A musical interlude, the search for strange objects, and still looking for signs of intelligent life in the universe

My slackerly ways have gotten the best of me this past week, but I did run across a few things that I thought were interesting. Probably the coolest is a 2008 series of entries from the blog Cruise Elroy, about the music in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Even though I'm not much of a music enthusiast and I know nothing about its technical aspects, I am a big fan of several of the Zelda games, and I often sleep to the soundtrack from Ocarina. Well, I was blown away by the depth of analysis and appreciation in these posts, even while most of it went over my head. Each post taps into a level of geekery that tweaks a special part of me deep inside. *ahem* Yes, well, I recommend checking out Cruise Elroy in general for nerdly interests both musical and game-ish in flavour.

Also cool: Saul Rubinek posted to Twitter today with, "http://twitpic.com/10jq4d - can't wait to start using my Artie stuff again March 1." Yay! I assume he's referring to the start of production on Warehouse 13's second season, which is scheduled to air this summer. While it's not the best TV to be had, it is entertaining and has some decent potential. Plus, I like Saul Rubinek so much that I'm pretty sure I'd watch him in damned near anything.

If you've been wondering what's up on the search-for-aliens front, wonder no more.

And that's a few things!

Extra geek on the side

Since my return, I've made a few changes to the "Geeky places to go" list over there on the right. Today I'm adding Dot Physics, the blog of Associate Professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University, Rhett Allain. His blog caught my attention with his recent post, Flying R2-D2, you are doing it wrong, but I definitely recommend browsing past entries as well. He writes interesting things.

I also ditched a couple things that I'm tired of, and added TED to the list. Remember TED? We talked about TED the other day. If you still haven't checked out TED, well, that's just a damn shame because you're missing out.

Finally, I added Penny Arcade, which oversight it's about damn time I corrected.

H.G. Wells: Bitter old hack

I consider Fritz Lang's Metropolis to be one of the most amazing and influential films in the history of cinema, scifi in particular. Mr. Wells, however, thought it was "silly." What a jerk. His petty and dismissive review, originally printed in the New York Times in April 1927, is available for your perusal.

What I'm not watching on TV

The subject line says it all, but before I dive in, I want to give a little warning: this post is about the shows I tried and passed on, so it's not very complimentary. I'll rave when I write about Dollhouse or Star Trek, but for now it's all about the bitching.

Sanctuary was entertaining for awhile, but it lost me shortly into the second season. I certainly wasn't a cheerleader for Ashley, but I kind of missed her - they got rid of one irritating chick only to replace her with a far more irritating chick. The stories got dull, my favourite character (John Druitt, played by Christopher Heyerdahl) went away, and I just don't like any of the other characters enough to care about what they're up to. Finally, a good bit of my TV viewing is for the hot people, so between Druitt's absence and Henry (Ryan Robbins' character) getting less hot every time he did something stupid, the thrill was gone.

I also gave FlashForward a try and ended up saying no thanks around episode nine. The various ideas it presented made for some fertile ground for speculating, but the execution got too hard to watch. More soap opera than I could stand anymore. That was especially unfortunate, as I like John Cho quite a bit, and Sonya Walger (who also plays Penny on Lost) is more than enough of a hottie to overlook a lot of other flaws in the show.

V is another show I couldn't give more than a taste before I was compelled to take a pass. Aside from just not grabbing me, it starred Morena Baccarin, who's pretty painful to watch. I've yet to see her in anything where she's able to display any kind of dimensionality or nuance, and her role as Anna in V was no exception. Another unfortunate loss, since I enjoy Elizabeth Mitchell (Erica on V, Juliet on Lost) a lot.

I almost skipped mentioning this altogether, but I've raved about Stargate on this blog so much that I pretty much feel obligated. As big a fan as I am of SG-1 & Atlantis, Brad Wright & Robert Cooper (the creators) have convinced me to give Stargate Universe a pass altogether. Their attitudes about the earlier shows and the fans of those shows has just been too shitty and insulting. I'm not in their desired demographic, and that's all right by me.

