Good Thing! The new series of QI starts tonight. YAY! Also, more Misfits.

Bad Thing! These American anti-gay-marriage ads are insane. Edit: But good thing! This parody response is wonderful, and has George Takei.

Good Thing! Anton Vowl's Christmas cards for Daily Mail readers are fabulous.

Bad Thing! People think they have the right to know what BBC employees earn. Problem is - apart from privacy concerns and all that - unless they know what other people in the media industry earn, the raw figures for the BBC tell them nothing. It's just another excuse for the Mail to have a go at the BBC. When I worked at the Beeb, you actually earned slightly less than the competitors because of the benefits of working there (job security, status, looks good on CV) and because it's publicly funded, but it would obviously still look like a lot to someone on minimum wage.

Good Thing! That kid who peed on a war memorial got community service. Seems to have had a sensible judge who wasn't going to imprison him just to "send a message".

Also, it's sunny. Hurray!

Yeah, so this updating regularly thing isn't going great. Sorry. Hello!

Things:

• Letterman talking about his blackmailer was pretty funny. And I admire him for it. And I really, really wish people would stop going on about his "affairs" and his "cheating" - have they never heard of open relationships or polyamory? I'm not saying either of these things apply to his relationship with his now-wife, but I'm not assuming they don't, either.
  
  
• Interesting how media opinions on the Polanski thing have changed in the last few days. Looks like quite a lot of the industry mouthed off before reading about the facts, or were very out of sync with public opinion, or both. Wonder how many people regret signing that petition now. (IMO, if anyone cares: He was convicted of a crime and fled before sentencing. He should be extradited, and if he thinks there was judicial misconduct, he can ask for a mistrial or appeal, like anyone else. I wouldn't if I were him, mind you, because I doubt he'd get off with a "sex with a minor" charge these days - it was rape, pure and simple. And now he also has to do his time for fleeing.) Good list here of celebrities supporting the extradition. (And jeez, if Kevin Smith is more sensitive to gender and rape issues than you, take a look at yourself. Much as I love him.)
  
  
• Less than 24 hours between the first girl-dies-after-cancer-jab story and the information that she actually died of a huge tumour in her chest that could have killed her any time, and yet people are still claiming the vaccine's unsafe, it's a cover-up, it would be irresponsible to have your daughter vaccinated without more testing, and so on. Argh. Hoping Ben Goldacre gets round to ranting about it soon.
  
  
• New TV season! Derren Brown's been great. I quite enjoyed the first three new Heroes, though (judging by the number of downloads and the number of pages of TWOP forum comments) the viewership has plummeted. Although it helps that one of the new characters reminds me of a younger Anthony Stewart Head. First Dollhouse ep was very good (as was Epitaph One). I quite enjoyed the first Flashforward, too, and am about to watch the second - I've read the book, so I'm in that weird place of knowing what happens in some storylines, *until they change it*. All a bit Schrodinger. And I've got two Big Bang Theory eps to watch, too, yay.
  
  
• Also: Unspeak wonders how to spell I'ma/Imma/Ima. Comes to the same conclusion as I have at work, and is therefore Right. Rats playing miniature musical instruments. May be my new wallpaper. Almost Cththuloid balloon creatures. Escher bunk beds. (Want!) Onomastikon - names from many countries and time periods. RP resource, but fascinating. Best porn I've seen in ages - Beautiful Agony; people film themselves from the neck up while orgasming. (Probably NSFW. Especially if you have speakers.) Salon talks about Polanski. A companion project to FML, My Life Is Average. Strangely heartwarming. Gay teens in Oklahoma. Straightforwardly heart-warming. Carl Sagan talks about the pale blue dot. Awesome.
  
  
• And worthy of a line of its own, fjm's book Diana Wynne Jones: The Fantastic Tradition and Children's Literature is out in paperback. I've had the hardback on my wishlist since it came out four years ago, but could never quite justify the £60. £20? Hell yes.

Thanks to all those I've nicked these links off, over the last week or so!

Ahh, procrastination. I'm sure I used to have a procrastination icon, but I can't find it. I have Things to do, so I'm playing Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook and posting here. Idiotically, it's not even dull or annoying things I should be doing, it's things I want to do, but I'm procrastinating anyway. So, a list:

• Write a 1,500 word Nine/Donna story for sudge. I actually have a triptych in mind for this, in different styles, but we'll see.
  
