Personal Status Updates! (Page 4 of 13)

That's a sad place to be at. To feel like - retroactively, any happiness these characters could have had is stripped from you. This is the extent of the devastation Fox and Peckinpah visited upon the series.

I guess that's why I have a headcanon for Wade and the others after that point. To redress that feeling of inevitable hopelessness, to have life go on. Wade and Remmy escape, scarred but not broken. They found the "real" Arturo back in Azure Gate World. And as for all the stuff with Quinn and Remmy's origins - Kromagg tricks.

And nice catch on Universal Signs! It's a great movie - just watched it recently. A very thought-provoking insight into Deaf culture and sign language, which is an incredibly beautiful and intimate language. Dopamine is a great movie too, as is Hello Lonesome - that one'll make you laugh and cry in equal amounts.

Sabrina's in her element in these little indie movies, I think. She gets to work with people who are passionate about their project, and who are directly involved in seeing it happen, and she gives her all. I imagine that's what Sliders must've been like at the beginning, before everything.

I've been having some very odd issues lately. Driver updates were messing up my wifi, my touchpad was not controlling the cursor at times, the onscreen display for brightness would get stuck. Older drivers would only partially install, newer drivers would make things worse. Then I started having trouble opening my portable browsers. The culprit has turned out to be, strangely, Avast Antivirus. It was locking down administrative functions and preventing my programs from running and my drivers from loading. *sigh* I've switched to AVG for now.

You should have put "Seasons Greedings" on the Box!

Edit:

But yeah Happy whatever time guys and gals.

I'm nervous about telling you what ROM to install without a phone model number. What is it? There's several Galaxy Aces. I had a blue one once.

Or you could consider picking up a Moto G! :-D

I had a poke around on some developer sites -- every Samsung Ace ROM out there is underdeveloped and full of bugs. The Ace devices are the sort of low-end Android phone that I wish manufacturers wouldn't sell.

No one should ever buy a phone running Android on a single-core processor with 500MB of RAM and 8GB of internal memory. An Ace with its 4GB is an overpriced, barely functioning dumbphone on Android -- freezing, lagging and perpetually short of RAM and storage space.

The absolute minimum for Android should be 16GB of memory with 1.5GB of RAM and a 720p screen. Any Android phone with less than 32GB should have a microSD slot. 16GB is just enough to install all your apps while using Link2SD to move the app-storage to the microSD while leaving the app APK and cache on the internal memory. (MicroSDs are too slow for running the APKs.)

Thankfully, the market for low-cost devices with these minimum specs is getting better. The 16GB Moto G (3rd Gen, 5-inch screen) meets these standards -- although Motorola released an 8GB version that doesn't. The Alcatel One Touch Idol 3 (5.5 inch screen) also makes my minimum grade -- although Alcatel released a 4.7 model that fails.

The other thing to think about when buying a phone is the accessories -- nobody should buy a smartphone unless they can also find a fitted case and tempered glass screen protector or a fitted case with a screen cover. A smartphone is fragile and easy to drop. And these low-end phones are always lacking protective accessories, meaning they're inevitably maimed if not utterly destroyed. If you can't find protective accessories on eBay or Amazon, don't buy the phone.

These under-16GB Androids have no business being bought and sold. They are incapable of performing smartphone functions well and completely defeat the purpose for which they were made. The Moto G 3rd Gen 16GB is the bare minimum for a smartphone; anything less shouldn't be a smartphone.

My Mobile Network ee/Orange have been texting me about Black Friday/Cyber Monday Deals so I will ask if either of these recommendations is on offer.

Thanks ireactions!

I would give you serial number of my Galaxy Ace but from what you are saying it is probably pointless.... Plus I'd have to turn the phone off and on which takes AGES. So i may post it latter but not right now.

On another matter..... I was getting nostalgic for my 90's Sci Fi Kids shows like Tommorrow People 90's Ver, Girl from Tomorrow, Ocean Odyysey (Ocean Girl) etc and was surprised by how much of that stuff was Australian.

Then I saw talk of "My Secret Identity" which you have referenced before ireactions and am curious if it was any good?

I saw the 90's American shows Eerie Indiana and Secret World of Alex Mack but yeah the Show with Jerry O'Connell as far as I know did not air in the UK on Terrestrial UK Channels.

