Heartfelt congratulations to Mike and Edda on the birth of their daughter Tara Elizabeth Doherty.
Archive for October, 2004
Some free advice: don’t watch the new series of Little Britain just after eating dinner.
Is there any point in watching Teachers any more (okay, was there ever)? Things have gotten really bad when I start missing Kurt and Brian. Oh, and Teachers related trivia: Andrew Lincoln and I share the same birthday: 14th September 1973.
And would someone please lock the scheduling morons of Channel 4 and Five in a room together and through away the key? The West Wing on at 7:30? The Sopranos at midnight? A three week gap before the final episodes of The Shield? Repeating Nip/Tuck the following week but not Six Feet Under? Random gaps in the scheduling of Lexx?
I’ve had to give up on Lexx - it clashes with The Sopranos; and as I’m not staying up that late when I have to commute into town the next day there’s only one of them I can record; and as I can’t get my VCR to tape from digital and as the sound quality on non-digital Five is frequently appalling; oh, and as The Sopranos is about a thousand times better; well, not much of a choice is it?
Some bits and pieces that I’ve seen lately: –
The Infinite Cat Project – some of these people have very scary looking cats…
With the US elections looming it’s time to examine the The Truth About The Kirk/Spock Ticket and to consider the alternative history conjecture: What if George W. Bush had been elected president?.
Harry Potter vs the Great Cthulhu? My money’s on the guy with the tentacles. And speaking of the slumbering one that reminds of another election related site.
I had about four things I was going to post, but I can’t remember any of them. Bugger.
I’ve decided to work out just how much I spend on wargames/RPGs/miniatures in a given year. So I’m going to track my expenditure between now and this time next year. So I’ll start with yesterday’s spending at SELWG and continue right through until the same show next year.
I’m going to include everything - actual expenditure on goodies, show entry costs, travel costs, magazine subscriptions, paints, etc.
Yesterday came to a nice round £50 - £5 entry, £16 on Rebel Storm boosters and £29 on MoFo miniatures.
Yesterday was the SELWG wargames show at Crystal Palace. I went along for a few hours to look around and buy stuff; overall I think it was an improvement in last year’s show which I wasn’t very impressed by. Some people thought it was rather good whilst others found it not so good.
I bought Rebel Storm boosters - the first boosters I’ve bought (though I have been buying large numbers of canon fodder types on eBay). Got the very rare Princess Leia, Captive figure in one of them which was lucky. Various traders were selling boosters for prices between £8.00 and £12.99 - I got mine at the lower price because I remembered that it always pays to walk round every stand at a show before opening your wallet.
The only thing I bought were some MoFo minis from Gripping Beast - five packs of UK Falklands War troops to add to my UNIT force and a pack of SF characters based on Stargate SG1. The MoFo miniatures are little bit smaller the Harlequin UNIT troops but once based and painted up the same should fit in just fine.
There were some good games on show, the most striking being Diamond Geezers - a game based on old telly shows played over a very good recreation of a 1970s street scene.
SELWG is the last show of the year for me, there’s nothing now until Salute in April. You never know I may actually get round to doing some painting before then.
Go and see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Best film I’ve seen this year (but as previously noted that’s not exactly hard).
I’m very pleased to see that The Discontinuity Guide has been republished by Monkey Brain Books. Along with the forthcoming updated edition of A History of the Universe from Mad Norwegian Press this is splendid news for Doctor Who fans.
[Update] - Oh dear. The original version of this post read a bit like a primary school essay. Can’t be having that, so here’s a geeky top five list instead.
Top five non-fiction Doctor Who books
- A History of the Universe by Lance Parkin
- The Discontinuity Guide by Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping
- I, Who by Lars Pearson (all volumes counted as one)
- License Denied by Paul Cornell
- The Television Companion by David J Howe & Stephen James Walker
These are the photos I took at the Dinomites exhibition at the Horniman Museum. 
The first picture here was taken last autumn at the Eagle Heights bird of prey centre. I’m not sure what type of bird this one is, but later in the day I flew a Harris Hawk, which was a fabulous experience.
And of course the second picture is Lettice, also fabulous.