So, is there anything on TV worth watching? Well, I'm not exactly thrilled with Heroes, but I am entertained by it and I could probably never get tired of Sylar. I've been enjoying Dollhouse quite a bit, so of course it's been canceled. Shit. I guess this is what folks mean when they refer to TV as a wasteland.

Brains: not just for breakfast anymore

Enjoy some cool pictures of brains by photographer Peter Ross.

Taking a dump

Haha, I bet you thought I meant poop! Since I was away for so long, I'm dropping on you a link dump - a collection of some of the interesting things I've found or been pointed to in the past while.

The Year's Most Amazing Scientific Images from the Popular Science website. As you would expect, holy-shit-amazing pictures.

Super cool photos of the LHC No, I'm probably never going to get tired of talking about that thing (and some of the comments on that page are hilarious).

50 Years of Space Exploration This is super fucking amazing. If you check out no other links on this list, look at this. LOOK AT IT!

Planets and Stars to Scale If you were wondering just how small you are, this will help you understand that you are really, really tiny.

Free Science Lectures In addition to the above video, this site has all sorts of cool science shit.

Questions for the Author of The Physics of Superheroes I talked about this book awhile ago (here), enjoyed it and was quite pleased to stumble across this interview.

Top 10 Worst Portrayals of Technology in Film A list you'll appreciate eye-rolling along with.

The Bohr-Einstein Debates, with Puppets Puppets! And physics!

100 Games Cupcakes As an appreciator of both games and cupcakes, I think this is just spectacular. My list of words for #39: ado and coat cod coda con coy dan don nod oat tad tan wad wan wand yon

Os Gameboys Legend of Zelda medley This actually and truly made me a little misty-eyed.

I'll end this dump with some wonderful silliness - Star Trek meets the A-Team

Enjoy!

The TED talks I've been digging lately

If you're not familiar with the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conferences, you're missing out on a world of holy-shit-amazing ideas and information. Check out the About page for more info.

What really goes on at the Large Hadron Collider - "'Rock star physicist' Brian Cox talks about his work on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Discussing the biggest of big science in an engaging, accessible way, Cox brings us along on a tour of the massive complex -- and describes the vital role it's going to play in understanding our universe."

Beauty and truth in physics - "Wielding laypeople's terms and a sense of humor, Nobel Prize winner Murray Gell-Mann drops some knowledge about particle physics, asking questions like, Are elegant equations more likely to be right than inelegant ones? Can the fundamental law, the so-called 'theory of everything,' really explain everything? His answers will surprise you."

They don't make bad boys like they used to

James Dean was already dead years before I was born, having lived fast and died young, leaving behind a mangled corpse. Nonetheless, I nursed a crush on him through most of my teens. As far as I knew, none of his work was scifi, but I was entlightened this afternoon when I was catching up on my cheesy television with an episode of Tales of Tomorrow ("The Evil Within," 1953, which incidentally starred Rod Steiger) and I realized the awkwardly cool lab guy was James Dean. It's a small thing, but it put a bright little spark in my day.

Speaking of bad boys, Heroes returned this past Monday with two episodes, "Upon This Rock" & "Let It Bleed." Through some ridiculous oversight, Sylar wasn't even in the first ep. Hmph. "Upon This Rock" redeemed itself, however, with Hiro's continuing adventure. The effects of his tumor are manifesting in wonderfully appropriate ways, and I think he's going to save Charlie before he dies.

I like the character of Samuel, but I'm a little bored with his story. It doesn't help that he reminds me of a petulant kid sometimes. The carnival setting is cool, though, and I enjoyed the build up in the first half of the season. The setting and melodrama remind me of an attractive and square version of HBO's show Carnivale*.

Well, it's been a decent ride so far this season, with a few highlights but little that's really been spectacular. I loved watching Sylar in Parkman's brain. Parkman was an okay guy, but it was silly of him to think he could actually take out Sylar. Overall, though, the many stories continue to have lots of action while not going much of anywhere, and the characters keep banging their heads on the same old walls. However, I like Sylar so very much that I'm willing to overlook a lot. In fact, he pretty much carries the show for me (making his absence from "Upon this Rock" quite a drag). I'm curious to see where his story is going, and through what convoluted means everyone else gets pulled along.

