my husband David says he didn’t know about this:

Production Weekly reported that a feature film set in J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 universe will begin production in April in the United Kingdom. Straczynski wrote the film, The Memory of Shadows, which will be directed by Steven Beck (Ghost Ship), the publication reported.

But I remember hearing about this because I posted about it back in February, when the project was mysteriously known as “B5:TMoS” and a list of likely and unlikely titles was bandied about. My favorite is still “The Memory of Spoo,” so I’m quite disappointed.

And now I expect my stats page will show an uptick on TMoS-related searches, just as it did nearly a year ago when the topic first surfaced.

Joining her is Galen, a techno-mage who has been charged with keeping the technology out of the hands of those who would abuse it.

Galen? Ooooooo. Galen. Mmmmmm.

The four lead teams start off with a colossal blunder in which they learn the lesson that you never know the operating hours until you look at them. Fortunately (because some of them are teams I like), they hit the airport bunch, at which point we’re off to Dakar, where things look a little different than they do in Scandinavia. Kendra adjusts not-so-nicely to her surroundings, while Kris and Jon, predictably, think it’s kind of cool. The Detour offers a choice between catching fish and arranging fish, and for some reason, Gus and Hera and Don and MJ conclude that they’d rather wrangle live fish than dead ones. Throwing up ensues as these teams fall behind. At a physically taxing Roadblock, Lori and Kris kick ass, Adam feels like a weenie, and MJ impresses her sweetie with her grit. When MJ and Don hit the mat last, it looks like their luck has finally run out, but the earliest ever non-elimination round keeps them around to fight another day. Oh, and My Favorite Team comes in first again. Go, nice pretty people, go!

Just saving the recaplet for this week’s episode for posterity. This time I’ll do a run-down of everyone using the handy notes I took, rather than relying on my shockingly bad memory. That’ll be later.

I will say, though, that I adore Kris and Jon. They learned a hard lesson – always verify local information, if possible by finding official route flags, markers, and signs noting Race hours of operation rather than real-life hours of operation. The tower was open early to accomodate production and reduce the risk of bumping into civilians (and cut down on crowding in the very narrow spiral stairway).

I noted a HUGE time gap between the leader teams and the trailing teams. Again, without the notes, I’m relying on (bad) memory. But Hayden and Aaron left at 2:04, meaning they had a HELL of a fast leg previously. Usually, the legs work out so that teams arrive around 5, 6, or 7pm, which puts them on a good footing for possible airport or train departures on the next start after the “mandatory 12 hour rest stop.” In actuallity, some pit stop stays last longer than 12 hours, but this is edited out to keep things less confusing. And the last team to depart were Don and MJ, sometime after 8am, I think. That’s a 6 hour gap in arrival times!

D-MJ are starting out next time with the double handicap of late departure and no money – the ferries will add some guaranteed bunching, but they’ll need cash just to get off the Ile de Goree. They should think about gunning for the two weakest teams ahead of them in the Race, which would be Gus/Hera and… Adam/Rebecca, I’d say. G/H are strong only when the tasks require eye-hand coordination rather than muscle power, endurance, on-the-ground navigating or random luck – their strong finishes in episodes 2 and 3 were due to Gus’ skill with the Viking games and glass-sliding tasks. In the latter case, it set them up with an early arrival at the Roadblock, which Gus was able to complete without losing too much time.

But it is very, very cool that D-MJ have made it this far, because they’ve officially passed Dave/Margaretta of Season 1 as oldest team to survive this far in the Race. I love ’em. Their salty goodness balances their sweet sugar just perfectly.

StudyAbroad.com Launches World’s First Online Interactive Reality Show

Here we go. It’s billed as a mixture of Amazing Race and blogging – 3 college students are actually studying abroad, but they are given tasks to complete and they blog about their experiences. The blogging software is Mindsay.com‘s, which as it happens I’ve used off and on. Currently, half of the Gus Overshaw whale-killing journal crew have blogs there, since it’s a little more fun and interactive than Tripod, Gus’ main provider. Also, you have to log in to read Mindsay blogs, and you can set your posts to be read by all, read by a list of people you specify, or by no one.

One drawback to Mindsay beyond the “login required” factor is that if you visit someone’s page, you leave a link. It can be interesting to track people from blog to blog, but if you stumble across somebody really weird, they can see your ID and visit your page. There’s no anonymous lurking – which in some cases is okay, and in other cases can contribute to disputes on the order of junior-high-level catfights between former friends.

It’s an odd idea, but potentially interesting, but with a built in limitation on the size of the audience unless Mindsay customizes it for completely open publication (as opposed to the “walled garden” model they use now).