I Thought It Was Supposed To Be Too Hot In Here?

2008.02.26 - Tuesday

Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling

I wonder if the sun has anything to do with this? Nah! Impossible, since everyone knows the sun is a constant and even energy source which until the industrial revolution kept the Earth in an idyllic, Biblical "garden of Eden" state enjoyed by creatures for eons until the arrival of evil, technology-driven, carbon spewing Man.

So, obviously this cooling is something else. Everyone break out their "The Day After Tomorrow" DVDs and contemplate the ice age to come!

Toshiba Concedes, HD DVD Dead.

2008.02.19 - Tuesday

Toshiba Officially Drops HD DVD

The format war is officially over. Finally! I've been enjoying a few Blu-Ray discs for several weeks now after buying a Playstation 3 in the wake of the Warner Bros' announcement that they were going Blu-Ray exclusive. The war was really over at that point, but today we finally get the official word from the losing side. I'm hopeful that Paramount and Universal will be quick in offering their previously HD DVD titles on Blu-Ray, since there are definitely some good films. For now, there are still several discs available that I want to get, but all in good time.

I've definitely noticed that it's hard to go back to watching standard DVD. Oh sure, eventually you get used to the slightly blurry image and text, but it's always there. I can see how most people wouldn't particularly care about the difference, but for me it's night and day. That being said, I hope to be a bit pickier with my movie collection this time around, if only for the shelf space.

So, happy "HD DVD is dead" day. Go buy a Blu-Ray player!

Season Ten!

2008.02.14 - Thursday

I completely forgot how much fun "Stargate SG-1" is. It's been a while since I watched season nine and now that Chris and I have made our way through "Star Trek: The Next Generation" it's back to Stargate. So far the tenth season is pretty decent, except for a questionable CG dragon. It's too bad that the hyper-religious Ori weren't introduced at least one season earlier in the series. They're far more terrifying than the Goa'uld ever were. I will admit however that the compressed story is forcing things to move along very quickly, even for Stargate standards, which leaves almost every episode packed with so much information you can barely look away for fear of missing something.

I'd much rather watch this kind of pure fantasy than a show like "Battlestar Galactica". I know Galactica gets all of the press, but Stargate is just way more fun and even the downer episodes somehow leave you in a good mood. Besides, Stargate has more legitimate science fiction stuffed into one episode than you'll find in an entire season of Galatica.

Recently I've also watched through the first three seasons of "Stargate: Atlantis", the spin-off series which started alongside SG-1's eighth season. Atlantis is just starting production on its fifth season this year. I can't say it's as good as SG-1, but for me that's mostly because of the uninteresting villains. The characters are alright and the show has the same sense of fun. I'm hoping that at some point Atlantis will get a shot in the arm via a new nemesis that isn't replicating nanites or space vampires. Both have been done to freakin' death and I never want to see either in a sci-fi series for some time to come.

With rumours of a third Stargate series in the works, I'm hoping there's more of this kind of show far into the future. It's a great antidote to the depressing, stress-filled, no-can-do cynicism of most of the critically acclaimed drama series on the air these days.