Well...this was a tool I forgot that I had signed up for!  I guess it's goodbye for a free screen-casting tool (which apparently I rarely used).  Here is the note I received the other day from the crew at Screenr:

Sadly, we’re retiring Screenr on November 11, 2015. As you might already know, Screenr’s recording capability is based on Java RE (Runtime Environment), which is rapidly becoming antiquated. For example, Google Chrome doesn’t support Java RE anymore. So Screenr can’t run there. And on other browsers, Java support is also limited, causing constant problems for users. Because we at Screenr pride ourselves on providing a superior customer experience, these issues are simply unacceptable. And there’s no way around them. If you’d like to download your videos, please do so before November 11th. After then, you will no longer be able to log into Screenr. However, all of your embedded videos and links to your videos will continue to work. We hope you’ve enjoyed our services as much as we’ve enjoyed providing them to you. The Screenr Team

One of the things I came across while looking for Sev Trek: Enterforaprize comics was this call for suggesting aliens to create for the comic series (half-tribble half-klingon?)

Awwww, nuts!

As I was browsing my RSS feeds the other day I came across a news story that reported that both Defiance and Dominion, both SyFy channel series, have been cancelled!  Come on Syfy!  First Stargate, now this? ;-) What do you need more airtime for sharnados? LOL.

Spoilers ahead -

So, Dominion only got two seasons. The show was based, sort of, around the notions of the movie Legion, where God has left be building, the angels are upset, and they invade the lower planes (earth) to eradicate the menace that is Man, because according to them Man is responsible for God taking his possessions and heading for the exit.  Some angels have bodies, so they can blend amongst the humans, and some do not, so they need to possess a human in order to exist in this plane. This possession marks the human body and they look deformed in a sense (pale, messy hair, pointy teeth, and so on). Some cities have survived and they have fortified themselves, forming armies to fight the angels. One angel (Michael) stands with humanity and protects the savior who will do something amazing in the future (who knows what it is now that the series has been cancelled) ;-).

What I found interesting about this series were the social dynamics between "angel society" (higher classes vs lower classes), and the human society that emerged from this Armageddon, how classes re-established themselves, and how people 'grew' into their roles, faking it until people no longer questioned it.

Defiance on the other hand had 3 seasons, and the season finale for season 3 was actually pretty satisfying.  It reminded me a lot of the finale to Earth: Final Conflict. Both series had 12-13 episode seasons in the summer, so I don't get why they were cancelled (it's not like it's during regular fall/spring seasons).

Defiance, as a theme, reminded me a lot of Alien Nation.  Arcs carrying a variety of sentient species made their way to earth, as the only habitable planet, after their solar system went super nova.  Well, when they scouted earth Neanderthals roamed the place so now everyone's quite surprised at who's coming to stake a claim on this planet.  Unlike Alien Nation, where the newcomers blended into Californian society, there is a lot of conflict all around.  Earth is not longer the same earth, it's be partially terraformed to support some alien life forms, earth governments have broken down, a new global earth government has been formed, and of course you have the Votan alliance made up of all the Votan races (species?).And, beyond politics, you've got the regular Joe trying to make it through another day (be that Joe human or Votan).

Luckily the MMORPG will continue, so I guess stories from the Defiance universe will continue, but it's not really the same.

This week's Sev Trek: Enterforaprize comic is actually the last one I could find on the web.  This one is in French.  The great thing about Sev Trek is that even though the original was in English (I think the creator is Australian), there was an active community that translated the materials to French and German predominantly, however I think I came across some Russian, Czech, Finnish, and Polish translations as I was searching.



This comic strip pokes fun at the decon(tamination) chamber and the critique of the sexualization of such scenes.  T'Pol asks why is is always in the decon chamber, and Phlox responds that they are just following the Prime-Time directive (har...har...har).  Darned ratings!

Sometimes with fan productions you don't know if (and when) they run out of steam and something never materializes.  I had put Star Trek Horizon on the back burner (not sure if it had lost steam), but they recently released a full length trailer which looks pretty amazing!

Last week I was catching up with Continuum, a Canadian science fiction show about a future cop that finds her way to present-day Vancouver.What I didn't realize is that this was the final season, and I was actually watching the final episode, which for once was refreshing to not know what was coming. (yes, spoilers ahead). Stop reading, and go see this series.  It's worth watching.

