Yeraze's Domain 3.0

WOOHOO!

That’s right, the 2-hour Series Finale of Battlestar Galactica, one of my favorite SciFi (SyFy? ugh..) shows in recent memory, is tonight !
I really hope that lower-left panel is correct.
The Joy of Tech comic… laughter is the best tech support..
The Joy of Tech comic… laughter is the best tech support..

This is amazing.. I’ve got to start watching Robot Chicken again.
YouTube – Star Trek Opera.

I’m not a big news watcher, and I try my best not to simply reproduce information you can find elsewhere on the net.  However, this one is big enough to warrant an exception.  An excellent report by Dan Rather entitled "The Trouble with TouchScreens" aired recently, and someone has put it up on Google Video.

Doh.. Looks like Google Took it down.
It’s an hour long, and covers a wide scope of information with some really interesting discoveries:

• Calibration problems with Voting Touchscreens
• Quality Control issues with Voting Touchscreens related to high-humidity (like the Humidity in Florida)
• The fact that these units are assembled in Manila
• The fact that 30-40% of these units leave the Factory, knowingly defective
• Virtually no product testing prior to leaving the factory
• An interview with Michael Shamos discussing the reliability problems facing current systems, and what’s needed to make workable ones
• And much more…

And to make it even better, he talks to people behind the botched 2000 Presidential Election.  Talking with the people who make the paper ballots, he discovers that the ballots sent to Florida in that election were purposely made different from other ballots, both in composition and layout.  He also discusses the possibility that it was done intentionally to further the cause of electronic voting machines, now sold by that same company.

It’s a great insightful show, and I highly recommend that every American see it.

Update 8/17/2007:  Looks like google took the video down.  By the guy behind "The Brad Blog" has a WMV version for download.

[tag:news][tag:voting][tag:danrather]  

So this week I’ve been watching The Lost Room on the SciFi channel.  Looks like it’s three 2-hour episodes airing Monday, Tuesday, and concluding Tonight.  I’ve got the MythTV setup to tape it, but I’ve (so far) been just watching it live when it airs.

So far I’m enjoying it.  It’s an interesting premise with alot of mystery (What happened in “the room”? Who’s “The Man”? What do these objects do? etc).  It’s had some neat special effects, like “The Polaroid” last night, but they’ve haven’t overshadowed the story.  The characters are interesting, the “Objects” are neat, and the story really keeps your attention with all the twists and turns.

Unfortunately, I can easily see SciFi trying to turn this into a regular Series.  With “over 100″ objects out there, seems they could easily come up with 100 episodes.  Lose a few to a cabal every now and then and have a few more.  Seems like it would get a little ridiculous if they stretched it out, but the 3-part miniseries is so far going pretty well.  Guess we’ll see what I think when they wrap it up tonight.
[tag:tv][tag:scifi][tag:lostroom]

Last night was the return of SciFi friday, with the premiere of Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis.

I would love to say I saw them and they were awesome, but alas I can’t.  Due to “unforseen equipment failure”, Entergy had the power down until almost 11:00 last night, so I missed the first half of SG1.  But even when the power was restored and I got to see them, I’m sorry to say they just weren’t all that good.  On SG1 they setup the Ori in our galaxy, leaving us soundly trounced and licking our wounds.  On Atlantis they managed to save our galaxy from an additional invasion (2 for 1 special at the galactic ass-whoopin buffet apparently) at the cost of 1 intergalactic battlecruiser.  Basically, it was the same-old same-old, “Oh no we’re gonna get invaded”, “Oh no we’re gonna die but we’re gonna take them with us first!”, “Oh wow, how did we survive that?”.  The show really seems to have lost something since Richard Dean Anderson left, and it’s hard to see Atlantis as anything other than SG1 with a Search-and-replace on all the characters.  Hopefully they just had a weak season premiere and they’ll get better as the season goes on.

Although Friday nights are back, what I’m really looking forward to seeing is the new SciFi tuesday.  They’ve aquired showtime’s Dead Like Me, which even though I’ve only seen one episode I’m really looking forward to.  They’re also backing it up with the new Eureka, which looks like it could be alot of fun.  So I suspect I’m going to start slowly shifting away from Friday Scifi towards Tuesday Scifi, at least until Battlestar Galactica comes back. (Speaking of which, there’s supposed to be a preview of the new season’s BSG during the premiere of Eureka this Tuesday, set your calendars/TIVO’s).
[tag:tv][tag:scifi][tag:stargate]

Gotta thank LifeHacker for this find. Of course, Super Bowl XL is this weekend, and that means a few hours of football and a few minutes of hilarious new commercials! The one I’m really looking forward to this year has Richard Dean Anderson pickup up his swiss army knife to revisit one of my favorite characters, MacGyver, in a great MasterCard commercial.

Check out some of the commercials, including this new MacGyver one, at superbowl-ads.com. (2nd row, right-most column).

Update Seems alot of people are coming to my site looking for this ad. Superbowl-ads.com seems down, but you can find alot of the superbowl commercials at Google Video’s Superbowl page. Unfortunately, they don’t have the MacGyver commercial, the only place I know to find that one right now is on AOL Sports Superbowl Ad Page, filed under the 4th Quarter commercials.

Tonight is the start of SciFi Friday again, with the season premiers of StarGate SG1, StarGate Atlantis, and BattleStar Galactica. So from 7-10 tonight, I will be incommunicado.

That is all.

As I’m sure all of you know, I’m a big Stargate Fan. Every Friday night I can be found watching Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, and Battlestar Galactica. Stargate has started an interesting new “Priors of the Ori” storyline, and last week was the season finale with both the development of an anti-ori device and the Ori’s attack on the Jafah. This Friday is the season finale of both Atlantis and Battlestar, and it looks like both of them will make up an action packed 3 hours of television. On Atlantis they’re going to take on a Wraith Hive Ship, and on Battlestar it seems they’re goin to run into another battlestar outin the darkness. Can hardly wait to see how Adama reacts to finally meeting a superior officer. But what will I watch when this weekend is over?

Well, Laura and I have been watching HBO’s Rome. It comes on Sunday Night, tho, and we don’t want to miss any of the new season of Family Guy, so we catch it on the Tuesday Night encore. It’s proven to be pretty entertaining, although a bit gory and unnecessarily graphic at times. As an added bonus, the new season of Nip/Tuck has started too, and airs on Tuesday night right after Rome! The premiere was last night, and it was a nail biter at the beginning. Laura hasn’t been able to stop talking about Dr. Troy, “Did he live?” I won’t spoil it for you, but it was a great episode to watch.

It seems Tuesday nights will be the new TV night for a while.

That’s right, tonight is the season premiere of Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Battlestar Galactica. So don’t try to call/email/IM/poke me with a stick between 7pm and 10pm Central tonight, because I’m going to be glued to the TV. I’ve been waiting since March 25th to figure out what happens to Adama & Atlantis, and tonight I finally get to find out!

Sure hope the weather doesn’t knock the cable or the power out.