I'd love to take some of the credit, and I guess I helped, having done the covers (I did the colorization of the photo above), but the real hero here is John Ellis, who wanted to do this project, and is managing to do it against great odds in the form of a failing economy. He's my hero! He let me know about all of this in a hit-and-run instant message today.

Please notice the name dropping in the form of Rick Sternbach, who designed a lot of the art for the more recent Star Trek TV series, and was co-author of Star trek, the next generation : technical manual / written and designed by Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda ; with a special introduction by Gene Roddenberry. And please notice that he's the first person to comment on the blog article.

I was lucky enough to meet Rick years ago, when John and I were at MonCon doing advance publicity for the first Star Wars movie. John and I were on our way to see Forbidden Planet, and Rick said he envied me because I was going to see it for the first time. And well he might. It's an impressive movie.

The photos in this post are phenomenal, too, for any fans of Air Force hardware in the form of planes! Planes are one of my favorite things! The photos in this blog post are great!

I have to take a short break and calm down before I continue writing.

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I don't know if you have noticed, but I now have Twitter posts in the sidebar of my other blog, www.jam2day.blogspot.com, so you can get instant updates throughout the day, and during times (like yesterday) when I get distracted with other things and don't post, and days when I go to the Sheep and Wool Festival or the RenFair. The box with posts has a time-traveling slider on the right, so if you miss something, you can go back and see it. If you only check it once a day, you may miss some stuff, because I'm finding I update frequently during the day. So, now there's a reason to check this blog several times a day (or follow me on Twitter--click the link at the bottom of the Twitter box).

I should mention that I intend to discontinue this blog and have only the other one. If you check them both, you'll see that I post to the other one, then copy and paste to this blog. BUT I frequently put up other things on the other blog that don't appear here, so if you just read this blog, you're missing a LOT. Especially now that I have the Twitter box up in the sidebar. There are links in there about guerilla urban knitting, too. And the sidebar has book recommendations and lots of other neat stuff.

If you're on Twitter, it's Follow Friday, so there will be links to neat Twitterers, today, too. If you're a knitter, there are some recent links to spinning/knitting contests with some great prizes, and links to some more science fiction info, too.

One of the contests is the Berrocco Sock Competition. This sounds like fun! Click the link and check it out!

There's another contest going on for the ABC series, Castle. I know it's not SF, but it stars Nathan Fillion, who is always worth watching, even if he's not playing the captain of Serenity anymore. Check it out here and below.

I think there was another contest or something important that I've forgotten to tell you about, but put it up on Twitter. Check the sidebar!

Well, I watched Warehouse 13 last night, and felt it was the best I could have reasonably hoped for.

A series needs a lot of establishment, and this had all it needed, and got into the action right away. It will just get to be more fun as the series goes on and we get to know the characters better. Io9 says it best and at great length in this review of the first two-hour episode. I should mention that it's not a wishing lamp, but a teakettle, and it's not Pete who makes the wish. If you missed it last night, it'll be on several times during the coming week. Check it out!

As an artist, I was drawn in by the steampunk theme of the warehouse and it's contents. There's an interesting juxtaposition of modern tech and antique stuff, such as Artie's computer, which is sleek and modern, but has an old typewriter keyboard. It makes me feel better about my old iMac.

I also liked some of the references to the inventors of some of the tech. Oh and Renaissance buffs will be interested to note that this week's artifact (in the second half of the episode) was (supposedly) once owned by Lucrezia Borgia, and made by an alchemist. So there's some heavy Ren vibes, too. At least in the second half of this episode.

As you may, or may not be aware, Torchwood is currently airing it's third season mini-series in England this week. One episode of the five-part series, Children of Earth, will be shown each weeknight, starting on Monday. So two parts of the story have already been shown. Io9 has a review of it here. Since I live in Virginia, I haven't seen it, so can't really say much about it. It will be on BBC in America starting on July 20.

As many of you know, there was an episode of Dollhouse that was filmed, but never aired by Fox. Little by little, more information about this episode is leaking out. It will, or course, be on the soon-to-be-released DVD.

Io9, once again, has some information on this for all you fen who are waiting with baited breath.

You can get to see the actual episode on the DVD when it's released later this month on the 28th here:

Which leads me right into Comic Con. There will be a special, limited edition of Dollhouse available there, also later this month.

Comic Con in San Diego will be starting on the 23rd, and running through the 26th. John has plans to go, and I'm so envious! I'm going to try to get him to gather some information for you on the con. Wish I could go.

Oh, and speaking of SF Cons, someone on Twitter was talking about getting ready to go to Shore Leave, which is apparently this weekend. I'm going to have to be more alert and plan for something like this so I'll have the likelihood of possibly going.

I was just reading over the page, and Howie Weinstein's going to be there! I haven't seen him in ages. I met him at a private party also called Shore Leave in the '70s.

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There has been lots of knitting going on, but not a lot that's worth photographing. There will be photos soon, though.

Sorry this post was so heavy on SF and light on knitting!

Have a great Wednesday!

