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August 23, 2004
Doctor Who: Not Ranting, But Raving
Doctor Who. It's coming back. Its had the leads cast, and filming started about six weeks ago in Cardiff. Considering how I mentioned it often in other rants, why haven't I done anything much about it?
Simple - because I don't want to seem like a fanatic, a rabid, fanboy. Despite the fact that I am! I have daleks as my PC wallpaper! I don't mind admitting that I am totally overexcited at what is in prospect. Chris Ecclestone! Billie Piper! Autons! Daleks, even! What isn't to be excited over?
And the funny thing is, that despite Chris not being the lightest of actors, despite the new costume (leather jacket?!?), despite Billie Piper (thankfully a much better actress than a singer IMHO!), I am much happier about everything that is going on than I ever was with Thunderbirds! I love Thunderbirds as a series, but they basically pitched the movie at the wrong market. Still, it doesn't seem to be too bad really, in the end. The difference with Doctor Who is that it isn't being revision, reimagined or rebooted (unlikje my own I.T. comic strip!!!), it is a continuation from the old series and the TV movie (sorry Richard E Grant - you don't count!), it is being brought screaming into the new century, whuich is what it needed! I just can't wait! I have to, though, but if it does debut in March '05, I'll be happy - what better birthday gift could I have? My fave show comes back! w00t!
So what has brought this out in me? Why do this entry now? Well, I have found myself, after years of getting Doctor Who Magazine and sometimes waiting to get it on Friday (not the Thursday it comes out on), being there early on Thursday looking for any offical information on the series. And now I find myself visiting the BBC Who site for the Spycam images of things to do with the new production, avidly visiting sites to see images from filming (I've seen the Autons! Brilliant!!!!) while avoiding the plot spoilers (of which there are very few - yes you can find lots of images of Billie and Chris rushing around the streets of Cardiff in fake rain, but the bulk of the community is trying to keep things as much a surprise a possible) that lurk for the unwary. I can't help it!
I've also found myself visiting SuperHero Hype regularly to see how filming is progressing on another promising production, Batman Begins... Obviously, I'm not quite so exited here (the new batmobile is like a tank and looks cool - and it can bloody go some too judging by the video shot by fans in Chicago - but I'm more excited by the new TARDIS prop, all battered as it looks - I want a decent picture of it if I can find one). I think it is just something we can't avoid - we want - no - need to know as much as possible! I only hope that the so-far spoiler-free reports can continue (though I'll be gagging for the first shots of the redesigned daleks like everyone else), so that when the show finally debuts (and the second series is greenlighted!) it will still have surprises. I couldn't help reading what was going to happen in 24, but it still annoyed me to read in magazines a month early that certain characters were going to die and then read exactly who it happened - the biggest shock was that the 'stock footage' of F-16s was in fact not stock footage, and was in fact F-18s!!! For the new show to succeed (and boy, the BBC really do want it to from what we are seeing and hearing) we need to be able to watch it, and not know just what is going to happen next - how will it scare the new generation if they know that the dummies are going to jump through that glass window (though they will - it's what Autons best do, after all!) and that pouring rancid milk into their mouths will make them fizzle out and die?
I can't wait. I want to know everything. I want it to be on TV now. But I must wait. And hope that the surprises are there... along with the daleks!
Posted by Badgers at 01:01 PM | Comments (3)
August 20, 2004
What Have I Done To Deserve This?
Well, they finally came to collect the battered car on Wednesday, but unfortunately my worst fears were realised... The car has gone to Greyhound Ford for repair, so what do you think I got as a courtesy car? A Ka? A Fiesta? A Transit? Nope.
A Micra.
I hate Micras, but I must admit, it isn't as bad as it seemed at first. All the wheels are still in the right place! Perhaps its just because I'm so used to Camille's power, and how she drives, but it feels like the steering wheel isn't attached to the wheels - yes it turns easily (too easily!), but it feels like a Playstation wheel with the feedback turned off. The good news is that as I am off next week, I only need to drive it a couple more times, before it is left outside to be collected when my car is ready...