  
• Set up my shiny new PS3 that arrived today and have a go at Guitar Hero 5. All Along The Watchtower!
  
  
• Finish off the Eisenhorn book that I really need to get back to laerad.
  
  
• Do some ironing, I suppose, before my airer actually collapses under the weight of the things on it.

That's not unreasonable, I don't think. Writing first, or I'll never do it.

I'm listening to the Magnetic Fields, who I should obviously have started listening to at least ten years ago. Making up for lost time now.

Some linkage:

Great video about the acceleration of technological change, via andrewducker.

The guy behind the Alan Turing petition writes about his phone call from Gordon Brown.

miss_s_b has been interviewing Nick Clegg, in a Doctor Who t-shirt. Jennie, not Nick.

Salon interviews Dennis Baron about how the internet is NOT breaking our brains, any more than the ability to write made us forget how to learn things by heart, as Plato worried about.

And I'm not sure if I need a Rubix-esque dodecahedron with pentagonal faces, but I really want one. Not that I ever mastered the original Rubix cube, so...

Sitting watching '80s music videos on YouTube. Look! Angry Anderson with footage of Scott & Charlene's wedding!



Things that have amused me today: a trade union newsletter which said "From my union: "If every Member recruits one more this year then we can DOUBLE our Membership!" It's our maths skills that have got us where we are today, you know. (Also our Capitalisation skills.)

And the people on Countryfile who are actually, actually talking about hugging trees. Measuring their trunks, apparently - a "standard British hug" is about 1.5m. So now you know.

Oh my GOD, I just found a fan-made video to the B-side of Especially For You. By Kylie & Jason. Look! And clips of Smash Hits Poll Winners Parties...no, no. Countryfile.

*phone rings*

Me: Hello!

Dad: Hi, how are you doing? Are you at work?

Me: No, I'm not working today.

Dad: But I called your house and you weren't in! The phone rang out!

Me: I do leave the house occasionally for things other than work, you know.

I mean, I know I don't do all that much, but REALLY. Anyway, today I did many things, and took many photos, and also discovered that the Gaiman photos I thought I'd lost were just...on a different bit of my phone's memory or something, and have inexplicably reappeared. I'm not complaining, just bemused. So, photos of Collectormania this afternoon, and the Book Festival ten days ago and tonight.

( Neil Gaiman )

( Collectormania: Amber Benson, Peter Davison, Kai Owen )

( Douglas Coupland )

( What's a photo post without a couple of randoms? )

Generation A actually sounds like a return to form for Coupland, and I must find the JPod TV series, although he didn't sound too keen on it. And I picked up the new Best Of Tom Leonard poetry compendium - I've been meaning to get some of his poetry for ages.

As a prize for getting this far, two video links people showed me on their snazzy iPhones today: Literal Video for Birdhouse In Your Soul, and a fan-made "trailer" for a Green Lantern movie with Nathan Fillion.

Not dead, just...not on LJ, for some reason. Read about a week's worth last night, but I probably skimmed some important things.

Two awesome videos to embed, although I have a vague feeling it wasn't working last time I tried to crosspost embedded video from Dreamwidth. We'll see.

This will clearly be the best movie of next year: ( Hot Tub Time Machine )

And I love this song, from Malcolm Ross and the Low Miffs: ( The Man Who Took On Love (And Won) )

Malcolm Ross is very 80s Glasgow indie - Josef K, Orange Juice, Aztec Camera - and the Low Miffs add a mildly Divine Comedy-esque vocal. Makes it more glam and dramatic than a lot of the 80s jangle pop stuff. Other things I've been listening to lately: Lord Cut-Glass, who is one of the ex-Delgados but I like so much better than I ever liked them. And various stuff on Spotify, which I've now started paying for. Forbidden Broadway! Mull Historical Society! Wannadies! Sinatra! Just whatever comes to mind, really.

I have other links, I'll get to them later.

Long late shifts at work just now, dealing with Glastonbury, which is fun in a kind of flaily way. We know vaguely which artists are going to be on the BBC programmes, sometimes, and we try and prepare subtitles for their latest and/or biggest hits. And then we try to recognise them when they play them. Today I have been mostly using Twitter to find out what songs bands like Spinal Tap played, so that I could prep them - new media for the win! Fewer people were twittering about what Crosby, Stills & Nash played, sadly.

