The Walking Dead - Honor - Recap

The Walking Dead - Honor

Season 8's mid season premiere kicked off with the episode Honor concluding where the last episode left off.

Carl Grimes whose Actor Chandler Riggs leaves the show to be at an university, is dying, after been bitten by a zombie in the previous episode, very slowly. While his father Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln is crying all over the place. In the other story arc Carol and Morgan follow these taken Ezekiel hostage, taking down many of his man on the way. When they hunted Morgan down they talk about whether to kill him or not, also with tears in their eyes. Luckily instead of carrying the decision over to the next episode young Henry is taking care of it, scoring first blood.

For my taste this episode was much too cheesy. The few action scenes, killing some bad guys and zombies of course, could not make up for being one of the most boring episodes so far. The producers decided to jump back and forth between the two scene, where some scenes lasted several minutes, others less than a minute. Suppose the scenes not even took place at the same time it was very confusing.

© AMC

Then there were the flashbacks again, depicting Rick as an old man, while many other characters seem not to have aged at all. Why is that? But everybody is happy. Even Negan shows up as an older self, smiling to be happy being a part of the "good family". I wonder if this was all just a dream. If probably dreamt by Rick Grimes, slowly fading away. That may be some content we have seen of season 8 never actually took place. I was looking for a Bobby Ewing stepping out of a shower saying "Good morning" to Pam.

Is it just me or does this show losing its edge? Long gone are the days the show was fun to watch. Now episodes are filled with boredom to reach their dedicated 50 minutes (including advertisements) length.

SpaceX blasts into space with a Tesla car

Cape Canaveral, Florida - On February 6, 2018 SpaceX owned by Elon Musk blasts the A Falcon 9 SpaceX heavy rocket from the same launch pad used by NASA where about 50 years ago the first men were sent to the moon. It went into a solar orbit reaching as far as Mars. Inside his own a Tesla Roadster. It might travel there for billions of years.

The launch went smoothly although years before several Falcon rockets exploding on the launch pad already. The crowd was excited and cheering like there was a superstar giving a concert on stage. When the countdown started ti me it almost sounded like people in Times Square counting down on News Year's Eve.

Two of the boosters returned in a simultaneous touchdown to be recycled. While the third missed its platform crashing into the Atlantic.

The has catapulted Elon Musk into super stardom. What a show!

The X-Files and Ford vehicles

The Ford Motor Company continues its history with The X-Files, when the new series kicked off in 2016. While Ford already provided vehicles like the Taurus in the first episodes since 1993, with Agent Fox Mulder calling it "a good American car".

With the renewal of the series at season 10 in 2016 Mulder and Scully drive a Ford Explorer Platinum. Mulder also own a Ford Mustang, while Dana Scully this time drives a Ford Fusion.

Apparently the tie in with Ford also works well for the new seasons. It makes the series more American, albeit shot in Canada, while adding revenue for Ford. In my opinion something wouldn't feel quite right if they drove Japanese or European cars.

The episodes of season 10 include

1. My Struggle - January 24, 2016
2. Founder's Mutation - January 25, 2016
3. Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster - February 1, 2016
4. Home Again - February 8, 2016
5. Babylon - February 15, 2016
6. My Struggle II - February 22, 2016

The episodes of season 11 include

1. My Struggle III - January 3, 2018
2. This - January 10, 2018
3. Plus One - January 17, 2018
4. The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat - January 24, 2018
5. Ghouli - January 31, 2018
6. Kitten - February 7, 2018
7. Rm9sbG93ZXJz- February 28, 2018
8. Familiar - March 7, 2018
9. Nothing Lasts Forever - March 14, 2018
10. My Struggle IV March - 21, 2018

OS-9 - The forgotten operating system

When it comes to operating systems, people usually only recall very few. If they know what an operating system is anyway. Usually it boils down to Windows, older folks might remember its roots, MS-DOS. Some might mention Linux or even UNIX. Some might heard Android is running on their smartphone or tablet. Then there is the Apple (MacOS) party. I want to talk here about OS-9, and do not refer to a version of the Apple OS by a similar name (MAC OS 9).

OS-9 was released in 1979 by Microware. It can run on Motorola 6809, Motorola 680x0 CPUs, ColdFire, SuperH, ARM/XScale, MIPS, PowerPC, Intel x86 processors. And since it is one of the first a multi-user and multitasking operating system I am intrigued. This was long before the Amiga, let alone multitasking capable Windows 95 or Linux.

While OS-9 was general-purpose computing and embedded systems, the Motorola M6809 CPU was built in the popular TRS-80 Color Computer (Coco) and similar Dragon 32/64, although not shipped with, had a potential broad user base among non business users. OS-9 was later ported for use with M68000 systems.

It is considered a "UNIX-like OS", although it is not a clone of UNIX. OS-9 is still supported by Microwave (as of 2018 when this article is written), and can run on x68 and ARM processors. But the dominance of MS-DOS and later Windows is probably the reason it never had the commercial success it deserves in my opinion.

In this video I show the (emulated) Coco running OS-9.