As maybe not mentioned anywhere in this blog, I'm also a big fan of scifi series. I've been to Festival Fantazie, first in summer 2010, then again in autumn. By that time I've already seen some series, but it really encouraged me to see more. I was talking about publishing my top-scifi chart and to-see list, so finally here it comes.

Seen series

I created the list of following shows, so the best (for me) series are on the top. As time goes, I'll be updating this post, moving series from to-see to this list.

1. Babylon 5

I haven't seen the last two seasons yet, but I can already place Babylon 5 on the second place. First place be it! In many aspects it's better then FarScape, but on the other hand, it lacks the proper kind of humor and universe I was used to from FarScape (I've seen FS just before B5). First I was afraid that I won't like all the talking and politics involved, but actually that's the thing which keeps me at the series. And Sheridan, of course :) There's nothing our brave captain couldn't solve. I'm looking forward to see the last two series in hope, that Ivanova will get more space, becuase I think she's absolutely amazing.

Update 2011-04-25: So I've finished B5 last week. I really missed Ivanova in season 5, but the more happy I was when she appeared in the last episode. The final two parts were really moving and really awesome. B5 is now my #1 show. I'll really miss the guys.

2. FarScape

So, to explain this a little. I knew both Ben Browder and Claudia Black from SG-1, but I was really surprised. Crichton is much better written then Mitchell, and Aeryn is absolutely something different then Vala. First season was somehow boring, it really didn't took me in. But with Scorpius entering the show on full-time I just become to love the series. I've seen seasons 3 and 4 within one month (which is actually quite a short time for me!). The Peacekeeper Wars miniseries were very very good and led to a very good final, but for me, personally, the best final ever has BSG. Also, FarScape has absolutely the best Universe I've seen in scifi series.

3. Doctor Who 2005

Hey, Tennant is my Doctor! When I finally became to like The Ninth Doctor, he just changed and David came in. It took me about two episodes to get used to him and I become to love him soon. He's the best, ever will be. Smith is barely adequate follower for Tennant.

The idea of the entire Doctor is simply brilliant, they couldn't have made it better. There are only two big fails in the Doctor: Moffat and Smith. I don't like Karen either, but at least she's pretty :) Talking about companions, Rose is the best one for me. I don't think that Moffat is a bad writer and Smith bad actor, no. They're both very good, I just don't like their new style of Doctor. Well, let's see how it will change in season 6 this year, otherwise I'll have them all exterminated.

Update: season 6 was...hmm...avarage.

4. BattleStar Gallactica

5. Firefly

6. Torchwood

I say TORCH, you say WOOD! This Doctor Who spin-off is a great for relaxation. It's very lamer but that's what make it so fraking awesome. I was quite surprised actually that a british thinkg can contain so lot of homosexuality, but it's the best they could've done. Harkness, being all-sexual, giving it with everyone and  everything..duh! Torchwood is so great because it's so lame - simply as that. If you don't have nothing else to do or see, you definetely go for this. I'm just little worried about the fourth season, which was shot in US.

Update: season 4 was cool - Gwen with bazooka? Go Torchwood, go!

7. Stargate SG-1

Stargate is a greate phenomenon, but in total, it's a nonsense. How it comes that everyone in the entire universe speaks English :)? It's very long and I really liked only the first five or so series. Oris could've been a good revival for the series, but unfortunatelly it was cut too soon. SG-1 is important for me in one way: it was the first sci-fi series I really begun to watch. And I don't regret it, because it moved me further, to BSG.

8. Stargate Atlantis

New, fresh and good idea, acutally a spin-off from one of the storylines of SG-1. Torri Higginson is a great leader (and actress of course!), and I really missed her in the fourth and fifth season. It's not the best scifi ever, but it's something worth seeing. But only when you've seen all the other series.

9. Startgate Universe (season 1)

Yet another SG spin-off. The only SG-related thing is the gate, but there it ends. It's not bad - they've met aliens and they have secrets (especially Rush). I've seen few episodes from the second season and it seems to be good, I'll know more when I see all. The first season was very unbalanced I think. There were very very bad episodes, followed by two or three weeks long pause and the came two abso-freakin-lutely awesome episodes.

10. Red Dwarf (I really must see it again)

Red Dwarf is not 10th because I wouldn't consider it a good (good? Awesome!) series, but because it's much more sitcom then sci-fi and because it's a long time I've seen it and I really must find some time to see it again. Jokes and quotes are simply legen-wait for it-dary!!

To see

The order is random, just as I recalled the shows. What I can say now is, that I will probably give V second chance when I'm finished with Babylon 5, followed by Caprica and SGU S02.

I hope I didn't forget any series. I will try to return to this as soon as something changes. For now, I think it's quite enough :)

Based on KDE 4.6 beta 1 release last week, I decidedI to test the latest KDE snapshot 4.5.82 and here are the news I've found in there :) I haven't been using development snapshots I'm creating every week for ArchLinux regularily last few weeks, since I'm mostly on Fedora now, so the changes are now more obvious for me.

First interesting thing I noticed already in KDM. In the list of available desktop environments, there's no longer any "KDE", but it's KDE Plasma Workspace!

The first thing after login I was going to test was the new, aesome and almighty Akonadi. Well - it's cool, I really like that. On the other hand, I think it's quite slow on my 2x1.5GHz laptop. Loading 6k mails takes considerable amount of time after the KMail starts. I hope this will get fixed soon or later (most probably later :).

Next think I checked was KAdressBook. I hoped there will be an Akonadi Resource for something like sync with GMail contacts and calendar, but I haven't find anything, so I will probably have to write something myself :)

Unfortunatelly, Akregator does not store feeds and their content in Akonadi database, which was something I hoped for since I first heard about KDE PIM2 migrating to Akonadi. It's not a great feature, not definetelly usefull for any resource integrations (you really don't need to access your feeds from other apps, unless you are writing something better then Akregator), but I'd like to see all the PIM stuff stored in one DB, which would really simplify backups and improve portability (when you are migrating between more PCs, possibility to simply take with you just one DB file would be a nice feature).

A really great feature, a very appreciated one is the "Grid desktop" (Desktop Settings -> View -> Layout -> Grid Desktop). When you are dragging an applet on you desktop, a grid is displayed allowing you to position the applet and after you drop it, the applet is automatically aligned to grid.

When you move mouse to a screenedge, a bar with + and - buttons appears allowing you to change the density of the grid.

The new grid functionallity is further extended by applets groups. You can create widget which contains tabs. In each tab there is a grid and you can put multiple applets into the grid. Another cool feature, don't you think? I wish there were more usefull applets like this, instead of something like KDE Observatory.

However I still found some issues with this applet, mostly when you try to insert a widget which is bigger then the Group widget, it somehow overflows.

When we are talking about Plasma, I must mention Activities. It's a very cool feature, but it's not used a lot. Probably because they still were unperfect, I personally for example really minded that the activities were all named like Activity #1, Activity #2...now finally you can finally name your activities as you wish and they are more stable.

KDE 4.6 is also a great step toward HAL-less KDE. The PowerDevil has UPower backend now, but it's not yet enabled by default, HAL is still preferred, because it provides more features, but it's possible to already use it for watching battery/AC state and scaling CPU, but some features are slower then with HAL. UDisk was also implemented in 4.5.73 bringing support for mounting devices without HAL.

KDE 4.6 will be another great release in the KDE4 series, I'm happy to see KDE still evolving and moving towards modern and fast desktop environment.

Czech version (not exact translation) can be found on my blog on ABCLinuxu.cz.