Experimenting With a New Theme for the Site
This lovely work of design you see around my writing is brought to you courtesy of the Grey Matter theme. I tweaked the old one to death, including the Photoshopping of a custom header image, but it just wasn’t working out for me. Hence, the new greyness.
Grey it might be, but it’s also very clean and professional. I like it. What do you think? Keep it, revert, or find something else? Drop me a comment and let me know!
7 of the Best STAR TREK Scenes Ever Filmed
With all of the fervor for the new Star Trek movie coming out next year, I thought now might be a good time to revisit the old shows and movies that made the franchise great. I’ve put together a list of seven of my favorite Star Trek scenes. It is by no means definitive, and there are many more I could have included. But you have to stop somewhere. So here are seven picks, in no particular order, and YouTube videos for each. If you’re not already a long-time fan, you might not want to read ahead: Here be spoilers!
List after the jump.
Gmail Updated With Theme Support
I just popped open my inbox to find a fantastic surprise–Google just updated their Gmail software to include new themes. Take a look:
Don’t worry. If you don’t like the new themes, Gmail immediately offers you the option to revert back to the old one.
For myself, I think it’s great. It looks better, makes better use of the screen real estate, and it actually seems faster–both loading and opening messages.
Nice work, Google.
NXE - The New Xbox Experience First Impressions
The New Xbox Experience is finally here. It’s a suave new OS for the Xbox 360, and yes, it’s very slick. So what were my first impressions?
- Cool intro video. The first thing you’ll notice is a bit of spiffy FMV that Microsoft included for your first launch of NXE. It’s very arty and computer-generated; pretty, but forgettable. (I’ve already forgotten half of what I saw.) I guess it’s nice that they expended the time and effort to present the New Xbox Experience with a little panaché, though.
- The avatar system is cooler than I expected. It might seem like a blatant copy of the Wii’s Miis, and indeed, it is–but creating my avatar was smooth, fun, and more customizable than the Wii equivalent. And he actually looks like a cartoon version of me. Cool.
- The blades are still there. They just come up when you press the Guide button, instead, and don’t take up the whole screen. It’s a very clean, minimalist version of the old 360 interface. And you can access it mid-gameplay. Yes, that means you can do just about anything in the interface while playing a game. It’s a welcome change.
- Netflix isn’t working. It’s only an hour or so after launch, but the activation system for Netflix wouldn’t work at all for me, even after a dozen tries. I’ll give it a go tomorrow and update on whether it works then.
- Installing games is cool. It took about 8 minutes to install Fable II, and the result was magnificent. Load times decreased noticeably, and in-game performance was significantly better (like loading the start menus). It’s also quieter, since the normally-noisy DVD drive doesn’t spin while you play.
- It’s not as fast as I had hoped. I was hoping NXE would be a big speed improvement over the old Xbox experience, but this doesn’t appear to be the case. It runs about the same. But hey, it looks prettier and it’s better-designed, so I can accept that.
Update: Here’s Mii. I mean, me. My avatar.
STAR TREK Trailer Online in HD
You’re looking for Trailer #2. The first one is just a teaser.
It sure looks like a lot of fun. And it doesn’t look much like the Star Trek I remember. But you know what? I’m cool with that. The Star Trek I remember was getting pretty stale, and I wouldn’t mind having a little fun with the property.
Update: So you’ve seen the trailer now, right? Let’s The WB-ize this thing. (Yes, I know it’s The CW now.)
Joss Whedon’s DOLLHOUSE on Death Row
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…
Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse was just sentenced to the same time slot that killed his earlier series, Firefly. Shows rarely survive the Friday night/9pm “death slot”, especially science fiction shows, especially on FOX. In fact, it’s killed every science fiction show they’ve put there since The X-Files.
We have a FOX executive on record saying:
“If we put it on Monday and it didn’t do well, we might have to yank it. We can afford to let these shows run their course. We can give them 12 or 13 weeks to find an audience.”
Funny, isn’t that almost exactly how many episodes Firefly got?
Is it time to start a “save our show” campaign yet?
Both promo trailers after the jump.