The House That Silence Built

Doctor Who: The Doctor's Daughter

2008-05-11T17:21:32Z

This was a rough episode. There were lots of neat ideas -- a seven day war that no one remembers the start of, the Doctor talking about the loss of his family, and his tentative joy at having a daughter, and Donna being the clever one to figure out the big twist -- but it all seem roughly kludged together.

I hate to keep saying this, but there was really no need for Martha to be in this story. She didn't do anything except get that poor Hath killed in the mud pit.

Do you think Hath masks will be the next big tie-in product?

Tennant's still working on his Lonely God face. He's not quite there yet. "A man who never would" seemed far too over the top and staged to pack a real emotional punch.

Georgia Moffet did a lovely job as Jenny, the Doctor's progenated clone-daughter -- her father, by the way, is Peter Davison, the Fifth Doctor, so she is literally the Doctor's daughter. You knew how her character's arc would end the instant she stepped out of the cloning machine, but it was an enjoyable trip.

A spin-off with Jenny zooming around the galaxy, saving planets, would be brilliant, but I'll settle for her returning in future episodes of Doctor Who.

blinovitch @ 2008-05-09T08:26:00

2008-05-09T12:26:33Z

I need this weekend. Too many things this week have stressed the shit out of me when they have no reason to do so.

Even if it was touted by a destructive anarchistic dissociated identity, I want "the ability to let that which does not matter truly slide."

Highly Unenjoyable

2008-05-08T01:29:29Z

I may have had a genuine anxiety attack today -- or at least, the first I've recognized as such.

There was a campus-wide end of year lunch thing. I abruptly changed my mind and decided to go at least check it out, see if I recognized anyone so I could say hello. There was old 70s rock playing and the courtyard was packed with hundreds of people, one of whom I recognized -- the college president, for the record. There may have been more people I knew, but I never noticed them. Something kicked into gear in my brain that said "FLEE." There were too many strangers and I was sure they were all staring at me, even if intellectually I recognized most of them hadn't even registered my presence in the vicinity.

Enough presence of mind remained not to abruptly spin on my heel and run back into the building -- although hindsight makes me wonder if that wouldn't have been the more expedient and less elaborate solution than wending my way through the crowd to the far side of the courtyard and then making a circuit of the campus to get back to my building.

That was the beginning of the downslide of the day, most of it due to my own paranoia and self-recrimination, except for showing up to a rescheduled meeting, which I'm pleased to blame Gmail for, as it hadn't retrieved an email from my school account in a timely fashion. Again, intellectually I recognize the self-recrimination and mental beating-up are baseless things, but that doesn't really take away any of their bite.

Leisurely Reading

2008-05-05T17:20:28Z

I have been taking for-freaking-ever to read The Drawing of the Dark. It's Tim Powers' prototypical secret history novel, written before even The Anubis Gates. I like it a lot, but I keep finding these other things to do that leave me reading it on the bus ride home, or on the odd log 'n capture day, like today. Perhaps I shall finish it.

I do not believe this one will be going back on Paperbackswap.com when I finish. I already kind of regret trading away Expiration Date and Earthquake Weather, even though I had tired of reading the first and think the second is a ham-fistedly composed crossover of the former with Last Call.

It's Clearly to His Credit

2008-05-05T00:10:33Z

So I've decided what I'm going to run at OGC this summer: Marvel Heroes, the board game from Fantasy Flight Games; a BPRD adventure about the terra cotta soldiers of Emperor Qin Shi Huang (probably wrong; I keep having to look the name up to get it right) that uses Cinematic Unisystem; and a GURPS Discworld scenario about Ankh-Morpork's first amateur dramatics society.

The last I'm most concerned about, as Ben_McFarland over on RPGBomb.com was amazingly helpful in creating a plot structure for the BPRD game and a board game runs itself. I'll try to playtest it first, but it will probably be my first time running GURPS, and it'll be as an MIB demo guy, too.

I have an idea of interweaving the show, the Discworldian version of a musical/light opera, the characters are trying put on with the events they're going through -- mostly other people trying to stop them putting on the show for various reasons -- so I'm doing a little research for source material: an Opera Australia performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore. It's not bad, but I keep thinking of the bites Sideshow Bob sang in that episode of The Simpsons.

EXT. - NIGHT - DECK OF THE SIMPSONS' HOUSEBOAT

SIDESHOW BOB

Now, Bart, any last requests?

BART

Well, there was one, but...Nah, forget it.

SIDESHOW BOB

No, go on.

BART

It's just that you have such a beautiful singing voice.

SIDESHOW BOB

Guilty as charged.

BART

Uh huh. Anyway, I was wondering if you could sing the entire score of the "H.M.S. Pinafore."

SIDESHOW BOB

Very well, Bart. I shall send you to heaven before I send you to hell. And a one and a two and a...

Doctor Who: The Poison Sky

2008-05-04T15:04:58Z

I enjoyed that much more than last week's episode.

When the Sontarans stole the TARDIS, I thought for sure Donna was going to fly herself home, thus paying off the opening scene of The Sontaran Stratagem. So disappointing.

