Doctor Who - Partners In Crime

Donna returns, just in time to encounter the cutest aliens the Whoniverse has ever seen.

Oh, yes. Spoilers ahoy. If you don’t want any kind of spoilers for Torchwood or Who, I’d advise you to bookmark and come back later.

Only a night after the finale of Torchwood in probably one of the most frustrating but sad endings, which seems to be Russell’s style, we have the fun romp of Who back on our screens. It looks like it’s been some time since The Titanic - The Doctor’s talking to himself, missing having someone with him and regretting his actions with Martha. (I think, one of the nicer moments Russell has given the whole Martha/Doc angle) Still, no rest for the Time Lord. He’s investigating some strange goings on with the latest diet fad gripping London. People are taking diet pills, and strangly enough, it’s actually working! The Doctor knows this is too clever for normal humans. What he doesn’t know is Donna has figured the exact thing out.

Time has passed, and she’s beginning to regret her refusual to join Team TARDIS. Who can blame her. She laments to her Grandfather (remember the old guy in Voyage? Yep. That’s Donna’s grand-dad. There’s a reason for this. It was originally meant to be played by Donna’s father but the actor passed away days after filming the first episode.) and ignores her mother, who still is annoying as ever. She’s sticking her nose into weird conspiracy things hopefully she’ll eventually bump into the Doctor again. But we join the adventure as they both sneak into the same building and (of course) continually narrowly missing each other time after time. It gets a little tedious after a while, but their eventual meeting is one of the funniest moments of the entire episode.

The alien threat and the bad guy is probably the more disappointing element of the episode. Miss “Foster” is an alien “nanny” of these little cutesy creatures that are being made out of peoples fat. The creatures are all CGI and cute, and there really isn’t a moment in the entire episode that you feel any kind of fear for these creatures. Even Miss Foster, which is a deliberate cliche of the whole “supernanny” TV craze. That’s one thing about Russell, he doesn’t do subtle well.

Still, we get a lot of running up and down corridors, the beginning of the arc mystery (bees, anyone?), a few surprises here and there and a satisfactory conclusion which is essentially a re-introduction to this year’s main Doc/Companion duo. Donna is much less annoying this time around. She’s still loud, and it looks like she’s not going to take any crap from anyone, Time Lords included. What I do like however is their relationship is set from the get-go. “Mates”. Friends, even behind the scenes they’ve said this as far as it goes. Apart from the obvious scene with Donna/Doc/Donna at the end, I thought we’d get a few moments of witty dialogue and next week’s preview. How wrong was I.

They throw this small scene at us. Brilliant, but annoying as we’re going to have to wait probably until episode ten to see what it all means. If you dont want to be spoiled, don’t click on this link -

I just hope they don’t make her so she’s still pining for The Doctor and she hasn’t moved on. I hope there’s much much more to it than that.

Either way, a good but not perfect start to the Season. 3 and a half out of 5.

Organisation = fail

Ever since I lived in Melbourne, all my “backed up” DVDs have been in single slim cases. They’re pretty cheap to buy, easy to put away and apart from the weight easy to transport.

Three years later, and noone bothers to try and look for DVDs in that part of the cupboard.

I bit the bullet today and bought a couple of DVD carry cases at the local cheapo shop (Believe it or not, I could only find this storage at the local Cheap as Chips. Target? Nope. K-Mart? Not a chance. I know they’re daggy stores but am returning tomorrow.) Four hours later I have A - D sorted out, a carboard box full of plastic cases and a garbage bag of my duplicates.

This is going to take some money and time. Stay tuned.

I am planning to do something similar with my music but that’s a headache for another time. What does everyone think? I don’t think my 500 GB HDD will have the room for all my music. Probably I just might, but I have a lot of other junk on there at the moment that isn’t small. Put the sleeve, back cover and CD in a similar setup for my music?

ABC Playback

With the ABC losing out on a lot of cash and the hoped third channel (which is still showing up on the digital set-top box), they announced a few weeks back that they’re going ahead with a big digital online project. (Click here to register, looks like it’s still open). They had an option to sign up to their beta, which I thought I would do and not get an invite anyways.

A few days back, It finally came through my inbox.

At the moment, being beta, it’s very limited in what it has to offer. Basically it’s a way to watch shows online through their website. They have three options, catchup, real and shop.

The catchup is basically repeats of shows that have shown already on during the week. At the moment it is offerent Good Game (geek/gaming show), the new inventors (science/invention show), At the Movies (weekly movie reviews by ex-SBS critics), How Art Made the World and The Bill. The most interesting thing about this is the last two options are BBC shows. The BBC have always offered TV shows to our ABC first, and the fact that they have offered permission to replay these shows online is interesting (Dr. Who, anyone?). It means they’re not going to be just Australian content available. I like this a lot. (note, checking today The Bill is now gone. Whether this is a rights issue or they’re swapping the shows around I can’t tell you, but BBC stuff is still available as I write this).

