iainjclark | Recent Entries

I'm not about to defend whatever bad taste prank Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross inflicted on Andrew Sachs, but really this whole thing is snowballing quite ridiculously. Apparently Ross has apologised and Sachs is happy with that, but the number of complaints by people outraged on his behalf is still going up -- about a radio show that aired nearly a fortnight ago, and which most people complaining have not even heard. Suddenly, eleven days later, there are calls for the two 'stars' to resign. Or even for the DG of the BBC to resign. And now we have Gordon Brown and David Cameron weighing in; no doubt in a desperate attempt from both to appear relevant and in touch with the common folk.

My mob-mentality sense is tingling. We're in one of those horrendous, self-righteous tabloid feedback loops where public opinion and media coverage escalate in lock-step. That's not to say I like Russell Brand or approve of making offensive phone calls, but seriously folks.

Disturbingly, LiveJournal has apparently morphed into UndeadJournal. My Halloween-loving wife approves of this "tremendously". She's already bought some sweets in preparation for the trick-or-treaters this Friday. She's also bought a Witch's hat because the team on her enquiries desk at work are dressing up for the occasion. And, yes, she's now pretending to be a zombie and saying "Grr, Argh", which segue-ways me nicely into...

Joss Whedon has posted about Dollhouse in his inimitable (i.e. insane and free-associative) way. He talks about the show and its behind-the-scenes trials and tribulations. It seems like a fairly honest post given how much detail he goes into about the difficulties with the network, but he also sounds enthused. Right now I really have no idea what to expect from this show or its premise, or if I'll even like it, but I'm definitely intrigued to find out.

Today I succeeded in viewing the BBC iPlayer on our Wii, using the internet channel (for which I had to pay a trivial but somehow annoying £3.50). The Wii is an incredibly clunky way to browse the internet, with all sorts of zooming in, zooming out, scrolling around pages and trying to hit tiny buttons with the blunt instrument that is the Wii remote. It's a bit like doing watch repair while wearing oven gloves. However I did succeed in streaming part of Simon Schama's series about the U.S. using this method. Of all the ways to get TV on demand this is probably not going to win anyone over, but it does actually work. After a fashion.

I also now have a new mobile phone. I went with the Samsung G600 in the end, because although I don't think it's the best phone out there, it's the best one whose shininess I fell in love with. My verdict: shiny! Seems good so far. Okay, I had to do a stupid menu hack to get it to synch with the PC, and if I want mp3 text-message tones I have to upgrade the firmware with a special cable I don't own, but these niggles aside it's a nice phone to use. I now have the Firefly End Theme as my ringtone. Did I mention the shiny?

Hurray! My Tom McRae Live 2007 album arrived yesterday. Just listening to it now, and it sounds every bit as sharp and powerful as you'd expect.

Track list:
1. Walking2Hawaii, La Cigale, Paris
2. For The Restless, The Limelight, Belfast
3. A&B Song, La Cigale, Paris
4. Ghost Of A Shark, La Cigale, Paris
5. End of The World News (Dose Me Up), The Limelight, Belfast
6. Got A Suitcase, Got Regrets, Folken, Stavanger
7. One Mississippi, La Cigale, Paris
8. On And On, La Laiterie, Strasbourg
9. Deliver Me, Shepherds Bush Empire, London
10. Only Thing I Know, Debaser, Stockholm
11. Silent Boulevard, The Limelight, Belfast
12. Boy With The Bubblegun, The Limelight, Belfast

I could obviously suggest many other songs I'd like to hear, but this is a decent spread from his four albums with some material like 'Ghost of a Shark' that I've not personally heard very often (contrasting with songs like 'Got a Suitcase...' that I seem to hear all the time). The interpretations tend towards acoustic but if anything less quiet and sparse than you'd expect from the albums, with rich backing instruments from Olli Cunningham and Oli Kraus and a rounded sound. Tom is in strong voice and belts out some of the more up tempo material like 'A&B Song' and 'End of the World News' and there's some electric guitar in there.

If you've seen him live you'll know what to expect. This brings back memories for me, though I have to say we made a far livelier audience on 'End of the World News' than the shambolic lot on the album.

It has a fairly cheap cardboard sleeve, but since this is a direct release from Mr McRae unmediated by a record contract I assume it means more money gets to the artist. Go buy it! Other than that there's nothing to quibble about. Very pleasing.

This atheist bus advert is funny, sensible and positive. Really the mildest, nicest of messages. Amusing, then, to see how divisive it's proving on the very Guardian comments section that inspired it.

( Warning: Contains Atheism )

The campaign has reached £73,000 and climbing, far in excess of its stated goals. Which is nice. It all seems pretty harmless, and indeed pretty rare -- which is attested to by the level of slightly boggled media coverage.

--

¹ Genuinely sorry if all this offends anyone, by the way. I really do have a pathological conviction that even mentioning atheism in polite company is offensive, which is probably why I find this ad campaign so refreshing.

I'm sure this rumour about Paterson Joseph being cast as the new Doctor is utter bollocks, like 99.99% of all Doctor casting rumours, but I'd love it to be true. Ever since he played the flamboyantly Doctor-like Marquis de Carabas in the BBC's Neverwhere I've thought he'd be fantastic in the role. Along with Peter Capaldi he was the best thing about that series. In fact Neverwhere was explicitly Neil Gaiman's attempt to fill the old Who niche of scary genre television for adults. Ironically it was just as severely hamstrung by its production values as Classic Who ever was.

That news story also states that "many Doctor Who purists are already resisting the notion of a black actor taking on the role", which if true just pisses me off immensely. I don't hang around Who forums so I've no idea how widespread this sentiment is or if it's just confined to one troll and a few hardcore Whovians, but it's nearly impossible for me to imagine what arguments could possibly be advanced for the Doctor not changing his skin colour. This is an alien being who transforms every conceivable aspect of himself, including his hair colour, features, height, weight and, er, accent. Are we supposed to believe that melanin is one step too far?

Further adventures in book reading.

( 15. Bad Science – Ben Goldacre )

( 16. The Carhullan Army – Sarah Hall )

( 17. Tricks of the Mind – Derren Brown )

( 18. The Blind Watchmaker – Richard Dawkins )

Hard to believe, but this brings me to twice the number of books I read in the whole of last year. Next: The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.

It's really windy outside, with autumn leaves whipping past the window and collecting in rustling heaps that creep around our drive like sand dunes. Very cool. Our three-legged cat Pixie has been driven into a state of nervous hyperactivity all day, dashing from window to window and trying to bat leaves with her paw through the glass. She was less keen on actually being outdoors, since it's quite chilly.

