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On my drive home this evening I had this crazy random thought about semi-trucks and wondered why they don't make them sleeker, you know, like from that '80s series "The Highwayman?" Which inspired me to actually look up some information on this series to see if I am remembering it correctly. Obviously I dug up the Wikipedia article, but I also found the fantastically '80s intro for the show, plus some footage of the truck and the transformation from truck to helicopter. Wow.

After reading more about it, the cast is actually pretty interesting. It stars Sam Jones who starred as Flash in "Flash Gordon," Claudia Christian who was Ivanova in Babylon 5, Jane Badler who was in the series V, and Tim Russ who was Tuvok in Star Trek Voyager (who I just found out, was born in Washington DC). And don't forget the narration by William Conrad who voiced Marshal Matt Dillon in the old radio series Gunsmoke. Alright, I know that because I listen to NPR on Sunday nights...

It's always fun looking back at old TV programs and movies to discover actors you never thought about at the time have been a part of some of your favorite films and movies since.

Apparently, Andy Hallett, better known as Lorne in Joss Whedon's Angel, passed away Sunday night after a long battle with heart disease.

I think it was my first visit to Dragon*Con that I saw Andy talking about his time on Angel (while the show was still going on). He was funny and witty and had a really amazing singing voice and just seemed like a really cool person. Also scary that Andy was only 33. Sad indeed.

I found it impossible to resist watching a trailer for a computer animated series billed as "Metal Gear Solid meets fluffy animals," and it absolutely delivered! Normally the intense action depicted in this sort of military setting is deadly serious and sobering, but somehow, seeing a rabbit knock down a guy and pump him full of lead with an assault rifle had me smiling gleefully. In fact, every fluffy death, while animated with perfect blood splatter and ragdoll, is giggle inducing. Irresistible.

If you love Battlestar Galactica and can appreciate semi-kooky electronic tributes, check out Jonathan Mann's Battlestar Galactica song from his song-a-day project. It does spoil events leading up to the finale, but does not mention events in or around the finale.

And only tangentially related, but still worth mentioning is Jonathon's Zombie Ponies song, which should earn a heartfelt "OMG PONIES!!!!!1" from everyone. Yes. EVERYONE.

I've had SeeqPod on my cell phone for several months now. I haven't really found much use for it on a regular basis, but I really like the concept. In short, you punch in a band or artist name (or some similar search term) and SeeqPod will return you a list of individual tracks, whole playlists of tracks, or links to articles about that band, artist, or track on Wikipedia. Right from that returned list of search results you can queue up tracks into a playlist or just choose to play one of the returned playlists, streamed right over the Internet. The interface is slick, appealing, and customizable with different skins.

In what probably comes as no surprise to anyone, various music labels are suing SeeqPod for copyright infringement. In a rather daring and creative move, SeeqPod is now taking pre-registrations from anyone wanting to license their search engine technology and use it for their own (obviously nefarious) purposes.

As the Wired article points out, this didn't work so well for the music labels when they tried this strategy on P2P services like Napster. Taking action against these services forced P2P underground, making pursuit and monitoring significantly more difficult. I think it's fair to say that at this point, the labels have lost that particular battle. I have no idea if SeeqPod's strategy will save them, but you can rest assured that the number of services employing a similar search technology is going to explode, if for no other reason than because of the massive publicity this suit is going to rouse in the music-loving public.

UPDATE: It looks like some labels are working with similar service Project Playlist by licensing their libraries to the music search service. I have no idea why the labels choose these differing strategies for similar services. Obviously there is something here I'm not getting...

The core complaints aren't actually that uncommon as "witchcraft" quickly becomes equated with devil worship and satanism and so on in many western belief systems. Now we have Islamic scholars suggesting a, to my ears, baffling relationship between Zionism, "western cinema," and the Harry Potter stories that really ratchets it all up a notch on the absurdity scale.

Important take-away from this video, Harry Potter wasn't popular until the movies came out. And FYI, Harry Potter is the Messiah.

