Sci-Fi Storm

OK, I’ve made a change to stores.scifistorm.org to make use of the second server again. When connecting, you will be immediately redirected to stores2.scifistorm.org port 8000. If you can’t hack port 8000 – sorry, but everyone should be able to. In the meantime, check out whats coming soon – The first three volumes of Farscape Season 3; Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Special Edition; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 2; and The X-Files Season 7. Head over to the Sci-Fi TV Store for the details…

The space shuttle Columbia, on descent for landing in Florida, has apparently broken up over Texas and all contact was lost. NASA has declared an emergency. Debris has been reported landing in Texas, and NASA is warning people to stay away from anything that may be shuttle related due the the extreme toxic nature of some of the propellants. See CNN for details. President Bush has said it is “highly unlikely” it is any act of terrorism. Note that the descent phase is probably just as dangerous as ascent.

Got this from the larryniven-l mailing list: You of course know of Doctor Who and Space: 1999. You may know of UFO, Thunderbirds, and Star Cops. But what about Star Maidens (I actually remember this while visiting England as a kid)? Jupiter Moon? The Lost Planet? Take a trip down memory lane or at least find out about British shows you never heard about at Memorable Television‘s Classic UK Sci-Fi Page.

Sorry there hasn’t been much lately. I’ve been laid up with pneumonia for a couple of weeks (watching MacGyver reruns on my new DirecTV system), so there’s been little energy, and little earth-shattering news. So here are a few tidbits (sorry, no links – too much effort): Libraries will not be buying as many copies of the new Harry Potter book as they did last time due to budget cuts; Chamber of Secrets hops Jurrasic Park as number 3 on the all time international receipts; Odyssey 5 finally got the official heave-ho from Showtime as is shopping for the unlikely white knight network; and the cast of The Two Towers gets a nomination for the SAG Awards.

Well, my switch to Version DSL (from DirecTV DSL) went well – even with the dynamic IP update (I was set up for it and it got pushed through quickly). But to my great surprise (and detriment, and disgust) Verizon STILL blocks port 80 (a.k.a. the default http port) at the routers due to the CodeRed worm last year. Which means I can’t host a web server on the default port – which means I have to do something different. Temporarily at least I’ve moved it to a different server – if you can’t connect now give it a few more hours for DNS changes to happen. However, I’d like people to try and connect to http://stores3.scifistorm.org:8000/ and post the results here – I know some firewalls don’t like alternate ports. If this works, I can use a bounce page to get to the server at home…

The DVD for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is due out sometime in April according to reports – IWon says April 11th, and Dark Horizons says April 18th (but that may be UK release).

It’s short, it’s small, it’s…well…disturbing. ’nuff said. Check out the video. Update: Here’s a new link.

Just wanted to let you know of some Sci-Fi TV store updates: I’ve added a Dark Angel section with the forthcoming May 30th Season 1 release; Red Dwarf now has seasons 1 and 2 coming out on DVD February 25th; a week from Tuesday (Jan. 28th) brings us the second set of UFO and the first volume of series 4 of Lexx; also expect some store downtime this week as I get my DSL line straghtened out.

Publisher Scholastic has announced that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the 5th book of the series, will be published on June 21st – and is a whopping 1/3 larger than the big Goblet of Fire…

Update 1/17: You can now pre-order from Amazon.com.

Warner Home Video is releasing The Complete Second Season of Babylon 5, subtitled “The Coming of Shadows”, on April 29th. Pre-order yours now from Amazon.com and help us out…