Entia Multiplicanda

A Journalling Experiment

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:49:00 GMT

For the past couple of days, I've been experimenting with posting over on my livejournal. I don't know whether that will become my new online journalling home, or whether I'll revert back to using this journal exclusively, or continue to post in both places. We'll see how it goes. Livejournal has some features that I like, and some that I don't.

But for now, check wshaffer.livejournal.com for my ramblings and rantings. Now with bonus cute icons!

Supporting Public Television - Easier Than It Looks

Thu, 7 Jun 2007 20:16:00 GMT

So, the pledge drive was quite a bit of fun. I wasn't entirely sure that it would be - I really don't like telephones, and wasn't sure that sitting and answering them all night wouldn't be more stressful than it was worth. There are, after all, other ways of supporting your local public television station.

But being a pledge drive volunteer is pretty simple. You show up, and sign a couple of forms. They feed you dinner. (We had food provided by La Bodeguita del Medio! I'd been expecting nothing more glamorous than pizza.) They run through the phone script and how to deal with the various pledge options. Then you go into the studio, and answer phones for 10 to 15 minutes. When the pledge break is over, you go back to the break room and drink coffee and chat until a few minutes before the next pledge break, when you go back into the studio and do it all again.

In all my life as a PBS viewer, I always thought that the pledge volunteers sat in the studio between pledge breaks, while the program was running, continuing to take calls. They don't - at least not at KTEH. Apparently hardly anybody ever calls when the phone number isn't printed on the screen. Such is short term memory, I suppose.

It was nice to get to chat with my fellow Legion of Rassilon members. Even though I've been to several meetings, we all spent most of that time with our eyes glued to a screen, watching Doctor Who. So it was nice to get to know some folks better, and to be able to discuss truly important questions like which Doctor is the best one, and where the best online source for toy sonic screwdrivers is.

Along with the Legion of Rassilon, the phone banks were manned by the local alumni of Cambridge University. I'm not sure quite what they made of all of us.

The best costume of the evening award probably has to go to Merv, with his Tenth Doctor outfit. Although considering that KTEH hasn't aired any Tenth Doctor episodes, I don't know how many viewers appreciated it. We also had a lady in quite impressive Victorian garb. I am pleased to report that my Union Jack T-shirt looks great on television. (There are few places outside of a Doctor Who pledge drive or a Def Leppard concert where one can unselfconsciously wear a Union Jack T-shirt. So you have to take your opportunities when they arise.)

I don't really know how we did in terms of fundraising. The phones weren't exactly ringing off the hook, and the second-to-last pledge break was nearly silent. But I don't know what a typical pledge break during this pledge period is like. It was a bit disappointing - I think all of us in the Legion of Rassilon would have liked for the show to be a runaway hit for PBS. Regardless of whether or not it's realistic. (The 2005 season, which KTEH is currently airing, has aired and is continuing to air off and on in repeats on both the SciFi Channel and BBC America, and is available on DVD. There is an argument to be made that it doesn't need to be on PBS at this point - that people have had plenty of other opportunities to see it. But that's why it's viewer supported television - if the viewers don't support it, they'll stop airing it.)

A lot of the people that I talked to made a special point of mentioning how much they love PBS, or love Doctor Who. (I even took a pledge from a guy who doesn't live in KTEH's broadcast area, not by a long shot, but happened to catch our pledge drive while he was visiting family in the area, and wanted to donate just because he loves Doctor Who.) If you have doubts about whether public television still fills a need, in this age of cable, DVDs, DVRs, internet video, and everything else, the answer is yes. That made me feel good.

And we got some questions from callers about the Legion of Rassilon, so we may have recruited a few new members.

To sum up. It was fun. I'd do it again. I hope I'll get to do it again for Doctor Who.

