InkBlot's Inkernet

Sorry it’s been quiet this week.  I keep crawling the web for your entertainment, but everything out there is all election, election, election!  So, once that goes past maybe I’ll find something more interesting to put up here.  In the meantime, go vote!  Early voting is still available in many areas, if you want to beat the rush next week.  There is no voting after Tuesday! Which I figure would be obvious, but I hear some states are having a problem quashing the rumors.  Oy.

New pictures of J.J.Abrams Star Trek movie are abounding everywhere on the internet, so I’ll just be directing you to Ain’t It Cool News below as they seem to have the bases covered.

I’m excited about this film, although I’m not usually inspired by “reboots.”  And, to be honest, hearing a Star Trek story is based around another time-travel adventures usually makes me queasy.  The later television productions got much too fixated on time travel, and, I feel, handled the concept rather poorly.

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It would seem over in Torchwood Magazine, Producer Peter Bennett has announced four new cast members joining the show for next season.  If you hadn’t heard, Season 3 of Torchwood is in a different format – just five episodes featuring a single story arc called Children of Earth.  Guest stars were already announced, but the crew down in Torchwood 3 are a bit understaffed – what with one being shot, and another sealed in nuclear bunker having a meltdown.

So, it looks like the new members are:

Alice (Lucy Cohu) described as “a woman keeping many secrets from the past.”

Bridget Spears (Susan Brown), “a character vitally connected to the government, which plays an important part in this story.”

Lois Habiba (Cush Jumbo), “a secretary who hacks into some vital information.”

and finally Doctor Rupesh Patanjali (Rik Makarem), a “junior doctor at St Helen’s hospital who gets drawn into Torchwood’s investigations.”

from: Digital Spy

In last night’s Presidential Debate, there came a bit near the end where the formal back-and-forth order broke down for just a bit and the two candidates traded some “follow up” comments¹  In discussing an energy bill, McCain said,

“You know who voted for it? You might never know. That one. You know who voted against it? Me.”

The particular comment, “that one,” has bounced around all the major news outlets, with varying degrees of reaction.  There’s a strong suggestion that could posses racist overtones, although no one is explicitly claiming there was racist intent behind it.

Perhaps my multi-cultural radar is off, but even as a southerner who still hears enough off-color jokes at family reunions to make me cringe, I didn’t see anything in that comment to suggest a racial epithet.  I rather suspect McCain is looking at the national reaction in honest surprise.

Watching the debate myself, what it did make me think of was, Continue Reading »

1. In the first debate, the order held Comment 1 – Comment & Follow Up 2 – Follow Up 1.  In last night’s Town Hall format, each side got one comment, with no followups. ↩

On the heels of their final win in the Echostar/TiVo lawsuit, TiVo is also percolating through the news with an upcoming new product in conjunction with Nero AG: TiVo PC.

Bringing the popular TiVo software interface and control to your desktop, it looks like you’ll need your own TV tuner card.  For the full experience, you can splurge for a actual TiVo remote and IR interface for your PC.  I imagine TiVo/Nero will have various packages to sell you any hardware you need.

The question is, where is this going for TiVo?  Continue Reading »

New out from Neil Gaiman is the Graveyard Book.

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.

He would be completely normal if he didn’t live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.

There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy—an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer.

But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod’s family. . . .

It’s likely in the Young Adult section, which is an odd nomenclature to me.  When I was young, I was reading both YA and Adult books all the time and I didn’t see much difference.  I’d like to say, “well, except the covers were sillier,” except I read Fantasy and Sci-Fi.  The covers are always silly.  Except here.  Neil apparantly knows the nifty people when it comes to book covers and interior art.

Not only should you be able to find this book in your local bookstores, but he’s also touring the country and giving live readings from the book.  These are being recorded and collected at one of his websites, mousecircus.com.  So, give it a whirl.

from: mousecircus.com