My final three days of the trip were spent in the Netherlands. By this time, I was getting tired and less interested in taking pictures, also, the weather kind of sucked and didn't really lend itself to glorious images of, well, anything. So, things I noticed in Amsterdam: A) there are canals. Actually, there seemed to be canals everywhere we went. I realize that's a pretty well known fact, and I was certainly aware of it going in, but I think I was surprised by the massive infiltration of these canals. It wasn't just in the crop fields, these canals were everywhere, even the housing developments. To put this into perspective I tried to imagine the development where I grew up being crisscrossed by these canals. Playing around or even in them as a young child. Passing over them, biking beside them. But no, I couldn't. We had a creek running through the development, but that was directed by nature (roughly) and concealed by the trees that cloaked its journey through the neighborhood. B) The weather sucks. I didn't even remember England being that gloomy, but that was remembered through the foggy distorted glass of distant childhood. C) Everyone rides bikes. It doesn't matter, kids, adults, seniors, whole families, I even saw a lady riding a bike with two child seats mounted on it. And though people here do ride bikes, the thought of the majority of the population moving on these human powered vehicles is simply incomprehensible. It's as if someone had told me that a full grown elephant weighs six and a half fluid ounces. Like, first of all, that's not a measure of solid mass, and second, I can't picture "most people" around here riding bikes. And so we're clear, I don't think that's a good thing. It would be great if the default mode of transportation around here was the bicycle, but unfortunately, things aren't laid out to support that. And also, we're lazy Americans.

I think one of my favorite pictures (and sights) was De Burcht, which is basically a defensible wall crowning a hill in Leiden where people could shelter in case of flood. It also looked pretty wicked, hunched up on the hill like that, with a really creepy looking tree to keep it company. Standing up on the wall I snapped this second picture of the inside of De Burcht, which semi-clearly highlights the large tube of toothpaste and a nearby pile of expelled toothpaste. I have no idea what's up with that, but I explicitely avoided reading or even looking for an explanation for fear of there being some perfectly rational explanation. I much preferred the rather more colorful ideas my own mind concocted. For example:

Back in the olden days, an evil witch, sore about her cat being run over by a rogue bicycle messenger and then punted into a nearby canal, cast a spell on the queen and king turning them into a tube of toothpaste and expelled toothpaste respectively. No one at the time really understood what it all meant since, you know, they didn't have toothpaste or anything. But eight hundred years later it made somewhat more sense, except for the reason behind that peculiar transformation.

See, that's much more interested than something like "Donated by Mr. Npheldigger to the town of Leiden to remind people about proper oral hygiene."

The final "new" place I visited was Delft. It looked a lot like Amsterdam and Leiden, really. We strolled around and visited "The Old Church" (which has a rather distinct lean to it) and "The New Church" pictured here. I've been told the upper section is blackened because everyone in Delft loves Cajun cooking. Though, I could have been confused, she may have said that it was damanged in a fire and never cleaned up. After that stroll around town we went back to Jochem and Tracy's and played some Munchkin and ate pizza and talked about nerdy sci-fi and fantasy books that I haven't read.

You can see the full Netherlands photoset as well as the now completed EuroTrip Collection over on my Flickr page.

The curtains have been drawn on one of the best shows on television. The finale episode aired tonight (well, technically last night) and it was a doozy. It tied up most of the loose ends and explained a lot of the big lingering questions. Not everything was neat and tidy, mind you, but I don't (yet) feel bothered by that. I guess I feel pretty good about it in general. No need for spoilers or anything, I don't really feel a need to burst out with the "OMG, how could they!" issues. It was big, it was flashy, it was sad and emotional and hopeful. It was good. It was really really good and I think they did a great job of tying up an extremely complicated show in a way that didn't insult the fans. Good job folks!

Sci Fi Wire is reporting that the Sci-Fi Channel is changing its name and rebranding itself to: "SyFy" with the tagline "Imagine Greater." I am having a difficult time formulating a balanced response. Not because I hate it, I do understand the motivation and reasoning behind the change, but the name... While phonetically identical to "sci-fi", the word "SyFy" looks like the name of some goofy childrens' toy like silly putty or something. I guess it just seems a lot more difficult to take it seriously, you know?

As of this posting there are something like 675 comments in that linked thread and it looks like all of them are negative. Awesome.

What's more, I can feel a certain kinship with the SyFy folks as my company is also going through a rebranding process (no name changes, though). It always feels like some marketing/ad/branding company is getting tons of cash to come up with something that retarded neighbor kid could have barfed up for free.

Avon is now marketing a wrinkle busting product called "Avon Derma-Full" that looks remarkably similar to the fictional Umbrella Corporation's zombie creating T-virus. The best side-by-side comparison can be seen at io9.

The effective impact this will have on our lives? Zombies will now politely knock on your front door with a pleasant "Avon calling!" before busting in and proceeding to sell you skin rejuvenating products while feasting on your brains.

I hear the one who eats the most brains will win a tricked out Escalade.