Hmm. I guess -- I would be okay with buying a phone with a non-removable, non-replaceable battery so long as it was on one of those 2-year contracts with an upfront payment less than $75 USD and absolutely no subsequent payments on the hardware. None of those absurd deals where you get a phone for $0 at first but pay $5 - $30 a month afterwards in addition to your monthly bill. Basically, you'd be getting this phone with the understanding that after two years, the battery will be worn out -- but then your contract would be up and you could get another phone at a similar low cost.

I had some $0 options recently after accidentally destroying my Samsung S3. I could get the Alcatel Idol One Touch 3 for $0 or another S3. I ended up going with the S3 because I already had accessories for it, but I guess the Idol 3 would have been fine too. That said, the S3 is a ghastly phone by 2015 standards -- or at least it is until you install Cyanogenmod.

The appeal of Nexus phones, I suspect, is the operating system. It's clean, simple, straightforward and well-organized. Google does a nice job with Android, but manufacturers such as Samsung, Sony, HTC, LG, Xiaomi take Android and change the colours, layout, controls, nomenclature, graphics, fonts, symbols -- often taking a pre-existing operating system and changing it in random, inconsistent, unconsidered ways.

Some post-Google modifications are light and subtle. Sony's Xperia line adjusts the visuals while leaving the layout and controls alone. Some are ridiculously out of control; Samsung takes a simple series of nine toggles in the notifications shade and makes it 30 - 50, and takes a simple scrolling list of settings and turns it into an incomprehensible tabbed list of categories that aren't organized in any decipherable sense. LG has nonsensical tabbed selections in its settings as well. Xiaomi puts all the app icons on the homescreen instead of giving you your choice of homescreen icons and an app drawer the rest of them. And the noises! All the beeps, bleeps, buzzes and dings at every tap. Noisy and distracting.

The Nexus line is a way of getting away from all that nonsense. It's stupid to take an operating system that works just fine and mutilate it on the most superficial level in an attempt to make Android into a completely different operating system when the Android skeleton is never going to be obscured unless the code is used as little more than a raw base, like an Amazon Kindle tablet's operating system. Nexus phones are Android as designed by the Android team. Android that's coherent, consistent and clear.

To be fair -- earlier versions of Android lacked a lot of features that manufacturers had to build in, but there's no need for that anymore, hasn't been since Jelly Bean.

Your link seems to indicate the Nexus 5x battery is very much non-replaceable. And there's no microSD expansion, sadly. The reason I like a microSD -- it lets me buy a cheaper phone but still have lots of storage for multimedia as well as little tweaks where Link2SD shifts the app data to the card while leaving the app on the phone. I bought the Samsung Galaxy S3 twice -- but I installed Cyanogenmod both times. Cyanogenmod is indistinguishable from the Nexus version of Android except there's extra settings available (overclocking, animation frame-rate adjustment, superuser access). I guess I like Samsung hardware with Nexus style software.

What'd you get?

I thought you would have at least considered this one:
http://shop.ee.co.uk/mobile-phones/pay- … ct/details -- low up-front cost, low priced plan, waterproof, modern Android, microSD card expansion.

I bought my Samsung S3 for $0 on a two-year contract where I'm obligated to stay with my monthly service until 2017. I don't make any payments on the phone, but if it were destroyed, I could pay off the current balance of $200 or so (it goes down by 12.50 each month until it hits a balance of $0 by the end of my contract) and then get another $0 phone. Currently, the only $0, 16GB contract phone is the Alcatel One Touch Idol 3, which doesn't have a replaceable battery.

So, I'd either grit my teeth and spend $200 on that phone -- or I'd buy something a bit older from local tech shops with a lot of unsold, discounted inventory. I'd probably get something like a 16GB Samsung S2 HD from 2012 for $150, root it and install Android Lollipop. It's hard for me to recommend the aged and discounted option without knowing the market in the UK, sadly. I guess there's the $150 Moto E with its 8GB of memory. I would hazard a guess that 5.3GB of that 8GB is usable and after installing apps, you'd be lucky to have 1GB of free space left and I wouldn't recommend running Android with so little free space.

Given the fragility of phones, I never recommend spending more than $150 on a smartphone, but some people can get the latest and greatest for $150 because they use higher-cost monthly data plans. I never use enough mobile data to justify it, so my $150 tends to put me in the mid-range of the market.

The Alcatel Pixi 3. Oh. Hmm. Well, it was free.

Out of curiosity, I went to Amazon.co.uk and looked for unlocked phones for less than £100 that are unlikely to blow up in your face or melt or burst into flame.

