Archive for June, 2007

I’m just going to ask one question…

Just one…

Has the whole point of the last three series of Doctor Who been to set up a one gag story arc for Captain Jack?

In other news Last of the Time Lords managed not to be a lacklustre series finale and didn’t resort to a silly big battle that would have overstretched the CG budget and ended up looking worse than a small crowd of Daleks being an entire invasion in the 80s series.

Personally I think Muadib had a better ring to it as a word of power (not that I’d rather read the book where his name is not a killing word for a silly gadget but that’s another blog post). Bit more mysterious but Doctor will do as a second best.

My copy of Marion Raven’s album Set Me Free came from Amazon last week but in all the excitement of the week end I didn’t get round to blogging about it. A good mix of different style and even the tracks I didn’t like at first are growing on me. Her sound isn’t ground breaking or particularly new but it’s well constructed well performed rock music.

1. Excitement – I was like a kid on Christmas morning I woke up at 5AM
2. Nerves – These hit me on the way to the airport. It was my first time going up in a plane so being a bit nervous on the way was to be expected

3. Loud – Not as loud as I’d thought from watching films but certainly not quiet

4. Basic – No frills but not in the modern sense
5. Unpressurised – who needs a pressurised cabin anyway

6. Aroma – There was a slight but distinct smell to the plane

7. Spacious Leg Room – I’m reasonably tall and I didn’t feel cramped in my seat

8. View – Thankfully the rain held off and the views of Liverpool, Runcorn and the Wirral were stunning
9. Wow
10. Priceless – It was worth every penny, even the car park fee which was devised by a mobster on their day off

11. Soft landing – You wouldn’t have spilt a drink if you’d had a glass in your hand during the landing

12. Time distorting – It didn’t really feel like only fifteen minutes in the air

13. Indescribable and Unforgettable – words and pictures can’t really describe it

14. Cool

I’m planning on doing a TT of 13 other people’s favourite posts from their blogs as a follow up to my list of my own last week. If you leave a link to yours in the comments this week I’ll add it to the selection I’ve got to pick from.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

A picture of somewhere on the Wirral I took from a Dakota last Saturday.

About a quarter of the visitors to the impworks web site have French, German or Japanese set as their language in their web browser. In an ideal world I’d be able to read and write all of those or get someone to do the translation for me. This isn’t an ideal world so I’ve written a little bit of php to add links to Google’s Language Tools. I’ve not decided where I’m going to put this on the web pages yet so while I decide I’ve added it to the bottom bar of each page that wasn’t being used at the moment.

It was a bit fiddly to get working. I’ve also included some code that should stop the buttons appearing in the
translated page as the translator rewrites links but isn’t smart enough to cope with links to the language tool itself as special cases. I’m not 100% certain that code is working 100% of the time. So if you have a minute to spare and could nip over to the impworks and just leave a comment to say that you can or can’t see a line of links at the bottom of the page in a grey box including:

• Deutsch
• Español
• Français
• Italiano
• Português
• Pусский
• 日本語
• 한국말
• 简体字

Thanks!

I was worried The Sound of Drums, part 2 of the 3 parter season finale, last Saturday would do what has happened in several of the recent two parters: lose all the momentum built up in the first half. Thankfully it didn’t. Fingers crossed part three delivers a proper closing punch to the season and doesn’t turn into a silly wimper or a bad special effects fest.

I know Doctor Who is silly fluff. Till someone has the nerver to make real science fiction in Britain it’s the best champion we’re going to get for the idea that we can do science fiction and we shouldn’t just leave it to Americans to do because they have more money for special effects.

I’ve added seven pictures to the impworks’ web site gallery today.

For as long as I can remember I’ve had a picture of a plane flying over clouds and mountains. It had that grey, crome look that lots of 1950 art had. It was the front of a card, probably a birthday card but I don’t remember it ever having the back. I do remember the plane was a Dakota, otherwise known as a C-47 Skytrain, a transport plane developed from the Douglas DC3.

Today I got to go one better than the card. I got to go in a C-47B-15-DK built in 1944 for a flight from Liverpool John Lennon Airport. It was the first time I’ve ever been in a plane or through airport security, an experience of a different kind in itself. We went up the river seeing New Brighton, the Runcorn bridge and various bits of the city. At times we were in cloud and at times the sky was clear. It wasn’t as bumpy as I’d thought it might be and the cabin wasn’t as noisy as I’d expected. When you see Dakotas in films everyone is shouting. You’d have to raise your voice to be heard but not yell. Words to describe the experience fail me. It was very, very cool.

Sadly I can’t find the picture now in amongst the assorted cards I’ve kept. It may be somewhere just waiting to be found when I’m sorting out or it may be the only copy I have now is in my head.

Pyramid has an article about how much information can be stored in a book. You need so be a subscriber to read it. As a spin off they’ve made a calculator to work out how many ox carts it would take to carry around the data stored on computers, CDs and DVDs if it was written out. You don’t need to be a subscriber to use the calculator which you can find at a page cunningly titles:
How Heavy Is Dense Reading? Supplemental: An Oxcart Full of Knowledge

If all the data in electronic form in my flat were turned into illuminated manuscript I’d have about 59,000 ox carts worth!

1. My First Post which isn’t particularly exciting: Staring at a Blank Page.
2. Favourite picture: A reed in the fog.
3. After years of struggling to create a logo for impworks finally making one I like.
4. Relaunching my impworks web site in June last year.
5. My favourite article on writing I’ve written: Characters on the Couch.
6. Post with the most comments: Thursday Thirteen #8
7. My favourite film review since starting this blog Hot Fuzz
8. Favourite random stuff post: The Bank of England
9. Shameless promotion for a friend: Nimues Price
10. Not so much a single post as a variety of mentions of my short story become novel work in progress: Night in the Sidhe.
11. 12. Favourite TT: About Toasted Cheese Sandwiches because the feedback was so good.
12. Most traffic post: Vue Python for Beginners – a tutorial on using Python in Vue Infinite.
13. My first Python Script for Vue – I didn’t expect these to be such a big part of what goes on here but I’m not complaining that they are proving popular

In a fortnight I’m looking to do a TT of 13 other people’s favourite posts from their blogs. If you leave a link to yours in the comments this week I’ll add it to the selection I’ve got to pick from.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!