Wouldn't setting the atmosphere on fire mean there's no oxygen left to breathe?

For that matter, no one ever actually shut off the Atmos devices.

Martha really didn't need to be in this one. Perhaps it was necessary set-up for next week, which looks curious.

In spite of saying only generally negative thngs, I did enjoy the episode. The pace was brisk. There was always a sense of moving forward to something. And I really liked how they actually showed the Sontarans as a martial culture, rather than just evil potato head men.

And for the record, if next week is about what I think it's about, called it in 1997. (Jesus, 10 years? I need to find a new fandom. I've been here much too long.)

I should add this was the first time I'd watched a new episode of new Who with other people, kazama and his charming girlfriend. It was nice having others to laugh with.

Self-conscious

2008-05-03T02:44:59Z

I really hate having to watch people watch something I've made. It's so mortifying.

blinovitch @ 2008-04-30T10:16:00

2008-04-30T14:16:42Z

It snowed for about ten minutes on my walk to work. Nothing stuck, but still: snow.

blinovitch @ 2008-04-29T13:59:00

2008-04-29T17:59:22Z

The rain pretty well soaked my shoes and socks on the way to work, but that's all right. Now I have a legitimate excuse to be barefoot. It was a little surprising when two mucky-mucks popped in unannounced, but no problem. I was too busy enjoying being barefoot.

blinovitch @ 2008-04-29T12:44:00

2008-04-29T16:44:41Z

The computer lab off of which my suite exists is now being kept in darkness because the students have left, except for when tour groups come through. It's a little odd to have darkness at my back, and then notice the lights flicker on in my peripheral vision.

This interview with the governor is almost in the can. I've got one last edit to make, a little bit more fooling around with Motion animations, and then I'll be done. Just in time for graduation activities to kick into gear. Oh boy.

Back from Ubercon

2008-04-28T16:31:44Z

So I went to Ubercon this weekend. It was immensely relaxing and a great getaway, whcih is what I needed. If you want to know what I did there -- like my seven hour Rock Band/Guitar Hero odyssey -- you can read about that here. It was generally a good weekend, although I don't know if it's a trip I want to keep making on my own. A six hour drive is long and far enough that I think Ubercon would be a tough sell to most gamers I know in my area. It was a tough sell to me, and I wanted to go.

I made several wrong turns on the way down, usually because I second-guessed my Google Maps directions. This is probably due to the fact I almost always know where I'm going in my daily life, so I'm not good at navigating new territories for the first time. I feel out of control when I can't find my way around, and it gets worse when one's moving through unknown lands, looking for markers that may or not be as noticeable as promised.

Also, a scene from Ubercon:

INT. - DAY - HOTEL LOBBY

blinovitch enters from stage right, emerging from a hidden stairwell. blinovitch's FRIEND, having been watching the elevators for him, appears confused by his appearance from the side.

blinovitch's FRIEND

Wha -- ?

blinovitch

I'm Batman.

RANDOM CON-GOER WEARING A FLASH T-SHIRT walks past.

RANDOM CON-GOER WEARING A FLASH T-SHIRT

And I'm the Flash!

blinovitch

Oh, hey, Flash. I'll meet you at the Watchtower later.

blinovitch's FRIEND
(non-plussed)

Grr...

Doctor Who: The Sontaran Stratagem.

2008-04-28T14:24:21Z

Weak sauce. The Doctor does nothing but act smarmier than usual, Martha's played like a block of wood before she's cloned, UNIT's revision into gun-toting bullies is random and non-sensical (perhaps it's meant to subtly imply the Torchwood model of weirdness-handling is best), and that cliffhanger with the car and street of poison gas is so poorly blocked they could be two different scenes entirely.

Donna, of course, gets all the best lines and moments.

Source

2008-04-24T15:15:56Z

Thanks to Pandora Radio, I know now the source of Stewie Griffin crying out "I've got blisters on these fingers!" after playing the banjo in Family Guy.

I've been signed up to Pandora for a while, but I've only begun listening regularly in the last two or so weeks. The usual MP3 playlist was becoming tedious. This seemed like a good way to break out of the same old songs and artists.

Of course, the station I've shaped plays an awful lot of Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, Beatles and Who. So it's not too different, just lots of songs I hadn't previously heard. I'm slowly expanding though. Cake popped in there, somehow, and Widespread Panic.

blinovitch @ 2008-04-20T22:50:00

2008-04-21T02:52:07Z

My feet smell of fresh grass.

blinovitch @ 2008-04-19T22:08:00

2008-04-20T02:09:32Z

I can't even tell anyone how depressed I am because then they won't talk to me anymore.

Which is silly, because they won't talk to me anyway.

That's rather passive-aggressive of me. Fact is, I'm wicked depressed right and it seems like there's no one I can talk to about it.

Doctor Who: Planet of the Ood

2008-04-19T22:51:37Z

I have really mixed feeling about this episode.

First off, I liked the Ood when we met them back in The Impossible Satan Planet Pit. I figured they'd been enslaved and there was an uprising on the way, so I'm glad we got to see it.