All the more surprising, then, that we couldn't find her in the house this evening. Being outdoors in the dark, windy drizzle seemed a bit intrepid. An exhaustive search finally located her, nestled in the cocoon of warm air between the sofa and the radiator. Snoozing. That sounds about right.

After a long coin drought, Janet stumbled across the new 10p coin today. We're working our way steadily up the denominations.

They will be mine, oh yes.

We just watched part one of the BBC's new Stephen Fry in America. It's an amiable Michael Palin-esque travelogue in which quirky British person Stephen Fry drives a black London cab around every one of the US States. Now obviously Fry is a living man-god who can do no wrong, and his past forays into TV have been some of the best things produced in the last few years, whether delving into hs own mental health, his family history or the invention of the printing press. Which may partly explain my feelings of mild disappointment with this series. The pace of the tour is so rapid, with barely time for a vignette in each state, that it feels like edited highlights of a much better series. The early scenes are also crying out for more linking narration from Fry himself, coming across as a strangely disjointed series of moments with no common thread. Nonetheless he's a very likeable tourist, uncompromisingly English and out of place, but also delighted, interested and non-judgemental. It improved and felt more organic towards the end of the episode, so I hope the later episodes continue to relax into their subject matter. Maybe the book will fill in some of the gaps and add some much needed commentary.

We're not watching a lot else at the moment. The new US TV Season is in full swing, but is so far failing to impress. Bones is shaky at best, but then it was never what you'd call slick or plausible. The device of rotating grad students is at least mildly amusing. Heroes is proving considerably more engaging than Season 2, but is so irredeemably bonkers and that it's difficult to imagine how it can ever recover any plausibility. House is as good as ever, but lacks that single brilliant concept that made Season 4 stand out. Stargate Atlantis is like turning up for a rock concert and getting the hotel band instead.

(I do highly rate The Middleman for those that haven't caught up with it yet.)

Probably the thing that's most grabbed me is The Restaurant, a strange semi-clone of The Apprentice with a big dollop of Masterchef, in which a series of hopelessly inept couples struggle to run a busy Restaurant and repeatedly fail to show any trace of ability to learn or take advice. Like The Apprentice, I can't sit still for squirming in empathetic embarrassment or muttering in barely-suppressed outrage at their ineptness. Unlike The Apprentice, Raymond Blanc is clearly a Genuinely Nice Guy who offers insightful, constructive criticism, and always tries to soften the sting of his remarks. The man has the patience of a saint.

Lastly, I just saw these pics of Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes and Jude Law as Watson in Guy Ritchie's new movie. I'm unconvinced. In concept I was intrigued by the casting, but Downey Jr looks strangely like Charlie Chaplin. I can see that they're trying to go in an unorthodox direction with the material, and it's not that Holmes can't survive different takes -- I think he's the most played character in history, or close to it -- but at some point the changes will become so great that you may as well call him something else and have done with it. We'll see. A couple of pictures are hardly definitive, but they bode. They bode.

Tom McRae has released a live album through his website shop. He sounds great live, and it's a decent track selection recorded at various venues around Europe last year. Mine's already on order.

Meanwhile the irrepressible Dan "Don't call me irrepressible" Hartland has a rootsy new EP out. But you knew that. I was lazy and bought it on iTunes.

Anyway, all this leaves me musing...

[Poll #1274318]

Continuing my attempts to make myself look prehistoric by wallowing in Doctor Who nostalgia from the 1970s, here's a fantastic little tin that my Mum brought over recently (in her continued attempts to rid the house of all our old tat...)

Click for bigger versions and just admire the time and care that's gone into crafting this jewel in the crown of merchandising. I'm thinking the illustration alone must have demanded at least half an hour and a tube of Pritt Stick.

Here's the bit they would look at on Antiques Roadshow to confirm its provenance:

Apparently BBC Enterprises took the bold decision not to disown it. I do have a nostalgic fondness for the old girl, though.

When I discussed Prof Richard Dawkins's three-part series The Genius of Darwin I was puzzled as to why it merited the word "polemic" in my TV guide, noting that "creationism attempts to refute geological wisdom as surely as it does biological wisdom, but we don't go around calling [TV geologist] Dr Iain Stewart a polemicist."

Inevitably, Dr Iain Stewart immediately launched a three-part series (apocalyptically titled Earth: The Climate Wars) that's as likely to be labelled a polemic as anything Dawkins has produced. Global Warming is, after all, as likely as Evolution to be described in the media as "controversial". Interestingly, the polemic word doesn't seem to have been attached to this one. It's an "investigation".

To be clear, I don't regard either series as a polemic. Both are written and presented by individuals who hold a clear view as to the truth of the matter, and both include passionate advocacy of the importance of the issues being debated, but crucially both discuss the relevant 'controversy' in some detail and arrive at their determination through dispassionate and thorough (as thorough as the format allows, anyway) examination of the evidence.

Earth: The Climate Wars tackles its subject in three parts: the first details the gradual development of climate theories in the 1960s and 70s, including the now disproven prediction of a "big freeze" and the gradual rise of global warming as a theory. The second deals with the controversy that arose around global warming in the 1990s, examining the changing and contradictory evidence and the opposing arguments before ultimately disproving the objections fairly categorically. The third programme examines attempts to model the Earth's future climate, and to incorporate increasing evidence that climate change is, if anything, occurring faster than expected.

I found it fascinating. Iain Stewart is an engaging enough presenter and the programmes move at just about the right pace, focussing mainly on the science but to a lesser extent on the personalities and historical account of the discoveries. I knew a lot of the background, but there's plenty here that I hadn't heard before, or hadn't heard in detail. In some respects it's surprising how long ago the theory of global warming caused by human activity was first proposed, and how readily it was initially accepted. Fascinating, for example, to see Margaret Thatcher talking about the need for urgent action.

I was also aware of the notorious C4 programme The Great Global Warming Swindle (a "polemic" if ever there was one) for which the channel was censured by Ofcom for misrepresenting the views of its contributers (although since it had caused no "harm" to its viewers Ofcom refused to rule on its scientific accuracy). Dr Stewart briefly touches on that programme and the shockingly inaccurate graphs used to make its case. I've read other rebuttals, e.g. badscience.com but it's still nice to see a belated televised rebuttal. Indeed, this series of programmes, careful, thorough and engaging as they are, make a pleasingly level-headed counterpoint to the very propagandist and even ad hominem nature of the C4 programme. Dr Stewart also used extensive clips from a much earlier 1990 programme from C4 called The Greenhouse Conspiracy which makes you wonder what exactly C4 has against the theory of global warming.

The final programme includes some rather scary evidence of very sudden -- in the everyday rather than geological meaning of the word -- shifts in global climate in the past. These are sudden "tipping point" temperature shifts of several degrees centigrade occurring within a period of 2 to 5 years, calculated by examining both the thickness and chemical composition of Greenland ice cores¹. Coupled with recent evidence about the unprecedented summer retreat of arctic sea ice during the summer, it does make you wonder -- although thankfully 2008 didn't break the record retreat in 2007².