Real, is a documentary section. At the moment it’s only showing some animal documentarys at the moment. This is only new, and hopefully once going online might also incorporate some of the ABC’s current affairs and so forth.

Shop, at the moment is only ads for stuff that is available on ABC DVD. They were talking later on down the track having this section with already available BBC/ABC DVDs for purchase to watch online. I’ll be curious to see how this works, most probably it will be watch only, but can’t tell you much about this side of it until it becomes available.

The graphics setup is very nice. It reminds me of a ipod/mac design setup and is very very easy to navigate. You can click on full Program listing if you want to see the complete options, and add stuff to a playlist so you can watch the next thing straight after. There’s also a cute little clock up the top that keeps the time for you, honestly though I don’t know how necessary it is. When you click on a show, it shows you a small box with the show playing. Thankfully, sound is automatically off in the preview. It can be turned on, however. Once the thing is selected it opens up in full screen, which can also be full window if you want to get rid of your task bar. The only problem I have with fullscreen mode is the fact that the player taskbar takes too long to minimise once the mouse is not moving. The windows media player disappears pretty much instantly, this takes about 10 seconds, which is a little annoying.

The quality is pretty good. Much much better than their VOD service already available, but not TV/digital quality. I still think a bittorrent download is still better, but the download is probably much more. This thing on a 1.5 broadband connection is pretty good. Most shows play without buffering, I had one moment on Good Game, but once I paused it for a few seconds I had no issues after that.

This is a very well setup system and can’t wait to see it go live. It’s about time TV stations start to think digital, I’m glad the ABC are the first to do so.

Today’s rain insanity

For the last two days, we’ve had some very nasty storms that have lasted not even for an hour. By some very dodgy converting/phone capturing (anybody recommend a decent flv - mpg converter?) i managed to capture and post online.

During

After, half an hour later

This is Mildura weather most of the time. Pure insanity, but I love it. Sorry about that first post being the wrong way, the annoying program I use cannot rotate files.

Gary Gygax - Failed saving throw

Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, passed away today at the age of 69 due to heart problems.

I never have played D&D, or any traditional RPGs. I grew up in the Nintendo/Sega age. Mortal Kombat, Sonic and Mario were my addictions as a kid. I had a terrible attention span as a kid. However as a geek I am saddened at his passing. While most young people mightn’t have a clue at what he’s done, without him we wouldn’t probably have games like World of Warcraft, one of the biggest time wasters of most kids these days.

I don’t have any special memories of sitting round tables with funny shaped dice, but Wil Wheaton, author and actor, posted a little blog with some excerpts from one of his books, Happiest Days of Our Lives. It’s a nice little piece of his love of the game from his childhood.

Farewell, Gary. Hope you’re up there, geeking it up with Douglas and Robert.

Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I - IV

It seems these days thanks to the ease of the Internet, quite a few musicians seems to be jumping ship and also trying new things in terms of music releasing. You could say the first big act to release an album exclusively on the Internet would of been The Smashing Pumpkins, but that was more protest than idea - the record label were giving the band grief.

Then you have Radiohead, whose “pay what you want” idea seems more like a marketing ploy. The website was removed when the official CD was released, and the mp3 quality of the tracks were very substandard.

Trust Trent to do it right.

The wonderful thing about the internet these days is the ease of distribution. Trent has openly discussed his disgust over the state of the record industry. From the pricing of CDs to the control the big companies hold. He recently released Year Zero - Remixed. I haven’t listened to it yet, but that album was partly creative and partly contractual - now Trent Reznor is a free man to do what he wants.

He first started with Saul Williams latest album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! (which he produced). They offered the album free in a a reasonable mp3 format (192 kps) or for top quality mp3/lossless formats for five dollars. That’s right, 5 whole dollars. It was announced at Nin.com that, as of January 2, 2008, two months since its release, 154,449 people had chosen to download NiggyTardust. Of that number, 28,322 people chose to pay the asked price of $5 USD ($141′610 USD Total). In comparison, Saul’s self-titled album has sold 30,000 copies since its release in 2004. Not bad, but to be fair Saul is a newer artist. This is only the beginning of things.

On March 2, The album Ghosts I - IV was released on the Internet. Originally it was meant to be a small EP, by the end became a 36 track instrumental release. Normally I would give an intsrumental CD a miss, but Trent has made some wonderful music without vocals in the past (Quake and the Lost Highway Soundtracks). I’ve only listened to the first half, but it’s brilliant. I said on my twitter account it sounds like a soundtrack to a film that is yet to be written.