It also looks like you could get an 8GB Moto E for £90. The Moto E is a decent phone with limited storage, but if you root the phone, add a microSD card and install Link2SD, you can move about 45 per cent of the app files to the microSD and also store all your media files there, which would leave the Moto E just enough storage to run Android well.

I think I can add a small revision to my warnings that sub-16GB phones will not turn out well. I stand by that -- Android will constantly need to download software package updates, app sizes swell with each update, and you'll out out of memory errors very quickly. However, if you can root the phone -- and you'll need to find out in advance of buying it if there's a way to root it -- then you might be okay.

Link2SD is an app that requires root access, and once you have it, you can shift a good chunk of your app files to a microSD card and bypass the 8GB limitation. The Moto E can be rooted. However, if you can't find anything about root access for a sub-16GB phone, you shouldn't buy it.

Currently, my apps use 4.27GB of space, but I've been able to put 2.27GB of that onto the microSD card in the phone. I don't play games, so I could probably manage on an 8GB phone with it's 5.3 GB of storage if I had to -- so long as I had the option of using the microSD. Without it, and on 5.3GB, I'd probably be hitting out of memory errors.

I absolutely adored the 90s incarnation of The Tomorrow People. Back in the day, I was just devouring any form of media that contained the concept of the next stage of human evolution - which is right around the time that I started seriously getting into X-Men - and is obviously why I (albeit initially) lapped up Heroes. Teleportation, Telekinesis and Telepathy; I just loved the idea of these kids discovering these powers and trying to protect the world, regardless of how cheesy it was - but it was a children's show and it was a product of its time. And gosh, forget Peter Petrelli, Adam is cool as hell, lol.

I later began researching the show and discovered that it was based off of the original 70s incarnation. Though I have watched several serials, I could not take to it for various reasons - the main one being that it was designed specifically to be a competitor to Doctor Who. But that was what put me off of it. There was too much technology and space travel and all kinds of shenanigans, whereas the 90s version (don't get me wrong here - we've got alien pods, an egyptian deity, and a megalomaniac cereal mogul on the loose) but it felt more broadly grounded and I felt an attachment to the situation and the characters.

My dislike of the latest incarnation is well documented so I'll try and keep it brief. It made everything that I loved about The Tomorrow People and made it extremely bland and dull.

Everything from the poor acting, to the generic Jumper teleportation and telekinesis effects, to the soap opera 'whose bed is she going to sleep in now' love triangles, to the complete unlikability of the characters or what they were even striving for. And I hated how every TP was basically evil. Every single new one every week was evil. One of the things I loved about the 90s version was that everyone had their own unique spin on their powers. Adam was a fantastic teleporter because he has been doing it the longest. Megabyte could access computers. Ami had visions and once accessed some serious telekinetic ability when she was under control. But all the characters in TP, aside from the main who could stop time, had nothing that made them stand apart. And the whole chosen one / promised land story was just so boring.

I just didn't like it. I really wanted to because of my past love of the show, but like my issues with Parallels, they took the basic concept of the show but forgot to include the heart, the characterisations, basic plot development, and ultimately, believability and association. I felt no affinity for these characters, the story or their situation. None, at all. I do blame the CW for a lot of influence on what had the potential to be an awesome show. It could have turned out completely different on a different network, but that's the cards dealt I guess.

I attempted to piece together an audio drama reboot production of The Tomorrow People, but stopped when the CW reboot news came about. Now it's kinda killed a lot of my love for the show.

Pyrokinesis, Psychic Healing or Phasing are Elements which could be introduced and mesh well with as in Canon some Individuals having greater aptitude in one skill compared to others.

They all get the Ability Package but some are weaker and others stronger in their own area.

There is a sad lack of The Tomorrow People Fanfiction out there too.
I did read a good 11 Chapter Stargate/TP 90's ver Crossover fic over on Fanfiction.net but it is sadly unfinished.

You are so very right when mentioning Heart and Optimism, Pluckyness, Curiosity etc.

2013 was so unremittingly bleak while masquerading as Deep and Edgy... *sigh*

I absolutely hated Ultra's Anti Power Technology it was bullshit pardon my language.

A.I. I could just about stomach but only just.... as experimental tech.

Sure Indoctrinated/Blackmailed/Traitorous/Greed driven TP's working for the Man/Alphabet Soup group/Black Op is possible but all that Tech? NO!