My Public Television Debut

Tue, 5 Jun 2007 07:07:00 GMT

Any Bay Area readers who tune in to KTEH, San Jose's public television station, tonight between 7 and 10p.m., will see two things:

Two Hugo award-winning episodes of the 2005 series of Doctor Who ("The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances"), along with the Doctor Who Confidential documentary episodes detailing how they were made.

Me and a bunch of other members of the Legion of Rassilon, the Bay Area Doctor Who fan club, answering phones for the pledge drive.

I'll be wearing a Union Jack T-shirt.

So, tune in, catch some award-winning science fiction, and if you're feeling generous, phone in and keep me from being bored during the pledge breaks!

Weekend Wrap Up

Sun, 3 Jun 2007 17:41:00 GMT

Dealing with neanderthals, part 4,522: I wasn't able to summon up any eloquent response to being called a "cocksucker" by a passing moron in a pickup truck, but fixing him with an "I heard that and I'm so not impressed" stare until he looked away proved to be reasonably effective. (My crime was apparently stopping in the street to talk to another motorist who asked me for directions, such that said moron in the pickup truck had to steer around me. Or really, I suspect my crime was being female and existing, but whatever.)

I got a jury duty summons for July. Wonderful. I really don't mind doing my civic duty, but can't they pick a slow time at work or something? (In fairness, I think my last slow time at work might have been sometime back in 2003.)

Daniel and I saw Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End yesterday. I liked it better than number 2. Daniel liked it slightly worse overall than number 2, but liked the ending. I think the movie was a shade too long. And that it overindulged in gratuitious Orientalism and a gratuitous number of costume changes for Kiera Knightely.

And I don't think that as a movie-goer, I've ever been so unenthused to see Chow Yun Fat. Which is just sad. It's not that he's bad in the film - just nowhere underused, somehow.

Keith Richards, however, is used just the right amount. He doesn't have a huge part, but he does it well, and only a tiny part of your brain is sitting there thinking, "My goodness, I don't think I've ever seen Keith Richards utter so many coherent sentences in a row!" And he plays the guitar. Killer.

I do wish the film makers had found some way to make the climactic "plot twist" actually twisty. Okay, this is spoilery, so I'm going to try to protect it for those who don't wish to see. If I do this right, you should be able to see the bit between the [spoiler] markings by highlighting it.
[Spoiler]
So, the moment when Jack Sparrow has Davy Jones's heart, and he's all poised to stab it? I thought, "Oh, no, now they're going to talk for 5 minutes, and Jones is going to do something dastardly, and Will is going to have to stab the heart because that will be Tragic and Sad." And yeah, they kept talking, and I'm thinking, "You! Sparrow! Shut up and stab! Now! Now!" And, of course, he didn't, and it all worked out exactly as I'd predicted.
[Spoiler]

I also thought that Calypso was a bit of an anti-climax. But still, not a bad film. Far better than the third movie in a series based on a theme park ride had any right to be.

Also watched the first episode of Life on Mars. Which was better than it had any right to be. The set-up: A cop from 2006 gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. So this is a series that is building in the possibility of an "And he woke up and it was all a dream" ending from the start. Even making a part of you root for that ending. And yet at the same time, it's sucking you into this story that may or may not be real. And on a completely different level, it's an excuse to indulge in nostalgia and make an old school 70s cop show. But it also makes 1973 look like a pretty ugly year to live in. It's an interesting balancing act, and I'm curious to see how the writers keep it up without turning it into, "And on this week in Life on Mars, Sam Tyler doesn't wake up...again."

The soundtrack is great, too. Full of classic rock from 1973.

Hope all of you had a good weekend!

Doctor Who: Gridlock and Daleks in Manhattan

Wed, 30 May 2007 21:05:00 GMT

Since I got to see a couple more episodes from Doctor Who Season 3 on Friday night, I thought I'd post my first impressions.

Usual disclaimer applies: I'll try not to spoil major plot points, but if you don't like knowing anything about the setting or plot or villain, you might want to skip this if you haven't seen these episodes.

