The man behind the world’s first portable computer died on March 25th. Adam Osborne stunned the world with the bulky, suitcase-sized (and suitcase-weight) Osborne I in 1981; he didn’t engineer it (Lee Felsenstein did) but he did dream up the specs: a CP/M-based business computer, its unwieldly casing enclosed a 5-inch B&W monitor, two 5.25″ floppy disk drives, and a full sized keyboard on the underside of the unit’s lid. Though the Osborne I sold briskly upon its introduction, later less savvy moves by the company sunk its profits. Mr. Osborne was 64 years old.
Source: Associated Press

Some surprising wins and losses marked last Sunday’s Academy Awards. Beaten out by the critical darling Chicago in the Best Picture, Film Editing, Art Direction and Sound categories, The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers snagged Oscars for Sound Editing and Visual Effects; the latter category say Two Towers beat out Spider-Man and Star Wars Episode II. Easily the most surprising win of the entire night was Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (which has been getting rave reviews from theLogBook.com’s Mark Holtz as far back as its original limited theatrical release), grabbing Best Animated Feature out from under critical favorite Lilo & Stitch, Ice Age, Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron and box office bomb Treasure Planet. Not only has the Oscar kept Spirited Away on track for an April DVD release, but it’s prompted Disney to give it a wide theatrical release with a massive marketing campaign.
Source: Associated Press

The WB has announced some of its series renewals for the fall season, and fans are growing worried that Angel doesn’t seem to be among them. Smallville and Charmed have been picked up for the 2003-04 season, and the WB says it will render a final decision on Angel’s fate in May (which may also hinge on series creator Joss Whedon’s proposal for a major shake-up in the basic premise of the show). Also renewed were Reba, Gilmore Girls, Everwood, and an unusual two-season pickup for 7th Heaven.
Sources: Electronic Media Online, Sci-Fi Wire

Though space shuttles don’t carry airliner-style “black boxes” per se, the ill-fated Columbia alone carried a data recorder module – left over from its maiden flights in 1981 – which has now turned up intact near Hemphill, Texas. Though there’s no word yet on whether or not the magnetic tape housed within the module survived the heat of re-entry and will yield any useful data, investigators are calling it a significant find. Tests are currently being run to see if any data recorded on the tape inside can be considered reliable.
Source: Space.com

Despite the pre-order blurb we ran last week, it now seems that last-minute rights complications with bonus material are forcing BBC Video to push back the scheduled release of the 2-DVD remastered edition of Doctor Who: The Talons Of Weng-Chiang. No new release date has been set, but you’ll see it reappear in theLogBook.com’s Store when one has been announced.
Source: BBC

After receiving several submissions for the design of Florida’s state quarter, a design has been selected which features symbols of exploration from the state’s past and future. The design, submitted by Bayonet Point resident Ralph Butler, shows a space shuttle in the sky over a Spanish galleon, in honor of the crews of Challenger and Columbia’s final flights. The new Florida state quarter will be minted in 2004.
Source: Associated Press

For quite some time now – 2 years or so at least, now – theLogBook.com has been updated on Saturday nights. Beginning this week, the site will now be updated on Sunday nights instead, mainly to accomodate my personal schedule on weekends. So don’t panic if you log in next Sunday morning and the update’s not there; give it 24 hours or so and it will be. Consider it a little boost for the beginning of your work week.

Earl Green
theLogBook.com webmaster/editor-in-chief

NASA has announced tentative plans to have one of the three remaining space shuttles back in orbit this fall, though those plans are still flexible due to the ongoing investigation of the Columbia disaster which destroyed the flagship of the U.S. shuttle fleet and killed all seven astronauts aboard on February 1. Still, there’s some confusion as to how solid these plans are, depending on which NASA spokesperson is speaking: agency director Sean O’Keefe says no shuttle will be in orbit before the investigation into the Columbia tragedy has been completed. Part of the return of “go fever” may also be tied to U.S.-Russian tensions over the Middle East crisis, tensions which threaten to derail the joint international space operations, including the International Space Station.
Source: Associated Press

Some planets seem to have a bit of an insecurity complex, don’t they? I mean, it’s not enough that you’re the biggest planet in the entire solar system, and already have more moons than any two other planets combined. But hey, if you get enough people calling you a failed brown dwarf star, you’re probably going to overcompensate. Case in point: in the past two weeks, the satellite count of the planet Jupiter has grown from 40 to a whopping 52 moons. Ironically, all of the new satellites were discovered by ground-based observers using traditional techniques, not the Hubble Space Telescope. And there’s still some discussion about whether or not the new discoveries can really be deemed moons, as most of them are barely a mile in diameter. The International Astronomical Union has yet to ratify the new discoveries or bestow cool mythological names upon them.
Source: Space.com

