Five Pounds of Flax

Every culture has a burrito.

TeeVee: Goodbye Stargate, Hello HEX

Sunday, June 24, 2007posted by Michael Rothwell @ 6:06 PM

Stargate SG-1 aired its final episode this past Friday. I'll miss it -- it was a fun show. It peaked a few seasons ago (wormhole extreme! -- I liked how the show never took itself too seriously), but was still enjoyable. The Stargate concept -- past civilizations, the gate network, aliens playing the roles of gods (they cleverly managed to defeat the Goa'uld without ever meeting Yahweh, part of the reason they lasted 10 seasons, I suppose) -- gave the writers a very interesting way to fictionalize myths and history into entertaining science fiction. And the thrum that the Daedalus made in the vacuum of space always provided a good a chuckle. Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson were the core of the show's personality.
General Hammond: You ever think of writing a book about your military exploits?
Jack O'Neill: I've thought about it. But then I'd have to shoot anybody that actually read it. That's a joke, sir.

Martin : A top-secret government program involving instantaneous travel to other solar systems by means of a device known as a stargate.
O'Neill: Sounds like a good idea for a TV show. If you're into that sort of thing.

Jackson
: This tastes like chicken.
Carter: So what's wrong with it?
Jackson: It's macaroni and cheese.

Kershaw: I feel better just knowing there's an archaeologist watching our backs.
Jackson: Yeah, which end do the bullets go in again?
Hopefully the Stargate movies will be good.


Lately, I've been watching Hex on BBC. It's like a British version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but instead of vampires on the loose, it's fallen angels, and swap Ella for Buffy.

Weeds is a great show, but I canceled Showtime a while back. Ah, well. I watched through Season 2, and I'm not sure there will be a Season 3, anyway.


I wish they'd bring back Dead Like Me and Firefly. In the meantime, there's Dirty Jobs, Criminal Minds, and The Closer.


Harry Connick, Jr!

posted by Michael Rothwell @ 6:01 PM

I got to go see Harry Connick, Jr at the Koka Booth Amphitheater in Cary on the 22nd, thanks to Tim (thanks, Tim)! It was a great show!



Flash Lite, Moto Q

posted by Michael Rothwell @ 5:51 PM

I installed Adobe's Flash Lite player on my Moto Q this morning. I was hoping that Bloxorz would run on it, but it wouldn't. Bloxorz, like many flash games found on the web, requires Flash 8, while Flash Lite is based on Flash 7. However, I did get a few games written for the iRiver iClix or Nokia to run on it just fine -- Sudoku, Freecell, a Frogger clone. It's a nice addition to the phone. Kids love it while we're in the car.


It's all in the timing

posted by Michael Rothwell @ 5:48 PM

I happened to load the digg home page at just the right time. A story about the health care system killing people, with 666 digs. Perfect.


IMAP-IDLE News

posted by Michael Rothwell @ 5:20 PM

Leopard's mail will support IDLE... yay!

Version 1.07-pre-3 of my IMAP-IDLE plugin for Tiger's Mail.app is the most recent version. It was released on May 15, 2007.

I'll see if I can get another release out soon. Maybe even 1.07-final. The big issue with the 1.07 series is that I switched from using threading to using an event-driven state machine that utilizes Mail.app's runloop to process networking events. While it's lighter-weight, more deterministic and easier to control (and debug), it appears that there's still some bugs (see the comments here).