In other news, Sunday came and went, with everyone up at my place. Mum spent the day before her operation sitting in the cab of a lorry going round the town centre as apart of a parade of floats - apparently it was the best one there as at least we had done something! We had problems though - Nick, Andrew and I shared the internet connection without too much of a hitch (barring setting up the connection as I have only done it twice before!), but James couldn't get online - after fiddling with some settings, he couldn't even get onto the network. Things got worse as he got home - his graphics card has gone poof so he' shad to borrow the one from his daughters PC... and he can only use it at night. Not that this causes him much of a problem... that's when he spends all his time online!
Some good news (well, good-ish) is that Nick is now an uncle! Well done Nick - and you didn't even have to do anything! He's likely to be down in Wales this weekend having an ogle, and then coming back to share the pictures with us all... I hope it doesn't make me all broody again!
Work hasn't been too bad, apart from feeling trapped without the car - unfortunately getting out wasn't as easy as Monday night I fell over taking upteen sacks of tissue paper flowers out to the back street twisting my ankle. The weather, though has been terrible - apart from the rain (I'm surprised we haven't had much of a problem locally, though most of the rain did hang off until the last couple of days - some terrible footage of the floods in Cornwall and landslides in Scotland) that is even now coming down in buckets.
The good news is that Mum has had her operation on her knee, the bad news is that she will have to have the other one done sometime in the future. She is up and down (literally) on her crutches, determined to do pretty much everything she shouldn't. She is also moaning that when I get mine done I'll have to stay downstairs (why? she doesn't!) and will be on crutches for weeks. Yeah, right! I'll not be on those things for long, if at all, after the last time I needed to use them! I'll be at work by the end of the week too!
Ah well - next week I'm off to try and look after her a bit, and also get some comics drawn... its that 'lazy week' I told you about, so I should get next week's done, and possibly even the rest of I.T. Must Die! so that I can get down to Sun, Fun... I must also finalise the script for I.T. Goes To War... If I have time I may block out the rest of the rough plot of Automata (a novel!) and hope to get down to some work on Dark Tidings... I can't play Joint Operations properly until the next patch comes out to solve my constant sysdump.txt errors, so I might a s well get some stuff done!!!
See you all later...
Posted by Badgers at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
August 13, 2004
The Fact That It Is Friday Says It All...
...that it is the 13th just puts a fancy hat on it at a jaunty angle.
Imagine - I take the afternoon off work waiting for Greyound Ford to contact me or come to collect the car. By four in the afternoon I get worried, and call up. Apparently, they have been trying all afternoon - at least a dozen times. There are no calls to my phone, or to my mobiles. The only calls on the phone downstairs are dad ringing. I don't know what they were ringing, unless it was work, and they wouldn't send me a message, not about anything important like this.
The upshot of all this is that now my car will be collected next Wednesday. I will have to cadge a lift to my meeting in Preston, too on Tuesday afternoon. Hopefully, if I stay by my work telephone all day I should get a phone call and then rush back home in time to actually hand the car to them. Almost as bad as bloody PC World!
Ah well, at least yesterday was fun. I had four visits to make that I couldn't easily get out of, so I walked into work, then caught the bus to Rawtenstall, hiked over the hill to Haslingden, did the visit then hiked back. Then I caught a bus to Nelson, hiked round to the three people I had to see (virtually from two near the bus station to one at the bottom of Reedyford Road) then walked home over the tops. I don't know the exact mileage yet, but it was a lot. And I felt great about it! My legs are the only part of me I'm proud of, even if one of them is a little dodgy...
Here's hoping the car is finally taken for repairs/scrapping next Wednesday!!!
Posted by Badgers at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)
August 10, 2004
It Never Rains, But It Pours...
What?!? A mid-week entry? Never! But it is true, and here it is. There is a reason, but I'll come to that...
