blueZhift Blog

I’m a bad man. My lovely wife thought I was working late, instead I was watching Speed Racer at the movies and enjoying every minute of it!^_^ I grew up watching Speed Racer, and this movie perfectly captures the flavor of that experience. It just feels right and well worth the $10.50 I paid to get in, and the accusing frown I got from my wife when I got home! Definitely a baaaaad man!

Quantum physics tells us that the very act of observing perturbs the system and affects the outcome of the experiment. On the macroscopic scale of real life we this effect is negligible, and it is probably a good thing that my every thought does not become a command for the larger universe. Yesterday while browsing books in Borders I started thinking about the Catholic grade school I went to and the cute blue plaid skirts the girls wore everyday. A short time later I passed by a book that essentially had that on the cover. Mere seconds later about 10 short skirted Catholic school girls passed me by. What a wonderful sight!^_^

Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons passed away last week. I never played D&D as a kid, but I knew a lot of guys who did and I had more than one occasion to peruse the stacks of D&D books they never seemed to be without. I was fascinated by the color and detail of it all, and ultimately it was only the lack of time that kept me from getting in on the action. I was more of a Starfleet Battles man, and heavens knows how much time that game took per move!

Nevertheless, I owe a great debt to Gygax because the fantasy worlds I’ve come to inhabit later in life, such as Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft, are based on the role playing game paradigm that he helped create. And to a great extent videogames in general. So thanks Gary, and I think I’ll skip the obligatory saving throw joke! Here’s an xkcd tribute instead!

When I initially planned to go see Star Trek: The Menagerie in high definition on the big screen, I assumed that it was just going to be a really good looking version of my familiar Star Trek. Star Trek was my first religion, and I was mainly looking forward to “worshipping” with a lot of like minded people. To my pleasant surprise, I got a lot more than just that!

Not only was the episode better looking than ever before, all of the exterior/background special effects had been redone using modern technology! Oh my god! The planets look like real planets and the space flight effects are gorgeous. You even see stars moving through the captain’s cabin window. At first glance, one might think that Star Trek has been given the sometimes reviled, Star Wars Special Edition treatment. But that would be unfair to say because the improvements/reimaginings have been applied with the kind of restraint that George Lucas has not quite mastered. The intent was to make things look “like they should have looked” in the first place.

Absolute, don’t change anything, purists will hate this. But I for one am very excited and looking forward to seeing more of the remastered and enhanced episodes. This theatrical release is also great martketing because I had no idea this was even coming and now I’m totally jazzed about the rerelease. It almost feels like hooking up with an old flame!

Okay, this is your only warning.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

Now let’s get this all out the way right now. Col. Tigh, the Chief, Starbuck’s husband, and the President’s Chief of Staff, are all Cylons! Damn! Didn’t see that coming. Oh, and Starbuck’s alive and is going to show them the way to Earth. Of course, I suppose that is if they manage to survive the massive Cylon surprise attack that ended the final episode of the season.

Whew, that’s a lot to pack into the last episode, but it is all soooo deliciously cool. I haven’t had this kind of excitement since the cliffhangers of Babylon 5. Sadly, we won’t see how things turn out until 2008. I’m glad that, for the moment at least, it appears that Starbuck is alive and in the flesh, not in someone’s head. And I would even say, that maybe, just maybe her appearance with the Cylons is not just a coincidence. Maybe she brought them, and maybe they aren’t there to attack. And with 4 or the final 5 Cylons revealed, will the final one really turn out to be Admiral Adama, perhaps activated upon reaching Earth? Nah, that would be too easy.

Click here to join the fun in the Battlestar Galactica forums!

They killed Starbuck! Those bastards! T_T I’m still a little bit in shock because while I’d heard that a major Battlestar Galactica character was going to die this season, I hadn’t expected it to be Starbuck, at least not yet. Normally, I might be a bit pissed at having a favorite character killed, but if I’ve learned anything watching the new Battlestar Galactica, it’s that even dead characters have a way of sticking around. I’m sure we’ll see Starbuck making visits to people’s heads in the future, Caprica (aka Number Six) style. I’m guessing she may be taking up residence in Apollo’s head for a while.

I actually hope I’m wrong about that though, because the whole, people in my head thing, is getting a bit over used. Given all of the hints at a special destiny for Starbuck, I’m hoping we’ll see something more imaginative and perhaps more dramatic, maybe a Cylon aided resurrection or something. However it’s handled, I doubt that we’ve seen the last of Kara Thrace.

Once again proving that no good deed goes unpunished, those stupid dogs at Universal Studios are biting the fans that feed it. Universal has sicced its lawyers on Firefly fans demanding that they stop promoting the show and even retroactively billing them for licensing fees.

Now I don’t have a problem with a company protecting its property and trademarks, but handling your fans/customers in such a tactless fashion is not a way to encourage future sales. If some fan is selling unlicensed t-shirts, for example, there are better ways of handling it than releasing the hounds of law. But since the lawyers get paid regardless of the ill-will and bad PR they generate, then they have no incentive to help matters.

I’ve never watched a complete episode of Firefly, but I’ve heard it was a good show. It’s too bad the studio isn’t using the fan support they seem to be hell bent on crushing, to instead build Firefly into one of the great money making franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars are for their owners. There’s no secret to making money, you have to find/make something and sell it to a lot of people. Universal Studios has the something, and there seem to be a lot of people interested in it. So what’s their problem?

Well despite a lot of moaning and complaining over on Slashdot about the quality of the original version of Star Wars: A New Hope on the newly released limited edition, I went ahead and bought them anyway. I have the original trilogy on VHS, but I can’t even remember the last time I used the VCR and I have no plans to pull the thing out again either. So I finally have the originals (more or less) on DVDs that I got for $20USD per episode at Borders (less 10%, w00t!), which I consider to be a good deal. Yeah yeah, some people want everything absolutely perfect for $5/movie, but life is short and I was tired of waiting. So if the original trilogy is ever digitally remastered, then I’ll pick it up again. Ka-ching for George Lucas!

All of that said, this is a bit like a dream come true. I never got to see the original in theatres. I still remember being in line as a kid only to have the show sell out with just 5 or 6 more people in front of us. Later I’d watch it many times on HBO, but on a TV that had really wonky color. I even recorded it from the TV onto audio cassette tapes which also got quite a work out. So fast forward to now and widescreen edition DVDs with a boatload of extras and you’ve got one happy fanboy.

Forty years ago today, Star Trek began airing on NBC. I grew up watching Star Trek in syndication. I learned the episodes by heart and much of my outlook on life was influenced by that show. So I always get a kick out of people poking fun at it, especially when the people doing it are William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy as they do in this hilarious interview with CNN. Yep, it’s about the biiig bucks!

Shatner and Nimoy on 40 years of Star Trek

Today Battlestar Galactica “webisodes” began on Sci Fi channel’s website. These short 4 minute snippets tell the story of the budding resistance on New Caprica in advance of the season 3 premiere on October 6. But Firefox users need not apply, the first webisode at least would only play in Internet Explorer on my Windows XP box. If you’re as hungry for the new season as I am, these little snacks should satisfy. I only wish I could download them to my PSP.

Oh strike that Firefox remark, after I ran it in IE, it worked in Firefox. I don’t know if this is a real browser issue, or if my box is just wonky.