Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop gets a Korg Poly 800

...seriously, I recognise those sounds. Apart from those weird blotches of white noise randomly throughout the new Doctor Who opening theme music, I mean, what the hell are they?

And then in walks Brian Blessed chewing the scenery!

[END]

Fun with Russ and Jane

To check the punctuation and pluralisicality of the title of a previous post, I had reason to google "tofog". I found gruntland.com, the official website of the late unlamented Thirty Odd Foot Of Grunts.

I swear that, in the fonts and settings on my computer, it says
More News From Russell Crowe
dick here
If the link is about Russell, you can say that again.
[END]

This week's pet pictures

So, once you've used your camera phone to take a couple of pictures of your pets and you've selected the one you are going to use for your phone's wallpaper, what do you take pictures of then? Wait until you're stuck in a subway bombing and take some blurry video to send to the media?


Yes, I can take pictures of things that I see around, like currently-vacant blocks of land that have "soon to be developed" signs on them, but the 4.0 mpx camera is three times better for that than the phone. Who knows? Maybe something interesting will happen and maybe I'll be there when it does.



You might have noticed that I'm just writing text to see what happens to the text that I write in the lay-out I've selected. [END]

1.3-odd megapixels of grunt

or... scenes from my week.















Monday, December 19, 2005

Firefly 2

It turns out last week wasn't the last Firefly, although the episode, Objects in Space, is often listed as the last episode in the episode guide I link to; I think it's tv.com

[END]

Doctor Who's classified ad (+more)

Wanted, one assistant. Must be prepared to have faceless pervs hold you captive and go on about your "perfect", "flawless skin". Must be willing to be referred to as "a pretty one". Must wear bad '80s bodysuits.

Posted 7pm, December 2, 2005.

Must have a good proportion of meat to the bone. A plucky creature who knows how to take care of herself.

[END]

Doctor Who and Blake's 7

There must be something in this Doctor Who/Blake's 7 connection for the currently showing series. First we had the guys running around in the B7 helmets -- I think that was Varos -- then we had Servalan in The Two Doctors, now it's Avon's turn.

I'm sure a bit of research would either prove or disprove my theory that B7 had just ended and DW got some spare actors, more budget and some left over props in return. I seem to recall B7 starting (here) in 1980, when I was in grade 6. I don't think it went more than 5 series. Although, wasn't there a break before the final series? I really must do some research.

Actually, another theory - was B7 at the height of its popularity and they got the actors across to give DW a bit of added cachet? And some hand-me-down props.

[END]

Team America: World Police

I don't see too many new fillums any more. I haven't been to the cinema in yonks. We get two "Foxtel Box Office" movies per month (use 'em or lose 'em) included in our package, though. They're in the new window between the six-week video-store-only window and the premium-cable-movie-channel window. We've had trouble even watching them, however, because we often check the listings and think "do I really want to waste one of my two free movies on that?".

Well, when it's the 12th of the month and you only have two days - none of them a weekend day - to watch one more movie, suddenly it doesn't have to be a movie that we both will watch. And that movie was Team America: World Police...

But I still can't be buggered writing a review; it's been a lot of years since I sat down and did one of those. Instead, here are my notes:
Cairo bazaar like the cantina in Star Wars. Love the empath who only 'feels' the bleeding obvious. Of course, the 'Arabic' is standard South Park 'Arabic' - derka derka blukumlukumbluk mohammad jihad derka derka. World Police reminded me a lot of the South Park episode where Cartman was playing westerns with Clyde Frog - I was waiting for Salma Hayak to turn up "Oh no, my clothes have fallen off..." Kim Jong Il's panthers were awesome. Slavery, f**k yeah!
What's not to like about this film? It's a dead-on parody of a blockbuster, by which I mean every piece of overwrought music, every "I value you as a friend" was exactly what would be in a live-action taking-itself-seriously version of Team America. The puppet sex and the standard Matt and Trey gay jokes probably wouldn't be.

But try watching any other "patriotic" movie now and not have some part of it jump into your head. We watched Air Force One yesterday. Well, I played Solitaire on the computer while Boycat's mum watched it, and I swear there were several times where the only appropriate thing to do was to launch into a verse of "America, F**k Yeah!"

[END]

DVD recorders and cheap Chinese TVs

So my DVD recorder stopped opening last weekend. It had been slowly mucking up for a while - not reading discs, crashing when I pressed record, etc. but now the drawer won't open. Luckily I'd taken to keeping it empty so there's no disc stuck in it.