Sunday saw us up at Andrew's which was cool - we all managed to get there, and play Joint Operations (though I had a few hassles due to the dreaded sysdump.txt crashes! - I think this is down to servers though - Pork Rind 1 makes me crash everytime, while Typhoon 1 is usually fine... Fly Paper 1 is running with no crashes, so I might be lurking around there for a while...). We also got to play Doom 3 in deathmatch mode - it's old school, but fun. And the game is very good, if a little dark. Which is annoying as you need to keep using your flashlight or get a mod to tape one to your gun! Good fun had by all, especially as James has got another BB gun (from Blackpool this time) that came with red paintball pellets... he also brought lots of fizzy pop after spending ages going in Tescos, Asda, etc trying to find some coke. Ah well.
I'm getting to the reason for the early entry, but my way, okay?
It's been a wet couple of days - after the storms of last week, so far this week has been non-stop rain (though as I type it is just fining up for the first time in a while). The roads have been awash, and its generally been not nice. Lots of local flooding too. Unfortunately I have come a cropper due to this... on the way home tonight I took a run over the tops from Trawden as it was fining up and not raining any more. No problems at all. Then as I came to a narrow bit (suspiciously near to where I had a tyre get torn up by a rock last year) I saw a Discovery coming down towards me, so I thought that I'd pull into a farm gate to get by. Normally not a problem. Except that I had reckoned without the scree slope that had formed due to gravel being washed down! The car started to turn, then started to skid. Bump! The Discovery hit my back corner and I got off the road then! He has a scratch down the doors (nothing too major really) while I got a big dent in the back of the car. The brake lights, indicators, etc are still happily working though, which is a blessing. It may be repairable (the car was drivable, though it sounds like something is rubbing somewhere, but I can't spot anything too obvious) so it will be going to Greyhound Ford sometime pretty soon. I hope they can match the colour! If it isn't, it's goodbye Camille and hello to something else. Possibly a cheap, rusty Sierra for a short time, unless I can find another old Saab 900...
But what really irks me is that the bump happened as I am in the last couple of of payments for her. Just like my Colt. And looking at my dream notes (not yet put online) I had a dream about someone hitting me while driving last week (though the accident there was a close rerun of the one that totalled my Mitsubishi). Just when all my financial woes were finally going away (though I can fiddle it! - more Ebay sales are needed, and I will persecute any idiots who fail to complete checkout then whinge that they didn't recieve any of my many emails!!!!)
Here are pictures of the damage - more comment on the My Cars page!
Looks fine from here (well apart from the front skirt - an old injury easily glued back together (again)!)
A close up - the lights all work! This is the reason that bullbars should be banned!
A wider shot showing it in context. Sniff. Bumflaps indeed!
Posted by Badgers at 07:06 PM | Comments (3)
August 07, 2004
Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!
Disaster! Cataclysm! Devastation! Buggeration!
I mean, real Towering Inferno-style problems here, only without all that hot flamey stuff.
Sunday started well - I was up and drawing and finishing a bit I'd forgotten on the colours for yesterday's I.T. strip. I had a bath, went down for my usual Sunday bacon & egg dinner then got Ayumi pulled apart to go up to Nicks to take him up to Andrews. So far so good. I collect Nick - he has to get some shopping - so we go to Sainsburys. He gets a bottle of Bacardi as a house-warming present then mentions the frozen peas. Idiot. I say we can get them later (after all, they would be kinda more liike cooked peas, by the time we go home!). So we arrive, and Andrew shows us round the house - not that there is much to see as the place is a little smaller than I expected! A big garden front and back, though it is a little Vietnam-like - I kept expecting mercenaries to pop up and say "Did you hear something? Whatever that was, I don't wanna know!". A fair few rooms (two bedrooms and a room for his computer room/den) though, which isn't too bad. One horrible thing is the kitchen - it has all the appliances, but it is in a rather nasty yolk-yellow that really doesn't work - kinda like if someone bought it on the impulse to brighten up the kitchen - boy did they get a shock! A dodgy step on the stair and the laminate flooring in the living room that isn't quite fitted properly and bumps up and down, completes it really.
