There might be some spoilers here. I’ll try to keep them to a minimum.
The SciFi adaptation of Battlestar Galactica is over. From the opening scene, I could almost hear the collective wail of agony from BG purists (if there is such a thing) out there.
I liked it.
Wail away BG purists. It’s not like you didn’t know it wasn’t going to be a remake of the original series. It’s not like SciFi and the creators didn’t make it absolutely clear from the outset they weren’t going to simply redo the original series with updated FX. They made it quite clear that they were going to rewrite from scratch. Oh, they kept a lot of things. The story concept and some of the ship designs remain. The characters have been largely rewritten and redeveloped. They don’t resemble the characters from the original series at all. Cylons have advanced significantly.
It’s different, more gritty and edgy than the original. The Cylongs are bigger and badder than ever. Characters are harder and more complex. Galactica, the Colonial flagship in the original series, is set to be decommissioned and destined to become a museum in the new series.
I liked the tributes to the original series they put in. There were exhibits in the museum-to-be’ showing a Cylon and Cylon basestar from the original series. The Cylon ships have the red eye moving back and forth, as do the mechanical Cylons. The Vipers look mostly the same (all the fancy new ones get wiped out).
There were a few things I didn’t like. The technology isn’t quite as advanced as it was in the original series. Vipers shoot machine gun style, the Cylon ships launch missiles and attack with nuclear warheads. Galactica is kind of ugly looking, but I’m sure it will grow on me, just like the Enterprise-D did.
As just a 2 part mini-series, I didn’t think it was long enough. I wanted more. But hopefully, more will come in the form of a series.
I wonder when/if the series will start.
Good bye inkjet, hello laser
We finally decided to dump our old Cannon BJC-210 and replaced it with an HP LaserJet 1012. Office Max had it on sale for $150, so we figured what the heck. It’s a pretty sweet little printer. It’s light, with a relatively small footprint.
Installation was a snap on WinXP. Pop the CD in, install the drivers, plug the printer into a free USB port and let Windows do it’s magic. First page out in 10 seconds, 15 ppm, manual and auto feeders and 1200 dpi. It’s only a simple B/W printer (2 bit greyscale), so the print quality isn’t as great as something like a 4500. But for home use, print quality looks just fine. And 15 ppm sure beats the heck out of the 2 or 3 the old BJC used to do.
Printer configuration and diagnostics are done through a web interface and web server running on your computer. It’s something that can be turned off though, if you’re leary of an unknown webserver running on your system.
At $150, definitely a good deal if you’re tired of that pokey slow inkjet.
Whale Rider
Watched a movie called Whale Rider last night. It’s an nice movie about the classic themes of old ideas and traditions clashing with modern reality. On this occasion, the old ideas and traditions are those of the Maori. Good movie, good story, very nicely filmed.
Matrix: Revolutions
Saw Matrix:Revolutions this afternoon. Reviews were lukewarm, and didn’t seem to be all that well received from what I’ve read of peoples’ comments on various boards, but I thought it was an excellent movie. I thought it was more in line with the first movie than Reloaded was. Plenty of action, some fabulous fight scenes, and very thought provoking. The ending reminded me of Star Trek: TMP. If you’ve got some time to kill, I think Philosophy and The Matrix has some interesting articles to read.
Can’t wait to see it at the IMAX now.
Scary Movie 3
Went to see Scary Movie 3 last night. Definitely one you can wait to rent, if you even want to do that. I’d recommend skipping it altogether. A spoof loosely based on The Ring. Mostly a series of corny jokes, most of which are spoofs of other horror/sci-fi movies, like in the previous Scary Movies. The movie has its moments, but not very many of them.