How to watch Babylon 5

Babylon 5 has been off the air for over 15 years, and there's now a whole new generation of science fiction fans who probably don't know about it, and definitely haven't seen it. If you start watching it straight through, I'm afraid you won't enjoy it. So this guide is here to help you to see the show in the best possible way.

You have to understand that it's a show that was finely honed for its audience and its presentation format. It built up a following by slowly ratcheting up the amount of story being developed and then delivering big "arc" episodes that drove all of the story lines forward at once. This makes for a great series, but a slow start. Many viewers see a couple of episodes and give up, assuming the show won't go anywhere.

The FX can be distracting as well. It was aired when HD was being talked about, so the episodes were filmed in wide-screen, but the FX shots were rendered for non-HD TV and then the master data files were lost in a fire, so if you see it in HD the special effects look even more cheesy than they should, given that they were created at the dawn of the computer-rendered FX age. In addition to the purely FX shots like the exterior, the show pioneered a lot of the virtual set work that has taken over the industry. These scenes too had to be transferred over from the original broadcast masters, and could not be re-rendered. That being said, the graphics are phenomenal, given what they had to work with, and one of the draws of B5 for the "hard SF" crowd is that space combat is highly realistic. Spacecraft don't bank in B5, for example, they pivot and thrust the way they should.

First off, get over the FX and buy the first season on regular DVD or watch it online on WB's site with commercials (no, there's no Blu-Ray because to do that, they'd have to re-build every FX shot from scratch, costing millions of dollars). The guide below assumes you have at least the first season available.

I will avoid spoilers as much as I can, but I suggest keeping a bookmark to this post and not reading ahead too far as you watch the series. I'm going to walk you through the first two seasons, telling you which shows to watch and which to skip. I'll also give you a sense of when to wait a while before seeing the next. This part is important, so try to stick with me, here.

My Low Carb Diet in Detail

As I've mentioned, before, I came dangerously close to gaining enough weight that I'd be back where I was before my first low-carb diet (which lasted about 2 years and helped me lose about 50 pounds). I was back to 250 pounds and feeling terrible. I had to use a CPAP machine again, and that was compounding how bad I felt.

So, I gave up. Thanks to Jeff's help, I've managed to get my life back into a low-carb routine. Now, because I find most low-carb diets horrifying, I think it would be useful for me to go over my diet. It's really this simple:

1. Avoid all sources of mass starch and sugar (pasta, potatoes, grains and rice, sugar, honey, etc.)
2. Reduce intake of high carb veggies (sweet fruit, non-potato root veggies like carrots, tomatoes, squashes, etc.)
3. Trim intake of medium carb veggies (beans and other legumes, etc.)
4. Reduce milk and juice intake (substitute cream or cheese where possible for whole or skim milk)
5. Increase fiber intake (fiber supplements, use Fiber One as a garnish, etc.)
6. Reduce or eliminate high-surgar alcoholic drinks like wine, beer and most mixed drinks.

I shouldn't be tracked by Google: A modest proposal

Google shouldn't track my behavior. That's a simple enough concept, but that seems to have been lost in recent days with the publication of their new privacy policy. Why is it that they can't keep their hands off of my data?

Well, I mean, I want them to manage my email, sure. That data they should manage, but they shouldn't read it. I mean, they should read it in order to format it, spam-filter it, check it for phishing links and invalid from-addresses. They should also read the attachments so that they can present me with easy ways of downloading or displaying them as needed. Oh and they should present contacts that are mailed to me in useful ways and allow me to import them into my contacts list. But they shouldn't be reading my mail, you know? Like for advertising. I know I could pay money and get a no-ads version of gmail through Google Apps, but I don't want to pay for it, I just want random ads for political candidates from other countries and arthritis medication instead of things I'm interested in. You know... because Google shouldn't be reading my mail.

And they definitely shouldn't be coordinating across their platforms. I mean sure, they should read all of my texts and instant messages so that I can easily index them along with my mail and search through the whole thing at once. I'd really like more features for adding tags to text messages through Google Voice too. But I just don't want them to read that stuff. You know, because it's ... icky.