So, anyway, linkspam:

I didn't know who Ed McMahon was before he died. Farrah Fawcett reminds me more of a couple of lines of Buffy dialogue than anything else. I was never that into Michael Jackson. The only "celeb" death that's really affected me this week is that of Steven Wells, an ex-NME writer. He died of cancer: this was his last column, a couple of weeks ago, for the Philadelphia Weekly. ( Quote and more links under the cut )

(Vaguely related aside: watching Lauren Laverne presenting Glastonbury makes me want to look out my Kenickie CDs. She's one of my only girlcrushes.)

I've mentioned the Lord of the Rings re-read and discussion on Tor before, but I'll take the opportunity of them starting The Two Towers to plug it again - totally geeky, utterly fantastic conversation. Put aside a day or two and read the whole thing from the start.

If anyone hasn't read cereta's post On Rape And Men yet, please do, especially if you're a man. And read at least the first couple of pages of comments. I've been meaning to link to this and post about it for a while - I might still do a post. But I've been reading through all 17 pages or so of comments, too.

On a lighter note, blankets with sleeves! We saw these on the Big Bang Theory, and I looked them up because I Need One. Totally. Sometime before winter.

The Nieman Journalism Lab tells us that the New York Times has data on which words its readers look up in the dictionary. Interesting. And it also has an article about the Guardian's crowdsourcing experiment on the MPs' expenses claims.

An overview of the gay marriage debate, in chart form.

The best optical illusion I've seen in ages, and another illustration of why no, you shouldn't believe the evidence of your own eyes.

HTML Playground seems like a good way of relearning html and CSS by example, in a very web 2.0 stylee.

Jesus And Mo is always entertaining, but I particularly liked the latest one.

I thoroughly commend and recommend this How To Meet A Nerdy Girl post, if only because point #9 made me laugh out loud.

Tip #9: Embrace her collectibles.

That is not a euphemism for something pervy. It’s just a fact. When you walk into her apartment for the first time and notice a glass cabinet filled with a miniature TARDIS, a sombrero-wearing Giles, a 17-inch Han Solo and a two-foot long replica of the Enterprise NCC-1701-D, do not say, “What the hell is all this stuff?” Instead say, “What the hell? Why don’t you have MORE of this stuff? And may I mail order something for you?”

(Yes, I have a three miniature Tardii. And a sombrero-wearing Giles. No Han Solos, and no Enterprises, but I do have a Starbug.)

And finally, in case anyone hasn't seen it yet, Buffy meets Edward from Twilight. With inevitable consequences. One of the best mashup videos I've seen.

Dreamwidth have set up the auto cross-posting mechanism from their update page; just checking it works.

Have some Fry & Laurie, to make this pointful.



Linked to from Making Light yesterday, setting me off on an hour or so of F&L youtubing. I do like to see Americans' "But that's...House!!" reactions.

(Edit: Apologies if this is the 19th test post you've seen today. But hey, the crossposter works on edits, too! How awesome is that?! That's the main thing that was annoying about crossposting via semagic...)

(Edited edit: Hmm. I could see the video before I edited, but I can't now. Can you see it?)

OK, lack of video - here's the direct link, since I wouldn't want to tease you with Fry & Laurie and not deliver.

Tweenbots! This is fabulous, and disconcertingly heart-warming and hopeful. Worth reading the write-up of the experiment at that link, and watching the video.

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

( Watch the video )

innerbrat has an excellent post about seeing problems in stories, and the best ways to deal with seeing them, or not seeing them. With handy metaphors.

Ofcom is getting complaints about Coronation Street because one character in it questioned the truth of Christianity on Easter Sunday. And called God a "supernatural being", apparently. Outrageous!

And my probably final thoughts on #amazonfail - this blog entry from Clay Shirky about people's reaction to it is great. I'm guilty of being involved on Sunday, but I think I stayed on the right side of the mob mentality line - enough for my own comfort, anyway, and I'll be even more careful in future.

Though the #amazonfail event is important for several reasons, I can’t write about it dispassionately, because I was an enthusiastic participant in its use on Sunday. I was wrong, because I believed things that weren’t true. As bad as that was, though, far worse is the retrofitting of alternate rationales to continue to view Amazon with suspicion, rationales that would not have provoked the outrage we felt had they been all we were asked to react to in the first place.