*Being reminded of Carnivale inspired me to watch the show again and I was glad I did. It's two short seasons (twelve episodes each), and pretty damned great. I recommend it for the amazing atmosphere, and the high level of weird. Point of interest: Robert Knepper, who plays Samuel on Heroes, appeared in several episodes of Carnivale as radioman Tommy Dolan.

Geek-A-Thon 2009

Dragon*Con - I went, I saw, I had a geeky good time. For the unitiated, D*C is a massive multi-media scifi/fantasy/popculture/etc. convention in Atlanta over Labor Day weekend, and it's how I've been spending the long holiday weekend for the past few years.

Since it's already next year, I'll skip the day-by-day report that I've given for past D*Cs. Really, how the hell am I supposed to remember most of it anyway? As usual, I had a great time visiting my friends in Atlanta before & after the con, and the con itself was loads of fun. I didn't do much costuming, but holy shit some folks went all out. My favourite group costume was the Fruity Oaty Bar girls . Dark Knight Joker was terribly popular, and steampunk was all the rage. The closest I got to costuming was a sari with a fancy-schmancy sequined choli. I caught a few excellent science & tech panels (props to the Science and EFF tracks!), in addition to several celebrity panels so I could gawk at the pretty people. One of the coolest panels was on why the LHC won't destroy the world. Damned interesting, if somewhat disappointing (I mean, something's going to take out the place eventually, so it might as well be something cool like a man-made black hole. But apparently not). The Dealers' room was all right, though I failed to find a t-shirt I wanted this year, and I don't recall even making it to the Art Show. Hunh.

Well, I took a shit-ton of pictures.

Costumes I never stop being bowled over by some of the very cool things people put on their bodies for a con

Popetine and Darth Maulducci

Parade More amazingly costumed people

Wonder Woman

Hotties Celebrity Guests Stars from Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5 & Stargate, and scientists Kevin Grazier & Phil Plait

Bruce Boxleitner & Claudia Christian

I'm registered for this year (Sept 3-6) and have a hotel room reserved. 100% of all donations to the "Get Erica to Dragon*Con" fund will go toward debauchery.

Welcome to the Future

So I was gone for awhile and with no ado, it's time to post again. This is going to get long enough as it is, so for the moment I'm going to skip much analysis and just rattle off some things that are cool, interesting or otherwise noteworthy (to me, natch). Enjoy the new show & tell picture (over there on the right), which is Darth Vader totally saying, "How you doin'?"

I still love geeks, and while the geeks at the LHC have managed to smash some tiny shit together, they still haven't destroyed the world. Patience, my pretties.

Guess where there's water? That's right, the motherfucking moon. Here's the rather dry but info-packed Mission Update from NASA (13 Nov 2009), and the story at the National Geographic site.

Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon died in December. He was responsible for Alien, Total Recall and Blue Thunder, as well as some other stuff. My 13-year old niece just watched Total Recall and we've been discussing whether the Governator's character's experiences were real or just implanted memories. Good conversations.

So I've seen the new Star Trek a bunch of times and I think it's holy shit, A+, motherfucking balls out awesome. Yeah, I liked it, and not just because I have dirty, dirty thoughts about Zachary Quinto as Spock. I might write up something coherent about the flick eventually, but in case I don't, the high points of my commentary would be: for the most part, the characterizations were super entertaining; if the story even approached scientific feasibility, it couldn't be called "Star Trek"; visually, it seriously rocked and a lot of shit blew up; most of the acting was entirely enjoyable; and finally, wheee! I hope the next movie is a redo of the TOS episode "Mirror, Mirror," mainly so I can see Zachary Quinto as evil-Spock. I'll be in my bunk.

It's things like this that make me say, holy shit, I love living in the 21st century - 3D Mandelbrot Fractal.

Well, I don't know how long I'll manage to keep this up, but I'm kicking around ideas for posts about Dragon*Con '09 (good times, good times), "Dollhouse" (diggin' it), and maybe another thing or two.

Finally, since "happy new year" seems inadequate for 2010, I'll say welcome to the future.