Hopefully this one won't be as hard to fix as our last DVD player. We bought that one back last century when we were early adopters, but over time some functions stopped working. Like playing DVDs (it still played CDs though, and since my wife wouldn't let me replace our old CD player because the DVD plays them too, that was at least something). We rang the manufacturer to find the accredited repairer. We took it to them, and after a month they told us it would be $550 to repair. So we no longer have that one...

[The problem is that it was a 'world zone' player; we bought it already mod-chipped; and half of our DVD collection are region 1 discs.]

So we're hoping the DVD recorder isn't anything like that. Next problem: the Panasonic accredited DVD repairer isn't open on weekends, so I'm not sure when I'm going to get to Yerongpilly to drop it in, because I don't usually have the car on weekdays.

Still, we have our Foxtel iQ box to record things on - I think I've recorded directly to the DVD once in the past 6 months: I wanted to tape three things at the one time and one of them was on free-to-air, so I popped a disc in. But we're running out of things to watch: we haven't taped any Law and Order for about a month because we've pretty much seen them all. The original series isn't too bad, because there are such a lot of them, but SVU and Criminal Intent seem to have been syndicated from their first seasons, which means there aren't enough of them, so they play the same ones over and over.

Luckily we picked up our rainchecked TV/DVD player the same week as our DVD recorder carked it. And, being a cheap Chinese-made player they don't bother with any region encoding - it seems to play anything (well we only have Australian and U.S. discs to check; they both work.) Of course, it is about the worst quality I've ever seen. You know those DVD-Rs you recorded at 0.78G/ hour (6 hours on a disc)? Well they might look okay on the machine that recorded them, but on this thing they look like mpegs copied off the net and blown up to full screen.

So now we have a TV in the bedroom. We're just not used to watching TV in the bedroom. Boycat's Mum is one of those people who falls asleep almosts as soon as she gets horizontal. And if there is white noise in the background, or the audio of a Friends episode she's seen 10 times before, then she's out like a light.

Usually, the discomfort of trying to sleep on the lounge keeps her awake until a reasonable hour of the evening, say 8pm. But when we try to watch DVDs in the bedroom, forget it.


An Aside
Hey, those of you with hard-disc or DVD recorders, what do you call it when you record a program? I still talk about 'taping'. I've tried to change it to a generic 'recording' but it just doesn't come out smoothly. 'Disking' just sounds wrong to me. I thought about 'burning' or 'ripping' but they seem to require that a computer be involved somewhere in the process.

[END]

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Today's musings

Australian golf's "Triple Crown".
You know, I'd never heard that phrase used in relation to Australian golf before last week sometime. Last Monday, the ABC was calling it a 'triple treat' so it seems to me that it was invented after that.

It seems to me
Whenever you read "it seems to me" here, you have to imagine it how Homer Simpson says it.

U.S.A soccer coach writes off Australia.
I meant to say something about this at the time, because now I can't find the story in the archive. I think it's pretty funny, because at least people in Australia care if our team wins. Few in the U.S. gives a crap about his team.

[END]

Monday, December 12, 2005

Vengeance on Varos updated

I must watch Brazil and Farenheit 451 again. Something about the set-up of Varos reminds me of one of them - can't remember which.

I started watching Doctor Who again this time around for Turlough's first episode, Mawdryn Undead. Now we're, what, about two full seasons (i.e., one and two halves) past that? Gee the budget seems to have gone up a heck of lot over that time. Even from an episode in the previous series where they're all running around in left-over Blake's 7 helmets.

Blake's 7
, now there's a show someone should bring back...

Posted 8pm, 10 December 2005.

LATER -

So yesterday I started watching the DVD of Brazil that I bought about 6 months ago and hadn't got around to watching. I only got about 5 minutes in before something else came up, but it was long enough to see that the actress who plays Mrs Buttle was also in Vengeance on Varos.

[END]

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Here he is again...



[END]

Here's my baby



He's a little blurry - I needed to use macro mode, but it was the day I bought the camera, so I didn't know how at the time. Check out how in-focus that brick wall is, though!

And here's my wife's dog...

...and our lovely op-shop sofa.

Law and Order - Have you ever noticed...

Have you ever noticed on Law and Order (any of them) when a female cop or D.A. interviews a fashion photographer, movie producer or porn mogul, the interviewee always makes some comment about how the cop/D.A. could be a model/actress/porn star...

[END]

Firefly

Well, I have to admit it... I started watching Firefly because I missed the whole Buffy-mania* and I wanted to jump on a bandwagon.

But now I really, really like it and I, too, am pissed-off that it only lasted half a season.

I haven't seen Serenity yet, I figure now that I'll wait until I see the whole tv series. Although it appears that's only one more episode...

