The one bit of good news in amongst a generally lousy day is the news that baby Wilkins has made his entrance.
Not surprisingly Phil has only had time for a brief message to everybody by e-mail, but I’m sure we can expect to see loads of pictures of the baby and proud parents soon. We’d just like to wish Catherine, Phil and the baby all the best.
So, with us having returned the final set of enquiries, signed the contract at the weekend, and Beth about to start talking to moving companies, essentially ready to exchange, earlier this evening we had a shock phone call from the agent – our buyers have pulled out.
According to the agent they said that some friends who were also selling have been let down by their buyers so they’ve withdrawn from the purchase on our house to buy their friends house instead. Of course that leaves us in a total mess as the other people in the chain like us are pretty well ready to go, just a couple of queries to sort out, and now we’ve got to back to square one with finding a new buyer for our house. The agent was being realistic – he is going to phone the others on the chain and ask them to wait, but equally they could decide to go back to the market for a new buyer. Just one of the problems with the current purchase system in England – we can get almost to the end of the process, everybody having spent a lot of money on surveys and the like, and people are still free to walk away.
So we’ve had the first two parts of Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood – and it’s already gone one better than the only previous spin-off, K-9 and Company and managed two episodes rather than one!
The two episodes were shown as a double bill, a wise move I think, as the Russell T Davies pilot episode was definitely the weaker of the two. It will be interesting to see how it is greeted, as this is definitely not Doctor Who. Yes there are quite a few references – although never by name – but this is definitely an adult show, with occasional swearing, some gore, and well with the plot of episode two being about an alien entity that absorbs energy from orgasms (which I know sounds like the plot of a porn movie) quite a bit of sex. It will certainly be interesting to see if there is any sort of outcry from parents who had let their Doctor Who obsessed children watch it without checking it out first – certainly Beth is aware of pupils who are fans who were going to tape it.
As to whether it was any good, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t fantastic either. When Doctor Who came back it had the benefit of the key elements being almost embedded in the national psyche, so in general it didn’t need much exposition. The thing is that as a concept I don’t thing Torchwood quite works – I mean they’re fairly visible for a secretive organisation – dashing around waving guns around and in the most conspicuous car imaginable, which looks for all the world like a drug dealer SUV only more cheesy and yet conversely after the massive numbers of personnel that were visible when the London base appeared in Doctor Who, they now seem to have a staff of five at their base in Cardiff.
Having said that, most sci-fi shows tend to take a while to find their feet – and I suspect this may be no exception. However I do think that it might have been better not to saddle it with quite as much of a link to Doctor Who – especially as this is a very adult show spinning off from a show with a family audience. Quite apart from that I’m slightly concerned that with Sarah Jane Adventures coming along too the Doctor Who ‘franchise’ doesn’t go the way of Star Trek in that it spins so many shows off that it gets lost in it’s own continuity.
Take a look at this picture of a bit of Sky+ weirdness…
We had got it to record the second episode of Commander in Chief the short-lived drama starring Geena Davis as the first woman President of the United States. Whilst the technical details of the recording, and the recording itself are fine, the information is quite clearly the Jeremy Irons episode of Who Do You Think You Are? that was next in the planner. Interestingly the information for that was correct…
I have to say, whilst we wouldn’t be without the Sky+ now, it is decidedly buggy. It has periodic problems where it looses all the programme listings and needs to be powered off, and very occasionally really messes up. On one occasion I’ve actually had to pull the plug whilst it has been recording as the UI has totally seized up. Beth has also had a problem where she could get no picture out of the box, but it was quite happily recording – very strange. Maybe one day they’ll sort out all the bugs…
So here I am going through the e-mail, and I get a log for our Oracle Microcache which is an APS film canister hidden in the centre of Reading. Not uncommon as we get a steady stream of visits. Then I actually read it…
I’d overheard a conversation about this cache sometime ago, so got to the area quickly. Found with a little help from a local Geobabe currently in Devon. Fortunatly, I was at a fancy dress party last night dressed as the grim reaper so had a handy sythe to help me 😉
Cache stuffed with random pieces of paper so took the liberty of swapping it out for a fresh 35mm cannister with pencil.
The first paragraph is fine, but the second left me absolutely speechless. It’s always been stuffed full as it’s got four years worth of people signing it, plus various people have left other things in it, however he’s apparently just taken all of that away and replaced it with his own canister – and he didn’t even leave the same sort, he left a 35mm canister instead. Now it’s not uncommon for people to maintain other peoples caches, but it is usual to actually ask them before doing anything, certainly before taking their cache and replacing it with a totally new container.
I’ve got no idea what he’s actually done with what he’s removed – I’d actually like him to put it back if he’s got it, have to see what’s happened. I’ve e-mailed him, and also e-mailed one of the UK admins, so lets see what comes about.
Update: Ok, I’ve calmed down somewhat now. I’ve not heard from the cacher in question, as I’m told he’s actually on his holidays and touring around, using a mobile to produce the logs – which now explains why it was a short log.
Apparently he has kept the cache and is intending to scan in the logs which is nice. I’ve come to the decision, as suggested by some other cachers, to disable the cache for the moment, until I can get up there to check what is there. I shouldn’t think there is anything wrong with the new container as the cacher who changed it over has a load of his own caches, just making sure. I’ve also e-mailed the cacher again to thank him for keeping the logs, and see where we go from here.
I’m loathed to loose the Oracle Microcache as it produces by far the most amusing logs of any of our caches – not many caches that people have resorted to a vacuum cleaner to retrieve…
Update 2: Well I’ve heard back from the cacher – unfortunately not the nicest of e-mails. Sadly he doesn’t seem to understand why I should be upset at the idea that he has totally replaced one of my caches, apparently he’s done it to other peoples caches before and they’ve thanked him. Really it reminds me of just why I am glad not to be an admin on Geocaching.com any more. Trying to deal with peoples different ideas of what is acceptable and not is a real pain at times – it’s not the first time something like this has happened and it won’t be the last. The most notable I can remember from when I was fully active in the community with was one cacher who thought he’d be helpful and have the camera in somebody elses cache developed – it went down badly with both the cache owner and other people in the community – but then others thought he was only trying to be helpful.
I e-mailed again, apologising, trying again to explain why I’m upset by it, and suggesting we draw a line under the incident, to which he replied in fairly terse agreement, to his credit he has also gone and put the original cache back in place. I honestly think that he believes he was doing me a favour, and that he can’t understand why I was upset by what he did. The game is such that aside from cacher meets I’ll be unlikely to meet the guy, and with the few caches I have around, there’s not much chance of our paths crossing, so hopefully that will be an end of it.
The general comment I’ve had from most other cachers is that though I over-reacted a bit, which I accept, it is always good practice to e-mail before doing something significant somebody elses cache. An e-mail saying that the cache container was looking a bit battered and that he had a replacement he could provide would have been fine.
Interestingly as a result of this, the suggestion that has come from other quarters is that I should just draw a line under my whole participation in the game and archive all my remaining caches and be done with it. Certainly it gave me a lot of stress when I was more active, which is partly why I’m in the background now – and with the spectre of litigation against cache owners it certainly seems worth getting out and archiving all my remaining caches too.
Anyway, I’m not going to make any decisions on that just now, since as you can see elsewhere we’ve got somewhat more pressing matters to attend to with the house.