little bits of everything

So, Doctor Who. The BBC had related programmes last night on Radio 1 and Radio 2, but maybe the hype will die down now. I enjoyed The Show, mostly. I did wonder in the middle though, why aliens keep on choosing this country to invade, but maybe that's not the point. I was pleased to spot Christopher Ecclestone in the last few frames of John Hurt's regeneration. It may be because he doesn't want to take part in all the shows about the show, but I feel he gets overlooked. Although on the whole I enjoy Doctor Who, I'm disappointed that although we're in a Golden Age for TV drama generally, that's pretty much all we have for SF drama. Terry Pratchett made a comment in an interview how he wouldn't write for Doctor Who like it's done currently, with (and I can't quite remember the quote) leaving the clues as to the solution to the problem obviously at the start of the show. Maybe it's the all the story over in under an hour format that means you ca...

This is a sort of "draft public" post. Also, it's about Flickr, so maybe it should be on my techie blog. Oh well. Fact - Dan Catt is giving up on Flickr Fact - I will have been on flickr for nine years in November Fact - If I type fl in my browser bar then Chrome thinks I want to go to a parking company Fact - I uploaded a load of pictures to my photostream  at the weekend Fact - I have 1000 public photos Fact - I just looked at my stats page (which I haven't for months) and the daily views are around 60-100 which is more than they have ever been. Fact - two people I know have added me as contacts on the last week which hasn't happened for months or years.  I'm not giving up on flickr, but it is just somewhere I don't go to very often.

I've done a rare entry on our family blog about the lads days out that took place over the summer.

One of the boys says "I wonder which actor has been in the most films?". I pull a rectangle of glass and plastic out of my plastic and say to it, "which actor has been in the most films?". It tells me Mel Blanc. I say to it, "how far is it to London?" and it speaks back to me "the drive from your location to the city of London, UK is 33.7 miles". The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet.

Iain M Banks was pretty much my favourite SF author these days. So I was sad to hear of his illness a few months ago. I read one of his non-SF books (written under the name Iain Banks in case you're not up on that detail), The Bridge. I really didn't like it, but persevered to the end in case it got better. It didn't. I started another one, I forget which, and abandoned it. I bought The Quarry , a non-SF book, as a tribute to him, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed it. The main character's father is dying of cancer and so I couldn't help but read it with the assumption that he knew he was dying as he wrote it. Indeed when I researched it I found out that this appeared to be true  (via Wikipedia ). I'm not really good at book reviews, so go follow the links above to get an idea what it's about. There's strong language and philosophising but I think you'll find it will make you think.

When I was around ten years old I went on a holiday that was so great that I was really sad when I got home. After that I was determined never to be so sad again. As time goes by previous holidays are beginning to fade into a kind of blur. What is getting better though is that I am getting better at pacing my expectations of the way the holiday goes. There are three phases to the holiday. 1. Wind-down This is where you gradually wind-down from the normal pace of life. This really can’t happen until you’ve had at least 24 hours somewhere, so you can get used to the rhythms and routines of your holiday destination. If you’re like me you may find yourself worrying and checking to see how wound down you are. Of course, getting wound up about winding down is self-defeating. As well as getting used to your location there may also be getting used to the people you are spending holiday with. They may be your nuclear family who you see at evenings and weekends, or it may be extended fa...

I was tagged  by Simon Robinson to write about an album. I chose the one that is probably alphabetically first in my collection, and fortunately it was Aerial by Kate Bush. So first of all, the provenance. (I think that's a great word. It's a bit like terroir - it's hard to define, but encompasses so many things.) During my teenage and twenties decades the bands I was interested in were mostly all-male: Genesis, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, ELO, Queen etc. I don't really know why, maybe it was because I could relate to male singers more. Kate Bush was the exception to this pattern. So in 2005 this album came along, the first in 12 years, and so it was a case the situation where you get interested in an artist and buy a few albums from their back catalogue, and then after a bit they release a new album. (You probably can't imagine, really  can't imagine, how exciting it was when the new ELO album, Time, was released in 1981.) On the Guardian Music Weekly p...