*I saw the movie in the cinemas when it came out, but apparently Wheedon fans like to pretend the movie never happened. But I guess that if it never happened, the tv series wouldn't've either?

[END]

Some fun links

Courtesy of Mark Morford, a columnist from San Francisco. I don't recommend reading him, though, because he talks about politics... and sex and stuff

Thumbnails that look like p*rn, but aren't really

Toys for stupid boys

[END]

Boycat photo coming soon

as soon as i learn how to post photos.

[END]

Friday, December 09, 2005

I remember, back last century...

Back in 1997, I used to labouriously (sp??) hand-code html so that I could put what I used to call 'rants' up on my website. Now I just sign up to something and ten minutes later I'm sprouting shit to the world. Ahhh, what fun.

Of course, I thought more about what I was going to say back then.

[END]

Thursday, December 08, 2005

It's been so long since we took the time...

It's been 25 years, eh?

I remember (or think I remember) my sister coming down from her bedroom and saying "John Lennon's dead. And it must be true because Triple Zed just played Happiness is a Warm Gun."

[END]

You are my Solskjaer

Ole's back!

[END]

Friday, December 02, 2005

Alan Moore knows the score

The graphic novel "Watchmen" is approaching its 20th anniversary. DC Comics last month published an anniversary edition retitled "Absolute Watchmen".

"[W]hen they coined the term "graphic novel" nobody mentioned that the novel in question was Ulysses" - Tom Shone

Ground floor, comin' up.

[END]

Thursday, December 01, 2005

I take it the liver-coloured armbands were in honour of George Best?

Maybe the Queensland Roar just aren't any good. Maybe we deserve to be seventh. Helping New Zealand break an 11 game losing streak; that was woeful.

All this frickin' passing is driving me crazy. It's like that game in the Simpsons that caused a riot. We only score on first-touch balls and fast breaks, yet we keep passing. We did those three man triangle things at training in the under-nines; with about the same skills, it seems.

Hopefully our new Ronaldo [Reinaldo] will be as good as the other ones. Our Korean guy is pretty good. Maybe our Uruguayan isn't any good. We don't have a Japanese guy.

[END]

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

It's my wife's birthday today!

Happy birthday to her, happy birthday to her...

[END]

The first episode of The Five Doctors - the most tedious 24 minutes of TV ever?

[Post transferred from my old blog.]

Seriously, I've been watching a few of the old Doctor Who episodes from 1983 on the ABC because my brother wants me to tape them while he's out of the country. When I say "tape", I mean record on my Foxtel iQ and then dub it down on my DVD recorder. Anyway, the first episode of The Five Doctors is one of the most boring things I've seen recently - and I watch a lot of TV, so I've seen a lot "recently". Most of the episode is spent watching left over footage of the previous four doctors being kidnapped by a large black triangle that looks lower tech than Pong.

I'm up to part three now, and my point is the show itself is okay -- the series, not The Five Doctors, which is the biggest load of thrown-together crap I've ever seen, Tom Baker did well to stay away from that one -- they aren't even bothering with cliffhangers at the end of the episode -- even if the really low budget was beginning to really bite; but the picture quality of the filmed exterior shots it so bad they should have stuck to stories that could be done inside. The videotape might look tacky, but cutting from clean tape to dark dirty film is just jarring.

Not sure what I think about the new spin-off that was announced.

~November 7, 9.50pm

syme points out that it was originally made to be broadcast whole. That doesn't explain why the entire story was so bad. Especially since this was an anniversary special.

Poor old Jamie. Old being the operative word. Still, at least he wasn't dead.

~November 8, 10.50pm

Thanks for the info, syme. (See comments, imaginary other readers.) I guess it was just a shame the 25th anniversary came up during what seems to be a low budget period. Especially compared to the glory days of the 4th doctor.

[END]

Monday, November 07, 2005

Friday, November 04, 2005

Queensland Roar, Queensland Roar. Can defend, can't score.

I have to admit that it slipped my attention also that Queensland were the equal best defence in the A-League.

Probably because I was busy pulling my hair out as we squandered 33 -- count 'em, thirty-three -- shots on goal against Perth.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

This shit is addictive

So, I'm missing Firefly, but it's okay, because it was broadcast at midnight about a week ago anyway. I love my iQ.

I'll probably talk a lot about television but I'll almost always be behind.

A space western. Apart from a few jokes, I can't see what syme sees in it, unless it's Kaylee. I just can't take Johnny from Two Guys and a Girl seriously. Syme tells me he was in Buffy, too.