Gridlock. Gridlock was good fun, and a nice departure from other recent episodes. It seems like an episode that will reward a second viewing, and I suspect my feelings on it might change substantially on second viewing. On a first viewing, it felt like an episode that threw a lot of ideas at you, but didn't really take the time to explore any of them deeply.

The good. Cat nuns with guns. Let me say it again: Cat nuns with guns! Action! Weird people stuck in traffic! Gratuitous return of the Macra. (Dude, I don't even remember the Macra. That is old skool.) Martha giving the Doctor flak about him lying to her. Martha in general.

The meh. The emotion vendors were interesting, but it sort of felt like an idea that didn't go anywhere. (Or at least, not anywhere more interesting than "Drugs are bad." Just because it's family television doesn't mean it needs to be an afterschool special.) I'd been spoiled on the Face of Boe's message, so my reaction to that was, "Great, now we've got that overwith. Let's get on with it."

Other thoughts. The parallels between Martha's experiences in this episode and Rose's experiences in The End of the World are interesting. Martha realizes at one point that the Doctor is a complete stranger to her - the same way Rose did. Martha pushes the Doctor to tell her about his past, the way Rose did in The End of the World. And both episodes end with the Doctor telling Martha/Rose about the Time War and being the last of his kind.

I'm guessing that Russel T. Davies knows exactly what he is doing here, and that a close comparison of the parallel moments would probably tell you something about the differences between Rose and Martha and their respective relationships with the Doctor. I think I'd need another viewing and some more thought to really analyze those. (One obvious difference: the Doctor stonewalls Rose initially when asked about his past; he outright lies to Martha at first. Hmmm. And this guy is the hero of the show. Geez.)

Daleks in Manhattan. This is part one of a two parter, so it's hard to have a complete reaction. I wanted to like this more than I did, but I still think it qualifies as a good Doctor Who "romp". I liked the 1930s New York setting, the showgirls, the Empire State building.

There's plenty of excitement. I like the interaction between Tallulah and Martha. The head foreman guy who's working for the Daleks is a bit cartoony for my taste - his eventual fate would have been more chilling if you'd actually cared about him a bit.

But, really, this episode is about the Daleks. I had a moment during this episode where I caught myself thinking, "This is not the Dalek from Dalek." It can't be, of course. It's hard to do the Daleks right, because they are implacable, nearly unstoppable killers, and the trick is to come up with some way for everyone else in the story to stay alive until the Doctor can stop them. The easy but dangerous way to do this is to have the Daleks be up to some dastardly plan that keeps them too busy to get out there and do what they do best, which is exterminate the hell outta everyone. The problem is that the plan had better be good, or the Daleks just look stupid. At this point in the story, I'm not convinced that the Dalek plan is that good.

I almost have a horrible feeling that part two is going to end with Dalek Caan turning to the camera and grating, "And we would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for that meddling Doc-tor!"

Still, there was one particularly fine Dalek moment: Dalek Sec, observing that there are billions of humans and, at present, only 4 Daleks, asks, "If we are superior, why are we not victorious?" Daleks are usually so thoroughly convinced of their own greatness that you can't help but sympathize when they begin to question it.

Of course, I'm guessing that all of Dalek Sec's existential angst is just gonna get him exterminated in part two. But we'll see.

Suspending Sanity Until Further Notice

Wed, 30 May 2007 13:06:00 GMT

The problem with going to conventions is that you come back with all these books you want to read, TV shows you want to watch, stories you want to write, projects you want to start, people you want to email, blog posts you want to write, and so on, and meanwhile, the rest of your life has been on hold for an entire long weekend and is urgently demanding your attention.

In particular, I have just realized that I really need to put the pedal to the metal at work for the next week or two, or Bad Things Will Happen.

And so all of these other things in my head are needing to be shoved aside, and it is making me grumpy.

Watching the British sitcom Coupling helps a bit with the grumpy - each episode lasts only half an hour, and makes me laugh out loud many times. It is possibly the most comedy-dense television show in existence.