Also, I'd like Google to stop sharing my private data with other companies. OK, I know they don't do that, but let's say they did. That'd be pretty annoying, right? See? Right, there. Google is doing annoying things to us! Google says their corporate motto is "don't be evil" (actually, it's part of the S1 filing with the SEC, a sort of proviso to potential stock holders that they'll do things like pull out of China if they feel they can't provide a helpful service without propping up the state system of censorship, but that's sort of the same thing, right?) But I think they are evil because they unified their privacy policy and say that their various products will share information. I mean, sharing my information is bad, right? Well, except that I do want it all to be available in ways that make sense. I mean, Google+ should definitely read my contacts and Google Calendar should be integrated with Google+ to allow Google Pages companies to share corporate events calendars. I'd also like to be able to share my free/busy time with circles. I just don't want that other kind of sharing ... because it's icky.

OK, I'll admit it, I don't really know what it is that I'm worried about. Yeah, Google gives me more choice, control and ability to take my data out of their services than anyone else. Sure, they champion the use of open standards that make the Internet a playground for entrepreneurs and technophiles alike. And I have to admit that they've fostered a boom in open source software development that has taken systems like Linux into the hands of millions of people. But none of that changes the fact that I'm kind of scared about a nebulous evil that I expect to be creeping around the door any second now.

Good thing Congress is getting involved. You don't see Facebook sharing ... well OK. But you don't see Yahoo distributing user information across ... well OK. But you don't see Cisco coordinating with the Federal ... Hmm. Well, it's just scary!

Low Carb Chocolate Shake / Hot Cocoa

I have gone back to a low-carb diet, the only thing that worked for me in the past, and once again I'm seeing pounds dropping at a surprising rate. To help others who want to try this, I thought I'd share my recipe for chocolate shakes and hot cocoa.

Low Carb Chocolate Shake / Hot Cocoa

(serves 4)

These are yummy, though you definitely should not go in expecting it to taste exactly like a regular shake. The primary reason for this is that milk has a fair amount of natural sugar, so you should replace as much as you can stand to avoid with water. Depending on how much water you use, this will taste less and less like a regular shake. To reduce the impact, you can buy protein powder to add, which brings back some of the full-bodied flavor of milk, but without the sugars.

• 2 cups Whey Protein Isolate
  
• 10 packets (or equivalent) artificial sweetener
• 8 packed, level teaspoons dutch process cocoa powder
• 4 very small pinches salt, a bit less than 1/8 tsp
• 4 very small pinch nutmeg (fresh grated if possible, I use one-short pass over the microplane grater per cup)
• 1/8th teaspoon cinnamon
• 6 cups water (replace water with cream or milk to taste)

Stir and strain to remove any bits that did not dissolve. Refrigerate and shake before serving.

For the hot version, use the above recipe, add 1 raw egg and 1/4 teaspoon vanilla. Then whisk over low heat until the mixture begins to steam. Do not boil. A small amount of cream in place of some of the water is recommended for the hot version.

Don't be your own worst enemy: A lesson I'm always learning

When I was young, I felt as if I didn't have control over my life. Part of it was social. I moved around a lot and never developed the sort of friendships that most kids use to build the social skills that they later use without thinking. Instead, I just seemed a bit ... retarded (and I mean that word in the clinical sense in which I was introduced to it when I volunteered in a special needs class in grade school).

As an outsider, I latched onto the few things that could act as a social crutch: being funny, being weird. These things at least made people pay attention and sometimes react positively. I also suffered from what was never correctly diagnosed as attention deficit disorder (ADD), and the memory problems that came with it were often a source of additional strange behavior. For example, I would carry around a giant gym back full of every book I might need because otherwise I would always forget to have any given book for a class.

