Category: Uncategorized

  • Christmas is coming

    Well, that’s 2010 almost done with.  A new year beckons and here’s hoping that 2011 will be as good as the last one.

    Today on the Shetland Islands we were blessed with clear skies for the lunar eclipse and now I’m watching arctic smoke through my office window – you’ll have to go to my twitter account to see the pics (@dogbombs).  Works Christmas party tomorrow, relatives all arriving the day after (roads and ferries permitting).  If the weather holds, we’re going to have a fantastic Christmas.

    The Grand Plan for 2011.  Spend less time on the computer at home but do more with that time.  The old “work smarter, not harder” style of thing.  Who knows.  It might even work this time.

    Had a real blast last night dressing the church for Christmas.  Who knew we had so many strings of lights?

    Merry Christmas to all!  I hope Santa brings you what you never knew you wanted.

    Posted via email from Claytons in the Far, Far North

  • OK, so how’s he getting out of it this time?

    The big finish. We’ve been building up to this since they first started laying it on with a trowel back in episode 1.  The Pandorica Opens and silence will fall.  Or words to that effect.  And having seen part 1 of the season finale for this year’s Dr Who, it swings wildly between astonishingly good and astoundingly bad.

    Before I go any further, consider this your spoilers warning.

    Still here?  Good.

    Right.  Let’s go back a few years.  Christopher Ecclestone coming to the end of his run as the Doctor.  The whole Bad Wolf thing.  Yes, it’s been there in the background but no-one’s been paying too much attention to it until the big reveal and the Daleks try and take over the world.  Bit of a deus-ex-machina with Rose getting rid of them, but hey! It was good Who.  We get a swift regeneration into David Tennant and before the memory of the 9th Doctor is cold, they’re laying Torchwood on with a trowel.  So by the end of the series, once we finally get to Torchwood HQ in London we’ve known a lot about the arc-story for this season.  And the climax can’t just have Daleks, this time we’ve Daleks and Cybermen.  So far, so good.  And not one but two worlds in danger.  Right.  Moving on, end of Tennant’s next season sees the return of the Master and the return of Russel T Davies’ favourite trick – the big, red, reset button.

    Okay, so the button might not be red, but it certainly resets everything.  Daleks? Erased from history, never happened.  Reset 1.  Daleks & Cybermen sucked back into the void. Nothing left lying around (well, nothing of significance). Reset 2.  A whole horrible year of what the Master did to Earth undone, never happened.  I’m seeing a pattern here.

    DT’s third season sees him facing the Daleks.  Again.  Unfortunately, the Dr Who publicity machine didn’t do a very good job of hiding the fact that either (1) Rose was coming back or (2) Davros and the Daleks were returning.  Prize for most under-used Dalek threat goes to the Red leader Dalek who’s sole purpose was to descend into Davros’ vault and be blasted by Cap’n Jack’s enormous weapon.  Fnar Fnar.  And then the planets get returned, the Daleks erased from existence (again, this is getting somewhat repetitive) and the Earth towed back into place.  Not exactly a reset but the way the Daleks were dealt with is definitely a repeat of the S1 climax.  However, this is definitely my favourite season finale to date and there are moments in it that are just perfect.

    Moving on to DT’s final season and we have a collection of not-do-special extended episodes followed by my least favourite season finale.  Too long, too self-indulgent. A good send-off but not the best. The Time Lords were under-used, the Master nowhere near as evil as he is usually (he ends up saving the world!). And the trip round visiting all the past companions had ne reaching for the sick bag. Best thing was playing spot the Being Human cast.

    And each time the threat has got bigger and harder.  This time they’ve killed the companion, the TARDIS is about to explode and the Doctor is locked away for the safety of the universe.  The second part of this one has got to be spectacular.  And if it lives up to the writing of the first, we’re in for a real treat.  Just don’t use the reset button so obviously.

    Posted via email from Claytons in the Far, Far North

  • T-minus 24 hours

    In 24 hours, give or take, my wife and I will have our fifth child.  So, without further ado, some ramblings to clear my head and help me concentrate…

    Gardening
    I'm supposed to be running a half-marathon at the end of June.  And I've been resting my left knee for about a month now.  Did a superb 8-mile training run, really happy.  And then I mowed the lawn.  Somewhere around the first turn something went *ping* in my knee and it's been extremely unhappy ever since.  So I'm extremely pissed at this.  Plan is to rest until we get back from Aberdeen and then see what happens.  If I don't get to run, I'm going to be very disappointed.

    But my lawnmower hates me anyway.  If there's one appliance I'd like Dyson to turn their attention to, it's the mower.  When a vacuum cleaner can get rid of the wheels and have functional suction right up to the edges, why can't a mower?  Mine is a petrol-driven rotary beastie – our lawn is too big to consider an electric and too small for a ride-on.  Besides, with an electric, the power cable would get snagged on the trees.  It's got a wheel at each corner – big, inflexible wheels that don't corner easily.  Large quantities of the power stick out over the sides of the blade, so you can't mow right up to something or right alongside something.  After a mow you still need to get out the strimmer.  And it's allergic to grass.
    When you get right down to it, it's a motor driving a spinning blade whose sole purpose is the cutting of grass.  So why, when it encounters grass more than a couple of inches long, does it die?  Is this motor so weak?
    And then there's the cuttings collection.  I'm sure this seemed like a good idea to the man who designed it, someone with a huge compost bin and an endless capacity for grass cuttings, but when you're emptying the cuttings into a bin liner, the mechanism is superb.  Superb at shredding the binliner.  Serious design flaw.

    Enough whingeing about gardening.  I was going to write more but events have overtaken me here at work.

    More tomorrow…

    Posted via email from Claytons in the Far, Far North