Author Archives: The Babylon Lurker

Podcasts : Doctor Who

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I have, over the time been listening to 3 Doctor Who podcasts :

DWO Whocast
Doctor Who Podshock
The Sonic Newsdriver

They can all be found in iTunes, or else your favourite pod catcher.

There are many more, but time is a limited resource.

“DWO Whocast” is a not too long podcast with two hosts commenting on all things Dr.Who. All is rather well organized,news, reviews of TV episodes, Audio plays (Big Finish has a ton of those), books etc. and interviews with all kinds of people involved in the series. They do talk about spin-off stories like “The Sarah Jane Adventures”, too.

The last episode there was a review of the Big Finish audio release #112 : “Kingdom of Silver”. I have it here, but not yet listened to it (time, remember?), but it sounds like it will be a solid story.

It comes out on a regular (weekly) basis and I like the format. This one looks like a keeper.

“Podshock” is, for me at least, mostly too long, often running 1h 30 min or more. This makes it too time consuming for me – someone else may love the long format, and I have no problem with that – so I am considering whether to continue with that one.

Much of their programming is similar to the Whocast, they also have (had) a Sunday live recording when a new episode has been on the BBC on the Saturday before. Nice touch, but you have to be there for the live recording.

“The Sonic Newsdriver” is a short news program coming out several times per week – at least that is how it started.

I found the “Newsdriver” a bit long winded, so that one is under consideration, too. Remember : Limited time budget. I have not seen any new releases of the Newsdriver for about a week, so I might be wondering if it is podfading, or maybe there are just not much news to report.

Update : The Sonic Newsdriver is alive – new episode out today

Chandrayaan 1 enters orbit around the Moon

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First the Americans and the Russians, then the Japanese and Chinese. Now the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has aimed for the Moon. India is now the fifth country to reach the Moon. Yes, the European Space Agency has done it, too, but that is a consortium of 17 countries, though the size of the population is comparable to that of the USA.

The space craft is “Chandrayaan 1”. The name means “Moon Craft” in the ancient Sanskrit” language of India.

What I like is that the Indians, unlike the Chinese and Japanese, have invited other countries to contribute instruments to the probe. More than half of them are Indian, but NASA has two sensors, ESA has three sensors and Bulgaria has contributed a radiation sensor.

Chandrayaan 1 will help create a map of mineral concentrations all over the Moon, paving the way for the decisions on where to send (manned) expeditions to the Moon.

This and other collaborations is what I think has to be done. Space exploration is expensive, and a single country, however rich, cannot afford to go it alone.

More information :

Spaceflight Now

ISRO

The Babylon Podcast

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As a fan of Babylon 5 I have also become a fan of the Babylon Podcast.

I started listening to podcasts in 2006, and due to an accident late June that year I had some more time than usual at hand, so I started to look for more particular podcasts. Imagine my delight when I found that there was indeed a podcast about my favourite show. They had, at the time, “aired” about 40 shows. I downloaded the first few and listened, found it delightful and downloaded the rest, and listened to the first 42 (!) Babylon Podcasts in about two weeks.

Episode 1, a longer introductory episode “aired” in February 2006, with the hosts Summer and Tim telling why they were drawn to B5 and what kept them hooked, and Jeffrey telling about guests that could be expected to be featured on the podcast.

Show #2 had the first guest interview with Stephen Furst (“Vir Cotto”). He was a blast to both the hosts and to me to listen to, so the first hook was there …

Not just the Stars (actors) were interviewed, many of the crew as well. #3 brought us Bear Burge, the Master Prop Fabricator, and the first episode discussion on “Midnight on the Firing Line” (episode 1). Later this episode discussion segment got the title “Deep Geeking”, with it own “jingle”.

Many people have been interviewed on the podcast, a few names worth mentioning : Patricia Tallman, Bruce Boxleitner, Wayne Alexander (“The Inquisitor”, “Lorien” and a few other roles), John Iacovelli, Walter Koenig (one of my absolute favourite bad guys, the Psi Cop “Alfred Bester”), Producer John Copeland in a two part interview, the list is not endless, but quite long. Almost all of those interviews have been a joy to listen to, enriching the experience of the series.

