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OK. I admit it. I’m watching American Inventor.

And I just can’t stop wanting to scream at the TV “The solution to burning christmas trees isn’t a fancy invention for fire suppression. STOP PUTTING FIRE HAZARDS IN YOUR HOUSE.”

There. That’s my invention. Leave the trees outside. Fires suppressed. I haven’t had a real christmas tree inside the house for, what? A quarter century?

Now, where’s my million dollars?

Ronald Moore and his crew have been consistently doing amazing, high quality work. They’ve “gotten it” in a whole bunch of ways, from podcasting show commentaries as episodes air, to blogging, to video blogging behind-the-scenes stuff. I’m so totally, perhaps unhealthily, hooked on this show.

But they totally dropped the ball on the Season 3 webisodes. There are 10 mini-episodes leading up to the season 3 premier, viewable on the scifi.com website.

But, only if you have an IP address located in the USA.

Fans in Canada should be able to go to spacecast.com to view the webisodes, but apparently scifi.com wants the scoop. Meaning everyone outside the States is shut out.

Someone posted a copy of the first webisode to YouTube - an obvious copyright infringement - and that was promptly pulled down at the request of NBC.

I’m looking forward to BSG season 3 - more than I’ve ever anticipated any show. More than Lost. But, because I live North Of The Border, I can’t view the free, ad-sponsored webisodes. I don’t understand that.

Ron, please kick the studio’s ass for us non-US fans. They’re being really stupid about this.

There are only 2 words to describe the finale. Holy. Frak.

I’m not going to put any spoilers in here, because this finale would be worth watching the miniseries, and all of seasons 1 and 2 just to get to the point that you’re ready to watch this. It’s that amazing. I can’t remember a series that took such a gamble with rethinking the show so completely.

Ronald Moore described the finale as an attempt to roll hard sixes. I think he’s pulled it off. BSG wasn’t stale - yet - but was beginning to fall into the usual

10 print "oh no! run from the bad guys!"
20 pause
30 print "oh no! more bad guys!"
40 run
50 goto 10

formula. 2 seasons in, just as the show is really hitting its stride, they decide to be preemptive about it and completely rethink the genre. I said no spoilers, so I won’t say what they did, but I can’t frakking wait to see season 3. This changes everything.

Kudos, Ronald! I’m sure the network guys pushed back a little - not wanting to take a risk with the highest rated show they’ve ever had (IIRC). But being able to do something so radical is pretty amazing by itself. Just be glad that Fox isn’t bankrolling this one!

Thanks to a tip-off from James, I generated a quasi-reasonable facsimile of myself as I’d look in the Simpsons. The book wasn’t optional…

Lamest. Game show. Ever.

Not even the pretense of requiring skill or intelligence. Pick a bunch of random numbers, and try not to be a bumbling greedhead. About as much of a “game” as Keno or Bingo. All you have to do is pay attention (a little). And the “banker”? Just some clown sitting in front of a simple odds calculator to give Howie a chance to ham for the cameras.

At least they have 26 hotties in fancy dresses to hold the random numbers. They almost make it worth watching. Now, if Howie Mandel pulls out the rubber gloves and starts inflating them over his head, they might have a show…

And, yes, I’m aware that by watching it I’m only encouraging them

Iggy vs. Brodeur: photo originally uploaded to Flickr by Uncle Greggy.

I actually got to watch the game last night. Calgary vs. New Jersey. Hell of a game, and it helped that the Flames kicked some royal ass, too.

In the first period, I had a sinking feeling that Calgary wasn’t quite there. And then it happened. Iggy got pissed off. And almost dropped the gloves. Flashback to the last Stanley Cup run, where the Flames were often dormant until Iginla got pissed off and beat the crap out of someone, then went on to score a bunch of goals. He was |<-- this close -->| to scoring a hat trick last night, after being held goalless for the previous 9 games.

It helped that New Jersey basically shut down after Iggy got in their faces. Their defense just stopped trying. They did outshoot the Flames by over 2:1, but Sauve was rocking our net. Great to see we have two solid goalies this year - Kipper can relax a bit.