In an age in which (as repeats of Horizon on BBC4 will attest) TV science has been lobotomised to a few health programmes and the occasional theory that Yellowstone park may explode and DOOM US ALL, it's always welcome to have some real, solid science. Hot on the heels of Dawkins and the recent coverage of the Large Hadron Collider it almost feels like a mini-Renaissance in science programming, even if in each case it was probably the underlying sense of "controversy" driving things forward. I strongly doubt if Earth: The Climate Consensus would have made it to air.

All three episodes are available on BBC iPlayer. The third was probably the weakest, but all are worth a look.
--

¹ The process of dating ice cores back 50,000 years by simply 'counting the rings' that represent each winter and summer snowfall is surely as common sense a refutation of creationist dating of the Earth to 6,000 years old as you're likely to find. That's assuming geological dating using the precisely known decay rate of multiple radioactive isotopes is wrong -- which, wearyingly, is exactly what creationists argue. In fact, that very creationist web page states: "Ultimately, the age of the earth cannot be proven", a relativist bombshell which makes you wonder why they're bothering to contest the science at all.

² I sometimes find myself feeling an unworthy (and criminally stupid) desire to see the Earth meet a spectacular demise. Not just to prove the doubters wrong -- although, y'know, that would be some slight consolation for me as the human race faced extinction -- but because disasters are cool. That's why Iain Stewart's earlier series Earth: The Power of the Planet was interesting: because vast climactic and geological changes have a certain spectacular appeal. Catastrophes and disasters are strangely compelling, like that sensation climbers sometimes report of feeling an urge to hurl themselves into the void. I don't for a second suggest that I actually want the Earth to be destroyed, but the childish part of me does seem to revel in the concept. People are strange creatures. Or maybe that's just me.

Against all expectations I quite enjoyed that.

It's very far from the horrible teen travesty I was expecting, and nowhere near as glib and "modern" as the BBC's Robin Hood. Indeed it's about as literal and sincere a take on an Epic Fantasy novel (by way of Harry Potter) as you're likely to see on TV. The cast is good, and Merlin himself is a nice mixture of wit and self-deprecation. The atmosphere is well-served by some effective digital matte paintings and a rich John Williams-esque orchestral score. Even the dragon is well done, albeit exactly the same as the last few talking dragons I've seen¹. I particularly like the fairy tale quality of Gwen-from-Torchwood's plot.

Probably the worst-judged aspect is the Jocks-and-Nerds relationship between Arthur and Merlin, but it's a long way from grating.

Whether the world actually needs "Arthur and Merlin: Before They Were Famous" is another matter, but the pre-Arthurian premise is almost incidental to the fact that this is a surprisingly decent bit of Epic Fantasy².

--
¹ In films I mean. Rumours that I've been seeing talking dragons are scurrilous and should not be listened to.

² i.e. Entirely hackneyed and predictable, but in a good way.

My wife's doing heaps of overtime this weekend, and I've been sat here staring at a spreadsheet for several hours trying to motivate myself. It's due next week, time is short, and I'll regret it if I don't do it. Trouble is, I've already worked most evenings this week and it's all beginning to catch up with me.

Quite clearly the thing to do is procrastinate!

Tom McRae now has a blog, McRaetheism. As usual he's walking that fine line between deadpan comedy and soul-destroying nihilism. He also has a couple of new song demos up on his myspace page.

We've belatedly been catching up with The Middleman, which is exactly the kind of cheesy, heightened-reality pop-culture-drenched romp that the world needs more of; it's sort of what you'd get if The Avengers and Buffy Season 1 had a messy car accident. How can you not love a show in which the finale features an evil parallel universe, goatee beards and an impression of Snake Plissken from Escape from New York? Plus it apparently meets the bechdel rule. It's *so* going to get cancelled.

Tonight sees the debut of the BBC's Merlin in the Doctor Who / Robin Hood family slot. I'm not optimistic, but it does have Tony Head in it. And a dragon.

Thought for the Day: no matter how large or crowded the supermarket car park, someone is always trying to get into or out of the car right next to yours.

My book-reading pace has picked up again since last time.

( 10. The Lady in the Lake – Raymond Chandler )

( 11. The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins )

( 12. Climbing Mount Improbable – Richard Dawkins )

( 13. Dead Men’s Boots – Mike Carey )

( 14. Sunshine – Robin McKinley )

So there you go. 14 books to date during 2008, precisely half the number my wife has read in the same period. I'd like to say I'll catch up, but it's a bit like Zeno's Paradox.

It's been another bring-work-home-in-the-evening kind of week for both of us, and Janet is working on Saturday too, so we were very glad to have Friday off. We decided to head down to my native Yorkshire and visit the Harrogate Flower Show so that Janet could spend her hard-earned cash buying Even More Plants to squeeze into the garden.

How to tell you're in the North of England: On the way past York we found ourselves behind a Lorry transporting Mushy Pea Fritters (from Lockwoods, "the Mushy Peas Specialists"). No really. Take a look at that photo and tell me you don't want to throw up just a little.

At the show we picked up a 'wooden man carved into a tree trunk' sculpture, which is currently looking for a home among the tree ferns at the foot of our garden. I think it's possible to overdo this kind of garden ornamentation, but I have to say it looks pretty cool.

We were very lucky with the weather which miraculously held off from its scheduled pissing-it-down until we were safely back in the car and heading home.

I seem to have acquired a headache at some point during the day, but that's probably because our cat Pixie decided to try to find us at 7 a.m. this morning by deploying the feline equivalent of sonar - this involves sitting in the hall downstairs and miaowing loudly until you hear a response, then (and only then) trotting happily upstairs and jumping onto your owner's head.

We just watched the two-parter season opener of Bones. Set in the UK. Oh yes, you know what that means.

Not any UK, of course, but that very specific one populated by red telephone boxes, London monuments, double-decker buses, Dukes, "Gentlemen", Butlers and 'Scotland Yard' detectives. Janet successfully predicted that it would be all tied up with royalty before it even started.

Two of the young characters are named Cyril and Vera. Cyril's favourite food is Eels. Every scene takes place in a stately home of some sort, except the ones with Michael Brandon as an American ex-pat which take place in a gleaming skyscraper. Every single actor, even the British ones, and regardless of their character's background, have that particular "I shall do my utmost to accommodate you, detective" cut-glass accent that only exists in US dramas. Except the rough salt-of-the earth types who all sound like Dick Van Doike. Beer is served in pint glasses with handles, all the cars are boxy and twenty years old, and everyone is terribly concerned about class. At one point someone said "discombobulated" like it was an authentic bit of English slang. It was like watching Three Men and a Little Lady.