A segment of feedback, at times *very* amusing, also brought out a “spin off” of the Babylon Podcast, called the “Three Edged Sword”. It all started as an in-joke between three of the most active feedback’ers, who finally agreed to make a story line out of their contributions. More about “Three Edged Sword” in a later post.

In the latest “Deep Geeking” (ep. #135), “No Surrender, No, Retreat” was discussed how Sheridan’s approach to the conflict was entirely different from the end of the Shadow War.

This week’s episode (#136) had an interview with the Babylon 5 script team members “Captain” Jaclyn and Jan, telling a part of the story of publishing the scrips for every single Babylon 5 episode, and the approach to doing it. Jaclyn stressed that J. Michael Stracynski had stated “It’s all about the fans!”

Of course, it is well known to many fans that the customer service of the scripts team has been legendary, more about the script books and the scripts team later

In addition to the compliments from the fans, Jaclyn had compliments to the fans and their behaviour when dealing with the scripts team.

For me one of the highlights was when Jaclyn who came into this as a business – a specialist in “print-on demand” books with no interest in SciFi – telling about her experience of watching B5. In short, she was blown away by the story. She told that she was surprised how much she could be moved by 1) a piece of art, 2) a television series, and finally 3) a SciFi series. High praise indeed.

link :
The Babylon Podcast

Setting up a “new” system with Linux

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This week end I am going to re-establish a somewhat faster Linux machine than the one I am writing this post on (1GHz Pentium 3 gets rather sluggish when Flash is running in the browser).

At some stage I installed Arch Linux on that machine with a Sempron processor – it worked fine for a while, then apparently due to the “rolling update” something went wrong, and I lost the graphical setup.

Now, I am no Linux guru, so decided to do it the old fashined “Windows- way” – reinstalling. Oops. with a mixture of parallel and serial ATA the “#&/”/&¤% thing could not boot. What I plan to do ? install only serial ATA disks, install OS , transfer data from the PATA disks via USB – and that should do it.

I am planning on using Ubuntu.

How I entered into the world of “Babylon 5”

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By Internet standards I will probably be regarded as old. I remember seeing Arthur C. Clarke/Stanley Kubrick’s film “2001, a Space Odyssey” when it came in the cinemas in the late 1960’s, and, of course the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. I was allowed to stay up the night to see the first footsteps on the moon (some time around 2 AM local time). No internet, no NASA TV, just some blurred live black-and-white pictures on the telly.

My interest in scifi and space exploration had obviously started some time before, along with an interest in UFO’s and “X-Files” like stuff.

Fast forward to 1989 (yes – the year the Berlin Wall came tumbling down) I moved from Denmark to The Netherlands to work there.

At work, in the early 90’s we formed a group of “Star Trek” fans coming together watching a few episodes in an evening. We had come one evening to watch some “Deep Space 9”, and after that it turned out that one from the group had brought the “Babylon 5” pilot episode “The Gathering”.

I have to say that I did not like the pilot, thinking that it would not lead anywhere. How wrong I was … but I still consider the pilot under par, compared to what followed.

When the local TV started showing B5 I took another look, and lo and behold – that I found *much* better than the pilot.some season one episodes had the quality I was expecting from Trek, but soon the thing changed … this was not single episode stories – well. some of them were – but a longer story.

I was hooked.

I followed the 5 year arc to its end – sometimes at odd times of the day (or night), and soon found myself seeking out the VHS tapes.

After having watched the story several times I still get a thrill seeing it again. It has grown to be my all time favourite scifi story on TV – and there are many good ones out there.

I soon looked into more information about B5, on the net, books etc. – and got myself a few B5 goodies. But more about this later. Yes – I have all 15 volumes of J. Michael Straczynski’s (JMS) script books for all the B5 episodes he wrote. I still need to work myself though the about 7000 pages, but in time I will come though them, and as the completist in me told me, I got the “Other Voices” 3 volumes with episodes written by other writers, as well as the “Chronology” book and the quote’s book. There is enough reading for a while.

