As you may have read in rdhdsnippet's LJ, dababybean's latest addiction is "Land of the Lost." (The real one, that is, not the Will Ferrell abomination.) I got the complete series DVD set as a gift for the wifelet a week or so ago—in the collectors edition lunchbox case, of course. At Evan's insistence, we've been watching one or two episodes a night most nights since then.

Unsurprisingly, Evan's terrified of the Sleestak. But somewhat surprisingly, he's not terrified enough to stop watching. How long until he's watching "Doctor Who" with me from behind the sofa, I wonder? :)

The special effects are definitely, ahem... special. But actually not NEARLY as bad as I remembered. Maybe I've just watched too much 70s era "Doctor Who?"

The writing is simultaneously worse and better than I remembered. The dialogue is atrocious at times (although that's largely the delivery), but the overall plot is much more complex and multilayered than I remembered (and even than I remember from most 70s shows for grups). I'm vastly amused that of the six episodes we've watched so far, three were written by David Gerrold (who was also the first season script editor; and BTW, is Gerrold EVER going to finish the damn Chtorr series?????), one by Larry Niven, one by Norman Spinrad, and one by Walter Koenig. And looking ahead on IMDB, also coming up in season 1 are Ben Bova and D.C. Fontana. Wow. That's quite a lineup for a low-budget kids series!

Tags: dababybean, land of the lost, science fiction, teevee
Current Music: Laaaa-and of the Lostlostlostlostlost...

So, I've joined the Cult of Mac. A 2.4 GHz 15" MacBook Pro. It's very shiny. The multitouch trackpad is very cool, but is going to take a bit of getting used to.

If you own or use a Mac regularly, what are your must-have applications/utilities/whatever? Either free or commercial, but let's focus on free, at least until this thing's paid off. :)

I need a laptop, very soon, and I'm very close to deciding to get a MacBook Pro. I still need to be able to run Windows, though (particularly since I have lots of money invested in Adobe products, and Adobe doesn't do cross-platform licensing)—should I go with VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop? Does anyone have experience running the Windows versions of Photoshop CS3 or Lightroom on a Mac in either of these environments (or through Boot Camp)? Any problems or caveats? Anything else I should know before taking the plunge?

Tags: geekery

Who the fuck is Ashton Kucher, and why the fuck does CNN think that him (her? it?) winning some stupid Twitter contest is worthy of a "Breaking News Alert" text message?

Current Mood: annoyed

It seems that Amazon has seen fit to remove from its search results, sales rankings and bestseller lists any book it deems "adult" oriented, including just about anything gay or lesbian themed. Among the books Amazon thinks are too offensive to display in search results:

D.H. Lawrence: Lady Chatterly's Lover
Michael Wilhoite: Daddy's Roommate
Leslea Newman/Diana Souza: Heather Has Two Mommies
Annie Proulx: Brokeback Mountain
ETA (and removed the links in case people were tempted to buy them from Amazon):
Randy Shilts: The Mayor of Castro Street
Randy Shilts: Conduct Unbecoming - Gays and Lesbians in the Military
Rita Mae Brown: Rubyfruit Jungle
Jeanette Winterson: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Dr. Nathaniel Frank: Unfriendly Fire- How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America
Stephanie A. Brill: The Transgender Child - A Guide for Parents and Professionals
Richard Plant: The Pink Triangle - The Nazi War Against Homosexuals
James Baldwin: Giovanni's Room
Gore Vidal: The City and the Pillar
Tristan Taormino: Opening Up - A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships (and everything else she's written; see Tristan's letter to Amazon here)

For a nonexhaustive list of deranked items, see Amazon's own list of products tagged with amazonfail.

Funny, though... Kindle results $eem to be unaffected. I wonder if there'$ a rea$on for that?

markprobst, whose (sex-free) YA gay romance novel The Filly was deranked, has more in his LJ.

ETA: The LA Times is now reporting that Amazon is calling it a "glitch." Yeah, right.

Tags: amazonfail

rdhdsnippet, dababybean and I just watched the International Space Station pass nearly directly overhead (give or take 30° or so). With the recent completion of its solar array, the ISS has now surpassed Venus as the second-brightest object in the night sky. rdhdsnippet thinks that's unnatural; I think it's amazingly cool.

Find out when the ISS will be visible over your location here.

Next time I'll set the camera up on a tripod and try to get a time lapse.

Tags: geekery, space
Current Mood: geeky

What does it say about me that I see the headline Spector a 'dangerous man,' prosecutor says on CNN.com, and the first thing that pops into my head is "Arlen" and not "Phil?" And remember, I was a Music Production & Engineering major in college—I studied Phil Spector a LOT...

