Monthly Archives: April 2005

Doctor Who

New Who Confirmed

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The BBC has confirmed that David Tennant will be the new Doctor Who, to appear in the second series due to start filming shortly.

This comes in the same week that we got the first of the Doctor Who is too frightening for kids complaints after last weeks Victorian episode with gas creatures taking over dead bodies. It actually reminded me of a comment that John Nathan-Turner made in a documentary, that he usually looked forward to Mary Whitehouse complaining about the show, as her intervention would usually result in an increase in viewers the following week.

The discussion even made it to PM on Radio 4 on Thursday, with Mark Gatiss, the writer of the episode called on to explain himself. The argument presented on the radio, and also by many other commentators is that Doctor Who is safe scares, and the new series is no different to the old series in that respect. As a child you were frightened, but the goodies always won in the end. I had a chat to Mum about this today, and she said the only thing she ever complained about was the final episode of Blakes 7 where the goodies didn’t win. As a number of people say on the BBC comments page on the item there are a lot more frightening things going on in the real world. To some extent I think that kids being frightened by Doctor Who, is much the same as the traditional telling of ghost stories around a campfire.

Anyway, tonight we have the most spectacular effects sequence of the series so far, with an alien spaceship crashing in London, taking out Big Ben on the way. Take a look at the Doctor Who Homepage for a preview.

Incidentally, if you’re a fan with a musical bent, take a look at the Whomix site, an entire site devoted to fan remixes of the main theme, with some versions that could grace the TV show!

Movies & TV

Bad News for Hitchhiker Fans

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I got to read my first review of the new movie version of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy today. After my initial worries, I had been more hopeful having seen the later trailer. However, having read MJ Simpsons review my worst fears about the film have been realised. To quote from the review:

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie is bad. Really bad. You just won’t believe how vastly, staggeringly, jaw-droppingly bad it is. I mean, you might think that The Phantom Menace was a hopelessly misguided attempt to reinvent a much-loved franchise by people who, though well-intentioned, completely failed to understand what made the original popular – but that’s just peanuts to the Hitchhiker’s movie. Listen.

And so on…

It’s bad on a big scale because enormous swathes of the story have been dispensed with – most of the Guide entries, whole scenes – or changed beyond all recognition. And it is bad on a small scale because many, many wonderful lines have been cut or in some cases actually rewritten to make them less funny. Whatever your favourite line from Hitchhiker’s, there’s a good chance that it won’t be in the film. Even if it’s really well-known, widely-quoted, much-loved, very funny – it will probably be absent from the movie. Or if it is there, it might have been changed.”

In addition there is a much more detailed review that goes through the entire plot of the film pointing out where changes have been made, lines have been cut, and so on.

Having read the long review, it seems to me that what has happened is a usual dumbing down for a US audience. As a result, a lot of the jokes and wordplay have been cut out. On top of that the plot itself is even more confused thanks to changes made to the original plot, in some cases changing fundamental elements of the original.

It remains to be seen whether I’ll actually go and see the film now, although I guess with my expectations suitably lowered I might find something to enjoy.

Computers/Technology, MobLog

Limitations of C#

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I am currently going through the process of designing a pretty complex object hierarchy for a project, something that I haven’t done for a while. The big difference this time around is that I am doing the design to be put into C#, the new language that Microsoft introduced as part of .Net. The last time I’d done a hierarchy this complex, we’d been working in Java.

Anyway, I’ve just had a fairly frustrating time trying to create a hierarchy to meet my requirements in C#, made all the more annoying because I know I can do it in Java, and more than that, J#, the Microsoft version of Java can do it too. The problem is that I want to use overloaded and polymorphic properties, and C# just won’t have it. What I want to do is supported by the CLR, and by other .Net languages, just not C# or VB.Net.

This now leaves me with an interesting quandary. I can probably shoehorn a way around the limitations of the language – but it won’t be nice. Or I can write my object hierarchy in J#, and use it from C# without a problem. Decisions decisions…

Computers/Technology, Pictures

Google Sightseeing

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Thanks to Dave Oliver for pointing me towards the new Google Sightseeing Blog. The site has a pretty straightforward basis, following the introduction of satellite imagery to Google Maps the whole blog is filled with shots of famous places, places of interest, and some just plain weirdness. For example take a look at the weird trippy triangle in the desert north of Las Vegas.

Currently the maps only cover the USA and Canada, however that does mean that I’ve been able to check out some places that we know well.

For example, take a look at this plane coming in to land at Calgary International.

Plane coming in to Calgary

And this is Niagara Falls from above.

Niagara Falls

Or how about a view of Beth’s parents place, the Crooked Tree Ranch from space?

Crooked Tree Ranch

There are loads more interesting shots on the blog, and if you don’t find what you want, Google Maps has the whole of the USA and Canada, and a powerful search tool to find just what you want to see!

Politics

Amazing What You Can Do With Photoshop 2

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A while back I posted an item with an example of what can be done with Photoshop. Today the Conservative candidate for Dorset South gave another demonstration.

Spot the difference

You can read the full article on The Times website. But to sumarise, the first picture is the original, showing the candidate campaigning against the legal deportation of a family back to Malawi under the current rules, the second is a doctored version of the first, that went out on campaign literature describing the Conservative plans to tighten immigration. It does strike me as decidedly odd that a few weeks ago he was campaigning for an asylum seeker to stay, and now he’s all for tightening up the rules. The BBC article on the photo offers some justification for the apparent conflict, but to me it serves to highlight the fact that making statements on immigration are all very well when dealing with statistics, until you are actually dealing with it on a personal level, and hearing personal stories. Certainly it is a difficult subject, and the coverage in the campaign so far has already brought warnings from Churches and the United Nations!

This also came on the same day that it came out that the Conservative candidate in Winchester was trying a little cyber-squatting, having registered a site in the name of the local MP. Whilst there is a dispute resolution process, it would take months to sort out. Of course Winchester is a prized seat after the fiasco in 1997 where the Conservatives lost by 2 votes, took it to court and forced another election. The local voters didn’t take kindly to it and delivered a 39.6% swing against the Conservative candidate in the rerun.

Anyway, according to the BBC Election Page we only have to put up with this stuff for another 23 days, before all the politicians all retreat back to Westminster.