Paul Gregory's LJ

I can assume that by now you'll have found out the result in your local election yesterday if you had one, and that you voted. (This is one of the defining characteristics of my LJ circle, but if I'm wrong I won't hold it against you.)

Poll #1181330 local elections
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

The person who won in my local ward is from a party that...

The person who came last in my local ward is from a party that...

My voting decision was influenced by

The person I voted for was the one I...

Comments

One of the many blogs I subscribe to is Matthew Perpetua's Pop Songs 08. Each post is about a different song from R.E.M.'s extensive back-catalogue. R.E.M. have for many years been one of my favourite artists, and I have every album and practically every non-album track on CD. I don't always agree with the blog, but it's often a good read, and the concept's sound.

Imagine my delight to discover that there's now a similar blog for another of my favourite gotta-have-them-all artists, Juliana Hatfield - only written by the singer/songwriter herself!
An Arm and a Leg has so far covered three songs, including the song for My So-Called Life and her appearance in it (which contains spoilers for anyone thinking of borrowing my box-set). Naturally these posts drift into covering other things like the rituals that keep her "sane in the absence of a 9-to-5 job" and why she doesn't have a dishwasher (a trait more adorable in someone I'm not trying to live with). It brightened up my lunch hour, anyway. These are based on requests, so if you see me running another JH/BB/SG marathon on my Last.fm scrobbling it'll probably be me picking one to ask for these 21st-century liner notes on...

This is beautiful. They've probably been making this joke for days but it's still funny.

"...and on the Sky News website, see Sky's music man get a guitar lesson from a rock legend. That's at sky dot com slash news."

It's always with a heavy heart that I click the "Comments" link under any site's "We've just pissed about with everything" story, and BBC News is no exception. I've got up to #63 and I'm having to take a break before my hands get locked in a throttling motion imagining the necks of people who can't figure out how to get to Weather. *I* know I'm always one click away from it, but it seems a lot of people aren't. It's fascinating.

I'll return to all this later, but first I'd appreciate some more general feedback from you regardless of whether you're a BBC News website user.

Poll #1163380 Browser / Monitor Usage
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

How large do you most often have your web browser?

If you don't usually have your web browser maximised, and you came across a site that needed more space, would you:

When a site doesn't fill the whole width, do you prefer it to be

The new BBC News front page is

Any other comments?

Facebook say "Now you can use friend lists to control exactly who can see what."

And indeed you can. The exclusion is more prominent than the inclusion, which threw me for a bit. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced that "Some Friends.." hasn't just been added in the last few minutes.

There's also a welcome new option to allow friends of friends to see types of things. I've moved photos & videos to this, and the profile stuff that used to be just friends & networks. I'm toying with excluding "Clients" from status updates.

The options raise a question - if I'm friends with Gwen and Jack, but not Ianto, and set videos to be seen by Friends of Friends Except Jark Harkness, under what circumstances should Ianto be able to see the videos? If he was friends with Gwen, but not Jack - he should. If he was friends with Jack only - he shouldn't. If he's friends with both - what should happen?

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Oh, and I'm relieved that Torchwood will be over very soon - after the Wednesday episodes tonight, it moves to Friday so we have two in one week. Wraps up on BBC2 Fri April 4th, with conflicting reports on exactly when BBC3 will show the finale (looks like we have the usual week-with-no-next-week's-episode to screw the momentum).

To me, this seems a clearer indication of April 5th being Doctor Who series launch than the timings of the Ross interview and TV screening of the cinema trailer. It's all quite exciting... and then I remember Donna. Ah well.

I had laser eye surgery today. Having worn glasses for 20 years this is a big deal. Checkup tomorrow; will find out what my vision is now rated at, but I can see the TV from the kitchen. I am pleased. Hi all, btw.

Right. This Churchill = Myth thing. 3,000 people were asked some sort of question, given some names and seemingly answered "myth" or "real" to each one. This was done so UKTV Gold could promote their repeats of Robin Hood.

There's a lot of inaccurate claims being made about this. The Telegraph version says all 3,000 were under 20. Not so.

Many people have assumed that the people asked were UKTV Gold viewers. Not so.

UKTV's article itself, however, is full of crap.

King Arthur is the fictional figure most commonly mistaken for fact – incredibly almost two thirds of Brits (65%) believe that he existed and led a round table of gallant knights in the idyllic ancient Kingdom of Camelot.
Right. Was the question "Did King Arthur exist for real and really lead a real round table of real gallant knights in a real idyllic ancient Kingdom of Camelot"? Probably not. It was more likely "King Arthur - Myth or Real?" At least some of these 65% must think that there was a real King Arthur but are less certain about the shape of his table.

