Ladewig.com

Doctor Who is coming! Doctor Who is coming! Doctor Who is coming! Doctor Who is coming! Doctor Who is coming!

Finally! Doctor Who is coming to SCI FI Channel in March!!! Series one (all thirteen episodes) will air as part of SCI FI Fridays. As a result, the DVD release in the US will be delayed until July.

I had all but given up hope that anyone was going to pick it up over here, so I didn’t think anything of the recently announced delay for the DVDs. Never dawned on me that it meant great news was coming! With Battlestar Galactica (best show on TV.. period!) and now Doctor Who on Friday nights, well, it just doesn’t get any better!

Check out the announcements from BBC and SCI FI. BBC has an animated welcome, showing the TARDIS materializing in front of the White House with fireworks. The volume is pretty loud though, so if you live in a cube farm, be careful.

The Optimus keyboard from Art. Lebedev Studio in Moscow has to be the most cool peripheral I’ve heard of in a long time. We’ve had programmable keyboards for a while, but making the keys themselves programmable is a great idea.

This adaptability would be especially handy in a computer lab like the one at work. We have students from all over the world. They can already customize Windows’ to use the conventions with which they are most familiar (time/date formats, keyboard layouts, etc.). Just think if when they logon, the keyboard shifts to display the keys for their preferred layout? Pretty handy, although probably not worth the cost of the keyboard (they say less than the cost of a good cell phone).

Disney and Pixar are expected to announce a major deal soon. I think the best option for both companies would be for Disney to acquire Pixar and put Steve Jobs (a major Disney shareholder after the acquisition) on the board. Put John Lasseter in charge of all Disney animation, including the new Pixar division, and you’d have a win-win for everyone.

Pixar brings Disney a steady new stream of successful movies and characters. Disney brings Pixar the marketing muscle and outlets to extend those stories and characters into so many areas, such as the theme parks for example. Without that, Pixar just makes movies. One of these days Pixar is going to release a so-so movie, so it is better to make a deal now when they’re batting a thousand.

If Jobs really wanted to find a new partner, he would have done so by now. The fact that he waited until Eisner was gone, made it clear that he wanted to be in business with Disney… just not with Michael.

The Packers fired head coach Mike Sherman this morning. With a 4-12 record, it wasn’t entirely unexpected, but I had hoped they would let him finish out another year. It is a shame since the problems they had this year had nothing to do with his coaching. Injuries decimated the team this season, and I don’t know how you can expect firing a coach to change that fact.

So with Sherman gone, it is pretty much a certainty that Brett played his last game yesterday. At least he went out with a win at home. I’m glad that I went to Packers Fan Fest last year and had an opportunity to see him in person. Everyone was so excited the night that Brett arrived on stage and made the announcement that he would be back for the 2005 season. We were yelling, screaming, and carrying on. Little did we know what was going to happen.

Now the big question is who the next head coach will be. If the Bears hadn’t snagged him, I think Lovie Smith would have been a great choice. Should be an interesting off-season. We’re in for some lean years, but you can’t expect to stay at or near the top forever.