The way he’s gone about releasing it is also brilliant. There’s five options.
1 - Download the first EP for nothing. The first 9 tracks are available for zip, and you do not need to put any details at all online.
2 - Digital Release. For $5, you can download the whole album in variety of different file formats. 320 k mp3, lossless and apple lossless. This version also includes some spiffy artwork as jpgs.
3 - CD release. For $10 you can purchase the set on 2 CDs with a 16 page booklet
4 - Deluxe edition For $75 you get the 2xCDs, 1 data DVD containing multitrack files for use with audio editing software, a 48-page hardback book with photographs, and a Blu-ray disc with Ghosts I-IV in high-definition 96 kHz 24-bit stereo and accompanying slideshow.
5 - Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition. For $300, you get all the above and a 4LP vinyl, and two exclusive limited edition Giclée prints for USD$300. Limited to 2,500 pieces, numbered and signed by Trent Reznor.

There are a few problems, however. The shipping for the physical CDs is a little pricey and the website went belly up and has not been keeping up with the amount of traffic generated. I myself got 95% through using a download manager and after a crash was informed that I had exceeded my download limit. I emailed them and they apologized and said they’ll reset my download soon. Since I paid I just downloaded the thing from bittorrent. They can’t say I didn’t pay at all.

Speaking of legal mumbo jumbo, Trent has released these mp3s/music under a The album is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. This means you can do whatever you like with these files. Change them, alter them, send it to your friends as long as you don’t try and make a profit out of it.

According to Trent, this is only the beginning. He’s being rather secretive about some other plans on the way, and he doesn’t mean more music (which he already has said he will). I hope it means more with his own record label. Stay tuned, and if you want to check the album out, click here.

Ebooks, Part 2

I recently spoke about ebooks, and how Tor are releasing free ebooks? Well Simon from Bloggasm.com (p.s. - LOVE the URL) sent me this email yesterday -

I recently spoke to two sources on condition of anonymity who told me that this is just a small part of a much larger expansion for Tor that will include social networking and original online short fiction and nonfiction.

If you want to check out his post, it’s here. Sounds very very interesting. Still haven’t received any emails from Tor myself, but I’ll give them time. Probably caught them inbetween releases. And if this idea goes ahead, I’m all for it and supporting it. I love anything that pushes the boundaries online.

And now I sleep. I’ll have the new Nine Inch Nails album tomorrow morning. I’ll tell you the story then.

This is brilliant…

Johnathon Coulton playing Still Alive live, but through Rock Band.

Do they pass the song? You need to watch…

e-books

If you’ve never had a chance to read Neil Gaiman yet, shame on you!

No, seriously. He writes comics, movies, books, even the occasional TV show. A few weeks ago, Neil asked his fans online which book of his would people like to see online, free of charge?

The winning by a massive margin, was his most famous work, American Gods.

Click here if you’re curious. It’s a long book but so very worth it in the end. Neil take’s his ideas of old gods and new, and throws them into our normal, everyday world. It’s such an original idea and works so well.

I have a lot of respect for that man. Apart from being incredibly nice to his fans (he spent ten minutes finding the “right pen” when he autographed my copy of The Dream Hunters), he’s pretty up to date with his technology. Okay, I mightn’t agree with The Kindle (overpriced and underpowered) but all of his work is available in e-book format, and with extras not included with his normal books as well.

Other news from e-book world, Tor are releasing free e-books on a regular basis. This will be very interesting to see as well. I have no room anymore to read books normally. I just wish more authors would release their work in e-book format as well. I always have my Palm TX on me. It would get me reading so much more..

The battle of the boxsets

I thought I’d add something to this so called “HD war”, or whatever you want to call it.

If you haven’t read already, Toshiba have stopped making HD DVD, which was the last part of the puzzle. Most had suspected this for a while, but this was the nail in the coffin. MS are already thinking about a Blu-Ray addon for the xbox, and I’m glad I didn’t get the HD addon for the 360 I own.

Actually, I’ll be honest. I don’t know how long I will wait until I buy something Blu-ray. Okay, my sound system needs updating, but I do have a TV capable of supporting it now. But, to me the quality of DVDs now are pretty impressive. And a watch a lot of xvid/divx stuff as it is now streamed to the 360. My favourite show is Dr. Who, which is costing the BBC money getting the classic series up to DVD specs (and doing one of the best jobs in the DVD business, I may add). So quality isn’t the biggest factor. And with download speeds and compression technology getting better and better, will the next war be a war of file formats? I know there’s people who will always want the physical product (look at CD sales) but a lot already download most of their stuff as is. I’ve said before, I wouldn’t mind paying a couple of bucks a week to get a good quality, ads free episode of Lost. The amount of fake/faulty torrents online makes that very appealing.

There’s also talk of a downloading version of Netflix coming to xbox dashboard. Think of it - You turn on your xbox, pick which episodes you want to buy and bingo. There is the small problem of getting it off your 360, but for some people they may want to watch it once and thats it. To do so with Itunes, you get a sub-average download and need to buy another product to add to your tv. The 360 is already plugged in. Most already have it hooked up to the net.

Of course, who knows if any of this will ever come to places outside of the USA. We can dream, and run Tversity in the meantime…