First, a new banner header -- only the second in this blog's history! The background image is a gorgeous view of the night sky from the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, taken by Yuri Beletsky. I cropped it and played around with the colors slightly. The full original image, along with explanations for the various foreground and background features, is here.
The new typeface for the name of the blog is from the belovedly cheesy 1978 TV show Battlestar Galactica. I always loved the weird ways that series mashed up futuristic space opera with ancient Egyptian visual motifs and quasi-Mormon spiritual tropes.
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| And the star maps were pretty cool, too... yeah, the star maps... |
Lastly, if you click on "April A-Z" up there, right under the banner, you'll now get a list of this year's April challenge posts (in addition to last year's). For anyone coming to the blog recently, my theme for the April blogging challenge was "An A to Z of Masters of the Imagination that You Oughtta Know About." Each day I posted a brief profile of a super-creative artist, author, musician, magician, or whatever, along with some choice quotes or snippets that aimed to show you why I'm so enamored what they created.
Some responses to other blog challenges are coming up soon, so stay tuned!
I had a great fondness for the original Battlestar Galactica when I was kid. Seeing some of the reruns recently, I realize that it wasn't a very good show, but I always thought the premise wasn't bad.
ReplyDeleteIt was fun. The more I see old sci-fi shows from the 60s and 70s, the more I realize how starved we were for good content back then. :-)
DeleteAt the time, I bemoaned the drop in quality from the first season of BG to it's retooled second season ("Galactica 1980"). Seeing them all more recently made clear the similarities between the two seasons; the differences were minor!
I sure liked that show too. Even though Lorne Green's field of action --intergalatic space-- wasn't quite as large as the Ponderosa, he made the best of it.
ReplyDelete:-) He certainly got many more years to explore the Ponderosa than he got to roam the stars!
DeleteNot sure if it's related, but someone once claimed that Bonanza got by for more than 400 episodes with only five basic plots. One of my back-burner blog projects is to verify this...
Heeeeeeeeeeey! I love your new banner. I'm going to look forward to coming here even more just to look at it. :)
ReplyDeleteJust looked at it, again. I want the mug!
ReplyDeleteI did go and check to see if the Astronomy Picture of the Day people do that kind of merchandising, but no, nothing official. If they could figure out how to do it legally, they might start putting a dent in the national debt! ;-)
DeleteYes, but I'd like a 'Servitor Ludi' mug. The whole design. :)
DeleteI'm convinced that every time I turned on the TV and caught the old BG in reruns, it was always the same episode. Could I tell you now what the episode was? Not a clue. I missed the craze with the new series, though. From what I understand, it was much better.
ReplyDeleteWho's the lady in the pic? She looks a bit like Twiggy, though that hairstyle was a popular one in the era.
Laurette Spang as Cassiopeia. (It kind of scares me that I didn't need to look up any of the info in the previous sentence...) She started out on the show as a "socialator" (the oldest profession in the galaxy) that was rescued from a Cylon attack, but the network didn't like that... so it was revealed she was highly trained as a nurse, too. :-)
DeleteI never watched the mid-2000s series either. Someday, maybe.
The Mid 2000s revival is vastly darker in tone and much more violent. It has much better production values and better acting generally. It starts off quite well and finishes less convincingly. It adds religious themes and features a female Starbuck, which takes some getting used to.
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