Why wait for people to rip MP3s from your commercially released CDs when you could be doing it yourself? That seems to be a question the BBC Radio Collection is answering with the first two titles in an unorthodox new approach to their series chronicling the surviving audio of “lost” Doctor Who stories. Each of the new releases is a single CD-ROM containing one or more longer stories in MP3 format. For example, The Daleks’ Master Plan, a 13-part William Hartnell adventure, took five CDs in its initial audio release, while the new MP3 version reduces both the disc count and the price tag. A second disc combines both of Patrick Troughton’s “Yeti” encounters, The Abominable Snowmen and The Web Of Fear (the latter of which was the first appearance of Colonel – later Brigadier – Lethbridge-Stewart in the series). The BBC’s publishing wing has indicated that other releases – such as their definitive audio dramatization of “Lord Of The Rings” and the original Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy radio series – will be forthcoming in MP3-CD format. The first two Doctor Who titles in the series can now be ordered from theLogBook.com’s Store.

TV/movie producer Fred Freiberger, who took on the daunting task of taking the reins from Gene Roddenberry in the third season of Star Trek in 1968, died on March 2nd in California. His other TV credits include stints on The Six Million Dollar Man, Wild Wild West, Ben Casey, and the second season of Space: 1999 (where, again, he was brought in with a mandate to “fix” the show). Mr. Freiberger was 88 years old.
Sources: Startrek.com, IMDb

It’s not every day that a group of stations sues the parent company of the network that those stations are carrying, but then again, the suit filed by several Fox-owned UPN affiliates complains that it’s not every day that a TV network underperforms like UPN does. The stations in question include UPN’s #1 affiliate, WWOR 9 in New York, and puts a pending negotiation between the two companies into further jeopardy. (As we reported in January, an agreement – or the lack thereof – between the two parties is vital to the network’s future.) With an increasing rift between Viacom and Fox, UPN’s struggle to stay on the air has become even more difficult.
Source: New York Daily News

NASA engineers at the Ames Research Center have reported that contact has been lost with the Pioneer 10 space probe, 31 years after it was launched. The most-traveled man-made object in history, Pioneer 10 was originally intended to survive an unprecedented 21-month arc through the solar system to take the first close-up photos of Jupiter and its moons. Its radioactive power system – not nuclear-based, but drawing energy from the passive decay of radioactive material (similar to the Voyager probes) – has probably faded to the degree that it can no longer send a signal to Earth. One last faint signal was received on January 22nd, but it contained no telemetry or other information (in fact, no useful data has been returned by Pioneer 10 since April 27th, 2002). NASA has no plans to attempt to contact Pioneer 10 or to listen for further responses. Traveling at a speed of 32,400mph (still the record for a man-made object), Pioneer has now put over 7.7 billion miles between itself and Earth. To put that in perspective, it crossed the orbit of Pluto – our solar system’s most distant known planet – in 1983, and is now more than twice Pluto’s distance from the sun; at that distance, Pioneer’s radio signals took nearly 12 hours to reach Earth, despite traveling at the speed of light. Pioneer 10, like sister ship Pioneer 11 (which fell silent in 1995), carries a gold plaque designed in part by the late Carl Sagan, which details – in a kind of scientific hieroglyphic inscription – the solar system and planet from which it originated, the life forms who created it, and the date of its launch (the plaque can be seen in the background of the image above). If it isn’t disturbed in its path of travel or destroyed by a collision with another object in space, Pioneer 10 will carry this message toward the star Aldebaran, 68 light years away. It will reach the general vicinity of Aldebaran a little over two million years.
Source & image: NASA / Ames Research Center

After seven seasons, Sarah Michelle Gellar is giving up her stake on the title role of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. While rumors are still circulating that the show may yet launch a second slayer-oriented spinoff series (after spinning Angel off into his own series, which remained on the WB after Buffy was picked up by UPN), most of the show’s cast members have made it clear that seven years is enough. In the wake of Gellar’s announcement, UPN has officially announced that this is the last season of Buffy. Nothing has been announced by 20th Century Fox or series creator Joss Whedon about spinning the show off again beyond Angel.
Source: Zap2it.com

Acclaimed Star Trek novelist J.M. Dillard returns to the fold this month with a new original Enterprise book, “Surak’s Soul“. T’Pol, after using lethal force to defend herself on an away mission, swears off any kind of violence even in self-defense, vowing to reacquaint herself with the pacifist principles of Surak of Vulcan. Captain Archer is left to question whether she can continue to serve on the Enterprise’s command crew if she’s unwilling to protect her ship. “Enterprise: Surak’s Soul” is now available from theLogBook.com’s Store.

It may not be the same thing as a new movie, but Tron is returning this fall, according to Tron 2.0 developer Monolith Productions. The first-person adventure game based on the 1982 film looks back in on the electronic world 20 years later – and drops you right back into the middle of it as Jet Bradley, the hacker son of Alan Bradley (played by Bruce Boxleitner in both the original movie and the game). Tron 2.0 is due for an August 26th release, and we’ll have pre-order info here as soon as it’s available.
Source: Monolith Productions