Anyway, after he takes us round, we set up in the living room. Nick's computer was making a noise like a chainsaw. Luckily this was just a fan. But Ayumi wouldn't boot. In fact, it wouldn't turn on. Andrew suggested the power supply but I doubted it - he did tell me to go to an open shop and buy a new one. Of course, this is not a good idea. As the only one anywhere nearby was PC World. I declined, but after a few tries to pull cables and try getting it to live, I gave up. I headed home alone, so Andrew could take Nick to Sainsburys fort the peas!
I got home then fiddled and determined that it was the motherboard. In a fit of madness I went to PC World. They had a few Pentium (spit-ding) mobos, but the only Athlon boards were for the new 64bit processors. And the staff were as useful as a chocolate radiatior. "The ones on the shelf are all we want - you won't get one now - it's a Sunday" (well durrrrr!). They did give me a leaflet. Thank you PC World - you'll be mentioned on Grumbletext!
So, I was without a PC for a little while (a slight lie, as I was able to browse on my parents machine, Rei, but it wasn't quite the same) and of course this had to happen at just the right time to bugger up the launch of the new-format I.T. didn't it!?! Yep - all the art I had to upload was on Ayumi, who was, until Tuesday when the bits came from Aria, so I couldn't do anything. Tankfully, On Tuesday I was able to get everything working again by slotting in a new Mobo - the same as before - and amidst a rather funky storm, Ayumi lived again!!! Live my creation..LIIIIVE!!!!
I had also got the bits needed to build my storage machine, but found that the Asrock Mobo had things sticking up that meant that my old Aero 7 cooler wouldn't fit. Bugger. So it was a new order to Aria to get another fan (an Akasa) and a DVD Writer for it - This time it worked and it came to life easily (in the middle of another storm)! Now I have a storage machine with all my Jpop music stuff on it, and so if this happens again (Goddess forbid) I can keep working and posting the strips! Result!
So I was able to launch the strip on Tuesday, and am now on schedule again, except that setting up two computers cost me a lot of art time so I am going to be busy today colouring and drawing next Friday's strip... Luckily there are what I like to call 'lazy' strips coming up that need so little art it hurts so I can get ahead again... you'll see...
Work? Do I have to? Well, it wasn't too bad, With a meeting on Monday in Preston to meet a top manager, various annoying people to see about equipment most days, supervision (thankfully a far less painful thing than previously!) and barely being in the office all week. For the last few weeks the staff at the loan store at the hospital have been off on holiday, sick, etc, so note of my equipment had been picked - I've been cobbling bits together, basically! But the boss returned this week, and on Thursday I came to work to find 3 1/2 sacks of stuff waiting for me... oh joy...
Of course, this week I went back to Rossendale Hospital to see the consultant about the ankle... I'm sure James and Marie will be interested! From the scan taken a few weeks ago, they now feel that the big lump that is sticking outo the ankle is a bone and have now put me on the waiting list for the operation. And of course, though most people would be in and outoi a day, I will have to be kept in due to my heart to make sure I am okay with the anesthetic. Oh goody. And the scan also showed that one of the ankle bones (the talus, I think!) shows signs of a bad injury - probably from the fall back in London years ago that first roally buggered the ankle, as it is old - so they will stick the camera in and look at that while they are there, just in case. Brilliant.
So, tomorrow we may be at Andrew's again, and this time it will be all four of us! This will be a test for his broadband connection! Joint Operations should be great... I also note that James has made a new blog entry, and beaten me to the Dream Diary! Git!
Ah well. before I go I'll just say a big "HI!" to the idiot who very nearly took the front of my car off in Waterfoot by ding 50mph down Burnley Road East in Waterfoot...
Posted by Badgers at 09:13 AM | Comments (0)