Category: Television

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Film Television

You have to be a Firefly fan to appreciate this

My wife tagged me in this on Facebook. It will only make sense if you are a real Firefly fan (if it doesn’t, go watch the TV series and then the movie):

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Business and work Legal People Television

Swooning over Louis CK content licensing

Louis CK has a new show which I have started watching, “Horace and Pete”. I love his licensing model for the show. You can stream it or download episodes once you have paid for them. HD or SD, your choice. He has a very simple license:

You can download the video here. Once you’ve got it, it’s yours to do with as you like: sync it to your Zune, stream it over wi-fi to your spouse, burn it to DVD, etc.

Sure, there is copyright law involved here with its presumptions but this is how content should be released. People should be able to pay a reasonable amount of money for content they want to watch or listen to. Then, once they have paid, they should be able to watch or listen to it on whichever device they want.

The only restriction should be not to re-sell or re-share it (well, unless the content creator decides to embrace Creative Commons licensing or something similarly permissive – which works too).

Instead the Entertainment Industry opted for a business model that just about discourages people from buying its products by using stupid geographical and format restrictions. Imagine if the industry gave everyone an easy option to buy and download whatever they wanted to watch or listen to and consume that on whichever device they wanted? Boy, if they did that, the industry may just thrive.

In the meantime, I’m a big fan of people like Louis CK who actively works to make it easier for people to buy their content.

Image credit: Pixabay

Categories
People Television

The story behind the Belter language in The Expanse

This picture, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), shows a galaxy known as NGC 6872 in the constellation of Pavo (The Peacock). Its unusual shape is caused by its interactions with the smaller galaxy that can be seen just above NGC 6872, called IC 4970. They both lie roughly 300 million light-years away from Earth. From tip to tip, NGC 6872 measures over 500 000 light-years across, making it the second largest spiral galaxy discovered to date. In terms of size it is beaten only by NGC 262, a galaxy that measures a mind-boggling 1.3 million light-years in diameter! To put that into perspective, our own galaxy, the Milky Way, measures between 100 000 and 120 000 light-years across, making NGC 6872 about five times its size. The upper left spiral arm of NGC 6872 is visibly distorted and is populated by star-forming regions, which appear blue on this image. This may have been be caused by IC 4970 recently passing through this arm — although here, recent means 130 million years ago! Astronomers have noted that NGC 6872 seems to be relatively sparse in terms of free hydrogen, which is the basis material for new stars, meaning that if it weren’t for its interactions with IC 4970, NGC 6872 might not have been able to produce new bursts of star formation. A version of this image was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Judy Schmidt.

We’ve started watching “The Expanse” and it is definitely worth watching if you are a sci-fi fan. One of the features of the show (and the books) is the Belter language or dialect which can be a little challenging to understand at times. At the same time, it adds a whole dimension to the story that would ordinarily be lacking without it. Are Technica has an article about Nick Farmer titled “Nick Farmer knows dozens of languages, so he invented one for The Expanse”, the linguist who helped create Belter creole. Interesting to watch if you are curious about how languages are developed for TV shows and movies.

If you haven’t watched The Expanse yet, here is a trailer:

I’ve been reading the books and there is definitely a difference between the books and the TV series storylines. They seem to proceed more or less in parallel but there are features in the TV series which are sometimes at odds with the books. I’ve pretty much decided to treat the two storylines as related but distinct.

If you are really curious, you can also follow Nick Farmer on Twitter for more insight into the language he helped create:

If you also enjoy the show, take a look at my previous post about it and the article written by Martin Rezny about The Expanse’s value as a hard sci-fi show:

“Meanwhile on Stargate, 95% of planets are Canada”

Image credit: Hubble Feathers the Peacock by NASA’s Goddard Flight Space Center, licensed CC BY 2.0

Categories
Science and nature Television Writing

“Meanwhile on Stargate, 95% of planets are Canada”

Martin Rezny has written an interesting article titled “The Expanse – A Milestone in Sci-Fi Television” about the appeal of “hard” sci-fi shows like the TV adaptation of the Expanse books by James S. A. Corey. I started reading the book series and I’m enjoying it.

View at Medium.com

I won’t rehash Rezny’s article, it’s worth reading it in its entirety, but his basic premise is that hard sci-fi (more realistic sci-fi) can be so much more interesting and entertaining than the usual sci-fi we are accustomed to. The main reason why I mentioned this article is because I wanted to share a quote that made me laugh because it is so true:

Meanwhile on Stargate, 95% of planets are Canada.

That said, my wife and I watched every episode of every Stargate series (except the animated one) and loved them.

Image credit: Liftoff of the Space Shuttle Endeavour from NASA on the Commons, released into the public domain.

Categories
Film Television

Star Trek and Star Wars

As much as I enjoy Star Trek, the Star Wars universe is s much more diverse and interesting in its diversity.

Categories
People Science and nature Television

Neil deGrasse Tyson and I’m thinking about the laptop bag

Bursts of pink and red, dark lanes of mottled cosmic dust, and a bright scattering of stars — this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows part of a messy barred spiral galaxy known as NGC 428. It lies approximately 48 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster). Although a spiral shape is still just about visible in this close-up shot, overall NGC 428’s spiral structure appears to be quite distorted and warped, thought to be a result of a collision between two galaxies. There also appears to be a substantial amount of star formation occurring within NGC 428 — another telltale sign of a merger. When galaxies collide their clouds of gas can merge, creating intense shocks and hot pockets of gas and often triggering new waves of star formation. NGC 428 was discovered by William Herschel in December 1786. More recently a type Ia supernova designated SN2013ct was discovered within the galaxy by Stuart Parker of the BOSS (Backyard Observatory Supernova Search) project in Australia and New Zealand, although it is unfortunately not visible in this image. This image was captured by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). A version of this image was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures Image Processing competition by contestants Nick Rose and the Flickr user penninecloud. Links: Nick Rose’s image on Flickr Penninecloud’s image on Flickr

I became a Neil deGrasse Tyson fan when I watched the series “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” which I loved. deGrasse Tyson has a really interesting YouTube channel called “StarTalk Radio” which I just subscribed to and which you may also want to watch if you are into astrophysics. Here is his introduction:

Small confession: as much as I was paying attention to what he was saying, I couldn’t help but notice his laptop bag in the background. I just kept thinking: “Hey, I have the same laptop bag!”.

Back to what I was writing about, you can also follow deGrasse Tyson on Twitter and Facebook:


Image credit: Hubble Sees a “Mess of Stars” from the NASA Goddard Space Center, licensed CC BY 2.0

Categories
Television

Imagine Lucifer quit – soon on TV!

Looks good!


Categories
Television

Running past a speed trap #InaFlash

We just started watching “The Flash” and we’re enjoying it. This one trailer is great and there is a little Easter egg in the first few seconds … “Palmer Technologies”. Ray Palmer makes an appearance in Arrow season 3 too. Palmer’s alter ego is Atom so this should be an interesting tie between The Flash and Arrow going forward.

This crossover trailer with Arrow is my favourite, though: