I just found a cool bunch of flickr badges and such over at bighugelabs.com. They’re kind of amusing, if you use flickr.
The badge above will change every hour. (Or so I’m told.)
Technorati Tags: Blog
Month: December 2006
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One word: “LONGEVITYâ€, people, “LONGEVITYâ€
BBC News => BBC denies Doctor ‘quits’ report
Isn’t this how it started when Eccleston quit, too? The Doctor hasn’t got that many regenerations left…The Sun claimed the actor, 35, planned to depart next year, in the middle of the fourth series of the hit programme.
But he was currently filming the third series, a BBC spokeswoman said, adding that any episodes beyond that had yet to receive the go-ahead.
“When a further series is commissioned, we will be able to confirm his involvement,†she said.
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After Christmas Tally
Another Christmas has come and gone.
Here’s my Macbook, finally complete in its two-monitor configuration (surrounded by reassuring clutter.) The wide screen monitor is certainly a wonderful improvement over old 4:30 resolution monitors. The wide screen is great for programming, video editing or just watching videos. I’m surprised that 4:3 monitors survived as long as they have.
Despite being up late Christmas Eve, I woke before James and Michelle. James woke up first, but really didn’t really understand the enormity of the day, but I knew that Michelle understood was very excited when she went to bed. I took my camera and waited patiently for her to wake up. My goal was to capture that first instant when her eyes would open wide and see the tree with all the presents beneath it.
I got bored after a while, so I told James to go knock on his sister’s door, which he did. Soon thereafter, Michelle was up and came slowly into the room. She walked right past the Christmas tree and completely ignored it. I guess next year we’ll have to put lights on the tree after she goes to bed so I can get my photo op.
Despite their initial indifference, both kids got lots of presents, all of which seemed well-received. We’ll see in a few days which ones fall by the wayside.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Christmas, Family, Kids, Mac, MacBook, OSX
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Big Shock – Daleks
BBC News => Doctor battles Daleks in New York
The Daleks are poised to do battle in New York in a forthcoming episode from the latest series of Doctor Who.
The two-parter will see the show’s star David Tennant and new assistant Martha Jones, played by Freema Agyeman, face their famous foes in 1930s Manhattan.
“This time, their plan is the most audacious Dalek scheme yet! Even the Doctor finds himself out of his depth,†said lead writer Russell T Davies.
So much for the days of “absolute secrecy†about upcoming plot developments.
Update: BBC Press Office releases more detailed info on the episode and the third series.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Doctor Who, Dr Who
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Torchwood – Combat – Review (Spoilers)
Combat
by Noel Clarke
Jack looses weevils, Owen gets depressedSynopsis
Owen is depressed. He’s in a deep, dark, depression. He drinks, he fights, he pisses on his friends (metaphorically.) (Come to think of it, the “metaphorically†was meant for the word “pisses†but could equally have applied to the word “friendsâ€.)Meanwhile, Jack has discovered that someone is “kidnapping†weevils, right out from under Torchwood’s nose.
Gwen has a fight with Rhys, then a fight with Owen, so she’s depressed, too. She tells Rhys about her affair, then gives him the amnesia drug.
Owen goes undercover and discovers a Fight Club where socially dissatisfied morons have cage-fights with weevils. Being in that right state of mind, Owen becomes one of the morons and goes into the cage with the Weevil.
He nearly gets eaten, Jack saves the Day. “Story†over.
Analysis
I had high hopes for this episode. After week-after-week of talky, only vaguely Torchwood related stories, the previews for this episode looked like this might be the turning point story where things finally begin to pick up the pace.One could be forgiven, having seen the previews, to think that Torchwood might be coming up against some opposition, perhaps even someone who actually knows what the weevils are (as Torchwood has already admitted that they do not.)
Instead we just get a bunch of dumb wanks in a fight club.
It’s a completely senseless implementation of all the cool violence and melodrama “teased†at in the preview. Oh wait! Could this be an oh-so-subtle “message†from the writers? Violence and fighting are senseless! I have seen the light; another mind “enlightened†by television!
The story did resolve at least one point about the weevils that has been bothering me (apart from their obvious absence): Why are they wearing overalls? It would now seem that it’s just possible that weevils are “infected†people, as Owen seems to have picked up the “bug†by the end of the episode.
As predicted, Gwen is falling apart, so much so that has to spill her guts to Rhys to ask for his forgiveness. Then, of course, she has to make him forget. She doesn’t get the forgiveness she seeks and resorts to pizza. I predict she’ll be 20 stone by the end of the series.
Capt. Jack Mystery Puzzle Piece of the Week: I’ll be darned if I saw one.
Next Week Capt. Jack goes back to WWII and meets himself. Toshiko goes along, I’m sure an ethnically-Japanese woman will be popular in WWII London… or will it be Cardiff?
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The Spirit of Christmas
Christmas Eve is almost over.
We’ve prepared the tree, placed all the presents under it, even the ones “from Santa†and even cleared out the front of the fireplace so that Santa had a place to get in. (Why not? You can’t burn anything in a fireplace on any day cold enough to want to have a fire because of high pollution warnings.)
I must say, I’m still a little disturbed about perpetuating this whole “Santa Claus†fantasy, but Michelle has picked it up from her friends at school and she’s really looking forward to it. At least she hasn’t picked up any of that baby Jesus nonsense.
We took the kids out to the zoo to see the Zoolights. Each year, as they get older, it’s more fun as they appreciate it more. I guess there will come a year when it starts tapering off as they get too old for that sort of stuff, but it is fun to enjoy it now.
