastic actress, but the writers just completely destroyed this character, and made the whole Clark and Lana story line contrived and aggravating. It became painful watch, and Lana’s dialog made me want to puke most of the time.
The season finale was a little dissapointing to me though. While there was a bit of action, and the destruction of brainiac was cool, the story was suppose to wrap up the story arcs with Lex , Lana, and Clark, and all of that was basically an after thought of the episode. I mean, Lex FINALLY finds out that Clark is the Traveler, and that is done in the last five minutes of the episode, and Lex is kind of, “Oh OK.. we could have done great things together, but now I am going to kill you.”
I just thought there should have been more time with that. Lana too. While I ended up hating the character, I really thought that her “ending” on the show was horrible. It was disrespectful to the character, the actress, and to us the viewers who have had to sit through seven ears of build up with that character. I really thought that the wrap up of Lex and Lana’s stories should have had an episode each dedicated to it.
My biggest concern is that since Clark and Lana didn’t really have closure, and so he will continue to obsess about her and she will continue to be a focal point in the show, which will suck.
Anyway, Cloe seems to get screwed in every season finale, Lois seems to be getting set up to be Clark’s new obsession, Clark and Lex buried in the rubble of the fortress and Michael Rosenblum not coming back next season, Brainiac getting blasted into oblivion, and Kara stuck in the phantom zone, we are left to wonder who will actually be the villains in the next season.
In the end, Smallville seems to be casting off it’s teen 90210′esq drama and embracing it’s geeky superhero self, and I, for one, welcome the change.
Phillip Torrone ( See update below ) has put together a air powered lego built V8 engine that can reach up to 1400 RPM’s… It is so very cool.
Here is a pic …
Here is a video of it running.
I think this may be the next line of eco-freindly vehicles made completely out of legos… Imagine getting into a car accident and just being able to put your car back together and go home.. 
*UPDATE*
One of our readers brought the following our attention :
TheQ Says:July 18th, 2008 at 8:09 am
I am sorry but the design is not Phillip Torrone’s. Alex from Nicjasno.com made the engine. The picture even has Nicjasno.com’s watermark on it.
One guy, Ivan, from the Nicjasno.com’s forum has made a motor that runs 3500 RPMs