(And yes, I know Arlen's last name is "Specter," not "Spector.")

Current Mood: silly

Just posted to my friends list (via bianculli_blog) is a spoiler-free preview of tonight's BSG finale, posted to ("Fresh Air" and former "New York Daily News") TV critic David Bianculli's TV Worth Watching blog by guest blogger Ed Martin. I think I've enjoyed the second half of the final season more than many on my friends list, but even I've been a bit dubious that tonight's finale could satisfactorily wrap things up. This post doesn't erase all of my doubts by any means, but it does have me even more curious about how Ron Moore is going to pull it off. And it did prompt me to make absofrackinglutlely* sure my DVR is set to handle the fact that the final episode runs two hours and 11 minutes.

* Although I still want to spell it "Absofragginglutely, dammit!"... B5 fandom dies hard!

Tags: bsg, teevee
Current Mood: curious

Steven Page left BNL?!??!!???

Despite the "pursue solo projects" line in the announcement, I've got to wonder how much this has to do with last year's "If I had a million dollars, I would buy you some coke (but not real cocaine, that's illegal)" incident?

Tags: music
Current Mood: awake

Tags: mobile

Okay, the kid walking through Target in a black hoodie and a V-style Guy Fawkes mask is definitely creepy...

ETA: Wow. That's been sitting in the outbox on my Centro since September?

Tags: mobile

I know there are quite a few Battlestar Galactica fans reading this. If you're musically inclined and not also reading series composer Bear McCreary's fantastic blog, check out the three-part entry he just posted about his extraordinary score to tonight's episode, "Someone to Watch Over Me."

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I'll need to watch this one again. I was paying too much attention to the unique character of the score (and the fact that, unlike just about every other TV show or movie out there, the actors' piano performances weren't obviously faked!) to really focus much on how tonight's revelations will impact the rest of the series.

And I *LOVED* the nod to the original series theme in "Noimon's Third Sonata."

Tags: bsg, music
Current Mood: fascinated

How many of these best-picture Oscar nominated movies have you seen? Bold the ones you've seen, regardless of whether you saw them in the cinema, on TV/video, or on a plane years after they came out.
( Gee, I wonder what year I had a kid? )

Tags: in lieu of actual content, meme

"The bomb squad blew up my science project."

We finally got home from !Arisia at about 10:30 Tuesday morning. After an 11-hour snowy drive from Boston to the in-laws' to retrieve the kidlet, we decided that it was best to crash there overnight before getting in the car for two more hours.

The party was great, as always. My personal experience was mostly great. I was utterly exhausted and very low-energy (even for me!) for the entire weekend, was sick for about half of it (what I thought at the time was just my usual sinus stuff developed over the course of the drive home into a full-blown case of post con crud), and was prone to bouts of surliness and antisocialness (due to the first two factors and the impending layoff). But despite all that, the weekend almost entirely failed to suck. Thanks to all the friends, new and old, who helped make that possible. And apologies to anyone I got sick!

More later, maybe. But now, sleep! In my own bed!

Tags: !arisia
Current Mood: sick

Has anyone else on Verizon (or using Verizon DNS) been experiencing VERY frequent DNS failures for all Google-related hostnames for the past few days? I've mostly been using Verizon's public DNS servers (4.2.2.1-4.2.2.5) for the past couple of years because they tend to be very fast, and don't searchjack like their FiOS DNS servers. But all week (maybe a bit longer) every second or third DNS lookup for a Google host has been failing, whether it's to www.google.com, www.gmail.com, www.youtube.com, a search through the Firefox toolbar, or something else.

I've just switched to OpenDNS, and that SEEMS to have solved the problem, at least for now. I used OpenDNS for awhile a year or so ago, but switched away because they annoyed me for some reason... but now I can't remember what it was.

Edit: Nope. Now it's failing on OpenDNS, too. Grrr.

This past weekend, a new friend asked what my favorite color was.

It's still blue. :)

Tags: politics
Current Mood: ecstatic

Tags: mobile

Apologies for the lack of zoom/cropping...

ETA: For those of you who can't read the sign, it says "Defeat McCain/Palin? YOU BETCHA."

Tags: mobile

I was in and out of our polling place (the local elementary school) in under half an hour at about 9:30 this morning. No problems to report, and the Obama and McCain volunteers/observers were almost being friendly with each other! (Before you know it we'll have dogs and cats living together and mass hysteria...)

The school PTA knew a captive audience when they saw one, and were doing several fundraisers. I bought a box of Krispy Kreme and brought it in to work.What can I say? The nice "O" shape must have inspired me. :)

Tags: mobile