If you're actually British it all adds up to a fantastic drinking game.

I shouldn't mind really. For an alleged drama, Bones has a sit-com approach to characterisation. Even its forensics team talk in ridiculously formal, technical ways for no good reason. People suddenly become really dense or really perceptive as the plot or comedy punchline dictate. It's a dumb, amiable show. Being set in the UK just makes it grate that little bit more than normal. :-)

My horrible phlegm-filled lurgy is now finally subsiding, even though my throat is still raw and I keep coughing randomly. At least I no longer sound like a cross between Davros and Barry White, and was able to laugh at last night's Mock the Week without actually killing myself. (Frankie Boyle's Inuit Robot Butler was absolute genius).

Janet is off work today, and is happily ensconced on her PC playing Spore, which (despite annoyingly refusing to let her interact with any of the online content) is generally pleasing her in being a combination of every game style she's ever liked, with the added bonus that she gets to design weird alien life and evolve it.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which turned out to be unexpectedly not-a-big-pile-of-crap, is back for a second season on 8th September. I might never have started watching this if I hadn't been asked to review it, and seen a couple of other people praising it, but I'm really glad I did. It's smarter than it has any right to be, and it neatly picks up on everything I liked about T2 while ditching everything I disliked about T3. Lena Headey is suitably obsessive and bad-ass as Sarah Connor, plus it has Summer Glau as a deeply unnerving 'good' Terminator, as showcased by this here poster (click for a bigger version).

Ben Folds Five are re-uniting for one night only to play "The Unauthorised Biography of Reinhold Messner" in its entirety. When we saw Ben Folds 'solo' back in June he was playing with two other musicians who were for all practical purposes indistinguishable from the remaining two members of Ben Folds Five (to a philistine like myself -- I'm sure their friends and families see an important difference) so I'm sure this will be a breeze for Ben. This seems to be part of a MySpace "Front to Back" live album initiative.

Folds's new album Way to Normal is out on 30th Sept. He played quite a few songs from it when we saw him live, and generally it sounds quite up-tempo; less acoustic and melancholy than Songs for Silverman. More of an early-BFF sound, in fact.

The moment I started my holidays last Saturday I started coming down with the lurgy. Funny how often that happens. So even though I'm on holiday this week I'm also bunged up and feeling like the back of my throat has been sandpapered (or, occasionally, chiselled). Since I'm not up to much therefore, here are a few things that, in my delirium, I mentally logged as worth telling someone. You be the judge.

The saga of Tom McRae's website continues. It's now in Australia. No really.

This story about the MMR vaccine scare on Bad Science is actually an excerpt from Ben Goldacre's new book. It's also a fantastically rational account of how irrational the media can be in their quest to sensationalise a story.

Frost/Nixon is a movie that wasn't on my radar. What were the chances that anyone, let alone Ron Howard, would make a Hollywood movie out of David Frost interviewing Richard Nixon? It's hard to know what to make of it. The trailer paints the film as a mixture of political drama and David vs Goliath feel-good story, in the general neighbourhood of Charlie Wilson's War. Michael Sheen looks great as Frost, and Frank Langella seems okayish as Nixon. Other eclectic cast members include Oliver Platt (White House Counsel Oliver Babish on The West Wing) and Matthew "Tom from Spooks" McFadyen. (Plus it has Kevin Bacon in it, so given how ubiquitous Michael Sheen is this should blow the Kevin Bacon game wide open.)

No Heroics is a new sitcom centred around off-duty UK Superheroes. The trailer looks surprisingly okay, albeit sex-obsessed, particularly given that this is airing on that great sitcom purgatory, ITV.

Lastly, what is up with those camera zooms that punctuate Evan Davis's every sentence at the start of Dragon's Den? It's like the camera operator just ate an entire keg of Smarties and can't calm down.

It had been a while since we'd seen any newts in our pond, having at one stage counted nine newts swimming around simultaneously. We'd more or less decided that the newts had left the pond, as newts are (so they tell me) wont to do.

Then, on the very day my wife declared that if we didn't see a newt she'd give up, we found the tiniest of tiny baby newts (okay, larvae). And then two more. These really are small: only just over a centimetre long, about the size of a 1p coin. They have little gills and four tiny legs. Awww.

I've no idea how many others there may be lurking in the depths of our small pond, or what the chances of them surviving are, but this is a very cool discovery.

My wife asks me to put the following issue to the enlightened denizens of LiveJournal. Since I don't know any, I'm asking you lot.

For some time now (and specifically after seeing them on The Gadget Show) Janet has been considering getting an ebook reader.

You must understand that my wife reads a lot of books. She owns a lot of books. She owns a lot of books she hasn't even read. She and books share an understanding. She even makes books. It's not that she wants to replace books.

However she does think that it would be cool to download books: it would save on shelf space, and it would be handy when going on holiday. Now that ebook readers use 'e-paper' that doesn't flicker or tire the eyes but looks just like printed text on a page, she's getting really tempted. It's this Sony model which has caught her eye.

On the plus side it looks decent, is small and light, gets good reviews and supports a variety of formats including the new standard "epub" file, audio and image files. Waterstones are promoting it and if she orders it by 3rd September you get 500 bonus points. They'll have more than 25,000 ebooks to buy from September. She could download new books instantly, and cart them around. Plus she'd be living in Teh Futur.

On the down side it's still pretty costly (circa £200), and the technology is still in its infancy so it could quickly become out of date (e.g. although it can display images the screen is currently only black and white). Also the files seem to generally come with DRM restricting how you can use them -- i.e. a max of six devices -- which seems like it goes against the spirit of a book. Most worrying of all, there are proprietary formats it can't play (including Amazon Kindle) so you can't necessarily just download ebooks from the US where they are plentiful. This last one is really what's made her stop and think.

Personally I suspect that I'd love to own one of these but I'd never actually use it. I'm also incredibly materialistic and like having shelves full of *things*. I still buy CDs, even though I immediately convert them to mp3. I'm also not keen on the inverted "negative" image you get for a moment whenever the page changes, which can be seen on this video.

[Poll #1251175]

Opinions and anecdotes gratefully received. She'll probably ignore you and do what she was going to do anyway, but you never know...

My wife just made some books. Actual books. To me, this is a little bit as if she built a new television set. It's sort of like magic.

Essentially the ~~magic~~process goes as follows. The paper is folded, then hand-stitched into groups of pages called signatures.

These separately stitched signatures are bound into essentially the inside of a book.

Then there's a cardboard cover, in three parts so as to give it a flexible spine.

This is rounded to make a proper book shape. Here are three raw books.