They might want to research, contain and control TP's but from a narrative point it is boring and takes away the mystery of these powers and people if they already know it all and can use said countermeasures.

The so called threat TP's pose is non existant if you mass produce those Power Jammers and distribute them everywhere.

Yeah it was bull..... *ahem* sorry, nearly fell into that profanity trap again.

The 90's ver dabbled in anti TP tech but it was experimental, unsafe and based on theories that could affect normals too.

The idea was to interfere with either Spatial Perception, Balance etc to disorientate and incapacitate/restrain.

There was one part in the Premiere for Season One that was a little shocking related to that which was not in the Unaired Pilot.

Even now I am divided on it.

The Scientist who is played by the same Actor (Now well known in the UK for his role in Medical Drama/Soap "Holby City" as a Surgeon) in the Pilot and Episode One explains he used the experimental tech on a Tomorrow Person prior to the Talent Show Location use of it and KILLED HIM because it was not finished being tweaked. Quite casually and slightly embarassed said "There was not much left of the poor Chap".

On the one hand that addition added some genuine menace and dramatic tension but it was also pretty dark and unpleasant.
I sort of like it but also dislike it. Strange eh?

The weird thing is that TV shows can work wonders with a couple million dollars, but the same exact thing on the big screen would cost hundreds of millions. The system is flawed.

I named my book! I know that people will hate the name, but I decided that I don't care. I just haven't officially told the public the name yet, so stay tuned for that. At least that one small part of my stress headache is gone!

Actually, for some reason "Time Again and World" keeps popping into my head as I try to figure out how people will respond to my title.

Is that a good thing?

My brother installed a custom rom, and his screen went black whenever the phone was active. Something with the proximity sensor. There was no way to answer or end calls. I think he worked something out though.

I'm thinking that I might enter this first book of my series into the Kindle Scout program. If I do and it gets enough votes, I could end up being published by Amazon, which would get me some money right out of the gate and hopefully some more promotion as well. But the question is, could I get enough votes? I guess we'll see. If not, I just publish like I normally do.

Can you send me one of the scripts in script format? I'd like to see if some of my Kindle publishing brains could work out that problem.

I usually convert to mobi rather than epub, but the tools that I use might be able to do both.

Hmm... I will see if I can work with a PDF. If not, I can try working with a doc or rtf type file. They are usually easiest to play around with.

Okay, I've been working on it. Going to send you some private messages now.

I was so impressed with the Moto E that I went back to the dealer and bought another one for myself. This is a pretty good phone for someone who can bypass the 8GB limitation and primarily uses a phone to read blogs, web articles and ebooks and respond to instant messages. I wanted my mum to be able to text on a large and clear screen, but I didn't expect such capable, responsive performance with unskinned Android and really nice build quality as well. I think I'll give my superphone to my niece.

I had a similar experience this past week where I realized that Coke Zero costs 16 per cent the price of Red Bull and supplies largely the same amount of caffeine.

ME: "I have a question and I need you to take it seriously."
MATT: *weeps openly*
ME: "Try to imagine that we are filming SLIDERS REBORN for real as I imagined it -- that inexplicably, SLIDERS as it aired had and maintained a huge audience right to 2015  but rights issues prevented a revival until today."
MATT: "Hahahahhahahahahahaahhahaah!"
ME: "Yahoo paid for REBORN in a round of media investment they would come to regret, okay? Kari Wuhrer is hired to play 20 - 25 or so Maggie doubles throughout the five-part series. Dan Harmon is writing the scripts."
MATT: "Aaugggggggggggggggggh!"
ME: " ... do we address how/why Maggie's breasts are suddenly smaller?"
MATT: "I almost just shot snot out of my nose."
ME: "Why did every single one of her doubles get breast reduction surgery?"
MATT: "If it's critical for continuity, just have her wear fake tits in her shirt."
ME: "I had a dream where Sabrina Lloyd showed up at my doorstep to demand we not do that."

I guess the simplest route -- REBORN takes the view that the Earth in the Pilot had a Maggie Beckett double that we never met. And all the Maggie doubles are variants on that Earth Prime Maggie. So maybe the Earth Prime Maggie never got breast implants.

Another thing Matt and I were debating -- I genuinely believe that Quinn Mallory is the greatest fictional character of the twentieth century, a pop culture icon who stands next to Indiana Jones, Spider-Man, Mr. Spock, Batman and Luke Skywalker. Or would if not for the fact that SLIDERS became a complete and total joke. Matt says that it's cute that I think that, but it's not remotely reflective of reality. But I genuinely think of Quinn as a superhero.

