Cyberclogs

Good news, just read that Doctor Who will grace our screens again for its fourth series starting on Saturday 5 April. I read the first episode is called Partners in crime and will re-introduce Catherine Tate as Donna Noble from the 2006's Christmas Special story. I must admit I'm a bit concerned at the notion of Catherine Tate being cast as a full time companion as it could really bring the wrong kind of tone to the show and make it excessively campy or comedic, I'm hoping this isn't the case but it could well be. It will be equally annoying if she continues ranting and raving like she did in the Christmas special as it will make for a difficult 13 episodes to watch (in that case hopefully the daleks will get her eh?!). Although the good news is all the other companions will come back, Jack, Martha and even Rose Tyler! So it will be quite a busy series but whether it will be a successful one or not remains to be seen. Watch this (time and) space....

I thought I'd write a quick blog about a couple of things that currently annoy me, number one, doing Cisco CCNA Semester 4 is getting to be a bit of a grind and a pain in the proverbial, but thankfully I'm at the last chapter and then its a question of revision for the final exam, which will be fun (not!!).

I personally can't wait to get rid of this effin course, to be honest I started off enjoying doing Cisco in Semester 1 with all the intro to networking stuff, but as it went on it just gets more infuriatingly tedious and technical with enough mind bending stuff to keep Stephen Hawking rather busy. The use of electronic labs is also annoying as there are plenty of labs to work through and you have to constantly type in the same commands over and over, its a hair tearing out exercise at times Cisco. The reading is pretty heavy stuff too with so much techno jargon and stuff to learn, when you don't work in IT it just becomes a drag to read after a while. No wonder there is only one lecturer who teaches Cisco in our college as none of the other lecturers want to have anything to do with it!! (They also have to score 100% in order to qualify as a lecturer in it, so another indicator as to why its not popular with them!). So begone Cisco from my sight!!

Another thing that has bugged me of late is MSN Hotmail as every time (virtually anyway) I try to send someone an email from it (I'm using Vista maybe that's why!) it tells me to sign out and sign in again, thereby I am unable to send the email and I need to copy and paste it in again. Aghh!! Friggin Microsoft!!

Now onto some better news as my Acting 4 classes finished last week, which marked the end of the Art of Acting units altogether, so our class have been trying to form a little theatre group of our own, and we've managed to secure 8 weeks of classes with one of the acting tutors Iain McAleese (from our Acting 3 classes). So as a group hopefully we can work on a play or some kind of piece and perform live some day in front of an audience somewhere. This will no doubt be a toughie to pull off but we might just get there.

Also I went and saw my fellow acting class thesp Scott in his first play at the weekend there at the Ramshorn Theatre in a classic play Playboy of the Western World, which he convincingly affected a baffling Irish accent and brilliantly played a drunk, it was a great laugh to watch.

So that's for now. Bring on the acting group and banish Cisco from my sight!

Warning: this blog entry isn't for non-Doctor Who fans.

Well I don't write too much about Doctor Who on this blog (ha ha ha ha ha!! Much derision at that one!) well by that I actually mean I don't write about classic Doctor Who much i.e. pre-Russell T Davies. And I recently purchased The Five Doctors 25th Anniversary edition on DVD, and I'm pleased to say I really rather enjoyed it as much I hoped I would. The Five Doctors doesn't quite stand as one of the all time great Who stories but it is undeniably solid and entertaining. Looking back on it I find it possibly even more enjoyable than I did before, especially as the DVD release features the original broadcast version and the Special Edition which came out on video back in 1995.

Peter Davison was at that time my favourite Doctor (although Tom has since superseded him imho) and I even vaguely remember this story on its original broadcast. Looking back though on most of Peter Davison's stories they were really rather boring, but this is definitely one of the better ones. Terrance Dicks's script is very entertaining and witty, and the inclusion of Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee is also frequently delightful (or scarecrow and the fancy pants as they call each other). Richard Hurndall is also pleasant surprise filling in the shoes of the deceased original William Hartnell as the first doctor, although sadly he too passed off not long after this show as broadcast. The rest of the cast is both amusing and delightful as well, especially the inclusion of Paul Jerricho as the Castellan (a high-up Gallifreyan dude) who's hammy performance is well worth remembering (especially his line "No! Not the mind probe!"). I was surprised though to learn just how little Terrance Dicks liked the Cybermen as he always thought they were ponderous and boring, the Cybermen being morely Eric Saward's (the then Dr Who script editor) inclusion in the story. I must admit the Cybermen by this time had become bastardised from their original robotic, cold, logical selves, and become more emotional in their responses ("Excellent!" "You will be destroyed!"). Ironically though Eric Saward was less enthused to bring in the Daleks as only one appears in the whole story! Probably also the reason why Eric Saward botched Ressurection of the Daleks (an awful dalek story complete with disco death dancing!).

Regardless of this The Five Doctors is alot of fun and a charming and commendable way to commemorate the show's 20th Anniversary.

On a different and on a slightly connected note my friend Stephen let me know about this site tonight which I've just looked at, which is pretty hilarious, Tom Baker says, where through some voice software they've been able to create audio files of Tom Baker saying many different things such as jokes, sayings, quotes from movies (listen to his quotes from Die Hard, Pulp Fiction and Planes Trains and Automobiles), even songs. Its quite funny to hear Tom say motherfu**** and the like as I'm not usually used to that, although I gather he does swear like a trooper. You can find this delightful site at:

http://tombakersays.com/

OK on that note I'm off.

I was in Edinburgh the other day with my cousin Dale and my pal Stephen to see my brother's band Soul-Fi as it was their first gig and they were actually pretty good I have to say. As their name implies they played alot of soul "covers" so we were treated to stuff like Wilson Pickett, Stevie Wonder, Jamiraqui and others, and my bro Steve did plenty of cool nifty noodling on the bass, putting a lot of players to shame (which he usually does!) and musically the band were very good musicians, with four women and three guys (in fact why couldn't I ever find a drummer as good as that?). So it was a good gig only hampered by the very cramped venue it was set in, The Old Bakehouse cafe, which has a downstairs basement for gigs which makes the 13th note cafe's basement look like the SECC, not to mention the gents bathroom was right next to where the band were playing!

But anyways it was a good gig and quite a good day too apart from the crappy weather in Edinburgh which was the same all over anyway, in fact I can't wait till we get out of this crappy post-winter weather and get into spring, should it ever come.