Nearly half of us (47%) have no idea who Richard the Lionheart was.
This appears to be the same percentage of people who think he was a myth, suggesting heavily that they've drawn this conclusion from that finding. I have an idea who Robin Hood was and I think he's a myth, so how could you assume it's the same thing?

IT GETS BETTER!

The research showed that the nation's under 20s are lacking the most when it comes to basic historical knowledge. Over one fifth (21%) thought Winston Churchill, arguably Britain's most famous Prime Minister, was a work of fiction
This compares with 23% of the entire nation. Yes. That must mean that a greater percentage of the over 20s thought Churchill was a myth!

If anyone knows anyone that saw the original survey, I'd love to see it. If people were faced with a still of Charles Dickens from the Doctor Who episode, they'd be correct to say he was a fictional(ised) character; if people were asked "Is Churchill a legend?" then under current popular usage of the term they'd be correct. Given that Robin Hood's title sequence kicks off saying he's a legend, and UKTV G repeat Doctor Who, neither is beyond the realms of possibility.

2 items for Torchwood fans! Advice that may apply, and a question you may be able to answer.

1) I don't know how many of you all are PVRing Torchwood off BBC HD rather than BBC2, but if you are, you should probably add to cart both the 9pm and the 11pm screenings next Wednesday as it's highly likely that the BBC will pull the currently scheduled 9pm simulcast in order to show live the England v Switzerland match that they've also committed to showing in HD. Ordinarily things would probably cope with a program being on later than originally EPGed, but I don't believe it's possible to mark the 11pm as being both the delayed 9pm and the scheduled 11pm and the possibility for a cock-up is immense.

2) Is anyone aware of an existing Torchwood/Doctor Who/Sarah Jane rehash of The Frost Report's Cleese/Barker/Corbett Class Sketch either on the net or in any of the magazines/fanzines?

I very rarely quote people's work, and I usually only obliquely refer to recently dead celebrities, so taking the trouble to type this up should be treated as a great exception and my way of honouring someone whose output I will actually miss.


From Miles Kington's Let's Parler Franglais!

Une Outline Biographicale

Comme bébé, Miles Kington est arrivé le 13 mai, 1941, á Downpatrick, Ulster. Comme adolescent pimplé et gawky, il a fait son growing-up á Wrexham, Wales du nord. La scéne de son éducation spasmodique était Glenalmound, en Scotland, oú il a flirté avec la bagpipe, mais pas sérieusement.

Au Collége de la Trinité, Oxford, pendant trois (3) ans, j'ai étudié le français et l'allemand. (Je dis "je", parce que c'est moi en personne qui écrit ce life sketch. C'est une charade de prétendre que c'est écrit par un hack anonymeux de Pingouin. Vive le honesty!) Après Oxford, j'étais free-lance pendant quelques (some) ans. Mon big break arriva en 1968, avec mon joining le staff de Punch, le laughable weekly. Mon small break arriva en même temps (1968) avec ma nomination comme revieweur de jazz pour The Times, une fonction qui dura 10 (dix) ans.

Quoi else? Ah, oui. Je joue du double-bass avec le groupe scintillant qui s'appelle Instant Sunshine; nous avons fait 4 (4!) LPs. J'ai présenté une sélection de piéces par Alphonse Allais, un humoriste obscur français, en un livre: The World of Alphonse Allais. (Il est toujours obscur.) En 1978 j'ai commencé mon column 'Let's Parler Franglais!' dans les pages de Punch. Et en 1980 j'etais le présenteur d'un BBC-2 film, sur les railways de Paris, dans la série Great Railway Journeys of the World. Vous l'avez vu? C'était quite fun.

Maintenant je suis free-lance again. Ma plus récente production est ce blurb.


I may even go through putting all the accents the right way around at some point, but frankly that's time better spent running through a year's worth of Miles Kington's pieces from the Independent, most of which are better than this piece.

Edit: Quite good obit by Michael Bywater, inspiration for the Dirk Gently character.

I enjoyed Torchwood, but more in the way that I might enjoy a particularly good fanfic rather than the level I might appreciate a piece of original sci-fi action drama. The presence of James Marsters only made me remember that I should probably go pick up the next issue of the official Angel continuation After The Fall, which also contains a fish character and is generally an unfair comparison to Torchwood. Spike also appeared within the pages of Buffy Season 8 which is also unworthy of the faint praise of Better Than Torchwood.

Thankfully I can point to one recent season premiere that was more predictable, self-aware, shark-jumping and Barrowman-worshipping - BBC Three's Two Pints Of Lager. But that was quite enjoyable too. At least Torchwood included one interesting science fiction concept - "murder rehab".

Plus, it was nice to see Doctor-Who-Jack instead of Torchwood-Season-One-Jack. And if they'd only injected the DNA into the device rather than the heart, it would have made substantially more sense although quite how... I'll stop. It's a show that's best left unquestioned, really.

