strangely entangled

Our alarm went off very early yesterday, so that we could haul our sorry selves out of bed and over to the Metrotown Hilton in Burnaby, BC where we boarded a bus bound for Bridge Studios. We spent the next hour and half touring the sets of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, and had a great time.

Some of our impressions:

• The SG-1 gateroom is smaller than it looks on-screen.
• The Atlantis gateroom set is gorgeous and very spacious. Despite what you see on-screen it isn’t very tall, although it has two floors.
• The puddle jumper is awesome. It’s a complete mini-spaceship and totally enclosed.
• The Daedalus set is very large and is composed of the bridge, several hallways and the engineering section.
• You’d think Earth’s flagship spacecraft would be powered by all sorts of high-tech hardware. But from what I saw, the Daedalus is built out of throwaway circuit boards, old ISA expansion cards, and “ancient” Nortel and BCTel test equipment.

I found a great little Vancouver restaurant review blog: Ethnic Eats by Degan Beley.

This might annoy the native Vancouverites, but since moving here Nat and I have been mostly disappointed with dining out in this city as compared to others that we have lived in. Maybe we just don’t know the right places to visit. I’m hoping Ethnic Eats can help.

Some of Degan’s photos already have my stomach rumbling.

I just finished reading an excellent article over at Wired: “High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace”. It’s about the efforts made to right a nearly-capsized cargo ship off the Alaskan coast. Very well written and very engaging. I highly recommend it.