Now, if only the TSN announcers would just shut the hell up during the game. Leave the commentary to the time between plays and periods, and let us watch the game without your inane banter…

Oh, man! I want to do this. Somehow, I think I’d get a citation or something. Sony dropped a bajillion superballs down the hilly streets of San Francisco to film an ad for their new Bravia line. Not in the market for a new TV, but the ad sure looks hella fun.

I’m sure glad I wasn’t on the cleanup crew for this shoot. First, The City has the roving bands of parrots on Telegraph Hill, now it will have mysterious roving bands of bouncing superballs for years to come…

The first home game since the Flames made their dash for the Stanley Cup - the entire city has been waiting for this for a year. And the game is banished to CTV SportsNet? Why the hell isn’t the game on every single channel? Hockey Night in Canada should be doing a special event. Heck, even TSN could cover it - it’s part of the basic cable package, so would reach the whole city. CBC has decided it’s better to run Coronation Street and Canadian Antiques Road Show (from Montreal). Coronation Street? Really?

But SportsNet means you have to subscribe to the correct “tier” of channels, getting a whole bunch of low-quality crap to get the one you want. So, I don’t have access to SportsNet, since we only subscribe to basic cable at home.

I guess I’ll be keeping the stats window open during the game - and tuning in to the NHL Radio stream, since I don’t have a radio in my house (we hates it…).

I was really looking forward to watching this game tonight, assuming they’d at least try to make sure it got out to a wide audience. It’s not like the game won’t sell out or anything…

Update: Just had a thought… What if the iTunes video section carried streaming live events? Sure, you couldn’t chuck them onto your iPod, but they’d play nicely via Front Row. I’d pay some cash to watch the game tonight. I’d bet people would also pay to watch the Stevenotes and One More Things… There must be an audience for streaming, and if the infrastructure is mostly in place, it just might work. Of course, paying customers would be less tolerant of stream droppage…

Update 2: Holy. Crap. Is the quality of the Windows Media stream suck-tacular! 20Kb/sec stream, and it sounds like a weak AM radio signal while driving through a tunnel or parkade. And it keeps dropping out for no apparent reason. Jebus. Why do people settle for Windows Media???

On the left, the “Genres” selector from the iTunes Music Store for the US. On the right, the same “Genres” selector for iTMS Canada.

There’s no “TV” genre in the Canadian store. Searching for “Lost” doesn’t turn up anything related to the TV series. What gives? Some crazy licensing scheme where the Canadian networks are able to block distribution of an American show - which they already rebroadcast on Canadian airwaves?

The Video/Movies/TV component of the new iTMS really has the potential to change how we access media - subscribing to a series rather than a bundled package of 50 crap channels to get the one you want. Perhaps the cable companies in Canada have the power to protect their silly tier-bundling scheme by blocking iTMS Canada Video Store?

Man, I hope that’s not it… This is soooo close to being an industry-changing thing, but if it’s just copying/pasting existing monopolies and their silly licensing schemes, it’s not going to go nearly as far as it could have.

Jim Roepcke noticed this first.

Well, the One More Thing event turned out to be pretty spiffy. Cool new iMac. Some funky new software (but is it iMac-only?) The new video iPod looks sweet - and the high end one still costs less than my 3G 20GB unit did…

The TV-on-iTunes/iPod thing looks like it will be awesome. But… Where is Battlestar Galactica? I’d subscribe to the whole season of that. I will likely buy the rest of this season of Lost, as well - or at least the ones I miss “live”. But, BSG? Every. Single. Episode.

Oh, and daddy needs a new iPod! Larger screen. Colour. Videos. Battery lasts 20 hours. Mine looks like a total turd next to the the cool new demo. I mean… It’s a classic 3G 20GB… Anyone want to give me, say $300 for it?

Also, can’t wait for the remote to be added to the Mini. That would be an almost perfect set-top box! Slap that Mini on top of the TV, and have a pretty high-end entertainment centre handy. It would be even cooler if you could add other apps - so you could customize it to let you check email, etc…

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