First, he has a distinctive silhouette and a costume that makes him recognizable from every camera angle. The moppy hair and Jerry O'Connell's build make him stand out in shadow, as does the pose of him holding the timer. The flannel and jeans are as memorable as any superhero uniform. Next is his secret origin from the trauma of his father and the desire to create something incredible that ripped a hole in reality, followed by a series of experiences that, combined with innate abilities, gave him a distinct set of superpowers: he possesses superhuman intelligence that allows him to resolve the plot in a very short number of pages, and he also possesses extensive knowledge of individuals and their private and personal details as gathered across thousands of encounters across the multiverse.

And also, Quinn has some severe social handicaps but also a limitless sense of compassion for the weak and a fierce sense of morality. This is a wanderer across time and space who is also a social crusader driven by an insane desire to oppose tyranny and injustice in every form he finds it. He also contains some incredibly complex philosophical complexities. Quinn is a gambler and risktaker who causally leapt into a hole in the air, but he is also a seeker of truth who is angry, suspicious and defiant of authority for its own sake.

I think his defining moment as a truthseeker is in "Luck of the Draw"; he is unwarmed by creature comforts, unimpressed by luxury and has no patience for trite platitudes and establishment fictions. He demands explanations and answers where most people would just sit back and sip the free champagne. This is a hero who believes in the power of knowledge to liberate, to guide and to vanquish the cruel and wicked.

(But he's still a messy dresser, a clumsy eater, a socially awkward isolationist whose megawatt smile conceals a lonely and secluded personality, a ridiculously guilt-driven egotist who blames himself for every single one of the world's ills and whose inability to maintain relationships has left him living in a basement for the last 15 years with his mother being his only social contact. He also hasn't had a date since 1996.)

This is a hero who is in some ways absolutely invincible, at least on an intellectual level. But this is also a hero who is incredibly vulnerable because at the end of the day, that limitless intellect is within a human shell and Quinn is as physically susceptible as anybody else. It's not difficult to write Quinn into situations that force his back against the wall, but it's also not difficult to adjust the situation to have him resolve the issue very quickly as the story demands it. His superpower is ultimately the writer's superpower; the ability to shift the story in illogical, irrational and unlikely directions that are made convincing through the device of Quinn's intelligence. And that's what makes this character unique, special, distinctive, invincible, immortal and eternal. Sherlock Holmes. Dr. House. Horatio Hornblower. James T. Kirk. Quinn Mallory.

Matt thinks that's just nuts.

Randomly, I have to say that watching "Love Gods" after knowing Wade's canonical fate is a very surreal experience. To see the whole breeder camp thing be used as the basis for such a lighthearted episode - and they never called back to it, to how Quinn and Remmy (well, mostly Quinn) might have felt while they were in there.

This whole show is so detached from itself, at Fox's insistence.

Wow! I'm a big fan of your Site! Glad you have rejoined us Orrible Lot over here!

I have to say the idea of your Fics being continued made me Squee a little.... How shameful....

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on 2013's Tommorrow People too!

Maybe you could do a blow by blow episodic review thread?

Welcome back, Stuslide. Always nice to see a familiar name return.

So, I went to a Q&A session on Saturday where actress Tatiana Malasny was answering questions and a lot of the questions annoyed the hell out of me. Half of the questions weren't questions, just the person describing their theories on what Malasny must think, going on for 3 - 5 minutes with their attempt at mind reading and then expecting Malasny to, I guess, let this person put their words in her mouth?

"With this project, you must be trying to say that you're not just someone in science fiction projects, you can do a lot of other things too and you want people to see................. " The other half of the questions asked were questions that could be answered with yes or no. "Did you enjoy ______?" "Do you like ___________?"

I don't know what it is about being handed a microphone that turns people into either rambling POV pushers or polar questioners. I wish that, at such sessions, there could be little cards distributed on how to form effective questions or some guidelines projected on the screen. "Avoid asking questions that can be answered with yes or no." "Please phrase your question in 2 - 3 sentences." "Please restrict your remarks to questions rather than statements."

That is insane. But quite an amusing question!

I think there have been two attempts to tell stories of Captain America running for President that made it to print, but altered shortly before publication so that Cap wouldn't actually run and the storyline would be aborted.

My Birthday today! o_O