In other news, I have possibly persuaded my boss to watch Torchwood. Um.

Back to work now. Talk to you later.

Back From Baycon

Mon, 28 May 2007 19:07:00 GMT

Just got back from the festivities at this year's BayCon. I had a great time, and I think everyone else did, too.

The convention had moved this year from its longtime location at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose to the Marriott in San Mateo. The hotel was small, had a weird internal layout that made it hard to find panel rooms, and was a bit lacking in places to just hang out, but was otherwise very pleasant. The hotel staff were particularly friendly and seemed to be delighted to have all of us there. (Something that I don't particularly remember of the Doubletree staff.) Some of the waitresses in the hotel restaurant even started collecting badge ribbons.

I spent an awful lot of time sitting either on the pool deck or in the hotel restaurant, drinking coffee and conversing with assorted interesting people. I did make it to two panels. The first was "The Evolution of Doctor Who", which was a somewhat rambling but interesting set of musings on the differences between old and new Doctor Who, and what future directions the show might take. (Much fun as everyone tries to talk at once. Also, much mayhem when the guy with the remote controlled K-9 showed up. I love remote controlled K-9, but don't bring him to a panel, ok?) The second was "CSI: Dark Ages" - a discussion of how you would solve crimes with Dark Ages technology. A wide-ranging subject - it sort of felt like we just skimmed over various ideas without really exploring them in depth.

I went to a couple of "Birds of a Feather" events - where like-minded fans gather for discussion. One for "Life on Mars", where I was one of two people present. (And I haven't even seen the show. Talking with the other fan there convinced me that I need to seek it out, though.) The other was for Doctor Who, where we got a whopping four people, and swapped recommendations for audio books and audio plays. (Considering that the Doctor Who panel was filled to capacity, I'd expected more people, but we had fun.)

I'm not sure why the Birds of a Feather events aren't more popular - you're guaranteed a group of fans with whom you have at least one thing in common, and you're given a sure-fire topic of conversation. Admittedly, this was the first year I'd ever attended a BOF event, because they're usually oriented around TV shows or specific fannish subcultures, and until I rediscovered the joys of the recent British SF television revival, there weren't many that appealed to me.

I learned to make chain mail! I spent 2 hours at a chain-mail making workshop, learning a very basic 4-in-1 pattern. It was lots of fun - I think I could get into it.

As usual, the costume-watching was interesting. Pirates made a strong showing this year, though not as overwhelming as I might have expected with the new movie coming out. For women, corsetry is big - everyone seemed to be wearing a corset. Classic Star Trek made an unexpected comeback, with lots of redshirts in evidence. There were fewer Klingons than I've seen some years. There was one very fetching Doctor Who-themed pair (the Tenth Doctor and Madame de Pompadour).

And I shopped in the dealer's room, acquiring a new Jon Courtenay Grimwood novel, a toy Dalek, and a fetching plaid newsboy's cap.

And I drank too much coffee, and got too little sleep. So I'm going to sign off now. Hope everyone else had a fantastic holiday weekend!

Quickie Post

Fri, 25 May 2007 10:19:00 GMT

I have been a documentation writing machine this week. A *machine*, I tell you. I rewrote/restructured a nice big juicy chunk of the online Help.

It's strange that in our modern technological era, the best tools I have found for visualizing overall document structure are a couple of sheets of graph paper, a stack of Post-It notes, and a fountain pen. (Well, it doesn't have to be a fountain pen, but Parker blue-black ink looks great on yellow Post-Its. Just so you know.)

Anyway, this documentation-machine-ness may explain the lack of postings this week, because at the end of the day, I've generally had it with the process of trying to string together words in sensible order. So, I've been spending my evenings:

drinking coffee

talking with Daniel (ability to string words together in a sensible order apparently optional for this - Daniel is very patient with my incoherence, bless him)

reading the second book in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series (so far, it is not as good as His Majesty's Dragon)

watching the British sitcom Coupling. (It's hilarious. Really. Are American sitcoms this funny, and I just never noticed? Or is Coupling doing something special? NBC made an American version of Coupling, and it tanked and was cancelled after 4 episodes. So there must be something strange going on here.)