Podcasts about Scifi etc that I have been listening to

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Babylon Podcast : (no surprise) about Babylon 5, weekly

Slice of Scifi : all about Scifi/Fantasy, mainly in media – news – interviews – (film/TV/Web etc) on the same feed they have a voice mail feedback show weekly

Dragon Page : All about Scifi/Fantasy books – reading – writing – interviews etc. weekly, most weeks two shows

Scifi Talk : Interviews with Scifi/Fantasy creators etc (no special schedule that I have seen, but often more than once a week

DWO Whocast : all Doctor Who related news – interviews etc, weekly (mostly)

Dr Who Podshock : All doctor Who related – sometimes very long, no particular schedule that I can see

The Sonic Newsdriver : Doctor Who news, several times per week if news is coming in.

In some hours the raw and unedited Babylon Podcast recording for next week’s show will be ‘cast on a live feed. Unfortunately, because of the time zone differences I cannot listen every week, because for me it starts at 3 AM.

But (for me) tomorrow morning I will probably be there – it’s fun – and at times hilarious.

The feed can be found at :

http://stream.farpointmedia.net:8000/listen.pls (USA)
http://w2k.myftp.org:8000/FPM.m3u (Europe)
(or http://w2k.myftp.org:9000/listen.pls as an option for non-Icecast users)

10th Anniversary of the International Space Station

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If everything goes according to plan, the Space Shuttle Endeavour – STS-126 will be launced on 14 November with a comprehensive 15 day schedule to upgrade the International Space Station.

The station currently houses 3 crew members and that is all that is possible at the moment. The Endeavour crew will prepare the station for the 6 person crew it was meant to have from the outset. Also, a repair of the solar arrays is in the program.

The solar array on one side of the station is using more power than anticipated for rotating the array to maximise the efficiency. It turns out that two bearings lack lubrication, and this will be repaired during three space walks.

Back inside, the crew will spend a lot of time unpacking new crew quarters, a new toilet, a new kitchen, a new refrigerator and new exercise equipment, not to mention the science experiments.

In addition to this a new water recycling system will be added, in order to reduce the station’s dependency of Shuttle missions. After all the Shuttle fleet is planned to be retired in 2010.

On top of this, it is good to see the station becoming fully operational at its 10th anniversary. The first module was launched on November 20th 1998, beginning the construction of the station.

If I can find the time, I will listen for the shuttle just after the launch to see if I can catch a few seconds of radio communication, and I will listen for ISS communication during the whole mission – time permitting.

Also, when all this goes on, and if you have a clear sky I recommend all you scifi geeks to go out and see a *real life* space station. Info about visibility can be found at

Heavens-Above

Seeing a real life space station or space ship beats the fictional one, no matter how good the story is.

Free space images from the web

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I just looked at a few sites providing space related images for download. All images – except the logo’s from these three sites are freely useable for non-commercial purposes, including personal web sites – of course with a clear attribution of the source.

The three sites I looked up here are

NASA (of course)for general space travel and some astronomical images.

The Spitzer Space Telescope for images taken in infrared

and of course The Hubble Space Telescope with some of the most stunning astronomical images made

If you like images, maybe using them part of your web pages these are three very good sources.

Do not forget that many observatories and universities have images available. These include very old images from the classical telescopes in the world. I believe there is a project to scan all those ancient images before they are lost forever due to the deterioration pf the photographic material.

The old images *could* become important  for detecting transient events or variable phenomena, like recurring nova outbursts, so we can not afford to lose these images.

Planets detected around Epsilon Eridani

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This is exciting for me as  a science fiction fan and as someone interested in space science in general.

Epsilon Eridani is a star a bit smaller than our own Sun – and quite young – only 800 million years old, located about 10.5 light years away.  Recently the Spitzer Telescope has detected a double asteroid belt around the star. The inner belt is located at a distance similar to the asteroid belt in our own solar system. Furthermore what looks like a cometary ring similar to the Kuyper Belt and indications of a planet at a distance similar to Jupiter’s. The Epsilon Eridani system looks more and more like our own solar system.

For more information take a look at these websites :

From the Spitzer Telescope site

From Discover Magazine

In the 1960’s I remember the scientific programs on the radio talking about SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) and mentioning this star as a likely candidate. At the time the young age of the system was not known, but it gave rise to the use of many science fiction writers using it as a home for intelligence.

In “Star Trek” the Mr. Spock’s home world Vulcan is located in the Epsilon Eridani system. and in “Babylon 5” the space station is in orbit around a planet in the same system.

Of course the star is featured in many other science fiction stories, too many to mention here.

Interesting stuff…