Atom’s Antics

Actress Billie Piper is coming back as Rose in Season 4 of Doctor Who. I held out hope she would return sooner or later. Between Sontarans, Rose, Martha leaving then coming back, Donna filling in for her, Rose coming back, and the rumoured David bowie villain; the Doctor is going to be a busy guy next season… You can read it all for yourself at the BBC’s website.

If you have never heard of Showtime’s Dexter or you have but have never given it a try, you MUST! Dexter is an original Showtime Network program that is more than midway thru it’s 2nd season. This show contiualy leaves you on the edge of your seat and waiting with baited breath for the next episode. It seriously is some of the best TV going in a long time.

“That’s great Adam, but what the heck is it about?” Dexter follows the story of Dexter Morgan, a Miami PD Blood Spatter Expert, who has a monster inside, he has this dark urge to kill. That’s right the series is about a serial killer that kills serial killers. Pretty morbid huh? But that’s the odd thing about the series, you really find yourself routing for Dex and caring what happens to him.

To give you the straight forward version of his back story, a cop named Harry Morgan found Dexter as a 4 year old left at the scene of a brutal murder. Harry took pity on Dexter and adopted him as his own. As Dexter grew he starting having dark urges. Thru flashback over the course of the 1st season we see teenage Dex being taught and couched by Harry on how to channel the dark urges into more “positive” uses… like killing those who have murder innocents, and how not to get caught. This is an over simplification of the story and there are plenty of twists and turns but the joy in this thriller (and a thriller it is) is the unraveling of the the story and I do not want spoil that experience for you.

Showtime is well worth adding to your channel lineup if you don’t have to check out the series or you can download it both legitimately and illegitimately in any number of places. I leave that to you to find. The series is so good I dare recommend it site unseen for purchase.

You can read more about the series on it’s official site here.

Ready to watch a giant monster destroy a city? I am. The trailer for the mystery J.J. Abrams Project is out now and it is indeed called “Cloverfield“. It is rumored it’s based or inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthullu horror stories, the monster is seen very briefly and it’s hard to make out what your seeing but it’s big. The trailer feels more like a scary Godzilla than anything I have ever seen or read in the Lovecraft universe. Either way it looks good. You can see it for yourself by clicking here.

My two favorite iterations of the Doctor met this past week in a special short made for Children in Need. Everyone on the production contributes their time to make these. So it really is done for a good cause, contribute if you can. BBC won’t let you view the clip if you live in the US off there site but it has been turning up on Youtube. So while it lasts clicky below to see the goodness.

This week on Atom’s Antics. We talk about Doctor Who and the Children in Need special and spend the rest of the show reviewing some of the games we have been playing since getting the Xbox360. Oh and Jen pwnz Pacman.

 

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The first images of the moon in HD as well as video footage has been released by the Japan Aerospace  Exploration Agency.

From their Press Release:

“The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) have successfully performed the world’s first high-definition image taking by the lunar explorer “KAGUYA” (SELENE,) which was injected into a lunar orbit at an altitude of about 100 km on October 18, 2007, (Japan Standard Time. Following times and dates are all JST.)

The image shooting was carried out by the onboard high definition television (HDTV) of the KAGUYA, and it is the world’s first high definition image data acquisition of the Moon from an altitude about 100 kilometers away from the Moon.

The image taking was performed twice on October 31. Both were eight-fold speed intermittent shooting (eight minutes is converged to one minute.) The first shooting covered from the northern area of the “Oceanus Procellarum” toward the center of the North Pole, then the second one was from the south to the north on the western side of the “Oceanus Procellarum.” The moving image data acquired by the KAGUYA was received at the JAXA Usuda Deep Space Center, and processed by NHK.

The satellite was confirmed to be in good health through telemetry data received at the Usuda station. ”

You can check it out for yourself here.

