a Stargate question...

I haven't watched Stargate in quite a while, i.e. I think I have watched up to somewhere in the middle of season seven, though I've always watched SG-1 somewhat casually, so I don't recall the exact place. Anyway, since it has come to my attention that Ben Browder is in the current season, I thought I might give SG-1 a try again.

Now I'm wondering whether I can simply start watching again, or have missed too much crucial stuff to follow (like that whole spin-off thing with Stargate: Atlantis -- I have no idea what that's about). So I'm asking those of you more into SG-1 for advice: Do I need to find an episode guide or season overview or the like to follow the current season?

I'm not really interested right now in procuring and watching the one and a half seasons of episodes I missed, but nevertheless I dislike being confused by backstories I'm clueless about. I mean, I still remember missing out on only about half of season four of the X-Files way back when they first aired, and I didn't have easy internet access then, so there weren't any resources I could consult. I ended up quite confused about the myth arc -- despite being able to follow individual eps -- until I truly found my way into online fandom in 1998. Well, I still stayed somewhat confused then, but I mainly attribute that to the myth arc becoming ever more convoluted over time, and me being significantly behind the US schedule in those times before broadband.

So were there any momentous events in late season seven and season eight of SG-1? Do the storylines of SG-1 and SG:A overlap and I need to know about Atlantis, too?

BTW, what happened to tvtome.com?! I used to look there to check for US airdates and episode lists, but when I tried that just now I was redirected to tv.com, who apparently have taken over the former? What's worse, however, is that the site doesn't even work for me anymore. I got a mostly blank page and a redirection link, and not even allowing javascript for the site helped, then it just displayed an obnoxious flash ad, that continually reloaded once I clicked on the redirection link. WTF? At that point I was fed up with the site, and not in the mood to fiddle with cookie settings or whatever is required by them to show me their content. If there even is still content under all that flash advertising.

sometimes language just breaks my brain

You see, I was in the process to write someone an e-mail about a (non-fannish) website update, only to stumble when I had barely written the subject line. The sentence in my subject line was innocent enough, i.e. "I've now updated the website." only I was writing in German.

German has actually incorporated the English word "to update", especially in computer an technical contexts, and personally I tend to use "updaten" over "aktualisieren" in particular in spoken or informal language. Now comes the somewhat tricky part in my explanation (at least if you don't speak German): In German prefixes are separated from the root under certain circumstances when you conjugate a verb, and also the prefix that's part of the regular past participle, i.e. "ge-", goes between the original prefix and the root.

Obviously you have to conjugate foreign words as well if you want to use them in German. And when words have prefixes that adds complications, you can either treat the foreign word as one unit, as if there was no prefix, or you treat the foreign prefix like you would a German prefix, and actually both strategies exist, sometimes for the same word, though usually after a while usage settles. Obviously I just use what sound right to me -- unless I'm angsting about language in my blog, that is. Strange as it is, when I talk I tend to treat English prefixes as separable in the perfect, but don't separate the them in other tenses that would demand an inverse position of root and prefix. A typical example for a German word with such a prefix would be "aufschreiben" (to write down), which demands an inverse position in the present tense, i.e. "ich schreibe auf" (I write down") and where the perfect would be "ich habe aufgeschrieben" (I have written down). So when I use update as a German word I say "ich habe upgedatet" not "ich habe geupdatet" (treating "up-" like "auf-") but "ich update" and not "ich date up", and it works like that for me with a number of English words with prefixes that are used in German. Not being a purist worried about imported words, it sounds perfectly acceptable to me.

Thus when talking I'd usually say for the sentence above "Ich habe jetzt die Webseite upgedatet." however written it looks really weird, probably because I'm so used to reading English where naturally "to update" isn't mangled this way. Written "ich habe geupdatet" looks slightly better to me, probably because it preserves the integrity of the English word, however it's not what I talk like, hence the brain-breakage. In the end I've decided to write like spoken, even if it looks peculiar.

BTW, I've googled both alternatives, and it seems I'm not alone in my preferences, there are 116.000 hits for "upgedatet" versus 71.000 for "geupdatet", not decisive but the former seems definitely favored in usage.