As I near my 40th birthday, I am coming to realize I’m a colossal geek with no desire to reform.

My interests beyond Battlestar Galactica — and, yes, there are some — include superhero movies, as well as Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, and Dune, and they appeal to me on a great many levels, as both artist and writer, and as someone interested greatly in what makes us human.

The latter is something sci-fi and fantasy genres explore better than any other, which makes me entirely unrepentant when it comes to my geekery and explains why my bedroom walls are adorned with images from BSG.

That said, I did decide to upgrade a while back from the poster-and-pinup look and make it at least look like someone entering middle age might sleep there.

To do so, I invested in a series of sleek, black frames, in different sizes, from IKEA, then I employed my skills to turn out some (mostly) custom designs featuring text and various BSG-related images. Then it was just a matter of arranging everything on the wall in a visually pleasing way.

Here’s the results (click through images):

Here are some closeups of the artwork (click through images):

I did this back in early July before I found myself waylaid by severe chronic pain in my lower back, flanks/sides, and legs that has had me on the sidelines for going on seven months now — hope is on the horizon for that issue, though, thankfully — and I’m so glad I made the change. Otherwise, I’d have spent all this time staring at the teen-pinup look of my bedroom decor and cringing, unable to do anything about it.

Frakstache alert!

My sister found this last week and, knowing how I felt about Edward James Olmos’ mustache, she bought it for me. I, of course, immediately adorned my beloved iMac, making it Apple-Stachetastic!

As Battlestar Galactica made its final bow nearly a year ago (*sadface*), I believed wholeheartedly that I would turn off cable once it was over, and told anyone who would listen. That’s how strongly I felt about the show, and still feel, which is why the only cable we have in our house now is the Internet service.

I just couldn’t see paying nearly 80 bucks a month for something I didn’t watch beyond one or two shows, especially since local network stations are available using an HD antenna for FREE, and we had Netflix discs/streaming, Redbox, and iTunes.

To get the most out of iTunes, we invested in an Apple TV, which has turned out to be an awesome entertainment option, possibly signaling the end of days of needing cable or satellite for pay-per-view.

The Apple TV from Apple Inc.

For those who don’t know, the Apple TV plays iTunes content on your television, which includes music, movies (buy or rent), and television episodes, basically anything available in the iTunes store. You can also sync over your pictures from iPhoto and view them on your television or set them to be the screensaver.

So far, we’ve rented a trio of films and have purchased several TV shows by the season and prices were reasonable. One of those was the BSG spinoff Caprica, which I wanted to see but couldn’t justify the cost of cable for the four or five months it would be on the air for the season. So I bought the iTunes season pass for the standard definition version for $29.99, and I couldn’t be happier. The new eps download automatically to either my computer or the Apple TV as soon as it’s available — on average, that’s usually within 48 hours of airing on SyFy.

If you can’t figure out how we saved, imagine paying $80 for five months to watch one TV show — that’s 400 frakking dollars! Instead, we paid $190 for a refurbished 160GB Apple TV from Apple.com and $30 for the Caprica iTunes season pass — that’s only $220. If you factor in that the $190 is a long-term investment and not a monthly fee, we come out way ahead.

There are only a couple “drawbacks” to the Apple TV that I’ve noted:

1. The download time for rented/purchased video content, but if you have a fast Internet connection and aren’t impatient, the wait is more than tolerable, especially since you can begin watching a rented movie before it’s fully downloaded — haven’t tried that yet myself, cause I’m patient, you see *grin* — if you have a fast enough connection.
2. Some movie studios don’t have their products available at the iTunes Store, Sony being one of them.

Benefits, beyond what was stated above:

• If you don’t want to leave your house to rent a movie, you don’t have to — assuming the movie you want is not from one of the non-participating studios.
• The pricing is about on par with renting from your local video store and you get a generous amount of rental time. You have 30 days to watch the movie rental, however, once you start it, you have to finish it within 24 hours, but you can watch it as many times as you want within that 24 hours.
• Movie rentals clear off once they have expired, and you don’t have to do a thing
• The quality of the videos, even standard definition, look good on our 1080i HDTV.

The Apple TV is a low profile device, comes with a remote and can be hooked to the TV via HDMI or component cables, and has several other useful ports, notably ethernet, which is a plus when syncing a large amount of content over to the device — I HIGHLY recommend that. For a full list of Apple TV’s technical specs, check the links below.

The brand new 160GB Apple TV retails for $229, but if that price seems a little steep for you, you might try a refurbished unit. You will probably save a few bucks and the refurbished unit is certified. Apple also has the same one-year limited warranty on the refurbished Apple TV as a brand new one AND you can buy AppleCare for it ($49), which gets you access to Apple’s award-winning technical support and hardware coverage.

Learn more at Apple.com

• What is Apple TV
• What’s on Apple TV
• Apple TV Specs
• AppleCare for Apple TV
• Support for Apple TV
• Syncing performance/options for Apple TV (wireless and ethernet)

***Images used in this post are copyrighted works and used here for informational and entertainment purposes ONLY.***