Rumor has it that they paid a lot of money to change their name to something silly. They wanted to expand their possibilities, but there are so many possibilities that they haven't even begun to explore even without expanding them that I fail to see the point. Just rerunning some of the worst SF ever shown, e.g.; Chupacabra, Dark Seas; Grendel; and Beowulf is something we could have all done without. OK, I can see rerunning them once a year or something, but three times each month is a bit repetitious.

But the premier of Warehouse 13 will be on tonight, and the concept has so much possibility that I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and expect something earthshaking.

If you miss it the first time it's on tonight, it will be on later, and then several times later in the week. SyFy really wants to make sure that you don't miss this because of a lost opportunity, so they're showing it over and over, which is hopefully a good thing.

For those of you who don't know, I have a Twitter account, and have installed a Twitter widget over on the right hand side in the sidebar of my other blog (at www.jam2day.blogspot.com) for instant updates.

Oh, and by the way, Stargate Continuum is currently on SyFy.

Lots of knitting to do, but nothing's done yet. I'll get some photos up soon, though.

Have a great evening!

Anyway, I found a whole website devoted to dealing with the current depression. It's called Recession Wire, and the particular post I started with was this one, about how to deal with being laid off. Some of the information seems to apply to people who have lost a job, and anyone else who needs some extra income. Check out the link for Discounts for the Unemployed. At the bottom of the list, "Government Money for Your New Career" seems like a winner, but only contains some very general information, with no starting point for where to look, and no links to more information.

And I just found another one of their Just-Laid-Off Checklists. This particular one is less about concrete steps you can do to make some money, and more about how to deal with the emotional impact of a lay off or being fired. And believe me, this part is every bit as important as making more money.

Each of those posts has a list of related posts at the bottom of the page, so there's a lot of information there.

If you belong to a subscription service like Google Reader, it might be worthwhile to add them to your list of blogs to read.

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I don't know if I mentioned this on my blog, but there's a sweepstakes currently happening on Twitter, and today is the last day to enter (moved up from the 10th). The final prizes will be awarded tomorrow at 10 am Eastern Daylinght Savings Time (I think). They are/were giving away 10 MacBook Pros, one a day. But they made such problems for Twitter that they've decided to give all the remaining ones out tomorrow. So, if you have a Twitter account, check here for more information.

And while I'm on the topic of something for nothing, check out the Family Dollar 50 Days of Giveaways. It's possible to win a car or an extremely large screen TV as well as many more prizes. And if you enter and don't win, it makes a very sad sound.

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I ended up my weekend pretty late last night after having spent most of Sunday watching movies on TV and knitting. Unfortunately for the knitting part, I noticed late in the day that I'd dropped a stitch early in the day, and it had ruuuuunnnnn! I'm a big one for fixing mistakes like that, but this was such a disaster that I wound up frogging almost everything I did yesterday and starting over almost from scratch.

The movie watching was fun, though. I saw: Live Once, Die Twice; The Avengers; and Independence Day.

Live Once, Die Twice was a good thriller to watch once. Unlike some movies that I want to see over and over, it was pretty much finished when it was over, but it was an enjoyable one-time shot.

The Avengers tried hard, but it had a lot to live up to, and just didn't manage to succeed. In the New Avengers, Joanna Lumbly wasn't Diana Rigg, but she was good, and she had Patrick MacNee to work with. But neither of the stars made me care about them or like them very much. I enjoyed the supporting cast much more than the stars, Eileen Atkins as Alice, a machine gun toting little old lady agent was the hit of the movie. And Jim Broadbent made an excellent Mother. I was especially interested in him because he'll be playing Professor Slughorn in the new Half Blood Prince movie.

I guess Independence Day doesn't really need a review because everyone must've seen it by now.

Off the topic of movies, but still in a science fiction theme, don't forget that Warehouse 13 will be premiering on what will become (tomorrow) the SyFy Channel. This premise has the capacity for total failure or completly fabulous. I'm hoping for fabulous. And I'm prepared for a slow start. SG-1 was OK when it started, but it took a little while before it really hit it's stride. So did Babylon 5, one of the best thing that's ever been on TV. Blakes 7, however hit the ground running!

Well, my DVR is full, and I need to catch up on the knitting I flubbed yesterday, so I'm going to run.

Have a great week!

Holly and I went out, did a quick errand, and had dinner together, always lots of fun. She showed me a fun new app for the G1 phones, and now my phone makes a Star Trek communicator chirp when I get a text message, and also whoops and says "Incoming transmission" when I get a phone call.

We came back to my place for fireworks. We watched fireworks on the mall in DC on TV, and also watched them live out the window.

For a rather extended time, the fireworks in DC were so constant that it looked like fire was just raining down on DC! I have seen more sophisticated displays (and seen them in DC), but this really outdid them for sheer volume. There was no time that the sky didn't have something exploding in it.

My window showed fireworks from about seven different displays in the local area, although the ground displays weren't really visible. We did catch the finale of a very close display, though, and before it was totally dark, there was a short batch of fireworks that someone set off in the commuter's parking lot next to the apartment building.

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Other than that, I call your attention to the fact that there are only 11 days until the Half Blood Prince movie opens. If you want to wear Harry Potter knits to the movie, you don't have much time left to knit/buy them!

I'm making this a short post because I want to enjoy the rest of the weekend (what's left of it) and get back to my HP knitting.

I hope you are all still having a great weekend!