Battlestar Galactica cannot be trusted, it seems, to actually push the envelope. I was very disappointed by 2.11 and 2.12 (the Resurrection ship episodes); I thought it would push the show into an interesting moral place if the "good guys" actually did "bad" things in pursuit of their goals. The speech about "deserving" to survive from Adama, despite a stellar (as usual) performance by Olmos, rang very hollow. BSG has become, to me, a show that constantly walks right up to the line, looks at it, looks at the viewer, and backs away again.

alg: Hi, interwebs. The problem with my laptop

I've been fighting this analysis for most of season 2, but I give up. I just watched the season finale of Battlestar Galactica, and it was terrible. Awful. Like "Let's take everything that makes this character who she is and ball it up and throw it away." bad.

I've been unhappy with several episodes in the second season (especially the "second half" of the second season - and what was that about anyway?) - I think they've begun to focus on syndication and making each episode a single capsule that stands on its own - which is very different from season one where each episode was a beat in an overall dramatic arc. But I still thought it was the best TV running right now.  I don't have much confidence in season 3 right now. They can redeem it, but that was just . . . bad. I can't explain what I didn't like without getting into spoilers, but as you watch the finale just ask yourself - is that the same Kara Thrace we've seen for two seasons now? I don't think it is, I don't think the whole episode holds true to the rest of the series.

 Very disappointed.

 

technorati tags: Battlestar_Galactica, TV

Magic's October 2006 large set, code-named "Snap", is called Time Spiral.

Announcing Time Spiral

  Hurrah! For those keeping score, this is not my novel. Time Spiral is the first novel in the block trilogy (codenamed Snap). My novel is the second in the trilogy, and the name has not been announced, thus I will continue to call it Crackle when I'm out with my homies keeping it real, yo.

But this is the beginning of the block, so anybody who plans on reading my novel will want to pick up the corresponding book for Time Spiral. I give it a hearty recommendation anyway, it's a good read!
 

technorati tags: Magic:TheGathering

OK, so yeah it's been a while.  Partially because I've just been super-busy on the wordsmithing front, and part of it was once I skipped most of February, it seemed to make sense to skip all of February. Don't ask me why.

But anyway, yeah I'm back. I have a few things to talk about. Buckle in! 

technorati tags: journal

What matters is this: an application, in and of itself, should never install an extension that modifies the system or otherwise diddles the runtime environment of other applications, without the express permission of the user. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Daring Fireball: Smart Crash Reports

This article is long, and it's sort of technical. But read it anyway, it's good to understand. But if you can't follow it at all, I'll cut to the key bit:

That might still be a bit tricky for some users. With a strong dose of caveat emptor, here's my step by step version.

1) Open a terminal window (it's in Application/Utilties if you live in the dark ages. If you run Quicksilver open Quicksilver and type in "Term" or so until you find it. Or put it on your dock and aspire to be a real Unix weenie someday. :-))

2) Enter the following: cd ~/Library

3) Enter the following cd InputManagers

4) If 3) doesn't work you probably need to create the folder. mkdir InputManagers will do it. If 3) worked then skip to 5)

5) Enter the following: ls

6) If 5) returns this text "Smart Crash Reports" you already have it. If you know what you're doing at the command line, then delete the folder.  (Full disclaimer - that's what I did - a rm -rf command. If you don't know what that means, I'm not going to tell you. If you do know than you don't need my help - RTFA beeyotch!) If you don't, let me tell you the safer way to trash it (using the Finder). Open the Finder. Go to your home folder, open the Library folder, and then inside there is the InputManager folder. Drag the folder named Smart Crash Reports to the Trash. This will junk it, but the next time you run whatever really ill behaved app it will reinstall it. Continue on to lock your system down. If 5) did NOT list the folder then continue to 7)

7) Back at the Terminal window enter the following: touch Smart\ Crash\ Reports

8) If you didn't do step 6 open the Finder window and navigate as described. Once you have a Finder window in Library/InputManager then select the file there named "Smart Crash Reports". Hit Apple-I (for Info). Click the "Locked" check box. Close the Info window, the Finder window and the terminal app. Now you are protected from "silent" installation of Smart Crash Reports.

Bonus note: If you have anything else installed in the InputManager folders you've got some other crazy thing running about. Apparently this is the same mechanism that PithHelmet uses. It sounds pretty clunky to me, but I Am Not A Mac Programmer. If you have something else in that folder and you don't recognize what it is . . . well that's bad. Drop me an email and we'll see what we can find :-)

technorati tags: OS_X, software

(And yes, I know they dropped the 'A' a while back. It will always be Advanced to me, baby.)

Amazon dropped me a line pointing out that I might want to order the upcoming 30 Years of Adventure : A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D Retrospective) (Paperback) - which is a reasonably good guess, let's be honest. I thought I was familiar with the product - this is just the softcover version of the book that came out last year. Fair enough. However one thing did catch my eye - the softcover was edited by Peter Archer (which makes perfect sense - he's the head of the book department), but check out the author of the hardcover version. That's right Vin Diesel!

I poked around a bit and it's not as quite as outlandish as it sounds, apparently he really did write the foreword. I've been seeing more and more stuff about Amazon screwing up the author credit on books and apparently it's a real pain to get it straightened out, so I assume this is the same sort of thing. Anyway, it made me laugh.

technorati tags: gaming, humor, Amazon