Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
TV Alert!
Thursday, November 12th, 2009I was just on the TV Guide site and I saw an advertisement for The Prisoner, starring Ian McKellen and Jim Caviezel. It is supposed to be on AMC on Sunday at 8/7 Central. I am assuming that this is a remake of the old British TV show, The Prisoner. In the ad, there was a giant white ball behind a man who I am assuming was Jim Caviezel standing on a rock, so I think that my guess is correct. I was never a big fan of The Prisoner, but to be fair, I only saw it occassionally and I never saw it from start to finish. Remakes are usually a bad idea, but I am willing to give it a chance. After all, the V remake has been pretty good so far.
Anyhow, I wanted to spread the word in case anyone is interested.
What I watch
Thursday, November 12th, 2009A friend of mine was complaining recently that there wasn’t much on that she liked. She asked me what I watched and I gave her a list. I thought I would share that list in case anyone wanted to chat about them and maybe give their own list. My list is roughly in the order of favorite to least favorite:
- Supernatural (of course)
- V
- FlashForward
- Castle
- Fringe
- Leverage
- Psych
- Burn Notice
- White Collar
- Stargate Universe
- Meduim
- Glee
- Smallville
- The Closer
- Monk (it’s going away!)
- Eastwick
- Heroes
- Law and Order: Criminal Intent
- Criminal Minds
- Bones
- Royal Pains
- The Forgotten
- NCIS
- NCIS: Los Angeles
- Top Design
- HGTV Design Star
- Project Runway
- Amazing Race
- CSI: NY
- CSI: Miami
- Numb3rs
- The Mentalist
- Lie to Me
Around about Bones, this list stops being must see and turns into shows that I’ll watch if they’re recorded. I also have a few shows that I consider filler that I watch but I don’t care if I miss: Good Eats, Say Yes to the Dress and House Hunters International. There are a few shows that I would watch, but I can only record two shows at a time on my DVR and these shows lost out: The Vampire Diaries, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and CSI. Jerod just reccommended Defying Gravity so I will probably check it out. Also, there are two shows that I would like to get, but since they are on premium channels (HBO I think), I can’t watch them: True Blood and Dexter.
So, that’s my list. What’s yours?
Changing Channels
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009Spoiler alert! If you haven’t seen the Changing Channels episode of Supernatural, you might not want to read this post.
As many of you know, Supernatural is my favorite show that is currently on TV. And last week’s episode was a prime example of why I love this show. In this episode, Sam and Dean once again encounter the Trickster. Sam and Dean are in some town investigating a mysterious death. They soon realize that they are dealing with the Trickster. Sam and Dean’s reactions are different: Dean wants to kill the Trickster; Sam wants to talk to him and try to get his help. They soon get caught in TV land and end up learning that he’s the archangel Gabriel, not a trickster. That was an interesting twist. I did not see that coming. Did you? And Gabriel wants the end of the world to come so that the fighting between his brothers will end. Turns out that there is another reason why Sam and Dean are Lucifer and Michael’s vessels: Lucifer and Michael are brothers, too.
All and all, a very interesting episode. But the fun part of this episode was all the different shows that the Trickster put Sam and Dean into, and watching Sam and Dean figure out what they had to do to get out of TV land. I’m trying to remember all of the ’shows’ the Trickster put Sam and Dean in:
- the Supernatural sitcom including cheesy theme song and opening credits.
- Dr Sexy MD
- the Japanese game show ‘Nutcracker’
- CSI knock off
- Knight Rider knock off
I think that was all of them, but my favorite spoof was Sam’s herpes medicine commercial. I was howling.
Did you watch the show? What did you think?
Catching up
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009I have been catching up on my TV viewing in the past few days (I love my DVR), so I thought I would write a little bit about the two shows that I was catching up on. Neither Heroes nor Eastwick are my favorite shows, but I enjoy them enough to watch them. However, I sometimes let them slip like I did last week. Luckily for me, I was able to catch up.
Heroes to me is a very uneven show. They will jump around from storyline to storyline so much that it is hard to follow. And sometimes some characters will drop out and it will be awhile before I even realise it. As was the case with Mohinder. All of the sudden I got a glimpse of him (I can’t remember which episode it was in) and I realised that I hadn’t seen him in awhile. They just gave us a glimpse of him, however, so I am hoping they will follow up on it soon. I thought that Matt’s solution to his split personality was a logical one, but from the previews, it doesn’t look like we have seen the last of Sylar. I will keep watching this show, but it will never be a must see for me until they stop meandering.