Then the whole assemblage is glued together. Extra sheets link the cover to the inner pages, the cover is coated in book cloth/paper, and a cover design paper is glued over the top. Et voila! Three finished books

The end result is a little blank notebook that, frankly, I'd have a hard time telling apart from one bought in a shop. And all this from nothing but paper, cardboard, fabric and glue. How cool is that?

EDIT: And here's an open book, so to speak.

Tom McRae's website is broken. Or possibly not. Allegedly it's run off overseas with a girl band wesbite and is sending him postcards from France and India. Mad.

Unfortunately he's also posted on his Facebook wall that while he was on stage in Regent's Park someone broke into his house and stole his laptop including his new songs. He seems... unhappy... about it. As you would expect.

The consistently mediocre (hey, at least it's consistent) Stargate Atlantis has been cancelled after five seasons, but will return as straight-to-DVD movies just as its predecessor Stargate SG-1 has done.

I find it somehow hard to care any more. Stargate has always been the McDonalds of SF television: that place you turn for a reliable, known quantity that never excels but rarely disappoints, unless you forget to remove the gherkin.

Right from the start it's been content to place its own stamp on concepts that you've seen at least three times previously on one of the Star Trek spin-offs, but I do think there was a period in the early and middle years of SG-1 where it was turning out a good balance of rompy action material, comedy, drama, and some semblance of high-minded issue-led SF (whose last hurrah was probably the Hugo-nominated two parter 'Heroes'). It made good use of retroactive continuity, generally managing to tie new stories into previously established events (or technobabble) in a way that felt internally consistent. Its military, modern-day setting lent a certain grounded quality to its outlandishness and unlike Trek it was capable of sustaining a sub-genre of X-Files-esque alien invasion tales set on contemporary Earth.

In SG-1's latter years, after being picked up by the Sci-Fi channel, the series took a decided turn towards lightweight action-led fare, with most of the drama leeched from the series in favour of laconic banter and last-minute escapes. The technology at the team's disposal now extended to FTL spaceships, laser beams and transporters, with no attempt made to give these tropes an original spin. Hyperspace looks, feels and operates like hyperspace always does, teleporting is referred to as "beaming" etc. It was genial enough, but little more.

Atlantis, began as a blurry photocopy of the original show, and has since spent most of its time searching for an interesting direction (experimenting with "dark and gritty"), interesting adversaries, or an interesting cast. Rodney McKay is always worth a watch, and the series has slowly developed something of its own mythology, but frankly the franchise has reached the point where it's produced so many episodes that there's nothing left to do but to recycle past ideas in endless minor variations. (So much so that the characters are often found commenting that they've dealt with a similar situation before.)

And now Sci-Fi has announced yet another spin-off to replace Atlantis, Stargate Universe. This seems to mean that they've hired a bunch of younger (cheaper) actors and tried to create a lost-in-space show reminiscent of Star Trek: Voyager or Battlestar Galactica. It's tough to see what's going to set this new series apart from its predecessors. If anything, it seems to be jettisoning the last vestiges of the military, low-tech Earth-based setting that allowed Stargate to put even a slightly unique spin on its cliches. It's the ultimate reduction of Stargate into a one-size-fits-all SF platform.

You just know I'm going to watch the damn thing, though.

For reasons best known to my brain I've become fascinated by the new UK coinage in which each coin is a circular section out of a larger image.

Specifically I'm interested in the fact that I've still only seen 1p, 2p and 5p coins. Is this just brownian motion in action? Are there so many more of these coins compared to the others? Are the higher denominations simply not out yet? Is it because I live in The North where civilisation frays at the edges? Are you all hoarding them?

This calls for a poll. Which of these new coins have you actually seen?

[Poll #1244025]

Enquiring minds need to know.

I last did a books post waaay back in February. It's fair to say my pace has slowed a bit since then, but I'm still doing much better than last year.

( 5. Fragile Things – Neil Gaiman )

( 6. Fairyland – Paul J McAuley )

( 7. Farewell, My Lovely – Raymond Chandler )

( 8. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union – Michael Chabon )

( 9. The High Window – Raymond Chandler )

Between the two Chandlers and the Chabon I feel like I've been on a bit of a crime kick recently. Since I'm currently reading the fourth Marlowe novel it doesn't look like it'll end any time soon.

(Films 9 to 19 are here.)

1,800-year-old Roman stone sarcophagi found in Newcastle. That's not far from us! I learn from this story that they're apparently building a Great North Museum in Newcastle including antiquities, a planetarium, an interactive model of Hadrian's Wall, a life-size T-Rex dinosaur skeleton, and special exhibitions from London. This could be very nice for us as it's not always convenient for us to get down to the British Museum. I'm only amazed that my wife's normally excellent Archaeology Radar hasn't tipped us off to this sooner. The website banner appears to feature Egyptians on chariots hunting Dinosaurs, but I'll assume there's some artistic licence involved...

Of course if that recent bonkers think tank report was listened to there'd be no point in doing any of this because everyone in the North should just give up on their cities, which are beyond all hope of revival, and move south. This is so patently absurd that it probably isn't worth getting upset about, but Exhibit A would surely be the fact that any number of Northern cities have already succeeded in transforming themselves and their fortunes into thriving centres of business and culture. Like Newcastle & Gateshead, for example. Sunderland is one of those named by the think tank as "beyond revival" yet -- although it's hardly the largest or most cosmopolitan of cities -- in the relatively short time I've known it Sunderland has transformed itself from a shipbuilding town to one with a beautiful riverside and coastal area and a strong service industry base (including the University), not to mention the famous Nissan plant. The fact that anyone could seriously suggest otherwise reflects blinkered attitudes to the 'North' of England (i.e. anywhere north of the M25) that are quite surreal. It's the equivalent of saying that the London Dockland area was beyond revival prior to Canary Wharf being built.

And finally...

A sensible, evidence-based story about the British Summer. Will wonders never cease.

Oh god, Bones is doing a two-part season opener set in the UK, aka the famous bits of London. This is not something US TV is noted for doing well, and Bones is not blessed with what we like to call "subtlety". I'm expecting this to be full of Scotland Yard officers wearing tweed and bowler hats. (I wasn't sure what to make of the previous season finale either, which featured a major twist in which one regular cast member acted completely out of character for the sake of the plot.)

Torchwood Season 3 will be a five part miniseries, and it'll air on BBC One, stripped across one week at 9 p.m. in the same vein as the disappointing BBC1 drama Criminal Justice. BBC1, eh? The continued success of Torchwood is as meteoric as it is inexplicable.

Ronald D. Moore has another pilot TV Movie on the go, Virtuality, which sounds a) exactly like a holodeck-goes-wrong episode of The Next Generation and b) completely uninteresting. Virtual reality almost never makes for good TV because it has no consequences, meaning that consequences have to be unconvincingly slapped on: "If you die in the game you die out here too" / "If you unplug her she'll die".

