Random Thoughts 9/10/10

• Having eye strain from staring at your computer or smart phone?  Use the 20-20-20 rule.  Every 20 minutes, stare at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds.
• "Heroes" was dead as a TV show, now it's dead as a TV movie too.  The proposal to continue the story was rejected by the studios.  The first season of that show, right up to it's anti-climactic finale, was a true phenomenon.  Then the ideas ran out.  There wasn't any depth to the creative team (I'm looking at you Tim Kring–who admitted he wasn't even a fan of comic books, on which the series was based).  There's nothing worse than when the fans know and like the subject matter more so than the creators of the show.
• The September 8 episode of "the Colbert Report" was really good, honoring the troops in Colbert's usual funny way.  I won't link to it from here, as it is, as usual, a bit off-color at times.  Other than that, it's really nice to see "Hollywood" give a shout out to our troops.
• I think I'm going to upgrade my iPhone to an iPhone 4.  I got on a waiting list at Radio Shack and they called me today to pay $196 for my 3GS.  The iPhone 4 is $199.  That seems reasonable to me.
• Here's a syllabus of sorts from Wired for reading classic science fiction.  It's a pretty good list, actually, with significant works from the last 200 years.  I've read a lot of Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Heinlein but not many of the works on this particular list.
• Shannon comes home today, thankfully.  It's not fun when Mom is gone but I'm glad for her to get to do these things.