Well, it’s been over six months since I saw the last episode of Stargate Atlantis and I’ve been waiting that long to see what happened in the ‘to-be-continued’ season premiere of the second season.

Since after finishing season one of Atlantis, I’ve watched all eight seasons of SG-1 and gotten to know those characters, so it was a bit weird to see a Stargate series without the ‘regular’ characters even though this was the first I saw.

Battlestar Galactica’s season premiere was also pretty good, though it didn’t tie everything up yet; it’s still a to-be-continued. Interesting developments though.

Later this evening, Justine and I watched Flight of the Phoenix. I didn’t realise until later that it’s a remake of the 1965 film of the same name (and plot); and the original is supposedly pretty good. Giovanni Ribisi didn’t really seem suited to the role, and the ’surprise’ (I wouldn’t really call it a twist) near the end was expected in one form or another. Not a bad flick but I’ve seen better recently.

I also watched one of Stephen Chow’s latest, Kung Fu Hustle. The story in this one was a bit disjointed, but the effects, fight scenes and overall purpose of the film were great. I’ve had this one for quite a while and hadn’t gotten around to watching it. If you like Hong Kong films, or Stephen Chow’s Catonese sense of humour, check it out.

After a long wait, the two Stargate series and Battlestar Galactica are returning to the (US) airwaves tonight (well, technically tomorrow afternoon sometime).

I’m not super-excited about these three shows in particular, though I do enjoy them, I’m more excited about the fact that this means I have something new to watch. Of course, there’s heaps of old stuff I’ve not seen yet that I could watch, but really, it’s old! Who wants to see old stuff?

Before we know it, we’ll have Arrested Development back after it’s miraculous recovery, as well as The Simpsons, Lost and a bunch of other shows I can’t be bothered to recite.

Huzzah for mind-numbing television!

Also watched Million Dollar Baby tonight. I’m not totally sure if I enjoyed it as such, but I did watch it all the way to the end. Bit of a spoiler here if you haven’t seen it, but the whole thing ended on a pretty downbeat note. The in-hospital part felt a bit… wrong. Not wrong in the sense of right and wrong, but it felt like it didn’t quite suit the movie to me.

I received Stargate SG-1 and Battlestar Galactica (which channel Ten aired tonight) earlier this week, which Ray graciously… erm… ‘lent’ me.

I’ve made it through the first series of SG-1 as well as the previously mentioned Atlantis, but none of Galactica yet. Both Stargate shows are not particularly faithful to the film, but that doesn’t really matter, they’re fun and that’s what matters, right? Let’s ignore the fact that the Atlantis “baddies” look pretty crap, and the SG-1 “baddies”… I mean, evil slugs with teeth? C’mon!

Crap villains aside, there’s something really annoying about both series. The first, is that all the characters are American (or Canadian, of which there is one in Atlantis), and most of the time they talk about saving “America” (not so much in Atlantis) as opposed to “Earth”. It is written for Americans so I suppose that’s understandable.

The second annoying thing is that each and every “alien” in the show speaks English — and if on the off chance they don’t, one of the characters manages to understand their language (it’s a derivative of this or that). I know the shows would be less watchable if we couldn’t understand most what’s being said, but it irks me to see something like this in just about every single sci-fi show.

Seriously, what are the chances that if we find another race out there somewhere, that we’ll actually be able to communicate with them? In the Carl Sagan book/Jodie Foster movie Contact — which may or may not have actually contained aliens — at least an explanation for the method of communication is given. Mathematics is used.

Last night, I saw the season finale of Stargate Atlantis. Since the last episode was the second of a 2-part episode, I expected to see things wrapped up nicely.

Nope; it would seem the 2-part story is really a 3 or 4-part story. In the last 10-15 minutes, they opened at least 5 “what is going to happen to…” plots. I don’t want to give anything away to those who haven’t seen it, but I have to say I’ve been enjoying Atlantis quite a bit.

