Alden Bates' Weblog

TSV 45 went up on the web site today. There's only one feature article this time - Kate Orman's piece on writing Set Piece - and many of the other pieces now online are reviews. Primarily reviews of the six stories in the Key to Time season (which is now out on DVD in the US but not anywhere else in the world, strangely).

There is also Sums over Histories, a comic strip with the fourth Doctor, Romana and K9, which has some spot-on characterisation. I had some problems working out how to include the double-page spread in a form which was legible, and settled for putting it in a scrolling box, and also allowing the user to click on the graphic to open it separately for easier scrolling. Hopefully this doesn't make it too difficult to read. :)

There's also some cool cartoons and lots and lots of Key to Time related artwork (which will come in handy when I start adding artwork and blurbs to the story index nodes.

I didn't have any items in this issue (in 1995 I was working my first year at Pocket Solutions, so that may be why I wasn't submitting more material) but go read it anyway. :)

Previously: TSV 44

There's a community on LiveJournal for everything, including one for Doctor Who companion Perpugilliam Brown. The Peri community is blessed with a talented artist named Paul Mudie, who recently posted this picture:
Peri, dressed as a dominatrix

I probably don't need to mention that's not safe for work. Oh boy.

He also has a deviantART gallery containing some other quite spectacular artwork.

I don't usually embed videos, but this one is officially the most awesome thing I've seen today:

Alanis Morissette covering the Black-Eyed Peas hit 'My Humps'. Simultaneously brilliant and insane! (Thanks to AgentCompassion for pointing out that).

I'm trying to decide if that video is weirder than Keith Richards confessing that he snorted his dad's ashes with some cocaine. That's really great, Keith. (and thanks to Meg for pointing out that one!)

Warning! Review may contain traces of spoilers.

On the weekend, I went to see Ghost Rider, the latest conversion of a Marvel comics hero to the big screen. I'm not really familiar with the comic version, so I don't know how comic-accurate the movie version was, but it was a pretty good film.

Itchy, burning scalp? Your head might be on fire.

Johnny Blaze is a young stunt rider who's father has just been diagnosed with cancer. Enter Mephistopheles, who offers the fellow a deal - his father's health in return for Johnny's soul. Johnny signs the contract, the devil erases dad's cancer and tells Johnny not to make any long-term plans.

Fast foward twenty years or so, and son of Satan is roaming Earth looking for a lost contract which will bestow him with many souls. The Devil is not happy at this and wants the contract for himself, so he activates Johnny as the Ghost Rider in order to fight Satan Jr and his elemental-based henchmen.

I quite enjoyed this movie...

Another Austrian import. Good on for them for going against the flow and having a short squat can instead of a tall thin one, but unfortunately this is the only notable thing about Power Horse - it tastes very similar to Red Bull and Shot and Go. Seriously, it seems like every energy drink to come out of Austria tastes the same. Man, do I miss the days of Dirty Dog and its five or six different flavours (Cactus!).

And, really, a black animal on two tone background screams "Red Bull knockoff".

Also "Power Horse" sounds like the name of an anthropomorphic horse super hero.

Actual text from the Network Solutions whois page: [screenshot]

Announcing a great NEW feature for WHOIS users -- you can now start a WHOIS query directly in your browser!

Use the format: www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=netsol.com and you'll come directly to our results page. Stay tuned for more useful features coming soon to WHOIS!!!

So... typing a URL manually into your browser is a "great NEW feature"? Man, the boffins at Mozilla are going to be fuming that they didn't think of THAT one....

Because I refuse to grow up and therefore still like Transformers, stumbling on this webcomic filled my heart with joy:

Lil Formers Because giant robots are inherently funny! Don't believe me? How about after seeing the morning after? Or perhaps now? (poor poor Megatron) Though this public service announcement is my favourite so far....

This weblog is now located at www.aldenbates.com, because I can. And also because it's easier to remember than 'abates.tetrap.com' (the old subdomain redirects here, of course). Please update your links and bookmarks. :)

So this post isn't a total wash, here's a picture I took last weekend from the top of Cannon Point:

In the foreground is Upper Hutt, with the Hutt River winding its way up the right-hand side. The bridge at lower right is the one I mentioned in this post last year. Beyond the hill in middle centre is Lower Hutt (It's actually quite a lot bigger than it appears in that photo. Yeah, as if we haven't heard that one before), beyond which is Wellington Harbour, on the other side of which is Wellington (yes, where Peter Jackson lives). In the far far background, you may be able to make out the very dim outline of the South Island.

This photo was taken with my shiny new Canon Powershot digital camera. :)

I've been missing a few emails (mostly from mailing lists) sent to my gmail account. Now, at the bottom of the page whenever I access my gmail account is something like "You are currently using 33 MB (1%) of your 2831 MB." so you'd assume by that that there isn't a problem with disk space, however Yahoo groups says that the emails have been bouncing with the following error:
Remote host said: 552 5.2.2 User over quota 26si6202460aga [RCPT_TO]

There's a Gmail help center but I couldn't find anything relevant (even searching for "over quota" didn't help). I've reported it to Gmail support, so we'll see what happens...

Mind you, it looks like this is a common problem. Yahoo blogged that they're working on it with Google, but that was several days ago now...

Sometimes the most unexpected things happen on this site. For instance, so far this month the five most popular archives TSV items are:

1. What's really inside a Dalek
2. Who Killed Kennedy eBook
3. Cyberman shot by an arrow
4. Is that a Sonic Screwdriver in your Pocket, Doctor?
5. The Doctor and Rose standing over a Slitheen

Why is a crumby cartoon I drew back in 1993 the most popular? Because when you do an image search on Google for inside a dalek, the first result looks like this:

...which looks deceptively like something the searcher would be looking for. I feel vaguely guilty now!