I’m liking my hiatus, and it will continue at least the end of this month… I’m even contemplating extending it to the end of May. Maybe.
Star Trek TOS screencapping…
I have capped ALL of Star Trek TOS 😀 And even uploaded almost all of it – only have The Original, Uncut, Unaired Version of Where No Man Has Gone Before left to upload… should should get all upped this coming night while I’m sleeping, and then I’ll make the final TOS update. I can’t believe I’m finally here! 😀 VHS, DVD, Bluray screencapping… it’s all been a labor of love, but TPTB had better not come out with an announcement of the release of TOS on whatever-superduperultrahightspecialquolityformat-that-will-replace-bluray-whenever at least for the next 10 years because if I they do, I’m gonna kill someone! 😉
On other hand, it’s going to feel weird, not needing/planning/having to/wanting to cap TOS. I’ve lived and breathed TOS screencapping since I got online in 1997 and if taking photos of television counts log before I ever had a computer, something like 1990 (Yep, I’m obsessed! They’d never included photos of characters I wanted in magazines, so I found my own solution! LOL). There’s no other show I’m as much into as TOS. Dark Skies is the closest second, but I don’t feel the compulsion to cap it the same way I feel TOS. It’s going to be weird, and empty, and I hope, great!
About youtube clone video sharing scripts…
As you may or may not know, several of my sites have Media sections – video clips of my actors and tv shows. I’ve never found exactly the kind of program I wanted – one that would be look like the usual youtube clone scripts such as PHPMotion, Clipbucket etc. but that would not re-convert the files upload. That because, no matter how much I messed with the settings, the outcome quality was never good as what I got when I encoded the video clips myself, using whatever program I favored at the time. I’d tested all of the freeware video sharing scripts, over the years, and found them all wanting.
I also contemplated testing vshare, which is not freeware – it costs only 10 USD, but I read so many people having problems first installing it, and then upgrading it, and quite frankly, I didn’t believe it’d have the feature I was after, that I didn’t want to wasted 10 dollars only to confirm that (they don’t offer a trial version).
Well, I got a copy from somebody to test this weekend, and low and behold, not only was it NOT hard to install, but it also does NOT re-convert FLV files but instead just adds them to the database. And it also does that with also FLVs that are encoded with x/h264 (which is my preferred codec at the moment because of good quality and small file sizes) instead of Sorenson/flash, AND it also plays them!
So what I’ve been desperately looking for and not finding, has been under my nose at least for the past 2 years *head desk* What do I learn from this? Something I should already know: never ever listed to other people when it comes to difficulties with scripts. Always try it out for yourself, and then make your decisions based on your own user experience.
TV Shows…
Started a rewatch of Lost, and been working my way through season 1. And know what? I still love season 1 just as much as I did the first time around. I just… LOVE it!
Lucy Lawless is playing a recurring character in the last three or four episodes of No Ordinary Family. I watched her eps, and they show appeared promising, so I decided to get all the season 1 eps and watch from the beginning. Especially because Julie Benz is in it, and I liked her Buffy/Angel. But it’s just not working… I’m about six or 7 episodes in, and there’s hints and promise there, nothing comes of them. Everything is solved by the end of the ep, anything darkish sizzles out and all is light and hugs and roses and goody-goody and whatever. It’s like the stories try to take a turn for the darker side, but every goddamn time TPTB force it kicking and screaming back into the “for the whole family” mentality. And George/Charlie/Whatever-His-Name-Is, you know, Michael Chiklis’ best friend? Does he have a life? You know, other than being Chiklis’ sidekick? Because so far it sure doesn’t look like that. I think he blinks out of existence whenever he isn’t working with Chiklis on his superheroing. Oh, and speaking of Chiklis – are you telling me nobody sees this short, fat guy jumping around all the bloody time, and making hell of a noise everytime he lands? The sound efffects make it sound like his landings should put him through the rooftops half the time, and the other half, should leave huge dents on the buildings. But whatever.
I was a huge comic books fan in my youth, mostly X-Men and varions of it, but I’ve never really wanted to seem made into movies or tv series. And what happened with Heroes, just confirmed it. And No Ordinary Family isn’t changing my opinion 🙁
Another new show I’m watching is Body Of Proof, in which Jeri Ryan plays a supporting role as Dana Delany’s boss. It’s about a neuro-surgeon come medical examiner and Dana Delany plays the lead, Dr Megan Hunt. Three episodes have aired now, and so far these are the things I like about the show: the fact that all the main actors/characters are at least in their 35-40s (no teenage doctors etc. here!), women are in charge, and the character interactions are getting better by the episode. So far at least.
These are the things I don’t like so far: Dana Delany doesn’t wear the hair-cover-thingy when she’s examining the bodies in her laboratory! D: And in those scenes, it’s all I can think about how unbelievable that is. I know wearing a hair-cover-thingy tends to make the wearer look less glamorous and sexy, but come on! After shows like Silent Witness, you just look vain and sloppy! And for a show that’s supposed to be all about the bodies giving Dana Delany evidence and leads about their murders, there has been zero shown autopsies. Zero as in I thought she hadn’t done it yet to the corpse in question until I saw the sowed up ‘Y’ incision when the camera panned the upper torso of the body. And even the ‘Y’ incision looked wrong – it was different from all the other hundreds of medical examiner scenes I’ve seen in other shows and movies. Instead of doing medical exam things, Delany’s character spends most of her time running around the city and asking the detectives’ questions for them! And in the first two episodes, she pulled the answer to the age old question “Who did it?” out of her ass rather than any examinaton of the body, IMHO. In the third it wasn’t quite as bad, but not good either. There’s insight, and then there’s insight that is just lazy writing.
It’s a pity, because I LOVE good medical examiner stories and I love stories where grown up women tell the story, so this show should be just up my alley. Sadly not 🙁 But Body Of Proof has Jeri Ryan. And while I’m not Dana Delany “fan” fan, I’ve enjoyed seeing her in things ever since her China Beach days. So, I’ll keep watching and hope they’ll change up they handling of the cases in future episodes. Continue reading Random Thoughts