@janetteb   I like to have control of media I have paid for.  If I buy a book, it’s mine.  The publisher can’t break down my door and take it back.   I can sell it again.   Same with DVD’s.   In fact there’s something physically satisfying about a DVD.   (Of course I can’t (legally) copy the DVD and sell it, same with a book, I can’t copy the en…[Read more]

@janetteb   As with the possums, so also with rabbits.   And deer in South Island I believe, and goats.  (There are deer in North Island but they live on farms surrounded by high fences).   Fortunately for us, nobody thought of cane toads   🙂   And, I noticed that everything had gone quiet too.

Currently Summer is still hanging on – late summe…[Read more]

@janetteb   Possums – we have ’em here in NZ, but they’re regarded unfavourably as they eat our native bush.   A couple of decades ago we had one in our garden, I was always cautious about approaching it because I’d heard they   have sharp claws and, when alarmed, a possum will climb the nearest tall object and if that happens to be you, ouch!…[Read more]

This is basically a fresh review, since it’s long enough since I watched that I’ve forgotten much of the ep.

‘Orient Express, Italy, 1962’ See my previous post for 5 ways this is technically incorrect. 🙂
The book the girl is reading, though, does look like an authentic Penguin paperback.
And I don’t think the mountain in ‘Everest Base Camp 1953’…[Read more]

@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]