The plots are a bit hokey, but it’s becoming a fun series to watch nonetheless. I fully expect to see that nasty Colonel Everett get his comeupppance since I like Major Shepherd and his “I don’t care for your stupid rules” methods (reminds me a bit of me). However, I fail to see how he’s going to get out of his predicament, since though he hasn’t come to any grief, it looks like he’s in a lot of trouble.

The biggest problem now, though, is that this season is still airing in the US, and it won’t finish airing until the end of March. This means a possible 5 or 6 month wait until a new episode, unless they’re aired early in Canada again.

Wow, I’m such a nerd.

On Friday evening, Justine and I paid a visit to good (a relative term) ol’ Frankston for a birthday dinner with Justine’s friend, Natasha. We dined at “Ecco qui”, which is situated in the new “ker-chunk” (the sound made when the pre-made building was dropped onto the site) precinct.

Obviously Natasha likes the place, since it was the third time she’d been there in as many weeks. Not only that, she had ordered the same meal each time (with the third attempt being the first time she’d managed to actually finish said dish). Justine wasn’t feeling too well so just had a boring old salad, while I had a plate of “Sicilian” prawns (they weren’t very Italian, let alone being from a specific part of Italy). Other than that new part, Frankston looked pretty much exactly the same to me; in fact some parts looked more decrepit than last time we visited. Don’t miss that place.

On Saturday night, we made an even further trip to Mornington for Timara’s 21st birthday. Timara, for those who don’t know, is my half-sister and for various reasons I have not been a big part of her life (probably somehow attributable mostly to me, I don’t really know). Anyway, not having seen Timara for a few years, I was surprised to see how much she’d changed. Mostly gone was the shy little girl; instead, before me was a confident young lady (well, mostly, but I won’t get into that). I also managed to catch up with Mum for the first time since her big operation; I was relieved to see her happy and looking quite healthy (especially given the circumstances).

After the bog-standard 21st stuff (speeches, bad adult dancing, etc) I had the fun experience of my car’s engine seizing while trying to start it. After giving it 20 minutes to calm down, the engine started fine (twice in a row!) though I suspect it’s a sign of possible things to come. We’ll have to see if it happens again.

Sunday was a pretty relaxed day, with Justine and I getting closer to the end of the first season of Arrested Development, which is definitely growing on Justine. To date, we’re completely caught up with Scrubs (we’ve watched all 86 or so episodes since the start of January) — which, unfortunately, is turning more into a drama than the wacky comedy it started out as — and have not quite reached the end of the first season of That 70’s Show, which means we’ve got another 150 or so episodes of that to get through. I’m all up-to-date with Stargate Atlantis, and waiting to see how the end-of-season cliffhanger turns out. I’m now downloading the first two seasons of Stargate SG-1 and the first season of The Sopranos since I pretty much missed them the first time around.

I’ve been playing with my new Xbox for the past week, and I must say it’s pretty darn cool! The strange (or perhaps not, considering my nerdiness for such things) is that I’ve barely played any games on it.

The majority of time I’ve spent with it has been doing other stuff; using it more like a computer than a gaming console. Using the Xbox, I have surfed the web (I visited Penny Arcade, PVP and a few other sites, including the one you are reading now, and they all looked pretty good), listened to mp3s (I haven’t been able to get them streaming from my PC just yet though), watched a ton (or is that tonne?) of videos (including a DVD-R of Stargate: Ultimate Edition — good film, by the way, as well as a lot of anime and other shows).

Next up is the emulated games I’ve been playing. Justine and I played a few rounds of Super Mario Kart. I soloed (is that a word? Yes, yes it is) a few games of Street Fighter II, Sonic the Hedgehog (the first isn’t on GameRankings for some reason), not forgetting IK+, and even Action Biker!!

Fantastic stuff, that Xbox. I’ve just downloaded a game a few hours ago and I’m about to test it out by just FTPing it to the Xbox. If I like it, I can burn a copy, if it’s crap, I can just delete it. Cool (yet so very, very nerdy)!