Torchwood 2x01 deserves an award for "Best V-Formation Walking". This is why they need Jack! It's particularly impressive when they reverse direction.

Obviously I don't mean to offend anyone. If I hold a different belief to you, I'm unlikely to judge you personally on it.

Hugh F-W has done an excellent job of getting chicken rearing methods onto the agenda. Even if the Chicken Out website is obnoxiously noisy. It has made me consider my position.

I like eating chicken. I don't buy whole chickens often, because I'm lazy, I believe in the division of labour and I'm generally cooking for one. But I do buy chicken breasts and other bits of chicken. I also buy various pre-made chicken meals (eg sandwiches) and eat chicken in take-outs and restaurant meals.

I don't generally buy free-range chicken, and the life of raw materials is not a factor for me when choosing where to eat. I am in no way sentimental about animals.

I can actually afford the extra couple of quid for ingredients that would have had a more varied Facebook profile, I just don't see the point in increasing the cost of a meal for the sake of an animal's past well-being. In many cases it's not even justifiable on the grounds of better taste, particularly when I'm just feeding myself, and especially when I'm throwing lots of spices in.

I *can* buy the argument that intensively reared birds are inferior to birds that have gained weight over a longer lifespan. I reject the argument that a bird with access to a football is better than one without.

I'm not counting on an after-life, but I am still mildly concerned that I may not go to the Upper Middle Class strata of Heaven if I don't fork out some of my income on improving the quality of life of others. (By this I mean some *more* of my earnings, as obviously I pay through taxation for things that benefit others.)

Yes. I'm intending to offset the value of Unhappy Chicken Guilt onto humans. At a pinch, monkeys. Therefore I ask you, dear reader, to suggest a suitable non-proselytising quality-of-life-improving project to throw small amounts of money at on a regular basis.

Ages ago, I ran a poll named Which Mr Men or Little Miss is who in Mr Men: A Christmas Carol? Here are the real answers.

Scrooge - Mr Mean
ceriwytch, anne_l_davies, missmagic all correct.
suziehill plumped for Mr Greedy, gowhonker put down Mr Grumpy.

Bob Cratchit - Mr Happy
No wrong answers here, although some skipped it.

Ghost of Christmas Past - Mr Nosey
No-one got this. It's not Mr Daydream, Mr Messy, Mr Forgetful or Mr Tickle.
Mr Nosey is a quite clever choice here - who else could remind Mr Mean that his previous Christmas had been spent all alone? Had to be someone that would put his nose in.

Ghost of Christmas Present - Little Miss Wise
Again, no-one got this. It's not even the previously rare Mr Christmas.
Little Miss Wise can work out what the near future will be like. Dreams don't have to be logical, but this one makes sense to me.

Ghost of Christmas Future - Little Miss Bossy
Again no-one guessed it.
This is a slight twist to the tale - rather than just letting Mr Mean work out that it's not a good thing for Mr Happy to be renamed Mr Sad in a possible future, the third ghost is quite direct about it being all Mr Mean's fault. So Little Miss Bossy works well here.

So let that be a lesson to us all - don't underpay the people who work in your piggy bank factory.

The winner was Anne, by the magic semi-cheating method of a second tie-breaker chance in real life denied to people not in the same room as me a month or two back. She got one of the two copies of Mr Men A Christmas Carol that I bought on some sort of Waterstone's deal. I am keeping the other, which makes more sense than it previously did.

Roger Hargreaves' son continues to release Mr Men books. This year we get Mr Men: A Christmas Carol, a simple mapping of the story to the Mr Men-verse using established characters as themselves. Intriguingly, it seems to be canon.

There's no Jacob Marley or Tiny Tim, but who (without looking at Amazon or Wikipedia etc) do you think are the other players? Prize to the person who gets the most right.

Poll #1076198 Which Mr Men or Little Miss is who in Mr Men: A Christmas Carol?
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Scrooge

Bob Cratchit

Ghost of Christmas Past

Ghost of Christmas Present

Ghost of Christmas Future

Radio 4: Any Questions. Any Answers.
BBC One: Question Time. Question Time Extra

Just not the same, is it? And as for clashing with "This Week"...

I know there are a few people on my flist (not least Alex) who have previously expressed an interest in a thing that tells you how much electricity something is using in various power states. And you probably know that these things are now available in the catalogues that fall out of the Radio Times and weekend papers, but you're probably unwilling to admit to finding anything useful in them until you're a bit nearer to 40.

But what you may not know is that this Sunday Aldi are selling a Power Meter for £7.99. Which is cheap. I intend to get one while stocks last. It may take a few weeks to work out how much power everything I have takes, but after that y'all are welcome to borrow it if you've not hotfooted it to your nearest purveyor of random import goods to get your own.

Aldi run their site in frames, which means that linking to a product means linking to a page without navigation or context. Their recommend-by-email just has the home page url. Nasty.