It’s interesting, having a family. Now we have “obligations†to make an effort at Christmas and while it might seem like a bit of a chore, it really isn’t. I hope we have many, many more Christmas
Perhaps it is our society, or perhaps it’s that I hold no stock in Christmas as a holy day, but I just don’t see a lot of Christmas spirit. Shopping, yes. People wearing Santa hats, yes. Bad traffic, yes. But no spirit.
I’ve only ever felt a genuine Christmas spirit once. It was back in about 1977, I was thirteen. My father and took the two-week Christmas vacation to travel down to the tip of Baja Mexico. We travelled over the inner “highway†nearest the gulf. Highway is a joke, it was a dirt road and we travelled for days without seeing another person.
We pulled into La Paz, which in those days was a sleepy fishing village, on Christmas Eve and we stopped into a little restaurant that stayed open for us. The owners didn’t speak much English, and we didn’t speak much Spanish, but before they left, they came over and asked about us. If we had family in the area, etc. We told them we were just traveling and that’s when they invited us to their home for Christmas. It wasn’t an obligatory invitation, it was sincere and genuine because they didn’t want us to be alone on Christmas.
We didn’t take them up on the offer, we had known where we’d be at Christmas and had planned accordingly. Still, I genuinely felt the actual spirit of Christmas that day and it was kind of nice.
I’ve typed away the rest of Christmas Eve, it’s now Christmas day. Merry Christmas, everyone.
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Finally!
BBC News => BBC moves to file-sharing sites
You know, I would gladly pay the £131.50 ($255.87) television license fee that everyone in the UK with a TV is required to pay that funds the BBC if only I could get the BBC programming. The technology exists, but it is political and contractual barriers that prevent it.
BBC programming is far more interesting to me than the existing pay networks we have in the US like HBO or Showtime. Of course, we have BBC America, but that’s only a small subset of the programming and it’s often months or years behind the actual transmission. It’s also cut and heavily loaded with commercials.
The programming never includes BBC Four material, like Dr. Iain Stewart’s Journeys from the Center of the Earth or Journeys Into the Ring of Fire – two excellent documentary series on geology that would probably be considered too arcane even for the Discovery Science channel over here.
That’s why I applaud the BBC’s commercial arm for attempting to setup a bitorrent distribution system through Azureus/Zudeo. I have just have two cautionary things that hopefully the BBC will not stumble over. They have to distribute the files fast (within, if not a day, than no later than one week after original transmission) and they need to price them reasonably. The second series of the new Doctor Who sells on DVD for $70, that’s about $5 per episode and it’s already rather pricey for DVDs. Copy-protected digital media can’t be anywhere near that expensive. It’s going to have to be in the range of iTunes’ $1.99 or less.
Even at $1.99 the numbers add up too fast. That’s $25 for Doctor Who, $25 for Torchwood, $25 for Robin Hood, $16 for Life on Mars and that doesn’t touch on other shows like Planet Earth, My Family, Worst Week of My Life and many other programs.
Most importantly, their DRM better work on Macs.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Commentary, Doctor Who, Dr Who, Mac, MacBook, OSX, Robin Hood, Technology, Torchwood, Video
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A Christmas Shopping Tale
It was a cold, dark, dreary, rainy day.
It’s not very often a story about Phoenix starts that way, but that’s what it was like today.
I had to go out at lunchtime to try to find a DVI cable for my new monitor. I also needed to get an Apple mini-DVI to DVI dongle for my MacBook. With a little luck, I thought perhaps Fry’s Electronics would have both the cable and the dongle. I was sure they’d carry the cable, but the dongle was more of a question mark. They carry Apple products and a few accessories and apart from the Apple store, they were the only place that might carry it. (I knew the Apple store wouldn’t carry the DVI cable.)
Fry’s only had the cable (and 135 people in line in front of me) so I had to make a trip after work to the Apple store. The city was practically gridlocked, between the holiday traffic and the rain, it was brutal. A trip from my office to the Apple store normally takes 10 minutes, today it took an hour. The parking lot was a log jam, and the Apple store was doing a ripping bit of business.
The guy ahead of me was buying eight 30Gb iPods!
I wish I had that kind of money for XMas (or even Saturnalia) presents.
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More Christmas Surprises
My wife is so thoughtful. She goes out of her way to try to surprise me Christmas. I really bad when it goes wrong… but on the other hand, as those wise sages, Morecambe & Wise, once said, the secret of all great comedy is timing.
Last night, my wife had to go pick up the ham. (I refused to pick up the ham because of last year’s tale.) Ten minutes after she left, someone showed up at out door. It was the UPS guy, which surprised me because I wasn’t expecting any packages. He was holding a small box from Amazon.com and he held out the electronic clipboard for me to sign.
I signed my name and reached for the package, which he pulled back to indicate he wouldn’t give it to me. Instead, he just pointed down at the ground next to the door, where I saw this: A new Sceptre 20“ wide screen monitor. (The one I thought I wasn’t going to get because I had already found my XMas gift and it wasn’t big enough.)
There wasn’t much I could do, it was packed just as you see it, so I couldn’t leave it outside and I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know what it was.
Still, it’s a wonderful present and it leads me to my next post…
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Ratty Xmas
Every year, the neighbors on the corner put up the ugliest nativity scene ever!
You can practically see the fleas leaping off the mannequins, and they’re always at least one or two wise men short. Joseph is often missing for days on end. (Well, what with the baby crying all the time and their marriage is a bit strained since he isn’t the father – who could blame him?)
I think this year, they got a new lamb and may have re-upholstered the donkey. Either way, my main complaint isn’t the display, it’s the fact that this is on the corner of a major thoroughfare and when you’re coming off our street (heading left in this picture) you cannot see the oncoming traffic because of that damn manger.
(They did move it back from the street some this year, which does help.)