It’s that time again. Time for a brand new episode of The Flickcast. This week we’re doing our “Being Thankful” episode just in time for the Monday following Thanksgiving.

Better late than never, right? Plus, it is Cyber Monday, after all. So . . . On this week’s episode Chris and Joe talk about, you guessed it, what they’re thankful for this year and in general. Naturally, the talk turns to various films, television and pop culture and, sadly, spills over onto COVID a bit too. What did you expect?

Some of these non-covid topics include Star Wars, Star Trek, The Mandalorian, Netflix movies and series such as Enola Holmes and The Queen’s Gambit and lots of music and more. And, of course the usual even more.

It’s a packed episode chock full of thankful goodness and positive positivity. Hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for listening.

WARNING: This episode may contain discussions about COVID-19, mental health and quarantine. We understand not everyone is in a place to talk about or hear discussions surrounding these issues. Please do what’s best for you. Stay safe everyone.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, Instagram or, yes, even Facebook. Or shoot us an email. We don’t mind.

Photo: Lucasfilm/TOR.com

Opening and end music by Kevin MacLeod under Creative Commons License

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS

It must be a bit difficult to be Microsoft sometimes, especially these days. Sure, they still make a desktop OS that dominates the world, but that lead is dropping as fast as sales of desktop computers.

And their other products, like the Surface, don’t seem to be catching on with the kids. And don’t get us started on the XBox One.

Microsoft just doesn’t seem to get it. So what do you do when you are a big company that’s falling behind the times? You go negative, of course.

In a new ad that’s just come out, Microsoft again decides to mock Apple and the iPad via Siri, the company’s voice-enabled personal assistant. The chief reasons the iPad is bad this time: it doesn’t have a zoomable home screen, lacks an SD card slot and for not being able to multitask as efficiently as Windows RT.

Sure, okay. Now that you put it that way we’re going to throw our iPads in the trash and rush out to buy a Surface right now. Not.

Check out the ad after the break.

As a fan of the Star Tours attractions on both coasts, I was excited to go to the D23 panel on the making of Star Tours: The Adventures Continue… I crowded into the 1,000+ seat ballroom, not knowing what Imagineer insights awaited me.

In true Disney fashion, the panel was a professionally crafted presentation, with no room for questions..errr, I mean error. In this panel, lead Imagineer, Tom Fitzgerald, spoke with the aid of Powerpoint and took us on the journey to bring this attraction into the future.

Tom Fitzgerald, began his Star Tours story in 1998 when George Lucas summoned the Imagineer team to his ranch to watch the pod race, and only the pod race. After seeing the infamous scene, the Imagineers decided to wait to see the rest of the film, hoping against hope that it would the pod race would be scrapped for something way cooler.

Ok, so Tom said, “In fact, we did think it was a great idea”, but I can read between the lines. Interestingly back in 1998, way before the 3D onslaught, the Imagineers knew the ride was going to be in 3D.

Now that CES is behind us, we’re expecting to see tons of new inventions or ideas that didn’t make the cut at the world’s largest technology expo. Plenty of things didn’t make it on the show floor, and it’s almost unfortunate that this new doohickey falls in that category.

3D is one of the biggest leading movements in technology for the foreseeable future, and in that world, one of the big advancements is removing those big bulky glasses from the 3D equation all together.

That’s where Francois Vogel and Jonathan Post come in. They’ve got a brand new device they’re testing out that plays with eyelids much like 3D and RealD glasses do with the lenses.

Of course, there’s no way of knowing if these gadgets have a place in the world of consumer technology, but they definitely freak all of us out. Check out the demonstration after the jump.

At a packed media event today Apple announced some new things that were met mostly with enthusiasm by the attending crowd. Among these new things was iOS 4.1 and 4.2, new iPods and a new version of the Apple TV.

Here’s a summary of the announcements:

iOS 4.1 – iOS 4.2

• High Dynamic Range photos: Takes three photos and combines them to form one better one.

• Proximity sensor, Bluetooth and the iPhone 3G.

• High-definition video upload over Wi-Fi.

• TV show rentals and purchase

• Game Center debut

iOS 4.2

• Brings iPad up-to-date with iPhone 4 including folders, better multitasking, etc.

The iOS 4.1 update will be available next week through iTunes. iOS 4.2 will come in November.

New iPod Nano

• New square design
• Touchscreen interface
• VoiceOver
• FM radio
• Nike+ and pedometer
• 24-hour battery life
• Six colors
• $149 for 8GB and $179 for 16GB
• Preorder today, shipping in a week

In a world of constantly evolving tech, SyFy’s Eureka stays ahead of the game. The writers seem to have an unending amount of innovations up their sleeves. Between the giant robot spiders, A.I. in the house of tomorrow, and cloud sculpting devices, the scientists at Global Dynamics are kept pretty busy.

That makes double for their new director, Douglas Fargo, played with an affable, geeky charm by Neil Grayston. Just like Fargo, Neil is curiouser than a cat when it comes to gadgets.

The Flickcast: What do you think of the future technology on Eureka that has actually come to pass?

Neil Grayston: I’m always blown away. Sometimes it’s funny if you look back at the first season, some of our “high-tech gadgets” have already been surpassed in the real world a billion times over. It’s like we were really on top of that, someone was really thinking back there. I like looking back and seeing what we maybe thought of before hand and then what the real world was actually leaps and bounds (developing). It’s kinda cool knowing what real scientists are doing and what they’re actually making up.

FC: Do you ever have trouble with the highly scientific, technical lines on the show?

NG: Those are the lines that I usually will…like sometimes I’m going to admit, I cheat, I have my little sides and I cut out just the little technical lines and I make them as small as possible and I hide them in my wardrobe so that you won’t see anything. And then just before a take I’ll just look them over.

I’m fine with the dialogue and the back and forth, but am I going to say a pulsating ionsphere photostar or is it a photographic pulsar ionsphere? You know it’s those little things that I can look up on Wikipedia forever and forever. Fortunately, the Wikipedia entries are written by people who know what those things mean.