Category: General

BBC – Press Office => Life On Mars press pack

John Simm is back for the final time as DI Sam Tyler, the time-travelling detective who, following a car accident, found himself back in 1973, as the International Emmy Award-winning series Life On Mars returns to BBC One.

Here’s a show I don’t think I mentioned last year, but really I should have. Life on Mars was a truly amazing police put out by the BBC.

The show will be starting again for the conclusion this month. I can hardly wait.

The recreation of the early 1970’s is richly textured and completely believable. It does harken back to a time before the great western societal homogenization had reached the advanced state it is in today. Looking at 1970’s Manchester makes me think of 1960’s America. I wonder if it was really like that?

Some American company has purchased the rights to a US-based remake: Crap, another travesty on the way to our screens.

Technorati Tags: Blog, UK, Video

UKTV History => Roman treasure discovered

The lost treasures of Emperor Maxentius have been found on the Palatine Hill in Rome 1,700 years after they were hidden.

Archaeologists in Rome have discovered the lost treasure of the last pre-Christian Roman emperor, Maxentius.

I was really rooting for Maxentius, Constantine really screwed the world over.

Technorati Tags: Archaeology, Books

Rough Translation: “Reporters followed police chasing the red car. After 51 shots, the guy is dead.”

While I’ve never seen shots fired in Taiwan, it’s certainly not difficult to imagine someone stopped by the police just driving off. No one ever stops of gets out of the way for police or emergency vehicles – they have to contend with traffic just like everyone else.

It’s widely said that if you pull over the police assume you’ve done something wrong. Obviously, the guy in this video hadn’t done anything wrong, so he had to keep driving, just so the police would know he’s innocent.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Video

Last week my wife was doing a research paper on using Sudoku in a classroom setting. Having avoiding playing Sudoku all along, I decided, after reading the description, that it might be an amusing logic challenge, so I picked up a book of advanced puzzles.

It’s an amusing diversion, but I soon found the book, paper and (yes, even) and eraser too big of a hassle to carry around, so I broke down and purchased the iTunes version for my iPod.

For starters, let me say it’s a great implementation, especially considering how simplified the entry mechanism has to be using only the iPod’s clickwheel. The game is bright and the graphics are nice (pointless, but nice.)

I particularly like the “newspaper” mode, where you can transcribe a printed grid into the game and play it there. The game times your progress, saves your puzzle when you pause and awards points for how well you do. (It doesn’t count points in Newspaper Mode, though.)

It eats my iPod’s battery alive! All told, I might get 2 – 2.5 hours out it when playing the game.

Here’s the trick, yesterday, when I started the game to show it off, it came up with this message:

This game cannot be played.

Connect your iPod to iTunes and reinstall the game.

For more information, please visit http://apple.com/support/ipod/

The Menu key exited and I tried again, and it worked fine. The next time I tried to play, I got the same error. It appears that every other time I enter the program this happens, and connecting to iTunes makes no difference at all. What’s up with that?

Technorati Tags: Apple, Blog, iPod, Sudoku

So, all the mac Rumor sites are abuzz with this special Apple event that’s coming (perhaps as early as tomorrow?) but what amazes me is all the speculation seems to be about new monitors or Mac Pros.

Maybe so, but, wouldn’t it be a much better show if they revealed the “top secret” features of OSX within days, if not hours, of Microsoft Vista being released? It’s too late for the Microsoft “photo copiers” and it would certainly steal a lot of thunder.

That’s what I think is coming.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Blog, Computer, Mac, MacBook, OSX

Apple UK => Get A Mac Ads

OK, I can’t really blame the Brits for this. Apple UK has re-tooled the current Apple Get A Mac ad campaign with a decidedly British flavor – not just accents.

There are six ads, four of them are basically the same as the American ads, but two of them “Office at Home” and “Tentacle” are new, and certainly show where Britons stand vis-a-vis their lazy European counterparts.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Blog, Mac, OSX, UK, Video

BBC – Doctor Who => Who’s a Toon?

Doctor Who and Martha are about to step into a new dimension – a cartoon one.

David Tennant and Freema Agyeman will star in The Infinite Quest, a 13-part animated adventure that will run weekly in the second series of Totally Doctor Who.

The next DW project for the Who team… a cartoon. I guess that shouldn’t come as any surprise. Perhaps this pioneering technology will lead to more cartoon reconstructions of “lost” Who episodes.

One bit of indirect news from this article, Totally Doctor Who has apparently been renewed…

I wonder. Will they keep adding an extra hour of TV for each episode of Doctor Who each series? Will there come a day when the BBC might as well just be the DW channel?

Technorati Tags: Blog, Doctor Who, Dr Who

I love it when they find a “prehistoric” animal alive. Not that these Frilled Sharks were not known to exist, but they are very rare to find alive, living at depths of 600 meters.

Sadly, this specimen died shortly after being “found.”

Technorati Tags: Blog, Natural Sciences, Science

This car caught fire today outside our building. When they started to put out the flames, teh cloud of smoke was so dense, it looked like our building was caught in a cloud bank.

Luckily, John had his camera…

Technorati Tags: Blog

lostinspacerobot.com => Robot B9

Now you too can own a life-size replica of the Robot from Lost In Space – that is if you want to spend nearly $25,000 for the privilege.

Personally, I think it would be cool – far cooler than that lame Robby the Robot – but $25,000 is a lot of money for something that would, for all practical purposes be something that would sit in my office and collect desk – not to mention eating up valuable floor-space.

Ah, the dreams of childhood crushed by the brutal reality of adult life!

Found via teamdroid.com

Technorati Tags: Blog, Robot, Space