Cyberclogs

Just been watching over (again) episode 5 of the Apprentice, which each week gets better and better mainly because it gets more and more tense as the weeks carry on. The latest episode saw the two teams make their own flavours of ice cream at a diary farm, which they would try and sell to businesses. The production of the ice cream surprisingly turned out to be the easy part but the selling was the toughest part (understandably). Both teams struggled with the sales but in the end one of the teams just managed to outsale the other (spoiler fact: it was Renaissance who won, lead by a new and improved Claire). The other team Alpha lost, mainly due to the fact that they failed to secure enough sales, as three of their leads also made their own ice cream!

I was somewhat surprised by this episode as it showed the ditzy contestant Lucinda (a risk management assessor) to be quite effective as a team leader, but again as team leader she did somewhat fail to gain the respect of her sales team, who seemed determined to work as a little threesome without her help. Ironically in the board room, Lucinda's idea to mix up the teams by having one of those who helped with the production of the ice cream go in with the sales team and vice versa, went down very well with Sir Alan, but it didn't go ahead because it was met by a stony silence from the three sales people: Jennifer, Lindi and Raef. This episode also did reveal Jennifer (the foxy looking Dubliner) to be a bit of a snake and a icy bitch, something which Lucinda highlighted in the boardroom, after Jennifer spoke up and said how indifferent Lucinda was as a team leader. Ironically aswell Helenne when speaking in front of the camera defended Lucinda for once as a good team leader, and said Jennifer was a snakey bitch, yet later in the boardroom she denied this! Just goes to show where loyalty is these days! So I ended up feeling a bit sorry for Lucinda, as I felt these two women actually were backstabbing her, I also felt it was a bit unecessary and nasty of Jennifer to raise the issues of her being icy and a snake in front of the whole group later on back at the house. This just comes across as a nasty attempt to have all the people side up with Jennifer, but to honest they are all out for themselves regardless of who they get on with.

But in the end sir Alan did fire the right person, Lindi, who was somewhat useless as a second in command in this task, as she wandered through the task with a deluded over-confidence of her own abilities. She also allowed Jennifer to make 2 sells promising full exluscivity to 2 businesses, which she had no authority or right to do. This girl wasn't too brilliant in the past either, as she offered one laundry business to do their laundry for £5000 as opposed to £200!

Anyway I'm definitely looking forward to the next episode to see who is up for the chop next!

Episode 4, the Sontaran Stratagem saw the return of those ruthless potato headed military driven alien swines. And on behalf of the Sontaran race I would like to apologise as I called them egg-headed last week but they are indeed potato headed, not egg-headed. But the episode was to be fair not a bad one, it also marked a nice re-introduction of Martha Jones aswell (who looks rather lovely once more!). Another pleasant surprise was seeing Christopher Ryan play a Sontaran general very effectively, it was almost but not quite like listening to Kevin Lindsay again (the late great actor who played the original Sontaran officers back in the 70s very well).

There were a few drawbacks to this episode though, mainly that the stories still rely on the same old recurring solutions such as the Doctor (again!) in mid-episode running away from trouble, it also relies heavily on the Doctor using his sonic screwdriver all the time on everything, and in deadly situations its actually next to useless because of deadlock seals! The inclusion of Luke Rattigan as Ryan Sampson was a bit annoying to watch, as his character is such an irritating little dweeb (bet he gets commupenced next week!).

But there were some nice little touches here and there too, one of them being the scene where Donna tells the Doctor she is going home, and he misreads her meaning entirely as he thinks she is going home for good, but she's just going home for a visit. And yes the Sontaran make-up is pretty good aswell, Chris Ryan's line about the time war was quite good too "The greatest war in history and we weren't allowed to take part in it!".

So the second part should be hopefully more entertaining (or maybe less who knows) but it wasn't a bad little ep. Cue the next un....

Its only 3 days until one of the most anticipated games of the year comes out, yep GTA IV. Can I wait? Nup. Can you?

Planet of the Ood, the 3rd episode of the fourth season of Doctor Who, was for me a bit of a dissappointment after the last two rather entertaining episodes. The Ood themselves as aliens were actually not too bad and to finally see their planet and backstory made them a bit more likeable. But the story itself just lacked something, it all seemed pretty formulaic in a way to have the likeable alien "Oodies" turn into evil killers and wait, but wait, there has to be something behind this heinous behaviour, and there is also the usual runaround (or runaway) from the Doctor who increasingly seems to solve alot of problems in the middle of the episode by simply running away (and just what is with his hairdo in this episode!). The Ood song bit was also a bit cheesy and naff and in the finale moments (PLOT SPOLIER!!) the Doctor and Donna are treated like Gods, again! All the same I did like Tim McInnerny as the villanous Halpen who treats the Ood like cattle with foot and mouth disease (watch out for his peeling end).

But overall this episode was (to quote Chris Morris) a bit of a naff effort, hopefully next week's episode The Sontaran Stratagem (which features none other than Mike from the Young Ones!) will be an improvement, and mark a welcome return to those rutheless weird egg headed aliens.

I've just watched something rather shocking and yet totally compelling, yep as the title suggests I've just watched the fourth episode of the new series of The Apprentice. The reason why its compelling is fairly obvious (well to fans of the show like myself) seeing a group of power hungry, ambitious, self-driven business men and women go at it for and against each other in 12 weekly tasks is always fascinating to watch. But what shocked me about this week's episode was not from who lost the task, but who won it! In the team who won the task, which was to take themed family potriats of people in a shopping mall, not one of the members could actually burn a CD of photos on a computer!!! If these are the apprentices and (at least) six of them can't even burn a bloody CD, what hope do they have of working for Armstrad?!! Its not exactly the most difficult thing in the world to do, but it does show how shockingly PC illiterate some people are out there, but to pick some of those people and put them on a show like The Apprentice is just ludicrous!

