Star Trek 11 trailer online in HD

Watch here.

Starry Night Castle

The Astronomy Picture of the Day from January 19th. Very nice.

[From APOD: 2008 January 19 - Starry Night Castle ]

100 books every child should read

I thought Jennifer would enjoy this list next month when she reads the blog, so this is for her.

The Daily Telegraph posted a list of 100 books every child should read. All that I have read are excellent, so I’m sure the list hold up fairly well. Thanks to Neil Gaiman, an excellent author who has a book on the list himself, for pointing it out.

Speaking of Neil, I’m about halfway through Fragile Things. It is an interesting read, collecting short stories and poems that he wrote for various anthologies. I’ve liked some stories better than others, but I’ve found all to be worth reading at least once.

iPod Touch January Software Update

I just finished buying the new iPod Touch software update, though it is wrong to call it that. In reality, I paid for the five apps that are installed on every iPhone out of the box. $20 is kind of steep, since all of the new ones will have it out of the box, but that’s the early adopter tax almost guaranteed to come with a new Apple product.

I’m just happy to have the weather widget. I know it’s stupid, but I’m tired of asking Jennifer what the temperature is going to be tomorrow. Mail is going to be great too though. I’m excited to have what I thought should have been in the box from day one.

One more night for Chuck

I’ll be very happy to see these episodes, even if they are the last ones. Chuck got picked up for the back nine episodes of it’s season, but hasn’t been in production due to the writers strike. I would hate to see a great show get killed because the two sides can’t work out their differences.

If you haven’t seen it, I’m really sorry that you’ve missed such a great show. Full episodes are available on the NBC website.

“Chuck” is returning to NBC, for all of one night.

The show’s final two episodes for the foreseeable future will air at 8 and 10 p.m. ET Thursday, Jan. 24, the network announced Wednesday. They’ll be sandwiched around an episode of “The Celebrity Apprentice” and take the place of comedy repeats (at and “ER” (at 10).

[From 'Chuck' Gets One More Showcase - Final pre-strike episodes set for Jan. 24 - Zap2it]

Newsgator products are free now

I used NewsGator for a long time when I first started subscribing to RSS feeds. The first product was what they call NewsGator Inbox now. It integrated with Outlook, which was very cool for me at the time. I moved to the web edition when they released it, since I could have one set of unread feeds. Since then, NewsGator Inc has acquired NetNewsWire, one of the most popular feed readers for the Mac.

Today, the company announced that all of their consumer products are free now, including NetNewsWire and NewsGator Go!, their mobile client. It really is a top notch system, especially with the synchronization features that are integrated with each product.

Testing the Ecto 3 beta

I mentioned a long time ago that I was looking forward to the new version of Ecto. A beta of version 3 was released some time ago but I never got around to downloading it until tonight. A couple of things stand out so far.

I miss the link button at the bottom of the post window , but I love the ‘Link from clipboard’ feature. (Update: I’m an idiot. It’s at the top now, where it probably should have been to start with.) Very handy.

More impressions as I go along, but so far it looks pretty good.

Juno

We went to see Juno tonight. After hearing about it on Secret’s Out, we thought we’d give it a shot. Essentially, the movie is about a teenage girl who gets pregnant and decides to give the child up for adoption. It sounds serious, and it is, but it is also very funny, likable, and fun to watch.

Ellen Page is fantastic as Juno, but the supporting cast of Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Allison Janney, J.K. Simmons and Jason Bateman were also very good in their supporting roles. The movie is offbeat and, while I’m inclined to compare it to Napoleon Dynamite, it might be a bit unfair. Both are offbeat and funny, but that’s where the similarities end. Juno is much more accessible to the average person.

Don’t be scared off by the plot. It really is a great movie that is not like most of the stuff that gets shown in movie theaters.