The commenters handily illustrate the point by shouting about the possible inherent bias of the algorithms, and the fact that there's a filtering system in place at all, without admitting that while both of these things are definitely issues that should be addressed, they would not have stirred up anything near the amount of outrage that happened over the weekend. (And in fact didn't - people have known there was filtering in action since February at least, and have always been able to see the metadata Amazon uses, and neither of these things have previously caused more than minor mutterings.)

The trouble with late shifts, and consequent weird sleeping patterns, is that people keep buzzing your front door when you're trying to sleep. Two different flavours of postman, this morning (or it could have been the same one twice, I wasn't really awake enough to notice), and the people who clean the stairs. But that meant shiny parcels (from the postmen, not the cleaners), so I suppose they're forgiven. First was the very lovely Dark Heresy gaming sourcebook, which I've been meaning to get for ages. It's a beautifully produced book, crammed full of helpful background knowledge of the Imperium, lists of enticing weaponry, and pretty pictures. Yay!

Second was the holy-crap-1TB-of-storage-for-how-much Toshiba hard drive I gave in and bought after my computer blue-screened and I realised that yes, I really should back up occasionally. It's very lovely, too. Smaller than my 250GB hard drive, and shinier, and much, much quieter. I'm busy copying about 130GB of assorted downloaded gubbins to it, which could take a while. And I should get back to putting all my music on to the computer, too - I wanted to listen to the Field Mice the other day, and had to actually go and dig out the physical CD. Horrendous. (Actually, I was listening to a TAPE the other day - Victor and Barry comedy. Must find someone who can put that on the computer for me, too, before the tape dies.)

..and I just got SO distracted on youtube. Someone's put up loads of Victor and Barry stuff, though no songs that I can see. V&B are the comedy duo that Alan Cumming was half of in the late '80s, with Forbes Masson. There's a clip of them on Glen Michael's Cartoon Cavalcade, and I wouldn't have claimed to remember the theme tune to that, but as soon as it started - whoa! Flashback! Heh. Also footage from the Scottish part of an ITV telethon which includes a man singing with his head in a washing machine, while they're mildly sarcastic at him. Very odd. And there is a clip of them doing a song about the Edinburgh Festival on the STV website.

I may have had something else in mind to say before I sidetracked myself, there, but if I did, I've completely forgotten it.

Recently, the thing I've been getting most ranty about is bad journalism. It's always annoyed me, and I've always been aware of a certain amount of the spin and hyperbole and selective editing and outright lying that goes on, but either it's getting worse or I'm noticing it more. Sometimes it's the big stuff, sometimes it's the little stuff. For instance, on Tuesday the BBC had an article entitled What do you get if you divide science by God?, which started:

A prize-winning quantum physicist says a spiritual reality is veiled from us, and science offers a glimpse behind that veil.

Now, it's not really trying to mislead - it went on to explain two lines later that the prize that the scientist in question had won was the Templeton Prize, which is an essentially an enormous cash prize for shoehorning religion into science. (It's specifically designed to pay out more than the Nobel, because Templeton thought the Nobel ignored spirituality.) The problem here is that "prize-winning scientist" strongly implies that the prize was for, you know, SCIENCE, and gives more weight to this scientist's opinion than if he'd just been dubbed "a scientist" who believes that there's a spiritual reality that's veiled from us.

You can of course find far, far worse examples of journalism than that every day, even on the BBC site, but that one niggled at me because it was so pointless, and because I still - for some reason - expect better from the Beeb.

Charlie Brooker's new series Newswipe, which started last night, is being promoted as a sort of "catch up with some of the news if you haven't been paying attention" show, but it's mostly a savage indictment of modern journalism. The first show tried to explain what Charlie had learned about the credit crunch from the news channels and shows (not much that's in any way meaningful or comprehensible); touched on media spin and how PR agencies can set the news agenda and point of view, with reference to the "Natwest Three"; and finished up with a scathing look at the coverage of the German school shooting, and how the kind of coverage it got may actually be causing more of these incidents:



The whole thing is well worth watching - as well as being intelligent and incisive, it's very funny, as always. (If you've never encountered Brooker before: there will be sweariness and probably offensiveness.) It's available on iPlayer here, or on YouTube if you're not in the UK.

