There’s an ad for Excel gum that been on tv here in Canada lately. Two guys are sitting on the couch, watching tv. One guy has a big red maple leaf outline on his face, which the other guy asks about. The first guy replies “what better way to show one’s support than by having a giant red maple leaf on your face?”. The other guy comments that Excel gum has put a maple leaf on each piece of gum. The first guy responds “which would you rather have? A small red maple leaf on a piece of gum or a big red maple leaf tattooed on your face?”. The second guy responds “That’s a tattoo? Dude, I have to be honest – I’d choose the gum.” (Well, duh, right?)

So, no one would really tattoo something like a big red maple leaf, a bunch of stars or …. Oh, wait… there was that girl who had a bunch of stars tattooed on her face a few months ago.

Ok, but no one in their right mind would have fake glasses tattooed on their face, right? And they definitely wouldn’t upload a video of it to YouTube, right?

Whoops… wrong again…

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Journey of the Sorcerer by The Eagles is probably best known as the theme of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. The original version features a banjo and runs 6:40, which is a bit long for a theme song, so an abridged version was used as the theme for the THHGTTG radio series produced at the end of the 1970s. Journey of the Sorcerer has been used in every version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide since then, whether radio series, albums, or movie.

And then there’s the Mario Paint Composer version…

The premier of the next series in the Stargate franchise, Stargate: Universe, aired last night on Space. The premise is a group of people consisting of military-types, scientists, and bureaucrats who end up on an extremely old spaceship that travels faster than the speed of light, millions of light years away from Earth, after escaping via a stargate from a military outpost that came under attack. Rather than dialling a stargate address in the Milky Way galaxy, the lead scientist dialled a stargate address that had an extra character in its address. This nine-character address took them to Destiny, the spaceship, which was created by the Ancients thousands of years ago.

Being an extremely old spaceship, there are a number of “challenges” they’re going to have to deal with. First and foremost: the life support systems in the ship are not exactly in the greatest condition and there are a number of rather inconvenient holes that are slowly venting what remains of the atmosphere into space. They have extremely limited supplies of food and water. The lack of a proper doctor to look after the people who were injured in the evacuation is going to tax their medic.

And, of course, there’s the lead scientist who wants to explore for the sake of exploring. There are hints that he may have other motivations, too.

One of the character finds himself thrust into the world of the stargate after solving some thousand-year old mathematical puzzle that  the military had embedded in a video game to identify geniuses, similar to how the government tested the security of a new encryption scheme in the movie Mercury Rising.

I thoroughly enjoyed the premier and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series. The actors were brilliant, the characters were real, the sets and effects stunning, the cinematography superb and Joel Goldsmith’s music was perfect.

Commenters over at Joseph Mallozzi’s blog appear to like the new series, too. (Joseph is one of the consulting producers and writers of SGU and has been teasing his readers over the last few weeks with pictures from the series.)

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A tip o’ the hat to Gadling to blogging about this.

A good friend of mine who has been dis’ing bloggers, and blogging in general, for years has come over to the dark side. You’ll find a link to his new blog, A Moment in Exmortis’s Mind, in the rightside column and also on my Ottawa Blogroll page.

Be sure to go and harass him. Lots.
— Smakendahed of Random Ogre Thoughts

Fans of WPBS can breath a sigh of relief. According to the WPBS-TV website earlier today, Rogers is not going to be pulling WPBS from its Ottawa lineup afterall.

“We are pleased to be able to share this news with our viewers”, said Tom Hanley, President and General Manager of WPBS-TV.  “Together with Rogers, we have found a solution to continue to deliver programming to our friends in Ottawa through a reliable fibre connection.”

Clearly the backlash was greater than Rogers had anticipated because just a couple of days ago they were saying they were still committed to their plan.

Frankly, this is the best thing Rogers could have done from a public relations point of view because it lets them say “See? You spoke and we listened”, which huge companies like them rarely get to do. I noticed last night that channel 66, which was their Your World This Week promotional channel, is now carrying the Detroit PBS station, which is something I suggested to Rogers when I called them a few days ago. (I don’t know whether this is a permanent change because the cable lineup on the Rogers website still show YWTW as being on 66, but when they’ve promo’d other channels on 66 in the past they didn’t change the tag from YWTW.)

Congratulations to WPBS-TV on remaining part of the Ottawa community! And a tip o’ the hat to Rogers for showing that they still do listen to their customers. And a special tip o’ the hat to everyone who showed their support and complained to Rogers. 🙂

Update: CBC’s coverage of this.

Randall Deneley’s Memo to Rogers: PBS fans are right in today’s Ottawa Citizen is worth reading.

I’m a long-time Rogers customer, having had a Rogers cellphone since September 1991 when they were Cantel and Rogers cable service everwhere I’ve lived and I’m upset. My parents have had Rogers cable since the dawn of time and they’re really upset. Over the years, they’ve been loyal supporters of WPBS and the decision by Rogers to remove WPBS is causing them to start looking at alternative television providers. Sadly, it doesn’t appear that any of the other providers carry WPBS, though a clever company, like StarChoice, should be looking at adding WPBS to its lineup because there’s a chance to pick up a fair number of new customers.

I’m not sure why David Purdy, vice-president of Rogers, seems intent on ignoring his customers, but he is. Perhaps we should be focusing our attention on the members of Rogers’ Board of Directors to get their attention.