Do you ever have the ‘where have I seen that actor before’ moment? This week I finally figured out where I saw Heroes’ invisible girl before: Veronica Mars season 2. (I also spotted the kid who played Ryan, the mind reader, from Smallville in an episode of Law and Order: SVU this week) It always drives me crazy until I figure it out. The one that really drove me crazy was when the Mac vs PC commercials came out – where one guy plays a Mac and one guy plays the PC. I knew I had seen the guy who played the Mac, but I couldn’t remember where until I realise that he was the uber-geek kid in the movie Galaxy Quest.
As for Eastwick, it is doing a better job of holding my interest. The storyline is easier to follow and I am really liking the characters. I was sorry to see that they killed off Matt Dallas. I have had a soft spot for him since Kyle XY. Of, well. I kind of figured he would be going away to clear the way for Daryl. And the kidnapping was something that I didn’t see coming. I like that.
Anyhow, even though they are not my favorite shows, I am still interested enough to keep watching.
Monday, November 9th, 2009
Hi Letha,
Interesting. So I noticed a couple of things. Sorry for only pointing out the nits. The calendar should start with Sunday – not Monday. We are not in Europe.
Also, figure out how to link in Twitter and FaceBook to your web page. While I use neither, many others (Doug D., Mike P. etc) do.
Mike: he was over yesterday (Sat.) We played a game of “Dominion” – very fun card based game of domination. I thought I had smoked him so I got the last Militia card to end the game. As it turned out he was buying Duchy cards while I was mostly buying Estates. Rats – he beat me by two points!
Mike is married to his high school/college sweet heart Gina. She has two teen age daughters, and a weird Muslim/Lebanese ex-husband who follows her around where ever she moves. The daughters put a lot of drama in Mike’s life, but he is a pretty good and level headed dad in the end. Isn’t it funny how life turns out?
Also are you on Skype? I’m paulamala – yes – lots of imagination in that user name….
Stargate Universe
Saturday, November 7th, 2009I have been watching Stargate Universe, and I have to say, I’m liking it. I have not been a big Stargate fan in the past, but I am really liking the story so far. Which is odd. Stargate Universe is a similar set up to Star Trek: Voyager, but I am liking SU a whole lot more than I ever liked ST:V.
Why do I like this show so much? I’m not sure. Probably because of the writing and the characters. The story lines so far have been fairly interesting and they are building off one another. It’s not a convoluted story line, but instead follows some simple problems that might be faced by people who suddenly find themselves in a strange and sometimes hostile environment.
I have also thought most of the main characters have been well created and acted so far, even the ones that are hard to like (Dr Rush and Col. Telford come to mind). Of all the characters so far, I have really come to love Eli. His whole story line reminds me of The Last Starfighter, a movie that I always enjoyed. One thing that I notice is that they seemed to have split the “genius” character into two people. In Stargate Atlantis, the resident genius was Rodney McKay. In Stargate SG-1, it was Samantha Carter. In this show, they have two geniuses: Dr Rush and Eli. It’s like they split Rodney in two: Dr Rush is the arrogant side and Eli is the loveable side.
They haven’t done much to flesh out the secondary characters yet, but I assume they will do a little of that in time. I will be watching to see what they do.
Adding plugins to my blog
Saturday, November 7th, 2009I have been adding more plugins to my WordPress blog. I know most of you aren’t interested, but someone may be. There are literally thousands of plugins that you can add to a WordPress blog (find them at the WordPress->Extend->plugins page). Of the three new plugins that I have added, two were to help me administer my blog, and one was to add content for my readers. They were Broken Link Checker, User Locker, and Daily Fitness Tips.
For anyone that wants to add a pluggin, the process is simple. Search the WordPress plugins for a plugin you want to use. Download the plugin to your computer. Extract the files into a folder. It can be helpful to read the readme file if there is one. Upload the folder to your blog’s wp-content/plugins directory (I use FileZilla). Activate the plugin from your blog’s Dashboard by clicking the Plugins menu. Some plugins have to be configured, others don’t.
I used this process with each of the plugins that I chose. Broken Link Checker will do what it’s name implies – every few days it will go through my blog and check for broken links. If it finds one, it will let me know. User Locker will prevent someone from endlessly trying to login by trying out different passwords. This is to help prevent hacking and spam. Currently, I have it set for 5 tries. Daily Fitness Tips displays the box in the right-hand sidebar that displays a different fitness tip everyday. Of the three plugins I installed, this is the only one that I had problems with. Not that there was any problem with the plugin, I just had a problem activating it since I have a customized blog that did not allow me to use the widgets interface to activate it. Since I could not just drop the widget in a sidebar (which is how you normally activate a widget), I had to search through the code for the php function that is called to start the widget. The one that seemed to work was workoutbox_widget_generator. So, I added the following code into my right sidebar:
<li>
<?php workoutbox_widget_generator(); ?>
</li>
As far as I can tell, everything seems to be working. If you notice any problems in your web browser, please let me know.
