Anyway, they got the link from CatholicInsider.com a series of podcasts produced by a Catholic priest based in the Netherlands. This is a special three minute podcast, apparently of God delivering a keynote address in the style of a certain CEO of a computer company…
Just a quick note from the womanly half of this couple to wish everyone a happy Christmas season! And to say that I hope I’ll be able to do more posts in the new year, especially ones on the Reading Log. My lovely husband has given me two more Jasper Fforde books, and I’ve received many more that were on my list from friends and family. I’m quite impressed with myself (and a bit shocked, actually…) to find that I’ve read 46 books this year so far – and there’s still a week left in 2005! And it’s all holiday!! So besides hoping to go see King Kong this week, I’ve nothing pressing on except to dig into my stash and see what emerges as good and wonderful…
BTW – if you want to see what I’ve been reading this year, you can visit my Reading Diary list at BookCrossing. I’ve rated the books I’ve read, as well as included some links to author websites and blog entries about the books I’ve had time to write about.
Talk to you about the Christmas presents soon!
So tonight we had the first Doctor Who Christmas episode since the sixties (the last one was The Feast of Steven, episode seven of the Dalek Master Plan if you’re curious), and also the first full outing for Doctor number ten, David Tennant.
As in previous new Doctor stories, the Doctor himself is not in the centre of the action for the first part of the story, this time being in bed suffering the effects of his regeneration, whilst the alien invasion takes place. The invasion starts off with robotic Santa’s with flame throwers, and remote control killer Christmas trees. Also rolled up in the plot is a British backed mission to Mars, that gets hijacked by the invading Sycorax. By midway through the episode the main characters are on the Sycorax spaceship, and the Doctor is on the floor of the TARDIS unable to help. However, just in the nick of time, he is brought round by a cup of tea, and saves the Earth in his pyjamas, dueling with the alien leader. That leaves just enough time for the traditional new Doctor costume choosing scene, and a bit of Christmas cheer, before we get a tantalising sequence of clips from the upcoming series, including the return of Sarah Jane Smith, K-9, and a glimpse of the new Cybermen.
All in all we thought the story was a great episode, although there was a Christmas theme, it was still a decent Doctor Who episode. It gave the impression of having had some more money spent on it too, with a fully orchestrated soundtrack this time around. There is also a new version of the theme, again more orchestral, which restored the middle section of the theme that the Murray Gold theme left out (although enthusiastic fans have remixed the Gold version to include the missing section too) although the continuity announcer talked over the relevant bit in our region. The bigger budget also extended to showing us another part of the TARDIS – the vast wardrobe that has been mentioned in the past, but never shown. Here it is seen in a similar style to the console room, but with a sweeping spiral staircase in the centre. We also get some new surprises, with the Doctor, whilst still close to his regeneration being able to regrow his hand at one point, and who can forget the spectacular opening scene with the TARDIS crash landing.
As the upcoming clips showed, aside from the bigger budget, there are still elements from the old series. Tonight, UNIT reappeared as the nerve centre from where the British Government were operating as the invasion began. There were also references to other well known BBC sci-fi, with the Doctor saying that he felt like Arthur Dent, saving the world in his dressing gown.
Following on from the episode on TV, there was even a special interactive episode on the digital TV services, which although being pretty simple from a plot point of view, again seemed to have had some time spent putting it together, and had more of the new Doctor. It also had a great last line, when the Doctor warns that the residual effect of the sonic screwdriver on your TV remote may cause the universe to implode if you switch to ITV!
As is usual, the way David Tennant plays the role compared to Chris Eccleston, although there are still all the elements of the character, going from humour and fun, through to some serious and intense moments, particularly when the Prime Minister orders the retreating alien spaceship shot down, and the Doctor says he can bring her government down with a few simple words. Currently one of the lasting impressions, particularly from the interactive episode is quite what energy Tennant has in the role, possibly contrasting the new, more youthful Doctor to Doctor number nine. To some extent it is as if the events of Parting of the Ways have brought closure to the events that haunted the Doctor during the previous season. Certainly it will be interesting to see how the new series unfolds, with a different character for the Doctor, and with the strong characterisation we have come to expect from the new series, I’m sure we will see the dynamic between the main characters change and grow.