John C. Dvorak quietly slipped a new podshow up a few months ago and now that I have found his patent brand of crankiness in audio format I wanted to share it with you folks. It is well worth checking out and it’s short and to the point. easily the most important 5 minutes of your day as he puts it. Click here to listen.

So in John’s own words:

“Hi. I’m John C. Dvorak and this is the Tech5 Reports home page.

Tech5 is my daily five minutes of tech news and trend analysis will hopefully benefit the listeners in some way each and every weekday morning.

I’ll include special reports, interviews and lots of trend analysis. One or two tidbits alone can make this the most important five minutes of you life. Please subscribe and listen to the report through your iPOD daily.”

Not sure who he is, here is his bio from his blog:

“Current PC Magazine Columnist writing Inside Track, an essay and a weekly online column. These articles are licensed around the world. Also a weekly columnist for Dow-Jones Marketwatch, Info! (Brazil) and BUG Magazine (Croatia). Previously a columnist for Forbes, Forbes Digital, PC World, MacUser, PC/Computing, Barrons, Smart Business and other magazines and newspapers. Former editor and consulting editor for Infoworld. Has appeared in the New York Times, LA Times, SF Examiner, Vancouver Sun. Was on the start-up team for CNet TV as well as ZDTV. At ZDTV (and TechTV) was host of Silicon Spin for four years doing 1000 live and live-to-tape TV shows. Also was on public radio for 8 years. Written over 4000 articles and columns as well as authoring or co-authoring 14 books.

2004 Award winner of the American Business Editors Association’s national gold award for best online column of 2003. That was followed up by an unprecedented second national gold award from the ABEA in 2005, again for the best online column (for 2004).”

And of course if you like his point of view he has a weekly video show called Cranky Geeks and his blog.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I really dig the programming over at Revision3. Covering everything from Comics to tech they really are poised to become a Juggernaut of on-line media. One of my favorite show is, SYSTM. Patrick Norton and Dave Randolph are doing an entire month of building a MAME cabinet from scratch. The first of the 4 part series aired this week.

OK. I just got real giddy today. Season 4 of Doctor Who has several cool things happening next season.

First Peter Davidson (the 5th Doctor) will join David Tenant playing, well of course… The Doctor. Yep were getting a Doctor’s meeting episode. Always a special event in the original series. Though upon rereading it appears the meeting happens in a special for Children. Not the actual series. It is slated to appear on November 16th.

Photo comes from Outpost Gallifrey (the premier Doctor Who website):

Slated to appear on the regular series are the return and the reintroduction of the Sontarans, classic villains much like the Daleks and Cybermen. Photo comes from Outpost Gallifrey again:

This show just keeps getting better and better. Now I am really looking forward to next season. The new Christmas special airs on Christmas Day on the BBC.

Being a HUGE Babylon 5 fan, I of course feel compelled to pass on this info…

FROM J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI:
“With the coming 2008 elections, there aren’t a lot of candidates we can agree upon. So as a public service, we are now providing a slate of candidates that will bring the country together in common cause and preserve many of this nations’ finest electoral traditions.

The first slate is Londo/G’Kar (or, for those who wish to be contrary, G’Kar/Londo is also available.) They bring a combination of military training, a love of freedom, and sartorial excellences. They are also excellent public speakers and true patriots who put their people ahead of their own interests. Should the electorate find themselves not happy with the slate as elected, whoever is in second position will gladly assassinate the other in order to bring about a referendum.

Similarly, the ticket of Zathras and Zathras promises the best in crisis management at a difficult time for our nation. Their wisdom is inscrutable (also incomprehensible), their dedication to detail is almost frightening, and in times of economic belt-tightening by electing one Zathras you elect all Zathras, nine for the price of the One.

And a weary nation sighs its relief….”

I of course completely agree and wanted to point you to Joe’s websight for all the details. I just can’t decide whether I should go G’Kar/Londo or Londo/G’Kar?

Obviously, if you have never seen Babylon 5 this one goes goes right over your head.