As I grew older, these odd tics mostly melted away. I met enough people who were in the same boat, socially, in college to catch up and develop some social skills. But some of the tics stayed and became part of my persona. One of them was the urge to be strange enough to get noticed. The number of times in my life that I've created a situation that made me strange in order to stand out are... well, difficult to count. I've probably spent upwards of a working year explaining myself or trying to get a bureaucracy to cope with some strangeness or other. Why? Because it's how I roll, to use a phrase that's more modern than I am.

I suppose I should just be glad that I never did anything too permanent. I never changed my name to something obviously made up. I never got myself plastered with tattoos. I'm generally free of any major fits of poor judgement.

Now that I'm getting older and I'm starting to see those places where I've deliberately made my life difficult, I'm starting to unwind them, but let this be a warning to others: if something seems like a great way to draw attention, think carefully about why you want the attention. Don't tilt at windmills if you don't have to. At the same time, fight the good fight for your individuality if you must. There are times and places for it, but like all of life, there is a middle way.

Dangerous Software Gaming Essays: My four blogs

I'm currently actively maintaining four blogs. This is my random thoughts blog where I'll continue to post about things like politics, science, media, and so forth. Some of my posts will continue to be essay-like, and some will be more traditional blog posts in a mix that I'm sure what few readers I have have come to expect...

In addition, I have three much more laser-focused blogs that will get less frequent updates:

• AJS Gaming - Anything that's specifically video or board gaming-related
• AJS's Software Development - Thoughts on software, ongoing projects, etc.
• Dangerously Free Sounds - Reviews of freely downloadable music and related artists, Web sites and services.

Enjoy!

The Last Airbender movie review

The Last Airbender didn't suck. There, I said it. I put off seeing it for a long time, since the TV series was one of the few anime-style (I believe it was an American production with Korean animation) series that I've truly loved. The last thing I wanted to do was tarnish that memory with a crap movie, and everything I'd heard seemed to indicate that this was exactly what M. Night Shyamalan had done to it. Not so.

That's as much as you get without spoilers. From here on in, I'll assume that you have seen either the TV series or the movie. If not, go watch the TV series, and if you love it, see the movie, but don't expect a lot.

First off, let me be clear: I didn't think it was a great film. Casting was poor (though, to be fair, finding children that can carry an entire and relatively heavy movie is nigh impossible) except for Dev Patel and some supporting characters. The boy cast as Aang was acceptable, but not perfect. Part of my problem with him, though, was the writing, and I'll get to that. There was also a rush to tell the entire story of the first season. Frankly, this is where the movie made its largest blunder. If they had done a 2-movie set with the first and last half of the first season, then I think we could have seen a really great pair of films, but as it was we introduced and rushed past many interesting characters from the first season, just to get to the Northern Water Tribe. This had to be done, because Sokka's love is introduced and killed there... an arc which requires at least some time to explain and create an emotional resonance for. As it was, her death still felt artificial and rushed.

So, what did I like about the film? Clearly M. Night had a deep respect for the visual pallet of the series. He kept an awful lot of sets from the first season and they look beautiful. The core story is all there, and though there were some subtle changes, I mostly liked how it all played out. No one's back story was really broken, so much as just bent in places. Little bits of humor were much appreciated, especially Sokka's, "I always get wet!" Appa and Momo have sadly tiny parts, but what little we see of them is as fun as ever.

M. Night's writing has to be a major topic, here, though. He just turned what could be argued is the best children's drama of the past decade into a barely passable live-action film. It's not that he's a bad writer, but I think that he gets far too absorbed in certain aspects of a story or film, and he's just not that director that can write and direct his own work. This is made clear as he repeatedly has characters repeating themselves or consoling each other with platitudes that fall short of the dialog he was starting with. He has problems with pacing, structure and dialogue which simply cannot be ignored. Next time, Mr. Shyamalan, can I humbly suggest you get yourself a script doctor? Ask Joss Whedon (whose script doctoring is legendary). At the very least, he can probably point you at someone well worth the trouble.

Anyway, see the film and expect nothing. It's a fun popcorn movie and if you can get past the rushed storyline and late introductions of major characters, it will be worth seeing.