But there was some really weird stuff going on in this episode. Why were two of the people complicit in the subjugation of a species members of historically oppressed ethnicities themselves? Kess, a black man, was a literal whip-cracking overseer, while Solana, the Indian woman, was a heartless PR flak. I want to know if that was intention on the production team's part. The way the camera lingered on those characters at key points, and the nature of Commander Kess' death, makes me think it was meant to be ironic commentary.

Hooray for the Friend of the Ood mole. That was neat, but did he really have to die?

Donna gets more points for maturity and general competence. I think I like her better than Martha or Rose at this point.

Next week, Martha Jones and Sontarans. Meh.

Thete'll fix it.

2008-04-19T16:02:09Z

LARCHWOOD: http://drtheta.livejournal.com/213389.html

Equipment Failure

2008-04-18T19:26:41Z

I've been shooting interviews for these videos that will go on the college's new website this summer. This morning, the light kit I reserved hadn't been returned yet -- and still hasn't, I might add; bad patron! Given who checked it out, I had a feeling it wouldn't be returned on time, so I already had a backup plan in mind to cobble one together out of offlined resources. Everything worked fine in the office, but once I got over to the shoot location, one of the lights decided it didn't want to work. (Still doesn't, so I don't know what's going on there. I'll check it out before I go.) That, in conjunction with the fact I had to use a crappy camera and the location itself was flooded with sunlight I couldn't block out, made for a less than stellar interview in my view.

The second interview I did, which I just got back from, I had to pull out the big guns, a fancy three light kit that is nowhere near as portable as the one I've been using. I got my exercise for the day, at least.

I really hope that over the summer, we get the opportunity to revise some of the resource loaning procedures here. It's unlikely anything will ever really be done about overdue and missing equipment, but we should at least work to be sure of who's got what, and that they have what we think they have.

Bzuh

2008-04-17T03:19:37Z

So the other day I finally finished off that singles profile on the local site I've been attempting for like a year now. I go to login to the account just now and it's gone. Like totally gone.

Doesn't recognize my login name or password and says neither of the email addresses I might have used are on record. Was it that terrible a profile? Does the site admin have a vendetta against me?

It was you, wasn't it?

Grumble

2008-04-16T18:27:50Z

The user of the suite next to mine appears to be laboring under the belief these things are sound-proofed. I shall explicate why this is a mistaken article of faith in a letter to be found during the investigation.

And as long as I'm grumbling, I got almost to the very end of a fifty minute tape before the Head Cleaning message and attendant video artifacting appeared. Now I get to capture it all over again. Back to Thieves World, then.

Is the dimensional stabilizer on the fritz again?

2008-04-16T17:02:14Z

Another Who sighting today: someone over on RPGBomb.com put together a Weird War II minis scenario where the League of Heroes, including the Doctor, Indiana Jones, the Slayer, Captain America and Lobster Johnson, fight to stop a platoon of Nazis from using a stargate.

Scroll down to the comments section to see a nice close-up of the Doctor, the TARDIS, K9 and whom I presume to be Sarah Jane. I approve of his choice in the Doctor's outfit. It doesn't get enough love (even if my first and everlasting costume crush is the original S12 get-up).

Fantasy in Life

2008-04-16T14:08:30Z

A student just dropped off something he found in the computer lab: a sonic screwdriver pen tip. It's with all the other lost and found oddities, mostly pairs of glasses and thumb drives.

As I joked with the operations manager, whoever's lost the end of their sonic screwdriver won't be able to get past the cage window to retrieve it for want of a power pack.

Then Three Come Along At Once

2008-04-15T03:00:13Z

After several weeks of inactivity on the Paperbackswap.com front, I suddenly got three requests at once. Funny how that works.

blinovitch @ 2008-04-14T14:10:00

2008-04-14T18:10:00Z

Holy shazbat. Someone swiped the DV deck from one of the other editing suites. And, it turns out, this past weekend, two projectors were lifted from the next door building.

I thought these suites were poorly supervised. There are too many ways to get out of the building without having to walk past the media services desk -- and a DV deck is not a large object. It'll easily fit in any bookbag.

Broadcast News

2008-04-13T23:01:46Z

Tonight's the first night I've seen the ABC/FOX affiliate's news broadcast. It's only a couple months old, so I suppose some slack must be cut, but still.

The anchor looks like she's going out to the bars. She's got this flowing green dress thing that reminds of those tops that seem made to hide the wearer's belly; you know, snug at the chest, then loose and flowing down from there.

They started off the show with everyone standing by themselves, the anchor, the weather guy and the sports lady. It was only after the halfway point that you saw them standing together. It made the thing lack continuity as you jumped around to isolated locations.

Their set is...weird. It's very grey and there's little actual structure to it. Sort of a railing thing, like on the original Enterprise --

Distraction Alert!

I just saw an ad for The Simpsons tonight. Was that Lurleen Lumpkin?!

-- and there were some monitors in the background, although they might have been inserted electronically. The place needs some color. Even the talent seemed flat and two-dimensional.

And that's my half-assed analysis.