Month: September 2007

NBC Pilots

We took advantage of the free NBC downloads from Amazon Unbox to my Series 3 Tivo. So far we have watched Journeyman, Bionic Woman, and Chuck. I watched the first 10 seconds of Life and decided I wasn’t in the mood for it.

Chuck is a quirky show straddling nervously between comedy and an action show. It’s main character works for the equivalent of Best Buy and the Geek Squad except in TV Land it is Buy More and Nerd Herd. The show consisted of hints of comedy, then a car chase, then some offbeat comedy then finished with hunting down a terrorist. The Show reminds me of the humor in the recent Doctor Who episodes. If they can get the mix right then the show has a future.

Next was Journeyman starring the lead actor from Rome. Journey Man seems to be just a remake of Quantum Leap, which is about all I have to say about it.

Then the we have the most hyped and probably the show with the most potential out of the three so far, Bionic Woman. The special effects are a bit on the lame side but it has a dark side with the hint that there is more to come. You can tell that Battlestar Galactica is wrapping up this year since I counted at least 3 former cast members including Katee Sackhoff aka Starbuck in the show. My wife spotted the main character Michelle Ryan to be Zoe from Eastenders. We liked the show and will be interested to see where is goes and congratulations to Michelle for making the jump state side after a long stint on Eastenders.

The conclusion so far is that we like Chuck but don’t think it will run for a full season. Journeyman will probably get shuffled around a couple times then be canceled. Bionic Woman is definitely the leader of the bunch and will probably be the most successful. I will update the post with my views on Life once I have watched it.

High speed rail links

I am a huge fan of anything other than car travel and now to a large extent air travel. I bike, take the bus, take the train, if possible rather than taking the car. The Washington Post is running a story on the need for high speed rail links. What I am surprised they didn’t mention is the need for a high speed rail link between Baltimore and DC. The Marc does an acceptable job but doesn’t run on the weekend which hurts people who want to live in one city but work in the other. If you want a similar project to compare the possibilities of a DC to Baltimore line just look at the Glasgow Edinburgh line in Scotland. It runs every 15 minutes at peak time and is fast and used by a large number of people.

Palm Cancels the Folio

I just read on the Official Palm Blog that they are canceling their new folio product. It is always sad to see a product canceled, but I doubt this one will be missed much. I do feel a little pain for the programmers and hardware people who have probably put in long hours to get a finished product, but Palm say they are going to refocus on a new operating system which they have been in need of for over two years.

Now here is what I want in a new OS.
1) An operating system that can multitask
2) A phone that doesn’t randomly reboot when it feels like it
3) A phone that doesn’t lock up for a few seconds when cell signal drops in an out.
4) A phone that can browse the internet, Blazer is good, but it could be so much better
5) A phone with email that handles imap with folders
6) A phone that I can load third party apps on it.
7) A phone that will play video
8) A phone that will play music
9) a standard 3.5mm headphone jack
10) be able to run legacy apps in a VM at least till we get native apps.

I have looked at the pocket pc phones and the iphone and still stand behind my decision to buy a treo 700p. It does everything I wanted it to when I bought it and more, I just need it to be stable and fast.