Adding a favicon
Saturday, November 7th, 2009I have to say, adding a favicon to my site was one of the easiest things that I have done in this whole creating a website and blog process. Don’t know what a favicon is? Neither did I until I read about it in the book I used to help me create a website, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creating a Website . A favicon is a little picture or icon that sits to the left of the path name of the page that you are viewing in your web browser. One of the most famous favicons is Google’s “G”. For this site, it is the stylized “CL”. A favicon is a visual cue to your readers that they are at a specific site.
A favicon is either 16 pixels by 16 pixels (or 32×32). I chose to do a 16×16 pixel favicon. To create it, I opened the Windows Paint program (in the Start->All Programs->Accessories menu) and chose a font. I wanted something that looked handwritten but was easy to read. I think I ended up with Mistral, but it’s been a while so I’m not sure. I typed in my CL, I moved it to the top left corner, I resized the page so that it was just around the CL, I shrunk it down to 16×16, and then I saved it as a jpg file named favicon.jpg.
I then had to change it into a .ico file. To do this I used IrfanView, which I downloaded for free from their site at IrfanView.com. I opened up my favicon.jpg in IrfanView and saved it as a .ico file called favicon.ico. I moved that file to the home directory of my website and that’s it! Web browsers look for favicon.ico files in the home directories of websites and if they find them, they will automatically display them.
I did run into one problem: getting my favicon to display in my blog. My blog is a WordPress blog, so I did a search of the WordPress forums and found some instructions. Basically I had to update my header.php file by putting in (or in my case editting) the following line:
<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”faviconpathname” />
Of course, I didn’t literally type in faviconpathname, I typed in the path and filename of my favicon.ico file. And that was it! As you can see, it works!
Choosing a webhost
Saturday, November 7th, 2009I am going to be creating some posts on how I went about setting up my website and blog in case anyone is interested. I am going to start by talking about how I went about choosing a webhost. I can summarize my process in one word: cnet.
I first decided what my website would be called. I was going to name it the Science Fiction and Fantasy Forum (SF3) after a club I used to belong to that no longer exists. However, I decided it was presumptuous to use the club’s name since I was only one of it’s members. So I decided to go with something a little more personal since this was going to be my website and blog. Since Letha.com was already taken, I went with ChezLetha.com There is, however, a reminder of my former club in the logo at the top left-hand side of the header. The dragon and space rocket was the logo of SF3, but since I created the logo, I don’t feel bad reusing it.
Once I had chosen a name, I went to several sites that rate web hosting sites, but I ended up using cnet’s web hosting page to make my choice. From there, I went to the Basic hosting page. If you go to that page, you will notice a chart of approved providers and some of their plans. I clicked the checkboxes of several of the plans (I chose all plans under $5) and then clicked the Compare Plans button. I removed web hosting sites based on the information in the comparison chart (clicked the back button and unchecked the webhost, and then clicked the Compare Plans button again) until I had only three web hosts left. I then did a Google search on each of the webhosting sites and read reviews by third parties. I decided to go with Arvixe Web Hosting in the end. I have been pleased with my choice so far and I have been impressed with their 24 hour support line. It’s nice to know that if I have a question, I have someone I can call. Even if it’s just to find out, no I really can’t do that.
Anyway, I hope this post might help someone out there who is going through the same process.
Updates and changes
Friday, November 6th, 2009Today I have been doing a lot of updating on this site to get my wordpress blog working the way I want it to. I have been playing around with themes and updating files to massage the look of my site. I want to get it to look more like my website home page, but it is never going to look exactly like it.
One of the things that I have done is add some plugins to my blog. I have added the Scissors plug in that allows easier image manipulation in the posting screen. I have also added the Sidebar Login plugin that allows users to login to my blog from the sidebar if they want to add a post or comment. It has also allowed me to add in a link to the Add New Post page so that my readers can easily create a new post if they want to. Note: I will be moderating all new posts since the post text will also be appearing on my website’s home page once I get the feed working (which should be in a day or two). I guess I had better create a link to edit posts, too.
I am planning on putting in more plugins and doing additional updates soon, so stay tuned!