The show I wish was available on DVD would have to be Danger Theatre. This was cult viewing while I was at university. My favourite section was The Searcher. If the opening titles aren’t silly enough for you, how about “Golfers! Hold your balls!”
Yes, that was Robert Vaughn. Hmmm.
Louise and I are really enjoying Flight Of The Conchords on BBC4. I was going to try and describe the program but I think I’ll use the power of YouTube to do my work for me.
And so it ends. After two and a bit years of watching I have finished re-watching all five seasons of Babylon 5. Well, I say “I” but that should really be “we” because somewhere during the second season Louise joined me in the marathon. I hope she enjoyed rather than endured (as was often the case in the past but that’s her story to tell).
What tickles me is that my original estimate of how long it would take was right on the button. I don’t think Ben’s quite old enough to begin watching it yet, perhaps in a couple of years. I’m conscious that I don’t want to spoil or devalue the experience of Babylon 5 or other things I cherished when I was younger like Star Wars by showing them to him before he’ll appreciate them. I was about to say that he currently thinks that Transformers: Cybertron is the height of entertainment but then I probably would have thought exactly the same at his age. So perhaps I should stop being so precious… my preciousss…
Ahem.
I don’t think I’ll be doing a retrospective review of all of B5 either. I will say this, though: The effects still serve the story well and hardly ever take you out of the experience. The main story arc is still one of the best in television but the character arcs are even better. The fifth season is a lot better than I remembered it and the final episode, Sleeping In Light, still brings a lump to my throat.
My timing is pretty good, too, because I can roll right through and watch Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, which has only just been released.
Merry Christmas! Yes, I really am posting this on Christmas morning and probably too late for those it applies to: This year the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are being shown on Five at 7.15pm, starting today — it seems Five at least realise they have something of value. The topic this year is “The Number Mysteries”. The science geek in me is really looking forward to this one.
Today I have watched no television whatsoever. Wednesday’s are generally pretty dead, but this is an exception for me, so I thought it worth noting. Maybe I should try it more often. Well, my MP3 player has finished uploading the latest Babylon Podcast, so I’m off to bed; analysis of this momentous occasion will have to wait for another day.
Thanks to Pete for sending me a link to the Vader Sessions. That’s the funniest thing I’ve seen on the intarwebs in quite some time!
Update: Cripes! YouTube synchronicity! No sooner do I post this than I see Wil’s post on a Simpsons / Star Trek mashup. Urgh. Mashup? I feel dirty.
Watching tonight’s edition of Real Story about fraudsters picking up bank account details from peoples’ dumped hard drives was certainly food for thought. The one time I dumped an old PC I made sure to wipe the hard drive but this will certainly make me more methodical in future.
Of course the show didn’t give any advice on how to wipe a drive, just a warning that not doing it was bad. The linked article above at least has some help in this direction. Bare in mind that just deleting files or reformatting a drive is insufficient; it doesn’t take much to undelete the data. My recommendation would be to use the free DBAN utility. If I know you, I’ll come round and do it for free. For anyone else it’ll be a tenner. Companies are more than welcome to get in contact and I’ll do them a quote.
Louise and I have just finished watching the final episode of season two of Desperate Housewives. Enjoyable but the reason I mention it here is because we couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the truely blatant product placement by a certain car manufacturer who will remain nameless. Usually I’m fairly oblivious to this sort of thing but… wow. It left me expecting one of the characters to say, “I’d just like to take this opportunity to say how great the ride in my Pissan Nathfinder is!”.
Louise is too shy to post about it here, so I will: One of her favourite shows of late, Invasion, has been cancelled at the end of its first season. If you’ve been watching it too and want to see more, you need to sign the petition now.
I’ve got a heap of things to post about but mundane tasks, like clearing our gigantic backlog of laundry, have had to take precedence. I’ll attempt to make time tomorrow evening.
I’m glad to see that trials for terrestrial HDTV will start soon. I’m not so glad to hear that, “Freeview has no capacity for more national networks, and will not have enough room for national high definition broadcasts until at least switchover when existing analogue signals are switched off”.