It was a nice experiment. But it didn’t work.

The creator of Stargate(s) asked some of his friends (including easily-recognizable actors from Stargate and Atlantis) to put together a new live action series that would sell via the web, Sanctuary. They sell four 17-minute episodes for $10, and so far the first episode was released. The series is pretty cheaply-made (more cheaply than the average cheap Sci-Fi Channel series) and the actors are mostly acting in front of a green screen.

Personally, I don’t think that there’s going to be a second episode. The first episode was uploaded to YouTube already and even as a pirated series it doesn’t make as many waves as it should have. Too bad of course, as Internet is the future for TV too. They are a bit too early, I guess. Or, they should have gone through the iTunes market instead…

Update: My interview with the producer published!

Dear Apple and EMI,
eat shit.

While I don’t mind my iTunes account details being embedded in the music I purchase, I have a problem when I want to share my purchased music with my husband (or vice versa). Being in the same family, we should be allowed to use/exchange products, as it’s already legal with DVDs and CDs. The last thing I want is a lawsuit from RIAA just because Apple didn’t know that a “Loli” can be married to a “Queru”.

Fajitas is one of my favorites Mexican recipes, as long as I live in a country that stores sell the needed ingredients (e.g. easy in USA, but it’s tricky to find them in Greece).

Ingredients (for 1)
* 0.35 lbs (150 gr) of tenderloin or london-broil beef
* 1.5 tablespoons of salsa of your choice
* 1/8 of the big kinds of onions
* 1/4 of a green bell pepper
* 3 tablespoons of guacamole
* 3 tablespoons of sour cream
* 1 tablespoon of olive oil
* 3 tortillas

Execution
1. Cut the beef, onion and pepper in thin, long strips, like in the picture below.

2. In a big frying pan add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and heat it up on “high”. Add the beef and stir-fry it for 2 minutes.
3. Turn ON the oven to 400F (205C) and put the 3 tortillas in it. Bake for a few minutes just until warm, in parallel to the frying below.
4. In the frying pan add the onions and peppers and keep stirring for another 2 minutes. Add the 1.5 tablespoons of salsa and keep stir-frying until all liquids are gone and the onions/peppers now seem a bit softer (but not soggy).
5. Place the frying pan on top of a table-top protection. In a small plate put the 3 warm tortillas.
6. In your main plate take 1 tortilla, spread 1 tablespoon of sour cream and 1 tablespoon of guacamole on it, and then spoon on it 1/3 of the frying pan’s ingredients. Close the tortilla as in the picture below and enjoy! Repeat step 6 two more times until the rest of the ingredients are gone.

Tip: You can sprinkle some shredded mexican or cheddar cheese on the frying pan after step 5.

So, Palm introduced a “mobile companion” today, based on Linux, called Palm Foleo. The only similar product in the market today is Nokia’s N800. Here’s my take on it:

The Palm offering has a big 10″ screen and a hardware keyboard, but the N800 is smaller, it has a touchscreen and a real UI rather than an email/web interface and nothing else. You see, Palm’s Foleo –except few preference settings– does not have a full UI that enables third party apps or calendars or even music or video. It is simply, a web browser and an email client. Nothing else. Not even a solitaire game can’t be found in there. In the N800 instead you will find lots of different third party applications and a real UI rather than just a single front-end to email/web.

If you are JUST looking for web/email client to contemplate your phone, then the Palm Foleo is a good idea. However, it is a big device, you can’t slide it in your pocket as you can with the N800. If you are going to have a 10″ screen laptop, get a Fujitsu laptop instead which runs a full desktop OS. But then again, the Fujitsu laptop costs $1600, while the Foleo costs $600.

If you are looking at a mobile companion at a smaller form factor and with the ability to do more, other than web/email, then the N800 remains the best choice at $375. Besides, Nokia has licensed Flash and so the N800 can do YouTube, while the Foleo can’t! According to Gizmodo, the Foleo doesn’t do video at all actually.

Personally, I would be sold into a device that’s in between the N800 and Foleo. It should have a WXGA resolution (1024×600) at a 7″ touchscreen (rotatable, to look like a tablet) and a hardware keyboard like Foleo’s, but all other features should be as found in the N800. Now, that would rock because it is the best of both worlds between the two products and at the same time it would be much more “mobile” than the smallest desktop laptop available.

Amazing. Heroes was marketed as the answer to Lost, but not only it didn’t deliver, but it seems that its creator, Tim Kring thinks we are complete idiots. That’s how he thinks of us, the viewers (but then again, which professional doesn’t think of his/her customers as idiots?)

One of the plot-holes on the finale of Heroes was “why Peter doesn’t just fly away, as he does possess the power already?”.

Kring said that “we should not be thinking about that”, even if that was a glaring plot hole. Online, there were some Heroes fanatics on forums who said that “Peter can only use one power at a time”, but this was never established in the series and Kring does not claim that either. Instead, he suggests that we should be watching Heroes with half our brains.

What a glaring difference compared to Lost.