My health problem (a condition with no cure) is back in full swing for a week now and it’s really pissing me off. I feel sick and tired all the time with stomach pain a few times a day. I am seeing my doctor on Friday… Too bad, I can’t go to LinuxWorld because of that.

I got this Tiffen Star special effect filter and I am really pleased with it. A nice, impressive filter. Check my video below.

Many express their opinions online on how reporting is not objective among journalistic sources, e.g. FOX. However, for me, the real problem is not how this or that TV channel did not report on some bad things that the US government did, or it tried to half-report another bad thing that some soldiers did etc. It goes beyond that. It goes back to how bad pure reporting is, and how uneven it is on fundamental issues.

For example, for 2 days now the main story on the *international* version of CNN is the bridge that collapsed in the Mississippi River. Five people died there. I am sad about this. But my question is this: Why didn’t this story ever became No1? Or this one? Or this one, which barely made it to the top-10? If you try to completely objectively evaluate all these stories, or pick your top story based on the head-count of the various accidents around the world, the bridge collapse might not even make the front page!

I don’t mind the US version of CNN to have the bridge collapse as their top story, in fact it makes sense to do so. But for the International version, I expect a more even reporting. Just because the casualties are from third world countries where people are dying every day, does not make it “less bad” and therefore “less shocking” and therefore “less interesting”. Just like with art, it all depends how you present your work to make them sound interesting to your audience. From the moment you have achieved that, no one will say “ah, that happened in Kongo, who cares?”.

You could argue that even the International version of CNN is mostly read by “first world” citizens rather than third world ones, but then, don’t call it “International”. And besides, I am from Greece, which is not exactly very modern compared to UK or USA. And yet, CNN International is where I get my news from. And I am sure that a lot of people from Kongo who live abroad get their news that way too.

Usually, I mostly watch History, Discovery, Science and National Geographic channels on TV. Some of the documentaries presented in these channels are good, some not so good. What bothers me though is that their new documentaries are usually mashups of older ones. I mean, how many documentaries exist for Mars, the solar system, the 7 wonders of the ancient world, DaVinchi ’s life, and of course, the Black Holes? They keep using the same topics over and over again. Space documentaries are my favorites too, but they all talk about the same things over and over again.

I wish they were taking some more initiative and help people learn other kinds of things too. For example, having a tutorial on the basic principles of video editing, photography, or lighting. Or, learn chemistry, or math, or biology. Or, documentaries for how to actually survive out there, instead of adventures of crazy “survivors” who show off. Or even, a series on how to learn a foreign language.

My point is, Black Holes are not all that there is.

LonelyGirl15 has a “Season 1 recap” and it’s currently the most viewed YouTube video. Warning: falling off a cliff instead of watching that atrocity might be preferable.

I am preparing a review for the Sony Ericsson W580i soon. The last non-smartphone SE phone review I wrote was last year and since then SE has upgraded their platform. I must say this loud and clear: Sony Ericsson’s non-smartphone UI/usability is the best in the industry (their UIQ smartphone platform sucks). Only Nokia is able to be kinda close, but not quite. The worst is of course Motorola’s (although their new Linux-based non-touchscreen versions are better than its predecessor, usability is still not great).

While SE has made strides in various usability departments, and the new version of their Walkman software is much better than before, it is still not as good as an iPod. The main problem is that the joystick buttons don’t always do the same thing when you are on different screens of the same application. For example, you can hit up or down on the joystick to go to the song list, but you can’t go to the main “My Music” page. There is not a “tree” structure UI as there is for the iPods and makes the usage a bit confusing. I thought, how could they not clean that part up?

And then I thought: patents. Apple (and others) have patents on the way an mp3 player navigates, and I am pretty sure that SE would be stepping up on these patents to get it right. This is a good example as to how patents are too easily awarded on in this country. It is laughable to have patents for a tree structure UI for an mp3 player. On the other hand, SE needs a spanking in the ass too for not licensing the patent! They preferred to have their Walkman usability suffer rather than pay some dough and make their product better. IMHO, of course.

I was just visiting Digg and the first story on their front page had this title “How to respond to a racist joke“.

Without reading anything beyond that or clicking that link, the first thing that popped into my mind was: “erm, laugh?”.