I've discovered that I've been counting down the days until merchandise from the children's programme In The Night Garden hits the shops. This includes Igglepiggle And His Blanket. This "lets your children role play Igglepiggle". Right. Igglepiggle basically doesn't go anywhere without his red security blanket. This amazing £14.99 toy comes with a child-sized blanket so your child can pretend to have blanket attachment issues.

EDIT: This very (pre-edit) post was rated "Intellectual" by the wotayu meme.
( pie chart )
You are... 5% unique (blame, for example, your interest in variable bit rate mp3s) and 15% herdlike (partly because you, like everyone else, enjoy writing). When it comes to friends you are popular. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are keen to please. Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is intellectual.

Your overall weirdness is: 30

(The average level of weirdness is: 28.
You are weirder than 67% of other LJers.)

Find out what your weirdness level is although we'll probably miss the number out of one of your interests and you'll have to edit it back in because variable bit rate MP3s are a good thing whereas variable bit rate MPs are not!

There's a website called Game Table Online that has Java versions of a bunch of different board and card games. Normally it's $4.99 a month, but to get a critical mass of players they're currently offering free "core" memberships to the first 500 people to grab them. All you have to do to keep the membership is play 5 games a month against other humans.

Licensed games include Kill Doctor Lucky and Euphrat & Tigris. I have seen screenshots of Guillotine in beta.

Game Table Online is not brilliant, but it is worth a whirl for free. EDIT: If you're interested in playing these games online and can tolerate Java apps. They're not the friendliest interfaces in the world.
Anyway, if this interests you, Sign up for an account and then convert it to a Core account. See www.gametableonline.com/core.php for more.

I'm not sure Woolies needed *two* adverts in today's Metro, but I really do thank them for bringing to my attention the news that My So-Called Life finally got a legal UK DVD release today. This may have to break my self-imposed "don't buy any more DVDs until I've watched everything I already have" rule.

BBC2's The Culture Show is usually worth PVRing; here are some recent highlights:
1) Neil Hannon's faux-Eurovision song Trafalgar (with ethereal chords, key changes etc ticking the boxes from his longer "how to" piece.)
2) Avenue Q Does Trainspotting.

The latter has prompted someone to post up Adam & Joe's Toy Trainspotting, claiming that the similarity warrants litigation. I can't really see what's the same other than "fluffy things do trailer"; Av Q maps the Trainspotting events to their existing characters whereas A&J is closer to the film albeit substituting toys for people.

Anyway. My title connects a lyric from Hannon's Trafalgar to tonight's big Beeb / YouTube thing which led me down this trap in the first place* BBC Reporter John Sweeney vs Tommy Davis, Spokesperson of the Church of Scientology. Scientology recently posted a shorter version from a different angle in some sort of attempt to discredit John. Showing a man screaming that they're focusing on only the second part of an interview, and not showing the discussion that prompted the outburst - there's irony.

Seemingly I missed this on BBC Plugfest this morning and somehow I wasn't otherwise aware, but tonight's Panorama is about Scientology. 8:30. BBC1.

*This connection is thus better than the title "How Do You Stop An Exploding Man?" as there is no Heroes content in this post

The news that David Jason is to play Rincewind in a Sky One adaptation of The Colour Of Magic is in The Sun and The Mirror.

Fact Comparison time!

Where?
Sun: On Sky One
Mirror: On TV screens

Is "Discworld" mentioned in the article?
Sun: Yes
Mirror: No

Who is David Jason?
Sun: Del Boy actor Sir David Jason
Mirror: Del Boy actor David Jason

How old is David Jason?
Sun: 67
Mirror: 67

Who is he playing?
Sun: “failed” sorcerer Rincewind
Mirror: bumbling Wizard Rince wind, whose schemes don't always go according to plan - just like Del in Only Fools and Horses

What part did he play in the last adaptation?
Sun: Sir David played Death’s manservant Albert
Mirror: on the heels of his success ... as Hogfather

Is it better or different than last time?
Sun: even BIGGER budget and BETTER special effects. Sir David ... will also be an executive producer this time around. ... Will be even more visually stunning.
Mirror: no mention

Has David Jason had any other roles we might need reminding of?
Sun: No.
Mirror: also a hit as detective Frost

Is there a Yank in it?
Sun: He added that a big-name US actor had been signed up as his co-star to boost ratings abroad.
Mirror: "They are trying to get an American co-star to play opposite me."

When?
Sun: no mention
Mirror: "It should start filming this summer so probably won't be on TV until 2008."

Any more?
Sun: There are 34 more Discworld novels which could be televised. Sir David said: “I’d like to keep doing them.”
Mirror: no mention

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I think, on the whole, the Sun wins. The Mirror's extra info is cancelled out by the glaring errors.