Monday, May 07, 2007

Be Careful What You Google For

This morning (which is to say, Sunday morning) before church, I checked my email as usual. In it was a note from Sharon Major, the current editor of the Quantum Leap zine The Observer. She forwarded on to me, and to a Scott Bakula email list, a Google Alert containing text from my recent blog entry titled "Umm...!" It was occasioned by the following block of text:

There are images of Gates Pass, and Disneyland and Las Vegas, trees and lamps, Scott Bakula and Anthony Stewart Head, Randy Johnson and Zorro, and even Sylvester McCoy standing in front of a fan-built TARDIS with Paul McGann. ...

If any Scott Bakula fans rushed to see the entry before I read Sharon's email, then they were undoubtedly disappointed. The litany of photo subjects was just a partial list of what I was seeing on another computer's screensaver that night, which I was trying to relate to what was failing to happen in my brain that night, and how I might help it along. It certainly wasn't a promise to show thrilling new photos (or technically proficient screen captures) to any fan Google might care to send me. But Google's spiders didn't know that. How could they? I deliberately didn't name Walt, Scott, Tony, Randy, Diego, Syl or Paul in my tags/Blogger labels, but that apparently wasn't enough of an equivocation. Now I find myself wanting to apologize for misleading Google, which is clearly insane, and make it up to fans of Walt, Scott, Tony, Randy, Diego, Syl or Paul (never mind the fans of trees or lamps), which is only slightly less so. Still, it's an easy way to fill out tonight's entry, so here we go: archive photos of certain people named above, only some of which are on the other computer's slide show:


Scott Bakula as Archer, and as himself. I put together this photo montage years ago from an Entertainment Tonight preview of Enterprise.

"Professor, it works!" This is a remarkably bad screen capture that I was unable to clean up much. From "Her Charm," a Season Two episode of Quantum Leap.


KFB, Dean Stockwell and Scott Bakula in a composited green screen video made at the 1993 QL convention.


Paul McGann (the Eighth Doctor), Sylvester McCoy (Seventh Doctor) and India Fisher of Doctor Who. (India does Doctor Who audio adventures for Big Finish.) Convention photo from Gallifrey One, taken with the old Mavica camera three years ago. It all came out purple for some reason. I faked in the blue color correction for the fan-made TARDIS, only to wreck India's face.


McGann and McCoy again, at Gallifrey One's Fifteen Minutes of Fame. You see? Purple.


Anya in the terrifying bunny suit, and Giles (Tony Head) with his chain saw. "Fear Itself," Buffy the Vampire Slayer.


Disney's Zorro (Guy Williams). For me he's the definitive Zorro, a man who uses his wits as much as his sword.

Not very good, these shots, are they? They're old technology mostly, from old videotape or a digital camera whose low-res files were recorded on floppies. I did warn you: the photos I spoke of came from an older computer.

Now you know why I call this entry "Be Careful What You Google For"; even a good search string doesn't guarantee you good results, even if you end up with relevant images. And now I'm done. Good night!

Karen

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