I do seem to remember having a sneaking fondness for the short-lived VR.5, but that's probably because it had Anthony Head and David McCallum in it. (Alternatively it may be because it's "without doubt the best, most entertaining and thought provoking and compelling sci fi TV series I have ever seen, or can ever envisage being made" as someone on IMDB hilariously claims.)

I'm enjoying HBO's seven-part Generation Kill miniseries at the moment. It took a little while to get to grips with the characters, and I'm still not entirely sure I know who everyone is, but over the first few episodes the series has deepened and become more absorbing. It's esentially a cross between Band of Brothers and Jarhead, but based on a real journalistic account of the early days of the Iraq war. The production values are impressive, and the series looks for all the world like it was shot in Iraq during the invasion. It has the same sense of verité that David Simon and Ed Burns brought to The Wire, and a lot of clear parallels in showing flawed people at the mercy of petty and incompetent leaders. What's remarkable is the sense of complete aimlessless and confusion in what should be a co-ordinated military campaign.

My birthday yielded The Absolute Sandman, Volume 3 (the kind of gorgeous object of desire that's so heavy, nicely bound and on good quality paper that you'd want to own it even if you weren't interested in the contents). Also Alice in Sunderland, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, unchillfiltered Laphroaig whisky (which I'm sampling as we speak), two Raymond Chandler novels, wine, Fererro Rocher and the finest of foodstuffs, Tunnock's Tea Cakes. I'm led to believe a few other presents may be en route, and my wonderful wife even baked me a chocolate cake. With candles. Best Wife Ever.

In order to spread my feelings of goodwill far and wide, have a few links on me.

ittybittykitt really does feature some of the most brain-meltingly cute kittens ever captured by CCD. Every time I see one of their photos I think that kittens couldn't get any cuter, but somehow they do. I want to adopt them all.

One for

veggiesu: I notice that ITV3 are doing a six-week season of crime thrillers leading up the allegedly "glittering" ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards. What's interesting is that each week they're showing a specially commissioned documentary profiling "the six best crime writers working today" aka Colin Dexter, Ian Rankin, PD James, Lynda La Plante, Val McDermid and Ruth Rendell. (I leave it up to the reader to decide whether these are in fact the six best crime writers working today whose TV adaptations ITV3 happen to own the rights to.) Could be interesting.

One for

swisstone: Head of Roman empress unearthed near the previously unearthed statue of Hadrian in Turkey. Our local news is also banging on about visitors to Hadrian's Wall being up on last year, which they're -- not implausibly -- linking to the British Museum's Hadrian exhibit and associated publicity. I shudder to think that it could have anything to do with Bonekickers instead.

I've put this on Facebook already but look: Chewbacca mouse! Awwww.

I'm greatly enjoying Prof Richard Dawkins's current C4 series The Genius of Darwin, commemorating the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species. All pretty basic and obvious stuff about evolution perhaps, but I've been hoping for some time now (in this world of lowest common denominator science programming) that someone would come along and just Explain This Stuff to a wide audience. Too often TV gravitates towards only the most controversial or biographical aspects of science, or assumes that everyone knows the basics when it's sadly apparent that everyone doesn't. It's nice to see some basic facts set out clearly.

A lot of people seem to find Dawkins abrasive, but he's generally at his most self-effacing in the series to date, perhaps because this time around its premise rarely seeks to pitch him into direct confrontation with those who oppose his views (unlike previous series The Enemies of Reason and The Root of All Evil?). I don't find Dawkins particularly arrogant myself, but that's probably because I agree with him. He makes few concessions, but although I personally might not call a book on religion "The God Delusion" a) my book wouldn't sell many copies and b) I find it hard to argue with this title as a basic position.

So far the first episode has provided a whistle-stop tour of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, while the second has covered human evolution, and specifically the evolutionary roots of altruism, drawing on Dawkin's own work in The Selfish Gene. I've always been fascinated by the idea that humans are 'designed' for small family groupings and that much of our behaviour can, for good or ill, be explained by the rules for living in groups writ large. What's pleasing is how optimistic a view of human nature Dawkins manages to convey even while explaining biological origins of human behaviour that many might find unpalatable. He's obviously a liberal idealist who finds himself disgusted by the various political and capitalistic practices to which the word "Darwinism" has been metaphorically attached.

Next week it's back to the shameless creationist-baiting with a (to my mind much-needed) attempt to examine and rebut the attempts of intelligent design to cast doubt on evolution.

My only source of puzzlement about the series is that the C4 website¹ describes it as "polemical", whereas it's about as polemical as Earth: The Power of the Planet. It's not an opinion piece, it's the kind of straightforward explanation of accepted scientific knowledge that used to be commonplace under the banner of Equinox or Horizon . After all creationism attempts to refute geological wisdom as surely as it does biological wisdom, but we don't go around calling Dr Iain Stewart a polemicist.

--
¹ The C4 website has whacky floating banners that completely screw up the page in Firefox, but seem fine in Internet Explorer. Or rather, the IE tab plugin for Firefox which is about as close to Internet Explorer as I care to get these days.

Last year we built a pond. The construction process was fairly arduous for a soft northern shite like my good self. (There are various other pictures from the construction process here.)

One year on, I'm really pleased with the way it's naturalised in, something that owes a great deal to my wife planting lots of things, and very little to me watching her plant lots of things.

( Pond pictures )

Best of all it's full of wildlife, something we only faintly dreamed of one year ago. I'm genuinely amazed at how quickly the local fauna have moved in. They include various frogs and newts, about a million snails, some strange wormy things, and enough insect larvae to stage a 1950s B Movie. Today we encountered this lovely frog which poked its head above water between torrential showers, and obligingly posed for me:

There's another picture of it here.

We also went out for our regular Newt Watch the other night and discovered a hedgehog quietly snaffling all the dried meal worms we'd put out for the birds. Awwww. Being very soft, we're now putting out meal worms every night for the hedgehog. EDIT: And it was there tonight.

EDIT2: Huh. The pictures weren't working with 'new' Facebook links, but it's all fixed now.

Scrabulous suspended on Facebook.

Only suspended in America and Canada so far, so I'm okay. For now.

*wipes nervous sweat from brow*

I sympathise with Hasbro because Scrabulous does nick their game. Legally it seems pretty open-and-shut. On the other hand there's no profit being made and it would clearly never have occurred to Hasbro to do their own Facebook app without the success of Scrabulous.

The Wire star hits out at Emmys. Sergeant Ellis Carver thinks the Emmys are ignoring his show, and rightly so. I still can't believe that The Wire has never won an Emmy. It does at least have a single nomination this year: Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series for its final episode. Maybe that means it'll get the 'lifetime achievement' sympathy vote.