Anyway it was a great episode as there was plenty of on-the-scene drama between the two groups, sadly I felt Sir Alan Sugar fired the wrong person in a way, and left the other one, a bossy controlling madam go back to the house (hopefully she won't get too far). But it always appears that they manipulate who they keep in just for the sake of them making good or entertaining TV, so there always is that "Big Brother" element of reality TV in there with this show aswell, as long as the people left are a bunch of conniving backstabbing bastards then we can sit and watch with some glee. But its kind of sad to see the more straight down line ones go especially if they are capable but screw up at some point then get the boot in favour of an asshole who probably spoke up for themselves.

Well that's enough ranting about one of my favourite shows on just now. Back to the TV...

So I decided to resit my Cisco Semester 4 exam today and hurrrayy I managed to pass! I got 89.4% (admittedly even though it was a different exam the questions were fairly similar) so I can't really complain about that. A pass is a pass. Just that dratted skills test to do and I am free of the CCNA Semester 4 course. Huzzzaaa! After that just a little hair tearing out will be involved in preparing for the big CCNA exam, which can be done in one or two parts, but I'll leave that one for another day (or month or three).

Well I sat my final semester 4 CCNA Cisco exam tonight and failed it, by a narrow margin of 4.5% (that's a 65.5 percent score) so I'm a little pissed off and gutted that I didn't get it. That's the third time in a row I've failed a final Cisco time first time out, mind you I'm sure i've not been the only one been here. Cisco is no piece of cake (and if it was it would be a shit cake in my opinion ha ha!) so guess I will just have to bite the bullet and take it again probably next week and go over what I got wrong. But I'm rather gutted I didn't pass as it would have been one step closer to finishing it all off, after this there is a skills test to do aswell, which thankfully won't be quite as hard (hopefully!). After this of course there is the option of study and prep for the actual full big nasty CCNA Certificate itself, which would take months of personal torture and hair removal but I'm not entirely sure I want to go down that route (or router) just now. Personally I can't wait to rid myself of this accursed course and move onto something else entirely. Ho hum, the cookie crumbles that way, as they say.

Well thought I would say a little about another acting class I have been attending of late, which was arranged by our acting thesp and social network organiser Scott (let's face it we all owe this guy alot of credit for organising well... everything!) and one of our former art of acting tutors, Iain McAleese is taking.

The classes take on pretty much the same format as before, and the group are mostly people from our last Acting 4 class, all of which are a nice bunch of people, so its good to get invovled with them. The class also includes one of our acting 3 classmates Ann, who was terrific in Acting 3, and shamefully did not get into RSMAD when she auditioned! So far we've done a fair bit of improvisation in pairs from scenarios given by Iain, fairly soon we will get on to doing scenes from a few plays chosen by Iain. Iain has said he will go a bit deeper with his approach and probably push us a bit more than he did in the "Acting" units so it'll be daunting and interesting to see how we get on.

Sooooo onto something else, tonight's episode of Doctor Who, Fires of Pompeii was rather a good one. After a slightly (no pun intended) shakey start it got pretty good and also featured a nice bit of moral dilemma drama, should the Doctor try and save the people of Pompeii from the fate of Mount Vesuvius's inevitable explosion or should he let them perish to preserve historical accuracy. The cast were also on pretty good form too, Peter Capaldi was entertaining as Caceillius, and Phil Davis hamming it up wonderfully as the villanous Lucius. Catherine Tate also manages to shine in this story at certain points too (and I don't really care what some people might think of her looks, but I think she looks pretty cute in this episode) especially confronting the Doctor towards the end about the fate of Pompeii. David Tennant what can we say is on fine form and he can easily juggle between the light hearted gags and the life threatening drama, although I must admit in this episode especially he did do a bit too much eye bulge acting (mind you he always does it!). So I look forward to next week's episode with those strange Ooddies (probably not quite as amusing as Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and the other one).

Oh and finally went and saw Supergrass tonight at the ABC, and they were pretty good, but my left ear is still ringing. Ah well. Nuff for now.

Well the first episode of the fourth new series of Doctor Who got off to a fairly decent start and thankfully allayed a few of my fears regarding Catherine Tate.

The set up of the episode was actually quite good fun with Donna and The Doctor at the start both independently investigating the Adipose corporation, who specialise in selling capsules that help with weight loss (literally!) and they don't even know they are both doing it until later on. The adipose themselves were hardly a menacing alien and to be honest not really a villain, the real villain was of course Sarah Lancashire who played the evil wet nurse that was using adipose for other purposes. The main appeal of the episode was of course not so much that Catherine Tate was in it, but that they managed to re-write her character enough to make her more likeable than before as she is no longer the shrill loud mouthed harpie she was in the Christmas special. Donna is now looking for something more purposeful with her life having met the Doctor, something which pretty much all his companions have done after their short time with him, so its a nice touch to see someone who was a brief companion be affected by him that in that way. I also liked the surprising bit towards the end of the episode which will leave the viewers guessing as to how it happened.

So the teaming up of David Tennant and Catherine Tate thankfully and hopefully doesn't look too bad after all and Russell T Davies does deserve some credit for re-writing Donna's character so it will remain to be seen how the next 12 episodes will go, but hopefully they will be just as enjoyable.