There is a crisis in journalism, for a variety of reasons (general cost-cutting, sacking of journalists, researchers and editors, the need for 24-hour TV and internet rolling news to be produced, the slow death of print media in general and regional reporting specifically, PR agency blurb being used as stories, proprieters influencing editorial direction, a toothless PCC) which all feed into each other. The internet in general and, I think, blogs in particular are going to be crucial in the next ten years or so, while we're in a transition period of how the "news" works. Someone has to be out there checking facts, calling out inaccuracies, and challenging bias. People like Ben Goldacre and Mailwatch are leading the charge. The internet also lets the people involved in stories have their own say and do things like the BHA's line-by-line rebuttal of an inaccurate newspaper article. It makes it much easier for people who are angry about news stories to band together and do something about it, as was shown in the last week or two by the campaign against the Scottish Sunday Express's obscene article about the Dunblane survivors, which resulted in an unconvincing but high-profile apology and an upcoming investigation by the PCC. And I think we're going to have to use all these tactics and more if we want to have a chance of countering the waves of misleading, alarmist propaganda that the majority of our news outlets seem to produce, to some degree or other, these days.

* Title, of course, from The Day Today, which we used to think was satire.

Man, what was going on with last night's TV? Both of these things in the same night!

On Let's Dance (Ob disclaimer: I was down at my parents', my mum was watching it...), Robert Webb does Flashdance. In wig and leotard. And is Disturbingly Sexy, yes.



And then on QI XL, boykissing! Rob Brydon (who I have a total crush on, based almost entirely on his accent and his right eyebrow) and Ben Miller (who I've never really noticed before but now have a total crush on, based almost entirely on his Massive Brain) get a little too close for Stephen's comfort:



Phwoar! The original QI transmitted on Friday, and Rob's first twitter on Saturday morning was "Dreadful night's sleep. Ben hogged the duvet." Heh.

In other news: still vaguely ill. Doctor's tomorrow morning, if work will let me out for half an hour.

So the trailer is out for this year's Torchwood, which is five episodes shown over a week:



(Better quality versions on the BBC site and the BBC America site.)

Yeah, looks like Torchwood. Could be good, could be terrible, and I'll probably enjoy it anyway. Hurray! Still no word on an air date, though, except minor rumours about July.

I am, however, thoroughly amused by the fact that there's a squee post and a review/ reaction post on torch_wood. Ahhh, fandom.

(I mock with love! I'm currently reading - yes, reading, from front to back - Brave New Words, the Oxford science-fiction and SF fannish dictionary. And it's fabulous. I'm up to F.)

I never did get around to watching the new* Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy film, for a number of reasons. Martin Freeman irritates me beyond measure, for a start, and I read bad reviews about how they'd edited all the good lines just enough to make them crap, and frankly I don't think I could deal with finding Marvin sexy. However, it's just come to my attention that this lapse in geekiness means I've also missed the UTTERLY FABULOUS Neil Hannon song over the end credits. Thank heavens for Spotify, that's what I say.

And here's a video of a puppet miming along to it.



I can't believe someone's made a Lost fanvid to it. Ha. (Spoilers only up to season two, I think, but I'm not 100% on that!)

* Four years old. Eek.

John Martyn died this morning, less than a month after he was awarded an OBE. He was ill and alcoholic, so it's not a great surprise, but still a sad loss.

Here he is performing May You Never (and I think this is at least the first time I've posted or linked to this video):

I was at work last night, but I got to half-watch the inauguration. Wasn't it amazing? Congratulations, you Americans! Hail to the Chief!

Rick Warren seemed to make all the right noises, I suppose, although I was too busy muttering about the separation of church and state to really pay attention. Aretha Franklin (and her hat!) - fabulous! I'm sure the classical musicians were too, but I was mildly perplexed by the musical choice of Lord Of The Dance - I hadn't expected the spectre of Michael Flatley to rise up and disturb the proceedings.

Obama's inaugural address (text and video) was sheer brilliance. And his speech-writer is only 27 - I can't decide whether that's depressing or inspiring. It hit so many great spots, while still keeping in all the religion and uber-patriotism that seems to be compulsory. ( Excessive quotation below )

Random Inauguration links:

• Inauguration video from the LA Times, with a Martin Luther King clip predicting a black president within 40 years, clips from the inauguration, and reactions from various people including the Heroes cast who stopped filming to watch.


• The BBC Wordles the inauguration speech. Notable lack of "change", there, actually.


• The new White House site, notably the blog and the technology agenda. "Restore Scientific Integrity to the White House: Restore the basic principle that government decisions should be based on the best-available, scientifically-valid evidence and not on ideological predispositions." I <3 you. Please come and govern here. And bring your "safeguard internet privacy" and "improve science teaching" policies, too.


