Jewel Staite (Kaylee on Firefly and Serenity) is going to be making an appearance on Stargate: Atlantis. She confirmed this herself on her web site:

And finally, lets talk about Stargate: Atlantis, because most of you are, and I’ve been getting a ton of questions about the thing, so lets just get it out in the open. I know it’s finally been revealed that Paul McGillion is leaving the show, and since I’m coming on the show, a lot of you have it in your head that I’m “replacing” him. First of all, our characters are quite different from each other. Second of all, Paul has a penis, so we’re quite opposite from each other. Third of all, I’m not a regular cast member and I’ve only signed on to do a certain number of episodes (not 15—or at least that was news to me when I heard that on the internet!). One thing I should tell you is that Paul and I are very close friends. He lives three blocks away from me (in my mom’s building– how weird and random is that?) and we see each other all the time. I can honestly say he’s one of the sweetest and most lovely people to work with (the crew of Atlantis raves about him), and I really just adore him. I can’t comment on the why in terms of his character’s absense in the next season, but the best thing about sci fi is nothing is forever! It’s like soap operas—like, maybe in Serenity 2 Wash will have an evil identical twin! (Yeah, Joss, I know, that idea sucks—and if it doesn’t suck and you actually write that one day, I want credit for it) Anyway, I’m really excited about coming on to Atlantis and playing another prodigy—genius mechanic to genius doctor, I am truly moving up in the world! Maybe next time I’ll play the president! heh heh. Just please have an open mind, and don’t hate me—it’s not my fault. I’m just an actor who jumped at the chance to work with a really fun cast in my favorite city (mine) and play a young smarty pants MD with a cool uniform. Can you blame me?

An interesting note is that she has already appeared on one episode of Atlantis called Instinct. In it, she played a young wraith girl living with a human father. Of course, it is difficult to tell it is her with all the wraith make-up on. I’m looking forward to seeing her on Atlantis again, but it’s unfortunate that Dr. Beckett is leaving. He is one of the more likeable characters on the show. I’m sure Jewel Staite will be equally as likeable though.

Pandora has been around a while, but I recently tried it out. Pandora is basically a free internet radio service which allows you to create your own custom channels. You specify artists and albums that you like and Pandora will play those and similar music. As the songs are playing, you can give each a thumbs up or thumbs down for whether or not you like the song, and Pandora uses your choices to modify the type of songs played. It does this using data from the Music Genome Project, which classifies different aspects of each song and artist, such as melody, harmony, arrangement, etc.

Pandora sounds cool in theory, and it actually works very well. It is a great way to find music similar to music you like, and it allows you to bookmark songs or albums to review later. There are also handy links to iTunes and Amazon if you find something you want to buy. The are only a few limitations of the service. First, there are ads (unless you pay for a subscription). However, the ads are visual only and there aren’t any popups, so they are pretty unobtrusive. Second, you can only skip 6 songs per hour. This limit is because unlimited skips would let you find specific songs you want to hear on demand, which is not allowed for such radio stations. Finally, you can’t rewind a song, but you can pause, which is very handy.

I tried putting in some of my favorite type of music, movie scores and composers, and it couldn’t find them. There is an email you can use to suggest music for them to add, so I emailed a list of my favorite movie composers, and the next day I actually got a reply:

Thanks for all the great suggestions of orchestral film composers.But unfortunately, we don’t have orchestral film scores in our system at the moment; we’re focused right now on rock, jazz, pop, country, hip-hop, and electronica. We’ve just added Latin and world music will come next. Classical music–including film scores–and opera will come after that.

So, Pandora is great for mainstream music, and hopefully it won’t be too long before they add the classical stuff. They do already have some less mainstream stuff that I like in there, such as celtic music and Cirque du Soleil, and the overall selection is very diverse. I definitely recommend trying Pandora out.

After posting about the Hymn project yesterday, I found an article about Apple and a monopoly lawsuit filed against the company. The complaint is about the dependency between iTunes and iPods. Music and videos purchased on iTunes do not work with portable players other than iPods, and iPods cannot play music purchased online from competitors. An interesting point is that the lawsuit argues that the iPod hardware by default supports the WMA (Windows Media Audio) format, but that it is disabled purposely in iPods.

It is interesting that Apple is now dominant enough in the music industry to provoke antitrust lawsuits. They have certainly dominated digital media players. Microsoft’s mp3 player, the Zune, did not do well in sales over the holidays just after it was released. I don’t think the fact that you can’t play iTunes music on other players affected this. The Zune just doesn’t offer enough of a significant advantage over iPods to entice people to switch. The only interesting feature they added was the ability to share songs between Zunes, but there is a huge limitation on this type of sharing — you can only listen to the song three times or for three days, whichever comes first. Is that really such an advantage over borrowing your friend’s player for a few minutes? I have not seen the software that comes with the Zune, but it is hard to beat iTunes, despite the DRM limitations on purchased music. The iTunes has a clean, easy to use interface with interesting capabilities like dynamic playlists. So does the antitrust lawsuit have merit? It will be very interesting to see the results.

