JoeBeaudoinDOTnet

So today Alec and I went to see the Clone Wars movie. It was a nicely done movie, and enjoyable. Obviously, it was your basic Star Wars action flick, and if you’re a Star Wars fan you’d enjoy it.

There’s not much of a story here, and the main draw is the impressive CGI. The actress who voiced Padme Amidala is most impressive, she sounds like Natalie Portman did in the live-action flicks. Of course, the only three actors to actually voice their characters from the live action flicks are Samuel L. “Motherfucking Snakes” Jackson, Anthony Daniels, and Christopher Lee.

There’s not much of a story here. It’s basically Anakin being assigned a Padawan learner who is little older than a “youngling” (oh, how I loathe that term…) during the Clone Wars. Of course, seeing as we all know how things are going to turn out, there’s not much here to really invest your interest in. The story is nothing spectacular, and it really ought to be given the fact that it has the misfortune of being a glorified prequel film.

Otherwise, it’s a decent way to kill an hour and a half, but I would pay to see the early showing, since it’s not a movie that’s worth 12 bucks to see. (Yes, that’s what it costs in Canada: $12.50 CDN.)

Yes, I’ve been in Vancouver since the 6th. I can tell you now that it’s very beautiful up here. As with any major city, it’s congested like hell and driving is a bitch. Plus there’s construction happening on basically every other road, it seems. On the upside, I can pretty much get anywhere simply by walking. In my travels, I have seen coffee shops (yes, there’s Starbucks; I can get to two of them if I head east), 7-11s, eateries, sub-shops, pubs. There’s even a pretty cool comic book store within 5 miles of where I’m staying.

Of course, the very nice apartment that Alec Peters and I am staying in is a good 20 minutes (by car) to Vancouver Film Studios, which is where Battlestar Galactica was filmed.  (They will be filming the movie up here, and are in pre-production for this.) I’ve met pretty much the main heads of both the art and props departments up here, in addition to the producers: Richard Hudolin, Doug MacLean, Harvey Frand, and others.

I’ve also walked a majority of the sets. Been to CIC, the pilots room, the Cylon baseship set—the hangar bay set was locked down, so we couldn’t get there. Saw the hero Viper Mark II cockpit, Colonial One all in pieces (yes, it comes apart, and they’re breaking it down now to store it, since other shows will start shooting at the stage it presently occupies)… lots of stuff.

Of course, I don’t have pictures of the sets yet. And, to be frank, I probably won’t release some of them until after the series airs, simply out of fear of being spoilery. That, and I signed a NDA, so I deeded over my first born to NBC Universal should I spill something. As I will have access to the final episodes, not to mention the fact that we’ll be having input in the new movie prop and set decoration (”set dec” for short), that was necessary.

And, as part of our job, we’re going to be documenting the breaking of the sets, so those pictures will end up on the Battlestar Props website.

In any event, here’s a picture of the view from the balcony of the apartment, since it’s the only picture I have of Vancouver so far. Yeah, I’m that busy. LOL

This will be my last post in Vero Beach, Florida for a while…

I’m very happy that this is the case. That is all.

To much fan fare from the Wikipedians and Wikia, the for-profit service, launched their vaunted human-editable and maintainable search engine a few days ago. Essentially, the philosophy behind it is the same as it is with Wikipedia in that you can create and edit what search engines spew out whenever you search for a term.

Of course, having just tried it, I am wholly unimpressed. Then again, this is the same group of people who are involved in MediaWiki development who can’t give us an internal search engine worth a damn… I have to use Google to look up terms on Wikipedia! Bah!

I know that it is a beta, but there are several concerns which ring the alert klaxons immediately.

The more immediate one for me is this: I don’t trust Jimbo’s Jabronis to tell me what I need to know. Just look at the watchdog group Wikipedia-Watch.org and what they’ve dredged up over the years about so-called power-tripping Wikipedians in high powered positions. Frankly, I find the most ardent Wikipedians to be blood-shot eyed liberal extermists who believe in raping and pillaging information to suit their worldview. It really is like the concepts laid out by The Party in 1984 are coming true! “Neutral Point of View” my ass. It is more a case of “Might makes Right Point of View”.

Now, I must note that the ardent, outspoken bloodshot eyed liberal extremists who comprise Wikipedia and some of Wikia are a small minority of their contributor base. However, they are in positions of power, and thus explains my “might makes right” comment. (Axiom of the day, courtesy of Shakespeare: “There is little choice in a barrel of rotten apples.”)

Secondly, there is a reason why search engine algorithms are hidden from the public. If they were released under GNU or other open software license, spammers and the like would easily be able to manipulate search engine results to produce more garbage. Wikia, which says that it’s search engine code will be revealed to all, will be exploited ruthlessly by spammers and scammers wanting to make a buck because they know how it works. It’s like telling a thief who wants to steal from Fort Knox everything about the security setup!

To summarize, it’s really simple why Wikia’s Search will fail, and it all boils down to these tried and true axioms:

1. Money talks, bullshit walks.
2. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
3. History is written by the victors.

I’ll leave you with this tidbit from 1984:

Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.

This is the future. Fight it ’til we can’t.

So I’ve gone ahead an revamped the website. Woo-wee!

Let me know what you think guys!

So, yes, it’s been confirmed that Battlestar Galactica will have one final season, which will air in 2008.

I’m rather pleased with this news myself, seeing as most shows overstay their welcome with the audience. Most stories or shows just don’t know when to end, and just fizzle out. Like Sliders, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The X-Files (with the story that really went nowhere very, very slowly) and, most recently, Stargate SG-1.
In light of the announcement, I feel much better about the quality of the show’s fourth season, since I feel that the creative force behind the show will put their balls to the wall and produce some amazing hours of television.

I’m now psyched.  We now have 24 hours of Battlestar Galactica left before the end. w00t!

The DVD movie “Babylon 5: The Lost Tales” will be released July 31, 2007. Read more here.

Here’s something that should be pretty cool.

Here’s also some cool links:

• Sanctuary For All - Official Website
• SanctuaryFans.com
• SanctuaryWiki.org, a Frak Media production

For those of you that haven’t seen this, you need to do so. Fucking hilarious. Paricularly if you’re a fan of “Battlestar Galactica” and like the type of humor in Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm”.

Fucking A!

Went out to the Post Office in Zero Beach today to pick up the Mooby’s shirt I ordered from Jay & Silent Bob’s Secret Stash. (I wasn’t around when they delivered it, as they needed my signature.) Now I have a costume for that “Octoberween” party at work. Fuckin’ A.

In addition, I have a Technoranti listing, which is here.

Also, I’ll be updating both the Battlestar Wiki Blog and my own personal blog with the new WordPress. Boring, eh?

Woulda had a great day if I didn’t walk into that shithole today to give money for the walkathon. (It’s a walkathon on muscular distrophy and altzheimers. It’s supposed to happen on November 4th or something.) No good deed goes unpunished.

Oh, BTW, if you see me on GTalk and you don’t receive a reply from me, don’t get offended. I often leave my gmail/gtalk window open, simply because I’ve been really run down lately and I’m running around trying to juggle my online life (read: Battlestar Wiki), work life, and my own godsdamned life.

I’m also feeling like I’m getting sick: I’m hoping its not a damned cold virus; I don’t need it now.