I saved up quite a while for this laptop and brown bagged a lot of lunches to buy this and I even had to wait an extra week from the “expected arrival date” after I bought it. Imagine my dismay when I attempted to open my laptop, like I’ve done before on many occasions, only to hear it crack and snap. These ThinkPads had been advertised as being “tough” and “robust” but the left hinge of my laptop, which has never left the confines of my desk since I bought it, has simply broken off from its apparently flimsy connection to the LCD and keyboard.

I googled around and found that I was not the only one to experience the left hinge breaking. It looks like it has been happening quite consistently among other Lenovo ThinkPad users. On the Lenovo forum, I saw that at least two SL400′s have had their hinges break in the last few months. Two more SL500′s have also been reported to have had the same issue as well. There were at least 8 people who bothered to report the issues on the website and three of them as well as myself have had their hinges break in the last two months.

I sincerely hope that Lenovo will do whats right and provide proper compensation or replace these broken laptops.

Spoilers under the cut.

I’ve never seen anything on tv that felt that “real” until this week’s episode of Chuck. I almost welled up there, it was just one of those feel good moments. I really hope that Chuck and Sarah end up together on the show but there’s still one episode left in the season for them to mess it up.

Hopefully we get a season three, but not for them to mess up the Chuck and Sarah dynamic! We all know it’ll suck once they’re together but, hey, don’t we all want a happy ending?

The final two episodes of Battlestar Galactica are set to air over the next two weeks so be sure to catch them on the next two Fridays!

After reading through the thread on SA, here are some of the awesome possible endings.

The series will end with Adama waking up in a row boat with Roslin, realizing it was all a dream, and an unidentified alien ship will blast them into a million pieces. Then Riker will freeze the program and walk out of the holodeck into a bar where God serves him a drink and tells him the jumps will only get harder from here on.

In the end everyone gets hooked up hybrid style and is forever in the matrix!!!

Since most of the sets were already scrapped or sold off, we’re probably not going to get any new BSG after the television movie, The Plan. That and the preview for this week hinted that Adama was going to take the Galactica into a suicide mission. RDM just had to get the Picard maneuver in there.

Gods speed Admiral! Gods speed!

She was a great ship with a fine crew.

Warning: Here be possible spoilers.

The Thirteenth Colony / Tribe travelled to the new tribes’ galaxy via something called “sub-luminal.” Since it’s not the show’s typical “FTL” (faster than light) travel, it took them several thousand years. If you recall, the idea of FTL travel is supposed to be instantaneous travel. This, we can assume, involves something the science fiction universe calls “subspace.”

The thing about real space travel is that you become out of synch with the rest of the Universe or at least your point of origin and destination. When NASA sends out a space shuttle, they discovered that when the astronauts returned, they are a few miliseconds to a few seconds younger then the rest of the world. This happens even at the relatively low speeds we use.

Now imagine going faster and approaching the speed of light. That fraction of a second of time travel those astronauts experienced is multiplied exponentially. They’d be out of synch with the rest of the Universe. This could be by hours, months, years, or thousands of years depending on how long they travel.

According to shows like Star Trek, to counter the time distortion caused by accelerating towards the speed of light, one has to form a field or a bubble that will surround your vehicle. This bubble should, in theory, keep you within the same time as the rest of the universe. They call this “Warp speed” in the Star Trek, “hyperdrive” in the Star Wars Trilogy, and FTL in Battlestar Galactica.

So all that aside, since the Galactica is on the brink of hull breech and utter destruction, the fleet will probably have to switch to sub-luminal travel. This will cause them to be thousands of years out of synch with the rest of the Universe again and they’ll probably head back to the colonies.

By this point, they probably would have come up with a way to deal with John Cavil.

By the time they reach the colonies, the Nuclear fallout from the Cylon attack would have dropped down. The twist will probably be something like the survivors have reformed the planets and or have developed artificial intelligence again.

Why do I think this? They always show a clip at the beginning of the show of people travelling through some sort of wormhole, pictured at the top of this post. That looks like sub-luminal travel to me.

That and I also think that Starbuck is either Daniel or Daniel’s son.

What do you think?

I took my friend along to the movie and she was falling asleep. She, like many other people and reviewers out there, was disappointed at the lack of aliens and or monsters in the movie. Chris Carter said this was going to be a “monster of the week” type movie but it didn’t exactly have a monster either.

If you watch it, be sure to stay after the credits.

I sincerely hope that there will be an X-Files 3.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

…We learn that Voldemorte has also split his soul into seven parts. These pieces were stored in “horcruxes.” One of the pieces is in Voldemorte as he used it to revive himself, one was in his (Tom Riddle’s) diary, one was in Marvalo’s ring, one was in the Slytherin locket, one is in the Raven Claw cup, yeah I’ve forgotten them. But Harry and Dumby go after the locket which wasn’t actually the real locket. Apparently an R.A.B. took it and disposed of it as he noted in his note in the locket. It is mentioned that horcruxes can also be made from animals! I have a feeling that Harry Potter is a horcux himself for Voldemorte, that would explain a lot. Remember they could share thoughts and feelings at one point?

R.A.B. is most likely Regulus Alphard Black which is Sirius’ brother who as James has pointed out is a deat eater (ex-deat eater?).

So since Sirius Black (Harry’s godfather) died in the previous book, Order of the Phoenix, Harry has inherited Grimwald place. I may have just misspelled that or got it wrong all together. This meaning he’s also gained possession of Kreacher the annoying bastard of a house elf. I’m hoping Harry’s inheritance actually has something to do with book seven as JK didn’t even write the house into the book…

I’m having a nerdgasm. I was right about book 7 circa Tuesday, July 19, 2005.

Since the album’s been streaming on Matthew’s website for the last month or so, we already know what to expect. I’ve never particularly been a fan of the pre-release idea and this is probably why I’m not feeling overly excited about the new release. But it is good, you could even say Avalanche good. I guess I’m just trying to say that the whole “stream the album before it’s released” thing kind of ruined that Christmas morning feeling for me.

My advice to you, if you like the band, just wait it out to the release date rather than having a listen beforehand.

You can read more about Hospital Music on our parent site: Near Fantastica or you can order the album for $12.96.

It’s been three days now since I went to The Police Concert at GM Place, it was awesome. It was a pleasure and an honour to watch their first show on the reunion tour. I encourage you all to see them. I wish I’d taped it.

I’ve never been so impressed with Japanese animation until now. Ergo Proxy was pretty thrilling and the art style was just… great. It’s from the same guys who made Samurai Champloo so you’ve got the Cowboy Bebop experience somewhere in there as well.

It’s set in the distant future after a nuclear holocaust in a domed city named Romdeau. The dome is there to keep the people and robots (autoreivs) protected from the harsh post-nuclear atmosphere but the whole point of the story is: is the dome really there to protect us or to imprison us? Everyone in the city is paired up with an entourage class autoreiv which is supposed to keep everyone in check and safe but when a virus breaks out, the entourages start acting out on their own. That and there’s a monster loose in the city.

Ergo Proxy is just cool, it’s one of those end of the world scenarios but with a touch of thriller and mystery. The story starts off with a fight scene and the action continues on for several episodes. Eventually the protagonist, Vincent Law, is setup for a crime he didn’t commit and then the story really takes off.

Eventually the characters find out that the world outside the dome isn’t really as bad as they had been told. The thing is, since people are grown rather than born, there are problems with their DNA. The Earth may be recovering but the human race as it is now, is not. There are many domes but as Vincent, Lil, and Pino search out for Mosque, they discover a horrible truth.

“I think therefore you are.” Twenty three parts, hoping for a second season, I highly recommend it.