Category: Television & Movies

Argh. For some reason that I can’t figure out and don’t really have the time to screw with much, Scribblings (the original, you might say, at theLogBook.com) is broken. Videos don’t work anymore for no real reason that I’ve been able to fathom, actually getting it to accept new content is hit-or-miss, and it’s just emblematic of the site as a whole – WordPress was supposed to liberate me to some extent, and let me just concentrate on generating content, because I write almost constantly, and don’t want to have to code pages almost constantly. But it’s maintaining the infrastructure that’s killing me. When I upgraded the WordPress that drives the episode guide, it completely wiped out all categories, and I’m still going through those 2,500-odd entries and re-categorizing them (i.e. Star Trek? check. Deep Space Nine? check. Season 4? check.)…I’m up to 1995 now. Which is quite a feat when the thing starts in the ’50s. It really renews my appreciation for just how much ground the site covers, how much written material (and hopefully well-written material) it represents…and makes the back of my brain throb and beg for More Help With The Damn Thing. It’s not WordPress’s fault, but the early days of the toddler era is not a good time for me to be able to find the kind of time it takes to prop up that infrastructure all the time. The news page has also been hit by the same bug, and I just. don’t. have. the. time. I’ve stopped updating the news page. I’ve looked for someone to take it over, but there’s only so much I can offer when the site’s revenue basically covers its own bills (and to be honest, that’d be a misnomer this year – the PDF DVD is what’s paying the site’s bills right now; the site itself – aside from hosting the ordering page for the DVD – hasn’t made a cent this month). Next year is theLogBook’s 20th anniversary, but I’m starting to wonder if it might not be time to start dialing the whole thing down a bit and just doing sporadic updates. When I feel like it. Rather than trying to generate, on a weekly basis, what I would’ve needed to fill the 6-page print fanzine that theLogBook was in the 1990s.

I don’t even know if this entry will post, so before I hit the ‘submit’ button, I’m going to grab the whole thing and copy it to the clipboard. 😆

On the home front, I’ve just finished a bit of marathon data entry for the in-laws, which proved to be an exhausting, round-the-clock-for-several-days exercise that made me want to say “Uh…you guys do realize I have a child to look after…right?” I’m relieved that that’s over.

Today Evan uttered a new word quite clearly while patting Xena on the nose: DOG-GIE! Her tail started wagging so fast that I was afraid she’d start helicoptering and her butt would raise into the air and lift the rest of her away. Evan has also proven quite capable of playing with Oberon with a length of thick string (I think it’s the drawstring from the swim trunks I wore incessantly in 2007 that no longer fit me – even with the drawstring, they’re too big). He’s really picking up on the “animals-are-your-friends” thing at a very early age, and he seems to have a natural tendency to be gentle toward them (aside from occasionally wallowing all over Olivia like she’s an escapee from his stuffed animal collection that jumped out of the crib and somehow attained free will). Hopefully he’ll never outgrow that.

Work is continuing on the CGE DVD project, and after that I think I’m going to take a break of a week or so to just chill out and not edit any video for a bit. I’ve done more editing lately than I’ve done since the first PDF DVD, or maybe even since the TV station days, and it’s worn me out just a little bit. (The data-entry-o-thon sure as hell didn’t help to alleviate that sense of fatigue.)

Listening-wise, I’ve been devouring the last trio of Alan Parsons Project remasters, Ben Folds’ really uneven new album, and some other stuff. Supposedly, tomorrow we’ll have the tracklist for the new Doctor Who soundtrack album due in November, which I’m looking forward to tremendously. There was some fantastic music this season, moreso than in season 3 I thought. As far as watching stuff… I’m so far behind on Heroes that I’ve almost given up on it. It’s going to become one of these things where I’ll just wait until it’s all over and watch it in marathon viewings, the way some folks are doing Lost if they haven’t been in on the joke from day one. (For that matter, I’m beginning to feel that way about Lost too.) I have been watching The Sarah Jane Adventures (cool), as well as meandering through a couple of other short-lived BBC series, Star Cops (very ’80s, but really not bad) and Moonbase 3 (an early ’70s British companion piece to The Starlost…with about the same tone and pacing and bizarrely overdramatic characterization). I recently finished watching the first season of Alien Nation, picking up on all the episodes I missed out on the first time around, and while it too is hopelessly ’80s, it had so much potential that I’m depressed all over again in retrospect. The TV movies were initially a nice consolation prize, but then they became victims of the law of diminishing returns. A lot of this stuff I’ve been watching to add to the episode guide section, and between that and my general state of fatigue, I’ve been doing all of this viewing and listening in a kind of dazed mode. I haven’t picked up any new viewing habits from the new season, and I think it’s just a combination of not having the energy to devote to appointment viewing and the current crop of stuff just not hitting me the right way. Even The Sarah Jane Adventures don’t really qualify as appointment viewing – I download the episodes, burn them to a DVD-RW, and watch them when I have a chance, and then wipe the disc and reuse it when I have both parts of the next story. Suddenly I understand how/why parents can seem like they’re so out of touch: here I am, listening to new releases of old music, playing (or thinking a lot about) old video games, watching (for the most part) old TV shows. I’m clearly way past it.

I should probably hold off on writing anything else until I’m – ha! – less tired.… Read more