Happy birthday stephenpthomas!

Happy birthday, aquarionical!

I keep meaning to write a bit about BBC Two's A Scottish Songbook at Celtic Connections on Monday. It was ... mixed.
( Read more... )

Given the complete lack of response to these reports, I get the distinct impression that nobody really cares how much I enjoyed a folk concert. Well, tough 8-).
( Read more... )

Belated happy birthday to pickwick and capriuni!

Okay, I've just been watching Heroes, Volume Five Chapter Three: "Ink". There's a character who is deaf, but whose power is that she can see sounds. (But, for some reason, not all sounds; there's a burst of colour from a broken coffee mug, some beautiful swirly things from a cello, but nothing from traffic noise, or people speaking, or the applause following the cello bit[1].)

Am I right in thinking that calling this synthaesia (as her doctor does) is completely wrong?

As I understand it, synthaesia happens in the brain; it's not that the sounds are somehow being detected through the eyes, it's that once they've been detected through the ears, the brain mixes them up. If you're deaf, you can't detect sounds in the first place.

I don't have any problem with the character having a completely impossible ability because, well, it's Heroes, that's what it's about. But calling it by the name of a real condition which it bears a vague similarity to seems ... odd.

[1]Which we're definitely seeing from her viewpoint, because they don't make any sound either. And how exactly do her powers enable her to play a cello without lessons, anyway?

I've just got Spider-Man: 1602 #3. I enjoyed it (I'm a sucker for alternate versions of existing characters), but there was one part that had me staring at the page in disbelief.

Peter goes to see a theatrical troupe called "The Watsonnes of Scotland" (who, of course, include a red-haired daughter named Marion-Jane Watsonne). And for the first time, it's revealed he's Scottish[1]. And then the leader of the troupe says this:

"...My family has travelled a great way to entertain you from our small borough of Staffordshire."

Things wrong with this sentence, in ascending order of importance.

1) In Scotland, "borough" is spelt "burgh" (and pronounced "burra"), as in Edinburgh.

2)"Burgh" or "borough" refers to a town. Anything "shire" is a county. The Royal Burgh Of Inverness is in the county of Inverness-shire.

3)Staffordshire isn't in Scotland! It isn't even near Scotland. It's in the Midlands. Even when Scotland included a fair chunk of Northumbria, the border was nowhere near Staffordshire, and that was long before 1602.

Seriously, how hard is it to check these things?

(Then again, Mark Millar is actually Scottish, and he cheerfully had a caption in Ultimate X-Men read "Land's End, Scotland"...)

[1]This is fair enough - he kept quiet about it since he was apprenticed to a man working directly for Good Queen Bess. I'm less certain about the claim that "Parker" is a Scottish name (it isn't, although "Watson" is, as in George Watson's College), and that the reason he was going by "Parquagh" - which looks pseudo-Gaelic - was to cover this up.

Remember how I said I liked the new logo?

Well I'm very uncertain about this version of it. Not only does it lose some of the "Classic Who logo" feel by not having "DOCTOR" in smaller letters over "WHO" in big letters, but having the TARDIS insignia in the middle looks, well, silly...

Memed from speakr2customrs

( Read more... )

So, what did I make of that?

That's ... a heck of a good question.
( Read more... )

Okay, it's the 3rd of January. It was very picturesque having a white Christmas, but it can STOP now.

Got Mitch Benn's Sing Like An Angel for Christmas. Now, I know Mitch is a bit of a fan, but usually if the song isn't actually about Doctor Who (such as "Be My Doctor Who Girl", and the heartfelt "Call Me During Doctor Who And I'll Kill You") it doesn't come up. But "Richard Dawkins" contains the glorious lines:

He's evolution's top banana,
And he's married to Romana,
And that kinda makes him King of the Nerds.

I've just seen David Tennant give the death scene of his career.

Obviously, I'm hoping next week's will top it (Part One was awesome), but I can't imagine how...

That was pretty impressive. Whatever else this season's done, it's certainly shaken up the Season 1 status quo.
( spoilers )

The following was written and recited by Marcus Brigstocke on The Now Show. It's a work of genius, and I hope you enjoy it:
( Read more... )

When I first heard about this, my reaction was "that's ... an odd idea". A Doctor Who themed episode of a somewhat anarchic music quiz.

And having watched it, my reaction is still that it was a very odd idea. In practice, being Doctor Who themed meant it was presented by David Tennant, Bernard and Catherine were on the teams. Jo Wylie made up the numbers on one team, and turned out to be a fan, and some singer made up the numbers on the other, and turned out to have no idea what anyone was talking about. Beyond that, and Ten's Who related links, there were some questions connected with space, some others connected with the words "doctor" and "who", and somewhat random appearances by Ood Sigma and a Dalek. I was disappointed that Kate Bush featured in one question, and no-one mentioned the mad fan theory that she wrote "Kinda".

(It's been a very long time since I last watched Buzzcocks. Bill Bailey was still a team captain, and I suspect he'd have been much more interested in a Doctor Who themed version than the new guy.)

So, yeah. Not bad, really, but ... odd.

And David Tennant is a Coldplay fan. Nobody's perfect.

Happy birthday, mrslant and scarfman (and Arthur)!

Whoah.
( Read more... )

Yeah.

So apparently Disneyland is twinned with ... Swindon.

HIGNFY and The Now Show both aimed their satirical barbs at the idea Swindon is an extremely dull place. But for those of us who know how far this is from the truth, this is even more bizarre.

Disney is a huge monolithic corporation. And we all know that all huge monolithic corporations are secretly the huge monolithic corporation. Clearly, this is the beginning of some evil scheme by Goliath™, the true ramifications of which can only be guessed at, but which are unlikely to be good news for a certain ex-SpecOps-27 officer.

So, apparently there's a woman called Lisa Williams who has a show somewhere in the distant depths of the Sky TV menu. She sees dead people.

I'm used to the fact David Kennedy isn't a terribly uncommon name (there were three that I know of at my school, one of whom lived in my street). And having briefly had a boss who shared my Mum's name[1], I've got used to that as well. But, innocently flicking through the channels for something worth watching, this is the first time I've seen the name of an online friend in a context where it clearly isn't the online friend, and it's a bit of a surprise.

[1]Which didn't help me remember it, at all. In fact I'd think "No, it's something like that, but I've got it confused with Mum's maiden name..."