With the TV series over, I thought I would write a little bit about its plot, and what I liked about it. As I wrote above, the series starts off in a bleak future (do shows ever start off in a Utopian future?) where corporations rule the world and people are subjects of corporate entities. The police force (aka "protectors") work to (essentially) put down rebellions from the people, even though (at least some of the) cops that work for the police force are idealist and do it to actually protect the people.  The future also reminds me a bit of Fahrenheit 451 in terms of banned books and banned materials.

In any case, certain revolutionaries are about to be executed for their crimes, but they've hatched a plan to go back to the past to prevent all this from happening. One proctor, Kiera Cameron, sees this, and last minute jumps into the time stream and get thrown back into the past along with the revolutionaries who, in the present day, form a group called Liber8 (liberate).  Kiera joins the police force under the guise of being a federal agent to track down this terrorist group who has already gone to work.  In the meantime, just by accident, she meets Alec, her future boss (one of the corporate overlords), who is just not working on the technology that she brought back from the future. Her bionic suit communicates with his servers, and off they go changing the future.

Of course, as with any time travel show, when you muck with the past, things change in the future, so in subsequent seasons other future factions exist, the future gets more messed up, and people from that future wants to escape and come to this present which is rosier.  You also get some "time lord" referred to as "the traveler" who looks like a Jesus figure near the end who has (apparently been keeping tabs on things all along). This traveler figure reminded me of the Traveler in the Next Generation (star trek) a bit.

Anyway, along with stopping liberate, Kiera's goal was to get back to her family. Through this cosmic confluence she uses the time machine which goes forward in time (as well as back) built by this other faction to get back to her timeline.  When she returns she is greeted by Alec. The future is changed.  Things are much better. The government is for the people by the people, corporations don't rule the world and she is back with her family.  There is only one catch. This Kiera never became a police officer, she never went back in time to prevent "terrorists" from doing whatever they were going to do, so as a consequence while a Kiera is with her family the protagonist can only enjoy her victory from afar since there are now 2 Kieras in the future, and she is not this kid's mother (technically speaking).

This ending was amazing (definitely much better than lost!).  I give it a 9/10.  I would say that this is a series worth watching.

This week's Sev Trek: Enterforaprize comic is one of the few Malcolm Reed parodies.  Not bad :-)

Jackleg Joe

It's been a while since I wrote about Defiance.  At last writing I was at an EGO rating of about 200, which apparently was a little problematic for beating Jackleg Joe, the boss of the last mission or Marin called Bullet for a Badman (which apparently is a Western movie title). In this mission I was stuck by not having enough capability to inflict damage on the enemies, so off I went to grind a bit.

I suppose that this was actually not a bad thing because it allowed me do some unstructured playing in the Defiance world and participate in some ark-falls with other people. This turned out to be a lot of fun!  Even though I wasn't on the top of leader-boards when the ark-fall events ended, I didn't do too bad (at least I am not always the n00b) and it was a lot of fun to be on a game map with another 20 people working toward a common goal.  It's also nice to be able to be revived by someone on the map when your health is down to zero and to not have to spend scrip to be extracted.

After a few weeks of playing only ark-fall events, I gained enough EGO (427 to be exact) to theoretically be able to beat the stage. I had also leveled up on my VBI Inflector (or is it an "immunizer"?) and a Votan Rifle I had acquired through previous missions (one of them was in an ark-fall event). So off I went to the Dogtown Mine alongside Rosa. I was after Joe who had the ark-cell (that Von Bach is looking for) and who Rosa wanted dead, vengeance for her father's murder.  What I didn't realize before was that the infector (immunizer?) is actually quite an effective weapon.  It seems to leach energy and health of the enemies, even when the shields were up (important for Joe at the end), and it gives your own character a health regeneration bonus (also important when Joe starts shooting at you with grenades).

When I finally got to go mano-a-mano with Joe, without his minions, it was really about sticking to constant motion, away from the explosions, and away from him so he wouldn't rush me (which inflicts a lot of damage).   It took two tries to get through this stage.  Each try was at least 60 minutes, which makes this level probably twice the length of any one single previous level in Defiance.  I've played a few Sausolito levels now, and each one is at most 30 minutes.  I wonder what the boss level at Sausolito will look like.

So, with the defeat of Jackleg Joe - I'm officially more than half-way through the campaign in Defiance.  I did notice that a Silicon Valley location was added when I was looking at the map this past weekend. I wonder if that's free-to-play or as part of an expansion pack.

This week's Sev Trek: Enterforaprize comic tackles the topic of catsuits, again.  Seems like the readers of the comic strip had fun with this one.