Come on people. While there are a lot of racist jokes out there, only a very small percentage are meant with ill purpose. Most of them are just genuinely funny. So, just freaking laugh. There is no “special pre-calculated response” you need to have to a ‘racist’ joke, even if the joke is all about your own race/nation. By laughing with it is the only way you can make things better, not worse. What are people made up these days from? Melting sugar?

Jeez.

Update: Read the comments for some more explanation.

BTW, personally, I am more of a prank person rather than a sick-joke person. For example, last year, I had our neighbor of our Greek home on IM and at the same time I was speaking to my mother on the phone who she was sitting at her patio. I could tell her everything she was doing, and she couldn’t understand how this was possible. She was astonished. I kept telling her “I see you via satellite” and she believed it. She kept looking at the sky! Little did she know of the neighbor.

Now that the next 4 Cylon models were revealed at the finale of Battlestar Galactica’s Season 3, there is only 1 model remain to be revealed. My theory is (and that’s just a theory) that the last model is Gaius Baltar.

Of course, Baltar is the No1 person under suspicion by the fans to be a Cylon. It would be too obvious, right? Well, that’s true, but on the other hand, it would not make any sense for anyone else to be a Cylon. If the writers pull a stunt and introduce as a 12th Cylon someone like the president, or the admiral, or Lee, or Starbuck, it just wouldn’t make much sense and it would be way too far fetched.

You see, there are some pointers that Baltar is the last Cylon:
– He sees No6 out of thin air. Like the MS Word “clippy” to help him along his destiny.
– No6 told Baltar that Boomer’s child would be “their” child, but this was just an allegory.
– D’Anna asked for his forgiveness when she saw the face of the last Cylon. “I didn’t know it was you”, she said, and Baltar was the only human she interacted so much with.
– He is a narcissist. It is in fact a ‘justified’ reason to be one when you deep inside you know that you are the final model.
– He is deeply flawed in many other ways. It is the perfect excuse for redemption. I believe that Baltar might be saving everyone at the long end, by making the “right” choice for the humans, and at the same time, betraying his true Cylon nature, just like Cylons betrayed the humans. He would be the perfect example to show the Cylons that creations are not necessarily better than the creators — and hence learning their lesson.

Maybe the “Baltar is too obvious of a choice” is the whole trick anyway. Everyone has him under suspicion, and because of that no one believes that the writers will pick him as a Cylon. And maybe that’s exactly why he will be introduced as the last Cylon.

My second choice would be Cally, for reasons I won’t explain here because it would be too much of a spoiler for things we know so far.

JBQ got his Camaro Z28 back from service this week and so we drove around Silicon Valley yesterday. My short video below has a view over San Jose, Cupertino, Mountain View, Sunnyvale – the heart of Silicon Valley. A view from afar of Apple’s Infinite Loop offices is offered too.

You might notice some small black objects flying in the video (visibility depends on YouTube’s encoding – update: YouTube’s re-encoding was REALLY bad, so I uploaded the original 1.5MB PSP-compatible video here). At first, I thought that either my HV20’s sensor is starting to die, or that I… captured semi-cloaked UFOs. Thankfully, JBQ was here to put things in place: these are flies or mosquitoes that fly about 2-3 meters away from the camera so they look like blurred super-fast objects.

Continuing my review points from the other day, I finished watching the series from beginning to end. I think I “get” Battlestar Galactica more now than I did before. It is indeed a drama set in space, rather than pure action sci-fi. I do like it.

However, I find it ironic that my favorite episode from Season-1 is the “The Hand of God“. In that episode there was the kind of action that I really want to see in a series that calls itself “space sci-fi”, that is, Star Wars-style battles. There was actually a plot regarding the battle operation, there was a cool asteroid and Cylon bases on it. It was a battle that had a goal. In all the other episodes, the Cylons are the only ones attacking, the battles are just lame, too short, and without any true focus as the only objective is “shoot as many as you can” and “jump away as fast as you can”. It’s sensible for Adama to avoid conflict with a more powerful enemy, but the usual “cylons attack, starbuck kicks their asses, then we all jump away” thing is boring.

It seems that the BSG writers tried to bring over audience that don’t specifically like sci-fi, but at the same time they managed to alienate some classic sci-fi viewers. If only we could get more of the kind of action like in that episode, I think I would enjoy the series much-much more. I like well-directed action with a purpose. I don’t care if Starbuck has the hots for Lee. Anders is hotter anyway (plus the actor is a local, grew up a few miles away from my home).