Tonight I'm going to the Legion of Rassilon meeting, and I'll get to see the next two episodes of Doctor Who: "Gridlock" and "Daleks in Manhattan". Wheee!

Then, I'm off to BayCon. Where I will see some old friends, meet some new ones, and probably spend too much money in the dealer's room.

What with one thing and another, I probably won't get to post again until Monday at the earliest. But expect a reaction post on the two Doctor Who episodes, and some observations about BayCon.

Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, everyone!

I think I may love my mechanic

Wed, 16 May 2007 16:20:00 GMT

My new mechanic, that is.

I've been getting my car serviced at Stevens Creek Acura. No real complaints about their service, but they're a pain to get ahold of on the phone, and they're located a bit too far from where I work for their shuttle service to conveniently drop me off and pick me up.

So, when I finally decided to deal with my car being a bit overdue for regular service, I decided to see if I could do better. I went over to Yelp, and discovered AH Connection. They had six reviews, all overwhelmingly positive. I phoned and arranged an appointment.

Cool thing #1: When I took the car in, Jonas (one of the co-owners) popped the hood, had a quick poke around, and pointed out to me some of the places where older Acura Integras tend to start to have trouble.

Cool thing #2: They gave me a loaner car. No messing around with a shuttle.

Cool thing #3: Jonas called me less than an hour after I dropped the car off and explained in detail what needed to be done to the car. (In addition the regular 60,000 mile service we'd agreed on when I dropped the car off, the brake lines needed flushing and the distributor cap needed replacing.)

Cool thing #4: When I came back to pick up my car, Jonas showed me all the parts that they'd replaced and explained why they needed replacing. It is one thing to be told that your distributor cap needs replacing. It's another thing to be shown the corroded contact on the cap. Car parts are so...mechanical. And so cool.

The car is shiny and clean and running beautifully. (It had been idling a bit more roughly than usual - now it's much smoother. Which is exactly what you'd expect, I believe, after you replace the distributor cap. Duh. I'm actually really good at telling by feel when something is up with my car, but about half the time I talk myself into thinking that I'm imagining it or something.)

Anyway, AH Connection has my future business, and if you live in the SF Bay Area and drive a Honda or Acura, they should have yours.

Some News from "The Dark is Rising" Movie

Tue, 15 May 2007 10:37:00 GMT

Ain't It Cool News has a piece on the film of Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising that's in production now.

I'm finding it reassuring that Harry Knowles seems to like the script. I'd really like this movie to be good, because I think that you could make a great movie of the book. But it strikes me as not an easy book to film, because so much of it is about atmosphere. All I knew about the film prior to this article was that it had a great cast and a rather curious choice of director.

The stills look pretty enough, and there's nothing in them that looks terribly wrong. I'm not sure there's anything in them that looks terribly right, but there's not much you can tell from a few still shots.

I must say, I'm a bit disappointed by the shot of Christopher Eccleston as the Rider. He ought to be absolutely terrifying, and I'm sure he will be in the actual film, but when I look at that shot all I can think is, "Aw, he looks cold. Somebody bring him a cup of tea."

Random Things

Sat, 12 May 2007 20:05:00 GMT

Spring has brought allergens, and hence I have been taking Claritin. It may be a pure coincidence, but I've had more than the usual number of lengthy and elaborate dreams. This kind of sucks when you have lenthy and elaborate dreams about attending functional spec review meetings, which you've already been doing all day at work.