Fresh from last month's Ben Folds gig, we now have tickets to see Counting Crows supported by Ben Folds in December. This is good. Counting Crows' latest has some strong return-to-form stuff on it but has left me a bit cold overall. Nonetheless the combination of Crows and Folds is pretty much a slam-dunk. Folds has a new album Way to Normal out on 30th September which sounds a good deal more up tempo than anything he's done since the first couple of Ben Folds Five albums.

Hot on the heels of The Dark Knight (spoilery review here) there are preview screenings of Hellboy 2: The Golden Army on 5th August, so we have tickets to see that too. This is double plus good. My Cineworld Unlimited membership is a process by which I willingly allow Cineworld cinemas to scam £12 from me every month in return for me not going to the cinema. To add insult to injury, even though I only found out about the screenings through their Unlimited newsletter, my membership doesn't let me book advance tickets. So I've paid for the tickets. I really should cancel that membership...

The trailers for Hellboy 2 look a bit mediocre but I sense there's a good film hiding behind the crappy marketing. Plus I like the comics and really enjoyed the first flick and Janet is a sucker for dark mythological faerie types, so really the film is pandering to us shamelessly.

( Beware the Spoilers for The Dark Knight )

There's a decent little interview with Steven Moffat here about the fifth season of Doctor Who and how his writing style will change.

Meanwhile I recently came across something from my childhood that I just had to share.

You see, when I was young in the 1970s everyone liked Doctor Who and Davros was a scary villain. I know, obviously that's impossible to imagine today.

This is one of the Doctor Who game cards you used to get in packets of Weetabix. The back of each cereal box had a game board, and when you had all four game boards you could also add them together to make one really huge game board with the Tardis console in the middle. The cards were slotted in around the board, and then it was just a case of rolling dice and moving around the board, randomly landing on hazards. Sadly I no longer have the boards, but there are pictures here: 1, 2, 3, 4. Total nostalgia rush.

I have loads more of the things. As I recall they were traded in the playground at School and rare ones had the approximate market value of gold bullion. Ah, them were the days.

Joss Whedon is filming a new pilot for Dollhouse, with the original pilot now the second episode. He explains, in amusing fashion, why this is allegedly not the usual well-trodden road to cancellation here.

There's a promo for the Battlestar Galactica spin-off/prequel/barely related cash-in here. It doesn't look terrible. It confuses me becase it looks more like A.I. than Battlestar Galactica and seems, on the face of it, hard to reconcile with what little we know of Galactica's backstory.

Go watch Act III.

( Spoilers for all three Acts of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog )

Back in March I linked to a video of the Earth setting behind the moon from Japan's Selene probe. Here is another one of those things that really gets your 'sense of wonder' juices flowing: video (okay, technically an animation of many still images) of the Moon passing in front of the Earth. This was taken from about 50 31 million miles by Nasa's Deep Impact probe, which is all finished with its primary cometary mission and is hanging around the solar system drinking beer and spraying graffiti on asteroids until its next comet turns up.

More details, and an infrared version in which the continents are more visible, at the Nasa site.

And finally...

After tomorrow Dr. Horrible becomes paid download only, so get your fix now.

Not entirely sure about this poster as a design, but how perfect is Zachary Quinto as Spock?

That's Eric Bana with the tatoos, although it's pretty hard to tell. Plus Chris Pine as Kirk and Zoe Saldana as Uhura. TrekMovie.com has more details.

--
In unrelated news, today City Link delivered a parcel, to our door, while we were in. They knocked and rang the bell. I believe this means the apocalypse is nigh.

Assorted movie trailers:

Watchmen. The trailer is a strange mix of extremely faithful images, overly stylised slow-mo and slightly unreal visual effects. I think I sorta like it. (EDIT: now working.)

Outlander. A spaceman crashes in an ancient norse village while hunting an alien creature. The Vikings do battle. The Vikings are led by John Hurt... ...I *know*. I may have finally lost my grip on reality but this looks really entertaining, in a "Vikings vs. Predator by way of Chronicles of Riddick" way.

Terminator Salvation. This looks surprisingly promising for an unnecessary sequel, but really it's just a mixture of Christian Bale and some images taken wildly out of context. A teaser trailer in other words.

Quantum of Solace. Hmm. Could be good. I loved Casino Royale, and it feels a bit strange saying this about one of the longest-running movie franchises in history, but it remains to be seen if they can catch lightning in a bottle a second time.

Oh and of course not forgetting:

It's available again!

Having now seen Act One I can confirm that it is not, in fact, rubbish. It's rather droll, in fact. I don't often refer to things as droll - it makes me sound like a sardonic butler - but droll it is. Also, funny and with catchy songs. It takes a bit of time getting started, but it's generally an extremely likeable, extremely silly bit of TV streaming online media content. And Neil Patrick Harris is just great.

Interesting post from jms about the future of Babylon 5 - or lack of it. Interesting because I think he's now at a point that other people reached some time ago, the point where:

"B5 as a five year story stands beautifully on its own. If anything else is to be continued from that story, it should be something that adds to the legacy of B5, rather than subtracts from it.

As well intentioned as Rangers and TLT were, as enticing as it was to return to those familiar waters, in the end I think they did more to subtract from the legacy than add to it. I don't regret having made them, because I needed to go through that to get to the point where I am now psychologically, but from where I sit now, I wouldn't make them again."

This is unusually honest and self-critical stuff from a tireless self-promoter like jms, and he's clearly in a strong period in his film career right now so he's only going to go back to the show if it's genuinely warranted. My own review of The Lost Tales was somewhat mixed to say the least, and I tend to agree that this kind of half-hearted continuation detracts from the show's reputation. Every attempt to continue the show past its final episode, from River of Souls onwards, has done just that. Even A Call to Arms and those parts of Crusade which are okay feel ultimately unnecessary.

I certainly won't be upset if this is the last we ever see from the series, and from the sound of it neither will its creator. He goes on to say:

"The only thing I would be interested in doing regarding Babylon 5 from this point on is a full-featured, big-budget feature film.

It's that or nothing.

And if it's nothing, I'm totally cool with that because the original story stands on its own just fine."

David Simon was interviewed about The Wire on tonight's Culture Show. It was very much a primer for the show for UK types so there were no specific spoilers. Nothing he hasn't said many times before, but it was still nice to see the show getting some exposure on UK television. This edition of The Culture Show is repeated at about 11.20 p.m. on Thursday on BBC2 if you're interested.

They also premiered this highly amusing animated cat cartoon, from Simon Toefield, the man who brought you the equally amusing animated short of the cat trying to wake up its owner.

EDIT:

ajr beat me to it.

