How fantastic was that?

10/10

Oh, you want a proper review?

This was Doctor Who myth building at its best – taking a classic, hell the classic, monster and updating it whilst staying true to the orginal; and revealing more about the Time War backstory.

When I first heard that this episode would feature just one Dalek I thought that it would be acting in an Alien/Terminator/Predator fashion. And it did. This is what the Daleks have always been like in our mind’s eye. But this Dalek was more than that. This Dalek was a character, a real genuine character.

Oh, and the human and Time Lord characters were good in this one as well.

I f***ing loved this episode.

And isn’t it odd when you compare the Science Fiction that was on screen quarter of a century ago and now? Star Wars. Doctor Who. Battlestar Galactica. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. So when can we expect the Blake’s 7 revival?

Trailer for Serenity. Can’t wait.

Well two of them.

Proof, not that it was needed, that (a) CEOs say stupid things and (b) Opera Software are cool people.

Bought yesterday at Salute:

• Two Cyclops Battle Tanks and a Spider Tank, in a three for the price of two offer from Urban Mammoth - £35
• Deinonychus, Gallimimus and Young Tyrannosaurus from Copplestone Castings - £15
• Pack of ten 28mm SF figures from Trent Miniatures - £8
• Land Rover from S&S Models for use with my UNIT troops - £8
• Four Kryomek Drones - £7.98
• Stegosaurus, two Triffids, six (should have been five but there was an extra one in the box) Ichthyosaurus and two Platecarpus from HLBS Co - £28

Plus the freebies: St George and the Dragon and a Revenge of the Sith Clone Trooper.

So that’s £101.98 on miniatures, plus £8 entry and £2.90 train fare.

Running total is now £506.65

So Salute comes to the end of its six years at Olympia. From one floor in 2000 to four floors this year. I think this year was one of the good ones - lots of happy looking people, lots of interesting games and a good buzz in the air.

Top games in my opinion were the 1/1200 Battle of Trafalgar and the 28mm Pirates of the Caribbean. Hmm, a naval theme there. There were very few “traditional” periods being gamed - not a lot of ECW, ACW or Napoleonics. In fact I’d say that ancients and the 20th Century were there in force the periods in between were slightly under under-represented.

Dinosaurs (oh you didn’t think I wouldn’t mention them at all?) appeared in several tables, but the promised Bog-A-Ten 2.0 was absent (though another club was running original Bog-A-Ten). The Gloranthan HotT game featured some cool dinos as part of one army. One interesting new mini I saw was a very nice 28mm scale Mammoth labelled as “Coming Soon” from Baker Company.

My photos all came out crap. But there’s a gallery of photos over at Rotten Lead.

… and ready for deployment in 45 seconds no less! Was that just a little bit of politics? Oh yes.

Last week I said:

Doctor Who grows up and enters its second childhood all at once.

Which is probably a fairly good reaction to the current state of British politics.

So this week we learnt how to hack into the Royal Navy from a flat on a South London council estate and launch a missile to blow up Number 10 (but it’s okay ‘cos only nasty aliens who want to nuke the planet and sell bits of it as scrap get killed) – This is proper Doctor Who: totally barking mad in a very British way. Love it.

And the stuff about vinegar and Hannibal was a nice reminder that way back in the mists of time DW had been envisioned as an educational programme.

The plot had holes you could drive a starship through but I just don’t care. And next week we get a Dalek.

9/10

Went to Salute today. Very knackered. Spent … a lot. Full report tomorrow.

Sir John Mills has died which in deadpool terms increases Andy’s lead and move me ahead of the field and into a close third place.

pink_weasel has just phoned to say she’s very drunk and waiting for a bus to bring her home. Help.

Well, yesterday’s computer turned out to be the wrong computer. I eventually got the right one today (faster processor, four times more RAM, double the size of the hard drive) and spent the afternoon installing all the software again.

The train home was only two carriages.

So first day at the new job. No computer for most of the day. Bit of a problem in my line of work.

Anyway the day was enlivened by the news that Adobe has bought Macromedia. I’m very glad it was that way round because of the two I much prefer Adobe - I prefer the user interface on their software and they have a web site that actually works. But what does this merger mean?

For developers and designers it means that sooner or later some of the tools they use will be dropped. The clear favourite to be shown the door is Freehand which simply doesn’t have anywhere near the market share of Illustrater. But how will Fireworks and Image Ready be handled? Fireworks is far more popular than Image Ready but Image Ready is fully integrated with Photoshop which is much more popular, and does a lot more, than Fireworks. GoLive and Dreamweaver is another interesting match up. A product that combines the best of both would be ideal. But at the end of the day I’m not sure this merger will make a huge difference to developers.

For users there’s a potential nightmare on the horizon. Can you imagine a Flash movie embedded in an Acrobat document, or vice versa? The two most widely used (and abused) proprietary formats on the web are now controlled by the same company. Let’s see what happens.

Better news is that Opera 8 is officially released tomorrow.