It's a bit more entertaining when you have dreams about you and your entire extended family defending an enormous Scottish castle from an alien invasion using only a bunch of movie props. You get bits like this:
ME: Okay, have we got any weapons?
ENTIRELY FICTIONAL WOMAN WHO IN THIS DREAM IS MY COUSIN: We've got this. (Tosses over an enormous, shiny, and very scary-looking space gun thing. I catch it.)
ME: What is it?
FICTIONAL COUSIN: It's a prop from The Dalek Invasion of Earth.*
ME: Right. (Nods towards unseen aliens outside.) Maybe they don't know that.

The best part? The aliens never actually appeared during this entire dream.

*It couldn't actually have been a prop from The Dalek Invasion of Earth. It was too shiny and modern-looking, and anyway, I've never seen that movie.

We attended Chauncey's memorial service today. We all got to tell our favorite Chauncey stories. Well, a large fraction of our favorite Chauncey stories. There are a lot of Chauncey stories.

Meanwhile, over on this LJ community, people are knitting Daleks. Knitting. Daleks. Holy cow, I gotta learn how to knit.

I discovered a rather bizarre and wonderful web comic called Wondermark recently. Nearly as inscrutable as Cat and Girl, nearly as geeky as xkcd, with a Victorian sensibility all its own.

LOLWho

Mon, 7 May 2007 22:03:00 GMT

Some years back, at the Toronto WorldCon, I heard Neil Gaiman read his short story, "A Study in Emerald". It's a Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft universe crossover story. It works far better than it ought to. (Probably because it manages to get in that shock of realization at the end: that the universe is a weirder and scarier place than you ever knew. All good Lovecraft stories have that, and many bad Lovecraft imitations don't manage it. But I digress.)

Gaiman said something along the lines of, "I think it's deeply unfair that the coolest story I wrote last year was a Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft crossover story." This stuck with me, because it expressed an artistic truth that's not often recognized: sometimes your creative mojo really engages with something that is actually pretty silly or trivial.

All of this is my way of working up to admitting to having created something really nerdy and trivial yesterday, when I could have been finishing my post about our trip to Italy.

A bit of background: many of you will have seen LOLTrek - a Star Trek episode ("The Trouble with Tribbles") recreated as a set of "cat macros". (The link has a good description of what cat macros are. The one sentence summary: pictures of cats with amusing(?) captions in a distinctively bad grammar. The concept has now been extended to include pictures of things other than cats, amusingly(?) captioned in a distinctively bad grammar. There is, for example, a Doctor Who cat macro community on livejournal, ihasatardis.)

So, I saw LOLTrek, and I laughed. And then I thought, "Somebody must do something similar with Doctor Who." And I went about my business, confident that the magic of the internets would make such a thing happen in no time.

Days passed, and the magic of the internets was not forthcoming. And then I was playing around with a wonderful little program called Comic Life. This program makes it really easy to create comic book pages - you choose from a large selection of preset panel layouts or create your own, and then drag images into the panels. The program automatically handles sizing/clipping the images in a pretty intelligent way, though you can also tweak by hand. Then you can add text balloons or styled text of various kinds with a few clicks. It's easy and fun and addictive.

Then I came across this archive of screencaptures from season 1 of new Doctor Who, my fate was sealed.

And this was the result: Parting of Wai? No Wai!. (Warning: Link contains intentionally hideous grammar and syntax, atrocious spelling, and deploys every 'net cliche of the last decade that I could dredge out of my memory. It's not likely to be funny unless you love both Doctor Who and sites like I Can Has Cheezburger?.)

In other words, I think it is deeply unfair that the coolest thing I posted to the Internet yesterday was a full LOLTrek-style treatment of the Doctor Who season 1 finale, "The Parting of the Ways."

My consolation is that they totally dug it over at ihasatardis.

Not Actually Adjacent to Godliness, But Pretty Damn Good

Sat, 5 May 2007 15:22:00 GMT

So far this weekend, I have:

Paid all the outstanding bills.

Cleared off about 75% of the surface area of my desk, discarding a huge pile of papers and filing a smaller pile of papers.

Made a start on rearranging my filing system, in the hopes that papers will not pile up on my desk if I can actually get them into my filing cabinet instead.