EDIT EDIT: In fact, don't wait, watch extra bits from the David Simon interview on the BBC website right now. So much extra stuff it must clock in about the same length as the actual interview.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: And here's the aired interview to watch online too.

It's available!

Well, Act I is available. Act II comes out on Thursday, Act III on Saturday, and then after Sunday it disappears and you can only download for a nominal free (or buy the eventual DVD).

This is Joss Whedon's free, streaming, internet-only supervillan musical, which Joss explains far less coherently but more amusingly in his evil Master Plan.

My only caveat is that I haven't actually watched it yet. For all I know it's rubbish.

EDIT: This is on the Facebook and Myspace sites:

We've officially crashed

We love you for crashing the site, we really do.
In the meantime, those of you who have iTunes capabilities can go there and get your fix. Our site should be up and running again in a few hours.
Your support is warming our hearts and kicking our asses. So thank you thank you.

Joss Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon, and Zack Whedon

That Tom McRae single I mentioned, "Lipstick", is out now. It's one of those "featuring Tom McRae" arrangements where the original artist 'Wills and the Willing' supplied the backing track and a bit of rap and he wrote and performed the rest.

I have to say I absolutely love all of the Tom McRae bits - it's the best thing he's done in quite a while, especially when he gets to rock out a bit towards the end. Sadly, although I'm not normally averse to a bit of rock/rap fusion, the rap bits just don't work for me.

Still, I've bought it on iTunes. You can also hear it on his myspace account (although the contrast with the downloaded version from iTunes only serves to remind me how much streaming audio changes the mix and sound of a song.)

This is a fantastic dissection of a particularly odious anti-Muslim story in the generally extremely odious Daily Express.

What perhaps shouldn't surprise me quite as much as it does is that the story has only the slightest resemblance to the truth. The headline ("Sniffer dogs offend Muslims so now bomb search police face restrictions") is in fact not just a distortion but literally untrue and is disproven by the fine print later in the story.

This stuff really annoys me. Most days I wander past the news stand and see the headlines on the Daily Mail and the Daily Express and feel vaguely amused at how biased they seem to be. All tabloids pander mercilessly to their perceived demographic, after all, whether left wing or right wing.

Sometimes though I do get disheartened by how relentlessly the more right wing publications are brazenly trying to stir up xenophobia and make their reader (some hypothetical middle class, middle aged white person) feel that their way of life is under attack from all sides. For example, during the recent petrol strike (that only minimally disrupted the country) the Express chose big headlines stating "Government says not to panic but FUEL COULD RUN OUT!" To be fair, most of the media became obsessed with seeking out areas where there had been at least some disruption. Most didn't actively set out to cause panic, however. The Express is particularly fond of headlines that sound like they've been screamed by someone experiencing a nervous breakdown. Starting the headline with the word "NOW..." is their preferred means of indicating that this latest indignity is the final straw.

The website linked to above notes some of the more extreme comments to this story, which appear to be made by people who only read the headline. Okay, even the BBC website tends to have comments threads filled with slighty deranged people ranting from their chosen soapbox, but I still find this a little depressing.

I know the Daily Express is an easy target. I know they pander to a readership who already believes these things. I just find them particularly shameless and manipulative, and the one thing that really does aggravate me in journalism is Making Stuff Up.

(Link courtesy of the ever entertaining badscience).

Will Ferrell and Sacha Baron Cohen are making a spoof Sherlock Holmes movie (as Watson and Holmes, respectively). This is almost certainly a bad idea, but as usual they failed to run it past me before greenlighting the project.

Meanwhile Guy Ritchie is making a not-spoof Sherlock Holmes movie. Or not intentionally spoof, anyway, since this is the previously reported "sexed up" version emphasising Holmes's bare-knuckle boxing skills. Insert "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Jackets" joke here. On the other hand Robert Downey Jr. is playing Holmes, which makes me all intrigued. And afraid. And intrigued. And afraid.

Meanwhile David Simon will be following the incomparable The Wire and the upcoming Generation Kill miniseries with Treme, an HBO pilot for a series set in post-Katrina New Orleans; details of which can be found in this excellent and detailed article about Simon in the New Yorker (which contains some spoilers for the fifth season of The Wire).

Joss Whedon has an online webisode supervillain-musical thing called "Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog" starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day. Trailer, article and review. It looks strangely awesome.

Anyone got any idea about this one?

Our broadband has been absolutely fine since we had a BT engineer come and update our master socket and lay a new extension cable a few months ago.

But suddenly, even though the router reports being connected at speeds of between 3Mb and 4MB, every broadband speed test reports 128 Kbps or very close to it. (In a reversal of the normal position we can upload on the speed tests at a little over twice that rate!) Web pages seem veeery slow.

I've swapped to a different router with the same result. I'm a bit perplexed.

EDIT: BT's speedtester Best Effort Test:
Your DSL connection rate: 4480 kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP profile for your line is - 135 kbps
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 123 kbps

So I'm thinking something has caused BT to re-profile our line as REALLY SLOW. If so, I think I'm right in saying it'll improve after 72 hours if our sync speed stays high. I think.

EDIT 2: Yay! All fixed and speeds back up to normal. Apparently if there is a large percentage improvement in ADSL sync speed BT will revise your speed upwards in 5-6 hours instead of 72 hours. I have to assume this is what happened today, since the connection was moving like a broke-legged donkey until lunchtime and has now sprung into normal speeds again.

Well that was completely, embarrassingly terrible from start to finish. And not even in a good way.

It has pilot-episode-by-numbers so deeply encoded into its DNA that it's as if it was automatically generated by screenwriting software. On top of that it boasts an absolutely stupid premise, hilarious sub-CSI "sexy" archaeology, stultifying attempts at emotional depth and the least atmospheric riff on The Da Vinci Code meets The Last Crusade that it's possible to imagine. The one-dimensional villain and his nil-dimensional henchmen are rivalled only by a cast of heroes written so thinly and played so unconvincingly that it's nearly impossible to believe you're not already watching the Dead Ringers spoof. I'm hard pressed to find a single redeeming feature. Shame on you Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah.

My wife's been busy making crafty things again. As you know she's a tireless explorer of different craft projects and gets through more in one weekend than I get done in your average month. This time around she's turning her hand to wire bracelet making, and as usual she's invested in a range of books, equipment and tools. She's only made a few so far, but this is the one she's most pleased with:

This one is copper wire shaped around a wooden mandrel, bound at intervals, with beads threaded on to make the pattern. As usual I'm very impressed. The other fruits of her labours can be seen here. She's already taken an order from someone at work to do some more! I think Janet pretty much has a good time with everything she tries, but she's particularly enjoying the bracelet making at the moment.

For those of you not interested in craftwork, here is a cute snoring three-legged cat: