Star Trek dot Com dropped by CBS

After years of serving the Trekkie community, startrek.com, as per CBS, is closing the Web Site.
A sign of the times no doubt. I wonder if the site will be reopenned when the 10th Star Trek Movie is released Next year.

Remember, CBS is tjhe far-sighted company that dropped Jericho earlier this year. Fan support is bringing that show back. See my blog about the "Nuts" incident.

Most Network execs don't know what the public really wants or needs. But that has been the case for many years now.

More later, Wingman.

Charter Cable's New Line-UP

===================================================================
(Screenshot 1) (Screenshot 2)

As "Bones" said in one of the Star Trek Movies, "Engineers are always Changing things...".

Well, so are Cable Companies. Charter cable, in it's infinite wisdom, decided to throw out the "Old" cable channel Line-up and replace it with a New "Subjective" Format. This means all the news channels in a grouping, all the sports channels in a grouping, all the movie channels in a grouping, all the children channels in a grouping, and so on. And nothing between 74 and 99.

Really clever.

Well, computers to the rescue, especially if it's Linux.

I run an ATI TV pci card in my present OS FC-6 (Teah, I know FC-7 is out, but I'm in no hurry. My son is still on FC-5 and it's working nicely, thank you.).

Tvtime is the app that runs the Ati card. The TV Screen output is easily resizable, so I decided to create a Desktop Background to show the new channels as a frame to the reduced TV window. Using the Photoshop like Linux program called The GIMP (Graphic Image Manipulation Program) that was pretty easy to do. See screenshot 1.

Since the focus is with TV output, the backround is just a background, a press of the "f" switches the output to fullscreen. See screenshot 2. Yeah, that's my wife's shopping channel, what of it?

Anyway, to paraphrase from another TV icon, Felix the Cat (my oldest son's favorite), "the wonderful things he does with his wonderful bag of magic tricks..." That's pretty much what Linux is about: Lots of little handy tools to do the wonderful things you can do when you control the computer. If you zoom in on screenshot 1, you can see the Gnome Toolbar (Yeah, it's on top, just like the Mac) holding all the handy little tools I like to use with a click of the mouse.

A Quick Tour of the Linux GNOME Toolbar

You probably recognize the GoogleEarth globe and Firefox tail icon up there. To the right of Firefox is the Tv icon for TVtime and next to that is the Update manager that checks for updates. Going left from Firefox are gThumb image viewer, Inkscape SVG Vector Illustrator, next is a notepad with a pencil which is my favorite Text Editor: GEdit, followed by a window like icon that represents the console or terminal (kinda like the Dos Command Line), next is the GIMP, followed by Dictionary (you can guess what that's for) , next is a little camera that takes screenshots like the ones above, next to the camera is the Wordprocessor part of the Open Office Suite, next is the Email manager followed by a traffic-cone like thing that is the best video viewing program ever made for Linux Videolan, GoogleEarth, Next is GXine Video Player which handles online streaming content like the traffic cams from Cal Trans, and last on the My toolbar is Konqueror the Gnome File and Web Browser.

That's it for today.

Have a Good One!
==================================================================

Fox Deep 6's 24 for Season 7 ???

The word on the street among the picketers for the Writer's Strike, is Jack Bauer won't be there to help them.

Yesterday the LA Times said the series 24 was sitting pretty with half of the NEW season episodes done, but today Fox said it's OFF the schedule.

Does this make the award winning series the first casualty of the Writers Strike.


Seems like it is as the Big Wigs at Fox Towers decide to play Hardball.

Fox also stated today that the strike could be Good for the industry.

Yeah, real Good...

It pretty obvious they don't know Jack.

What's Good This Season? The Kill Point

Remember the Fat Guy in Todd McFarlane's Spawn?

Well, under the Clown Face was actor John LEGUIZAMO.

He was a cast member in last year's ER too.

The reason I bring this up is a slick little series appearing on SpikeTV called: The Kill Point.

John plays an ex-military Sargent fresh from the hell-hole fighting in Afganistan. Being treated back home like John Rambo was in First Blood, John and his military buddies turn into bank robbers.

The opening sequence where Leguizamo and his gang get out of their cars and head toward the Bank in slow motion is straight out of Reservoir Dogs. From the gitgo you like the "feel" of this little drama. What the heck is it doing on SpikeTV?

When John Leguizamo goes into the bank with a hood over his head and he barks out commands to the employees and "customers" you can almost hear a tinge of Al Pacino in his voice.

This is one sweet drama. Check it out.

"Traveler" (2007) TV-Series 2007-????

Pay attention to the 4 question marks above.

The "TV powers that be", also known as "Idiots", are at it again.

Do you remember the phrase? "Just keep throwing crap at the wall and see what 'sticks'.

It seems the networks "Don't Even Know" when the season starts.

24 just had it's season finale this past monday and it will return...in January...

JANUARY???

That's why the New Traveler series, on channel 7 just started May 30th.

If you check the a Website about the show, it appears the guys on the "run" won't be running long.

The 9 episodes the network okayed, has been trimmed to 6.

And some of the episodes are being "reshot".

ABC, the station that Sank "Surface" seems dead-set on GIVING TV programming to the New Media darling, the Internet.

CBS, just did the same with Jericho, and is getting truck-loads of "Nuts" from unhappy "fans". (See previous post).

And NBC, the one hit wonder-station, just gave "Studio 60" (one of the most intelligent programs on TV) its pink-slip.

For all it's HD puffery, network tv is no longer a "field of dreams".

It's devolving into snarkmanship on The View, to a lazy-susan of "game" or "reality" shows.

No wonder HBO wins all the awards.

Nuts To CBS

Well a ground-swell of fan support for the unceremonious dropping of JERICHO from the CBS fall lineup has taken form...

In the season Finale, the response to aggression from a neighboring city was the single word: "NUTS".

A reminder of a similar historic conversation between generals.


A petition has been circulated (Site-Link Below), which I and thousands others have signed, to Save the Program: Jericho.

In addition to that effort is a fund-raising (Also same site), to send CBS New York, NINE Tons of Nuts.
----------------------------------------------------
Quote from Slashdot report below:

"This is expected to become the largest ever fan campaign to bring a television show back from cancellation."

-----------------------------------------------------
Nuts Online: (Please sign Petition Here...)
http://www.nutsonline.com/jericho
-----------------------------------------------------
Slashdot report:
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/05/26/0324229.shtml
------------------------------------------------------
Jericho message Board on CBS:
http://jerichoboard.cbs.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?webtag=CBSMBJericho&redirCnt=1
------------------------------------------------------
Jericho Lives Webpage:
http://www.jericholives.com/
------------------------------------------------------
Jericho Rally Point Webpage:
http://www.jerichorallypoint.com/sm/index.php
------------------------------------------------------

Jericho has bomb dropped by CBS.

Another show falls by the wayside because the Networks are unaware of the THE BRAVE NEW WORLD coming, because of the Internet.

Like Dylan said: You don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
====================================