Taken care of the paperwork for renewing our lease for the next year.

Renewed my membership in the Society for Technical Communication.

Things I would still like to accomplish this weekend:

Figure out a good way to organize my miscellaneous electronic gizmos.

Find more storage space for DVDs.

Finish writing up my trip to Italy, so that I can post about something besides iPod batteries and Doctor Who.

Break down some of the cardboard boxes in the garage.

Daniel and I have actually made a cardboard-box-breaking-down date for tomorrow. Ah, the romance of married life. We'll probably go out for a nice dinner afterwards, though.

I'm not sure what the odds are of the rest of my list getting accomplished this weekend. Right now I'm going to go on over to Youtube and watch silly videos or something.

Doctor Who Series 3: First Impressions

Sun, 29 Apr 2007 09:48:00 GMT

So, on Friday, I attended the meeting of the Legion of Rassilon, the Bay Area Doctor Who fan club, and we watched the first two episodes of Season 3 of Doctor Who: "Smith and Jones" and "The Shakespeare Code". Thought I'd give a few impressions here. My intention is not to give major spoilers, but if you want to avoid information about settings or bad guys, you might want to skip this post.

"Smith and Jones": This one goes to eleven. We start the episode with new companion Martha Jones, on her way to work, receiving cell phone calls in rapid succession from every member of her family, complaining about each other. By this we establish a) that Martha is the Responsible One and b) she has good motivation to want to get away from present-day Earth for a while.

And then the Doctor runs by, and does something inexplicable for no reason any of us can determine. And then she gets to the hospital and there are creepy guys in motorcycle helmets, and a daft old lady with a salt deficiency. And the Doctor. The it starts raining upwards, and then the hospital is on the moon, and then there are rhino-headed leather-clad space cops hunting aliens, and oh-my-god the Doctor's an alien! And there is running up and down corridors, and the daft old lady starts sucking out people's blood with a bendy straw. And there is modification of X-ray and MRI machines for lethal purposes! And genetic transfer, which is apparently another word for snogging! And the Doctor saves the day and everyone is back on Earth just in time to keep from dying of oxygen starvation.

And you think, "I really don't quite know what happened there, but I think I liked it." I'll need to watch it again to be sure. I can't wait for Jacob over at Television Without Pity to recap this one, just because doing it sensibly will be such a feat.

The episode ties up with a nice scene of Martha entering the TARDIS for the first time. And then they are off on their first trip through time. Which brings us to:

"The Shakespeare Code": Shakespeare! Witches! Woot! That's really all you need to know. I think the episode is marred a bit by a little too much self-conscious humour. The first time somebody quotes a bit of Shakespeare, and Shakespeare says, "Oooh, I like that. I think I'll use that!", it's funny. The third time - not as funny. (Although the bit where the Doctor quotes Dylan Thomas, and then has to explain to Shakespeare that he can't use that bit, is pretty funny.) The first Harry Potter joke was funny, but the use of "Expelliarmus!" as a magic word at a critical point struck me as a bit too much. (Though it does provide for an interesting experiment in the durability of pop culture. Given the track record of Doctor Who, we can probably expect that fans will be watching this episode 50 years from now. Will they know who Harry Potter is?) Martha gets to flirt with Shakespeare, which is perhaps some consolation for the fact that the Doctor is intermittently being a jerk to her, because he's still not quite over losing Rose.

It'll be interesting to see how the writers deal with that over the course of the season. I like that the new show has actually been exploring the emotional consequences of the Doctor-companion relationship, in contrast to the "once you leave the TARDIS, we will never speak of you again" practice of the old show. But I think it's going to get old really quickly if the Doctor keeps bitching about how Martha isn't as good as Rose, while Martha is quite clearly awesome in her own right. I'm guessing that the writers know this.

Overall impressions of season 3: It's off to a good start. They've definitely achieved heights of over-the-top hectic Doctorishness rarely seen before. One of the folks at the meeting on Friday declared, "This is finally proper Doctor Who." I'm not sure about that. If the best episodes of Seasons 1 and 2 weren't "proper" Doctor Who, I'll take my Doctor Who improper, thanks very much. But there is a certain sense in these episodes that the writers and the actors have really gotten a grasp on doing what's best about old school Doctor Who in a new school television format.

And now I've got to wait a whole month to see the next two episodes. (Well, no, I don't. They've already aired in Britain, and I could BitTorrent them easily enough. But there actually is something really cool about watching brand-new episodes of Doctor Who with a bunch of other fans. Especially when you all break into applause over the closing credits. Which we did for both episodes on Friday. So I'll wait.)

I fixed my iPod

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 21:47:00 GMT

So, I have this old 3rd generation iPod that I bought back in 2003 with part of the proceeds from my very first technical writing contract job. So I suppose you could say it has sentimental value. Anyway, I still like using it for listening to audiobooks on my morning walks, even though I use my newer, shinier, tinier and cooler iPod nano for general on-the-go music listening.

As we all know, iPod batteries do not last forever. By a couple of weeks ago, my iPod's battery life had gotten down to about 45-50 minutes, which isn't enough to get through a typical walk. At this point, I had three choices:

Junk the iPod, and just get by with the iPod nano.

Junk the iPod, and use this as an excuse to buy a shiny new iPod video or something.

Send it back to Apple and get them to replace the battery, probably paying lots of money in the process.

Buy a replacement battery off the internet, and do the replacement myself, possibly permanently breaking or maiming the iPod in the process.

Well, option 1 was perfectly sensible but not any fun. Option 2 had all the attraction of allowing for a new toy, but I don't currently have that much desire to watch video on my iPod. Option 3 seemed likely to be a hassle: I don't even know if Apple does battery service on iPod models as old as mine, and since the thing is way out of warranty, it would probably cost a lot of money. Option 4 cost around $25 and gave me an excuse to dismantle a piece of electronics. We have a winner!

So, I ordered the battery from Other World Computing. A few days later, I got a little package in the mail containing the battery and a couple of little plastic pry tools that are supposed to allow you to open the iPod without damaging the case. Ha.

Getting the case open is the hardest part of the job. I spent about 30 minutes with the plastic tools, and all I got for it was a sore thumb. The recommended procedure given on most web sites about iPod repair is to start the tool at the top of the iPod, near where the headphone jack is, and then slide the tool around to the side of iPod and pop the case open. (You don't want to pop the case open right next to the headphone jack, because there's a fairly flimsy connector between the guts of the iPod and the headphone jack there, and if you tear it, then you've really broken the iPod, unless you want to start getting creative with a soldering gun.) The top of the iPod was indeed the weakest point, and I could get the tool in a bit there, but every time I tried to slide it around to the side, it would pop out.

So, I used a very small flat-bladed screwdriver to pop the case open a bit, and then the plastic tool to get it open the rest of the way. The plastic on the iPod is a tiny bit scuffed where I inserted the screwdriver, but you wouldn't notice it unless you were looking for it.

Once you have the iPod open, you disconnect the hard drive (Which is marvelously thin - I'd always imagined that the hard drive took up most of the interior of the iPod, but really it's only about the thickness of a 3.5 inch floppy. Neat.), and then unplug the battery. The battery connector is quite snugly attached - it took me a few minutes to unplug it, and I was afraid that I was going to break something while unplugging it, but I got it loose without doing any damage.

Then you plug in the new battery, reconnect the hard drive (takes a bit of fiddling to get the connector to line up again), and snap the case back together. Bingo. Good as new. (Better, in fact - the replacement battery has a greater capacity than the original that shipped with the iPod.)

So, if you're thinking of trying to replace an iPod battery, it can be done with patience and a bit of fearlessness.

Which is good, because I think Daniel's going to ask me to fix up his old iPod next.