I stumbled across the Hymn Project today. Its purpose is to remove the DRM associated with music purchased on iTunes. There is a GUI version of the program that works on both Macs and PCs. Now, I’m not advocating illegally obtaining music here, only the ability to play the music you have already purchased on many platforms. For example, iTunes music does not play on unsupported mp3 players or in other music software. A workaround that I know of is to burn your purchased iTunes music to CD and then rip the CD to mp3 (or whatever format you want). However, this results in a loss of quality. Since the iTunes songs are already fairly low quality (128 kbit/s), I don’t want to lose any more. The Hymn program looks like a nice alternative for me to be able to use music I have purchased in software and on hardware not supported by Apple, and to be able to continue to play the music on PCs that I own beyond the 5 computer limit imposed by Apple.

Here are the benefits of Hymn according to the web site:

• To decrypt your iTunes protected AAC files so that they can be played on operating systems for which no official version of iTunes exists, such as Linux.
• To use non-Apple AAC-capable hardware to play your music.
• To eliminate the five computer limit imposed by iTunes.
• To make archival backups of your music.
• As the first step in converting your music from protected AAC to MP3, Ogg, or your other favorite audio file format, for use with your non-iPod portable audio player.
• To demonstrate your belief in the principles of fair-use under copyright law.

The last point is a big one. Fair use under copyright law implies that if you purchase music (purchase the license to use material under copyright), you should be able to listen to it without limitations. DRM (Digital Rights Management) is one option used to prevent people from sharing music illegally. However, I personally don’t think it really works in practice. The honest people are going to pay for the music they like, and if they do so through iTunes, there are limits imposed on playing the music. With some hassle, there are ways to overcome the DRM limitations. The dishonest people are probably just going to obtain the music illegally anyway as they continue to do today. DRM may actually encourage the use of file sharing to obtain music if people who might otherwise purchase music legally want to have DRM free files. Of course, they can usually purchase a CD almost as easily, but this option breaks down if someone wants only one or two songs on an album.

I had recently read that there might be a Stargate SG-1 movie coming out after this final season is over. Well, it looks like there will actually be 2 direct to DVD movies. Yay! An interview with Michael Shanks on IGN has this info and more:

IGN TV: Though there isn’t going to be a next season, there was an announcement that movies would be in the works. Are you set to appear in the movies and is there anything you can tell us about what the movies will center around? I didn’t know if you’d got those scripts yet or not. I know I heard something about filming starting in April and June.

Shanks: I just finished negotiations - I think most of the cast has finished for appearances in movies - as far as I know, you guys by reading stuff on the Internet know as much as I do, because all we knew were we were going to do two movies, and Rob and Brad were going to pull away from the Atlantis franchise and focus on doing these movies - Rob was going to write one and Brad was going to write one. Rob was going to direct one and I think Martin Wood was going to direct the other.

We know the first shoot date of the first movie is April 15th and the second is around June 1st. As much as I know about the story, the first one Rob is writing and directing has to do with wrapping up the Ori storyline, which is the storyline that has taken prominence for the last two years of the show. I don’t know if he is going to wrap it up completely or bring it to some conclusion for the sake of the fans and the franchise, to bring that epic struggle to a close…I don’t know how he is going to do it in two hours but it will be pretty interesting to watch.

And Brad is writing one, as far as I know, is a bit more standalone that will involve some kind of time travel and has something to do with our main mustache twiddling villain Baal doing something in the past that alters…he basically finds a way to lift the stargate from Earth so the Stargate Program never happens, and I imagine the characters will have to go through some process to reset the clock and fix everything over the course of two hours. Quite frankly that is as much as I know. I haven’t even talked to the guys about it. They told us these pitches in September, so I haven’t talked to anyone since then so that could’ve changed overnight, I have no idea. Everybody is very excited to close the book on the show and maybe it will introduce the possibility of continuing the franchise in the DVD format or taking it to another level and boosting it up to a feature film or it just might be on closing the book on it or another spinoff - who knows. There is a lot of potential for the franchise and it would be a shame just for it to end, but it has been a wonderful run.

The interview also discusses a “Women of Sci-Fi” calendar released by Slacktwaddle, a company started by Michael Shanks and Christopher Judge. A “Men of Sci-Fi” calendar is in the works, and will most likely include both Michael Shanks and Christopher Judge.

On April 13th, 2029, an asteroid is on course to come within 18,600 miles of hitting Earth, according to NASA. That’s closer than the orbit of satellites. The asteroid is about 320 meters in diameter, large enough to go through the Earth’s atmosphere, “devastating a region the size of, say, Texas”. I love how asteroids are often compared to the size of Texas if they were to hit there. Since I live in Texas, I’d rather not have the mental image of it being destroyed. Regardless, this does sound like a pretty close call, and may end up being a cool light show.

Another slew of new shows this year have been cancelled. Most of them I never watched, so no loss there. I watched one episode of Vanished, The Nine, and Day Break. None of those kept my interest past the first episode, so I’m not surprised they are being cancelled. The only one I watched regularly was Justice, which was only so-so. While the trial process was interesting, the outcomes were too predictable to make each story interesting.

Luckily no cancellations for good shows like Scrubs, Heroes, and Battlestar Galactica. Unfortunately, Stargate SG-1 has already been cancelled. The current tenth season is its last. However, there are rumors of a movie possibility, maybe direct to TV or DVD.