Thought I'd just make an entirely new post to announce this, so it gets sent out to everyone who only reads me via RSS. (There's a few! Not a whole lot, but I'll bet more than those who visit the actual site.) Anyway! Vectorform, where my friend works, posted an article on Digg to try to drum up some traffic to their Surface blog. If you're a member of Digg, I kindly ask you to check it out or at least just give it a Digg up, or whatever they're calling it these days. Everyone else seems to be getting a spotlight for just opening the darned shipping crate, but these folks have actually been making things for the thing... Far more important and far more interesting!

EDIT: I guess the Digg article was removed? Wonder if it was Vectorform's idea or if Digg decided it wasn't "appropriate" for a developer to post articles about their own stuff... With Digg's general unfounded negative feelings toward Microsoft, it's hard to say. Regardless, it's gone. Nothing to see here!

Behold! The Microsoft Surface in all its glory... A friend of mine (who will remain nameless unless they want to take credit themselves) works for a company called Vectorform who has been working with the Surface for a while now, judging by the dates of the posts. They kindly pointed me to the site they've just now put online to showcase what they've been doing with it. Apparently, they've had a Surface SDK all this time and have been working on testing the limits! Pretty awesome, if you as me... What I would give to see one myself.

But yeah, not a whole lot to say... I mean, it's the SURFACE. I don't know why, but I'm really excited about it. I don't think people realize that Microsoft actually does invent stuff on their own. Everyone has to. Here, check out their Research page. The cool thing is, Microsoft makes a lot of neat little tools and then shares them for free, so be sure to take a look at their Downloads section. I remember stumbling across a voice-over-IP application they built long before Skype took the spotlight. (Heh, I'm looking through the downloads right now and came across a BitTorrent Simulator designed to show how torrents utilize network bandwidth. See? All kinds of neat stuff...) Anyway... Point is, you should check out the Surface and what Vectorform is doing with it, plus, you should check out all the freebie applications Microsoft has up for download on their Research site. Some of that stuff looks really interesting!

According to Gateworld, Stargate Atlantis will end this season...

BAM! Out of the blue! It's been doing VERY well... What on Earth is SciFi and MGM thinking?! Going strictly from the vague article, I'm going to go out on a limb and say they got punch-drunk on the pseudo-success of the direct-to-DVD movies that Stargate SG-1 was doing and decided to toss Atlantis and do it the same way. What is WRONG with people? Even Doctor Who is going this route! It's going on hiatus for who knows what reason and instead of a season, they're giving us a few 2-hour TV specials sprinkled throughout the year.

Regardless, this season of Atlantis has been nothing short of amazing. Last season felt off-beat and slow, but I'll chalk that up to a bit of actor reassigning going on, but they really seemed to step it up a notch this season... Story, acting, effects, everything. But seriously, please enlighten me as to what SciFi plans to run in its place? The only other show they have worth watching is Eureka... It's awesome and all, but it has such a short season and I'm always worried it's not coming back. Honestly, I don't know why anyone would even conceive of killing off a Stargate series this early... 5 Seasons is too short. At least 6... SG-1 went all the way up to 8 before they reimagined it and screwed it up completely for the next 2 seasons.

Ugh. I'm NOT looking forward to Stargate Universe. I went through this with Stargate Atlantis, of course, wanting SG-1 to keep airing and being extremely skeptical of Atlantis. Eventually, after those blasted Ori, I took up Atlantis as my flagship series... So I don't know. The writers are amazing and I think they'll do a good job, but nobody WANTS Stargate Atlantis to end this early! They've done it again and managed to axe the series before the season is over, but after anyone could change the scripts so it's still going to end on a stereotypical publisher-induced cliffhanger. Bah! Very upset with SciFi. As if cutting Eureka's opening titles from a paltry 60 seconds to a shocking 10 seconds... They're the classic example of a publisher who enjoys screwing around with the creative processes and demanding stellar ratings even as they break the season up into as many segments as possible with as many reruns as possible to get as many people as possible to keep watching their dumb commercials. I'm not against them making money, but I sure am against being cheated.

Enough ranting... Thought I should let you know.