@winston     Congratulations.   I’m sure we could all use a little bit of sunshine.    I wish the best for his future.

@winston Fortunately, the bottom (in the harbour) is only muddy, not weedy – that would add an extra level of creepiness. Also, whether in ‘the bush’ or the sea, we have very little in the way of bitey stingy things. We do have a few sharks offshore (though nothing like Oz gets) and they usually only – rarely – attack surfers who are out in the…[Read more]

@syzygy The Doctor is not so much ‘impersonating’ humans, as that Gallifreyans happen to look identical with humans. And the Doctor does conveniently have a soft spot for Earth.

There have been many, many alien races in Scifi that happen to look conveniently humanoid, or at least like a human in a rubber monster suit 🙂

‘Farscape’ actually made…[Read more]

[Tap, tap. Is this thing on? Is there anybody out there? (My inbox has gone really quiet this week)]

So, after a long hiatus from Dot & Bubble, I just re-watched ‘Rogue’. I found it a little better this time – first time around I was so disconcerted by the bird people I could hardly follow the plot.

This time I was more used to them but – why…[Read more]

@nerys   @whohar

@ps1l0v3y0u Avon was definitely a criminal, and a computer genius – I believe he hacked the Federation banking system of millions of credits. They were all criminals except Blake, who was a dissident.

The Liberator was absolutely *not* a problem. It was a product of advanced alien tech. How many of the spaceships on Doctor Who a…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u Which ‘rubbish’ computer do you mean? Zen, Orac or Slave? Probably the most interesting one was Orac, with the sarcastic temperament. Zen (shades of Hal from 2001) was taciturn. Slave was painfully obsequious.

@whohar @janetteb As for a reboot, I do hope it is a ‘re-imagining’ along the lines of Battlestar Galactica 2. (Which…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u @whohar (Delurking suddenly) I’m on the fence about a reboot of Blakes 7. And I say that as a past addict. I used to get dirty looks from my boss when I shot out the door at 4-30, I couldn’t muster the courage to point out it was only on Thursdays and it was so I could get home in time to catch a B7 re-run (first time for me) at 5.30.…[Read more]

@thane16  @winston   Dark Side of the Moon is still my favourite album of all, musically.   And also, the cover is perfect – a simple strikingly individual design undiluted by any text  (which I thought showed supreme confidence).

@nerys   I was joking about the VHS.   I can’t see it ever coming back into fashion, for several reasons:   Compared with DVD’s, or other electronic storage, it’s much lower quality, much bulkier, VHS players are mechanically  highly complicated, the tape wears with each playing, jumping to a specific place on a track requires the whole tape t…[Read more]

@nerys That happy circumstance happened to me just once. Decades ago I had a turntable and a couple of dozen LP’s. When cassette tapes came along, they were so much more handy (even though of doubtful sound quality) that I never listened to records any more. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of my LPs in their artistic sleeves. Then CD’s…[Read more]

@janetteb If I don’t have my camera on me, I also use a cellphone. They have become remarkably good for what they are. My 150-dollar Android phone will take perfactly good photos and videos in a good light. But I think dedicated cameras will always be a step ahead, for simple reasons of physics – there are only so many photons per square…[Read more]

@nerys      f/2.8   Wow.   That’s pretty nice.    The TZ80 is f/3.3 to 6.4.    I’m – almost – tempted to consider and FZ, but the same argument applies as did to my Konica (though obviously less cogently) – I can’t take photos if my camera isn’t on me, and the TZ is small and light enough to just carry as a matter of habit.   TZ has a Leica lens…[Read more]

@thane16 syzygy And a merry Christmas to you, thankyou. So a cloud weighs 500 tons (or tonnes – pretty much the same thing). Does that include the weight of the air in it, or is that the additional weight of the water vapour? (Is water vapour heavier than air?) That would imply 500 cubic metres of liquid water. But (Googles) water vapour is…[Read more]

@nerys Your FZ’s are a step above mine, in lens size certainly. I did love the light-gathering capability of my Konica film cameras with great big hunks of glass, but when I went digital I wanted something more portable. I also wanted a wide angle – 35mm or even 28mm, it was surprising how difficult that was to find in those early compact…[Read more]

@nerys    As you say, extra shots in digital cost virtually nothing.   Great, compared with 50c-a-shot film, but it can be a problem.   I don’t weed out nearly as many as I should.   Ones that are out of focus or accidental shots of my feet are obvious candidates for deletion.   Deciding which of several similar okay shots is the best is just to…[Read more]

@janetteb I’m not sure if the word is ‘dedication’ or ‘geeky obsession’. When I first went digital, c.2004, I saved the results on DVD’s, which naturally prompted me to put an index on each DVD. My first digital camera was a dreadful little thing, best forgotten, in 2005 I upgraded to a Fuji which gave adequate images. Then my first ‘good’…[Read more]

@nerys Sorry if it looks like I’m bragging. But its just so nice to be able to go and swim every day (and this year Summer seems to have arrived early, at least up this end of the country). What I also love about summer are the long evenings, it doesn’t get dark until 10pm or so (of course anyone in the mid-latitudes can say the same). It always…[Read more]

@janetteb @nerys @whohar

Merry Christmas / New Year / solstice.

I’ve been absent [minded] for a while, time always sneaks past when I’m not looking. Been swimming every day, here (water’s warm!) And also indexing all my digital photos, of which I have literally tens of thousands, I tend to binge on shots. A luxury I could never afford with film,…[Read more]

@winston   @nerys    I think a lot of the anti-society attitude stems from the myth of the hardy pioneering individual who did everything for himself and was beholden to no man.   So that, reinforced by the successful American Revolution (which was really a rebellion), morphed into the ‘all government is a threat to my freedom’ frame of mind. …[Read more]

@nerys   Unfortunately  Covid was a breeding ground for  anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists  and  bloody-minded obstinate people of all types who thought their individual rights trumped everyone else’s.   In fact, thought that they weren’t properly exercising their rights unless they trampled on somebody else.   The sort of mentality that thin…[Read more]