If you missed the episode first time around, both the episode, and the interactive stuff on digital are being repeated at New Years – and I’m sure I’ll be taking a second look then too! You can read some more opinions on the episode over at Behind the Sofa Again too.
Update: The overnight ratings for Christmas Day have been released (and Behind the Sofa Again have published these under the quote from the interactive episode “If you switch to ITV tonight, the galaxy may implode…”), showing that Doctor Who came second to Eastenders in the Christmas Day ratings, with 9.4 million viewers. The only ITV show that is close is Coronation Street, and with only three out of the top ten programmes being on ITV it looks like the BBC have won the Christmas ratings once again.
A couple of months ago, we got approval from the Church Council to upgrade the internet connection that the Church uses to broadband. Up until then, the internet connection had only been dial-up, which tied up the phone line when collecting e-mail, and caused regular hiccups with sending e-mail.
My initial worry was whether the line itself would be able to take broadband, but the initial tests by BT proved positive, with the prospect of being able to get a 1 Meg connection. That was turned on on 22nd December, at which point Matt went up to do the relatively straightforward task of plugging in the ADSL router and hooking up the PC.
What he hadn’t counted on was the quality of the existing phone wiring.
The master socket, where the phone line comes in to the building is down in the kitchen, with the other extensions hard wired into the socket, however the office, which is almost directly above the kitchen is on the end of about 700 feet of phone extension that goes across to the other side of the building and comes back across and into the office through the loft. Matt couldn’t get a stable ADSL connection out of the connection in the office, but had more luck with connecting directly into the master socket. However the connection again started to drop out whenever he reconnected anything else.
As a result, after three days worth of fiddling, he’s finally given up and we’re going to call a BT engineer in to investigate. Hopefully we’ll also be able to get him to move the master socked up to the office too. It is also a good reminder that the quality of your broadband connection is only as good as your phone wiring. Whilst a human can put up with pretty poor quality phone calls through wiring such as the stuff in the Parish Centre, ADSL is really a lot more fussy.
So we’ve finally reached Christmas Day. In previous years the choir has been required to sing at the 9:30am service on Christmas morning, so we have sung at that, and then gone up to my parents after that. However this year the choir aren’t required, so our final Christmas service was the Midnight service last night/early this morning.
Yesterday was pretty busy. We both sang at the 2pm Christingle service, and then Beth went home to phone her family in Canada, and I waited around to see if I was needed at 4pm, and also to provide moral support to Matt who had been struggling with the broadband at the Parish Centre for two days.
The Christingle services were well attended as usual, although we had produced 200 tickets for each service (one at 2pm, 4pm and 6pm) we don’t check tickets on the way in, so numbers wise we had almost 700 people between the three services. Next year we’re probably going to have to revise up the number of Christingles we make too, as with increased numbers of children at the 2pm and 4pm, despite Steve Clayton making a Christmas Eve dash to Tesco, and a team making more Christingles during the 4pm service, we still ran out at 6pm.
The Midnight service was also packed out, with people standing in the north aisle, and also a large group of people who stood in the vestry during most of the service. Rev Richard, preached a pretty good sermon challenging many of the non-regulars who turned up to maybe come along a bit more often. For all the Christmas services this year he had had special information sheets prepared, in the case of the Christingle focusing on our Family Services, and for Midnight on the Church community, with a tear off slip to sign people up on our mailing list. It will be interesting to see if we get an increase in numbers as a result.
Anyway, the choir now gets a week off, which we’re looking forward too. By the end of the service last night my voice was starting to go, with me just not able to get the bottom bass notes in some places.
Beth and myself would like to wish everybody a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.