Crapica

No, the title to this blog isn't a typo. To be honest, I found Caprica pretty boring. I don't really care for any of the characters and there wasn't enough sci-fi in it at satisfy my hunger geekery. The best part of the thing was the last 5 minutes, which gives me a tiny bit of hope for the series, but I'm really not holding my breath.

Overall, I give it three blahs.

Got Something Published

A short comic I did a while back with artist JC Grande just got published by the anthology Shrunken Wool. Pretty neat! To buy a copy just click here.

The 80s were good to me

(Note: I'm the one in the Spider-Man sweatshirt with matching Spider-Man sneakers.)

I saw this pic again in like forever and I was flooded with nostalgia. I realized a huge part of my childhood memories involved my brother, my cousins, and I staying at our grandma's house after school (notice the plastic slipcover on the avocado green furniture) and just watching cartoons like Voltron and Thundercats, playing with toys, and just running around wreaking havoc... Ah, just remember my cousin Jordan (far right in the pic) getting beat with an extension cord for chopping down all of my grandpa's banana trees with a machete while we were playing "ninjas".

Man, I had a great childhood.

Caribbean Cruise

Just got back from a week-long cruise of Mexico, Belize, and the far away land of Key West! I got to see lots of great Mayan structures, which I'm a total geek for. Although I probably enjoyed visiting the ruins of Altun Ha and Tulum the most, I have to admit just lying on the beach, drinking Coronas and eating chips and salsa all day was pretty nice too. Here are some pics of the trip.

Man, it was really awesome. I didn't want to get off the boat. A team of five Filipinos had to drag me out of my cabin on Sunday morning!

Spanish Inquisition #2

Second strip is up. The set up is a bit more complicated and the colors are bit more sophisticated (heh, we added the color blue) and it looks great!

Battlestar Series Final

Okay, it’s been a week since this amazing show ended and I haven’t deposited my 2 cents so here they are. Basically, I liked the ending despite it committing a lot of the 7 Deadly Sins of Religion in Sci-fi, but I didn’t love it and that’s a shame.

I forgave the lame ploy of having the dead pilot release the nukes and destroy the Cylon Colony, or that Starbuck was a “material” angel all along, or that virtual Baltar and Six were not virtual at all, but fraking angels as well. I forgave all the useless flash backs to pre-nuked Caprica that added nothing to the characters when this time could have been used to resolve some current character issue like Six and Tigh dealing with the death of their child and splitting up. I for gave all that, but I just couldn’t forget it so I couldn’t bring myself to love the finale.

I did enjoy the rescue of Hera a lot and I loved that they landed on ancient Earth and mingled with the Cro-Magnons, which started modern humanity. I just love shit like that. I also like that Hera is the Mitochondrial Eve, which means all humans alive today are a little bit Cylon.

But the highlight of the episode has to be the scene of Adama giving Roslin his wedding ring. That is what made this episode at all satisfying to me. It wasn’t much, but it was powerful.

Here’s hoping the shoe-horned spin-off, prequel Caprica lives up to the standard left behind by this messy, imperfect, awesome show.

Mayorga and Haplogroup R1b1b2

Marge’s dad just got back the Y-DNA results from the National Geographic's Genographic Project and it turns out he is Haplogroup R1b1b2 (formerly R1B1c), which is pretty common throughout Europe, but very common in the Iberian Peninsula. Here are some stats from Wikipedia:

Welsh 89%, Basque 88%, Irish 81%, Northern Portuguese 81%, Catalan 79%, Scottish 77%, English 75%, other Spanish 70%, Dutch 70%, Belgians 63%, Southern Portuguese 60%, Ossetians 43%, Italian 40%, German 39%

While doing some research on the Mayorga surname, which comes from a town in Spain and is a common surname in Nicaragua, I found this possible ancestor:

"Don Alonso Diaz de Mayorga y Arregui was born in Seville during the first half of the sixteenth century. His father was from Old Castile and his mother was Basque. He arrived in Nicaragua around 1608 and actively participated in the design of the new city Santiago de los Caballeros de León as the previous city had been destroyed by the eruption of the volcano, Momotombo, which forced the residents and authorities to seek a new site for relocating the city. It was relocated as the new town, consolidated on the site is now known as Santiago de los Caballeros de León. Don Alonso was one of those who collaborated on the layout of the streets of the new city, the location of the new church and buildings that would house the offices of the new authorities."

It seems most Nicaraguen Mayorgas are decended from Don Alonso Díaz de Mayorga y Arregui. The "Díaz de Mayorga" surname survived for like 9 generations before getting shortened to just Mayorga.