• CNN's "The Moment" photo blending thingy with Microsoft Photosynth - combines all the photos people have sent in of Obama taking the oath, so you can scroll and drag to see it from any distance and any angle. Technology awe!


• And Anna Pickard at the Guardian reviews the internet reaction to the inauguration.

1. After watching the twitters about it all day, I have sent my money via paypal to the scary puppet man off Heroes, and will - shortly, I hope - have a DRM-free copy of Wil Wheaton's latest audiobook, read and annotated by Wil. Hurray! Also, weird. The scary puppet man off Heroes turns out to be David H Lawrence, whose intelligent, geeky, technical blog (he's something of an internet entrepreneur, it seems) is at http://david.typepad.com/ I left that address out in full, because, whoa. Early Adopters R Us.

2. Hal Duncan has a hilariously ranty post about religion (when I say ranty, I mean sweary, hyperbolic and offensive to almost everyone) to go with his recent project - to "rearrange" the book of Revelation so that, using exactly the same words, it tells the story with God as the bad guy. (Which, as he admits, isn't that much of a stretch from Revelation anyway...) It's called violent eRa. Heeee.

3. Christmas week at work! Given that a normal week at work involves cakes and sweets and biscuits in the kitchen, this week means CAKES AND SWEETS AND BISCUITS BY THE BARREL LOAD. Hurray. There were about 12 of us in today, and we had a tin of Celebrations, a box of Quality Street, a box of Maltesers and a box of chocolate Christmas biscuits. And some leftover prawn crackers, for some reason. (Other things I haven't yet figured out: how my work year appears to have had 53 weeks. I suspect it's some leap-year-esque issue to do with always starting our weeks on Saturdays, but I still object to working on "Week 53" stuff.)

4. Via andrewducker, 40 Inspirational Speeches in two minutes. From movies, and nicely cut together. Made me laugh.

5. Still picking up great stuff by actually reading my RSS feeds. Today's haul so far: LOLworthy Queen of Wands comic strip (text possibly NSFW); an interesting article and comments thread on The Age Of Mass Intelligence, from The Economist's Intelligent Life magazine, which looks like it could be worth keeping an eye on; Alan Cumming writing in the HuffPost about Rick Warren and Obama; and the news that EA Games have abandoned the SecuROM for Spore - they're using Steam instead - and have launched a de-authorization tool for those who have already bought the DRM'd version.

Saddies 1: David Attenborough is ill in hospital after falling and hitting his head. Don't panic at the Daily Mail headline and first few paras, though - apparently he's out of the coma, the doctors aren't worried, and they're just waiting to hear when he'll be allowed home.

Edit: Happies 6: I changed all the music on my phone yesterday, and realised tonight that I'd taken my current ringtone (Bark at the Moon) off it. So now my phone, by way of ringing, is going to announce "I wanna do bad things with you". This amuses me more than it probably should. (The version of the song I have actually starts off with the "I wanna do bad things with you", rather than the musical intro.)

1. Happy Thanksgiving!

Epic Win: The Cartoon Network rickrolls New York during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. With actual Rick Astley.



2. Help! I'm completely failing to upgrade Flash on my Eee. I can download a tar.gz file, and executing the installer (and the other file) in it does *something*, but doesn't make Flash work, dammit. I think I might have to uninstall Flash and then reinstall it, but I'm not sure...

3. I am utterly entranced by the Text 118118 (text any questions) line's live feed. ( Some of my favourites from the last ten minutes )

More links later, possibly, as I have far too many tabs open again.

Happy 45th birthday to Doctor Who! That's...quite impressive.

Wired has been scouring YouTube for 45th anniversary vids - some of them are quite cool. But I will share this one that I found the other day:

Doctor Who On Holiday



It's a mashup of Green Day's Holiday, and Doctorin' The Tardis. (I always forget that it was the KLF who did that, and that therefore I'm allowed to like it...)

In still vaguely Whovian-related news, the remake of Terry Nation's Survivors starts tonight on BBC1, looks good (from the first 45 minutes, which is all I've seen) and stars a variety of ex-Who-ers - Paterson Joseph, Freema Agyeman and Shaun Dingwall being the obvious ones.

Whee! Sylar presents the National Television Award to David Tennant. Well, to Catherine Tate, and David's live from Hamlet at Stratford (it's the interval) giving both his acceptance and resignation speech.

Hat-tip to marcella_riddle for the link.