Chris Carline: Personal Website
Indelicates Redux (0) 
I wrote an incredibly gushing piece about the Indelicates the other day having listened to their music for the grand total of a couple of hours, at best. Now that I've lived with the album for a few days, my opinions have had a chance to develop and solidify, and as we all know, initial impressions can be deeply misleading. So. What to make of this album? It gets better with every listen. In the order of 50% each time. I'll report back when this equation no longer holds true. Don't hold your breath.Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-10-06 03:17:02
I wrote an incredibly gushing piece about the Indelicates the other day having listened to their music for the grand total of a couple of hours, at best. Now that I've lived with the album for a few days, my opinions have had a chance to develop and solidify, and as we all know, initial impressions can be deeply misleading. So. What to make of this album? It gets better with every listen. In the order of 50% each time. I'll report back when this equation no longer holds true. Don't hold your breath.Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-10-06 03:17:02
The Indelicates (0)
Once in a while, something marvelously serendipitous occurs. It started with a direct marketing message from ticketmaster. Generally speaking, I completely ignore these emails and they get consigned directly to the virtual dustbin. But in this case, somehow, for no particular reason I thought I'd see who was on and where they were playing, so I opened it for a look. Skimming through, I noticed the Pipettes were playing, who I've not heard anything of since the infectious "Pull Shapes" single. "Are they still going?", I asked myself, and bought up the website, including a photo of the band. I only recognised one member. Curiosity piqued, it lead me to the wikipedia, after which I learned that the final remaining original members had left. There was also an intriguing link to the first original member to leave, who as it turned out, was in a band called "The Indelicates". In these days of myspace, it was easy to find their website and listen to some sample tracks. And quite frankly, I fell in love there and then. Which probably says a lot more about me than it does anything else, but it isn't every day that you hear something that immediately clicks like that. I watched one of their videos (noting a cameo from Art Brut's Eddie Argos) which made me smile. And so I bought the album and set about a-listening on my drive home. I'm still listening to it now. And loving every moment. Every track. It's a thing of beauty. My words cannot possibly do it justice. It's just great! Go have a listen, and then buy their album. Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-09-22 03:17:02
Once in a while, something marvelously serendipitous occurs. It started with a direct marketing message from ticketmaster. Generally speaking, I completely ignore these emails and they get consigned directly to the virtual dustbin. But in this case, somehow, for no particular reason I thought I'd see who was on and where they were playing, so I opened it for a look. Skimming through, I noticed the Pipettes were playing, who I've not heard anything of since the infectious "Pull Shapes" single. "Are they still going?", I asked myself, and bought up the website, including a photo of the band. I only recognised one member. Curiosity piqued, it lead me to the wikipedia, after which I learned that the final remaining original members had left. There was also an intriguing link to the first original member to leave, who as it turned out, was in a band called "The Indelicates". In these days of myspace, it was easy to find their website and listen to some sample tracks. And quite frankly, I fell in love there and then. Which probably says a lot more about me than it does anything else, but it isn't every day that you hear something that immediately clicks like that. I watched one of their videos (noting a cameo from Art Brut's Eddie Argos) which made me smile. And so I bought the album and set about a-listening on my drive home. I'm still listening to it now. And loving every moment. Every track. It's a thing of beauty. My words cannot possibly do it justice. It's just great! Go have a listen, and then buy their album. Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-09-22 03:17:02
Large Muppet Generator (0)
According to people with a room-temperature IQ , tomorrow (or strictly speaking, later today) might mark the END OF THE UNIVERSE. Or at the very least, the end of the world. A part of me hopes this will actually happen, because these utterly subnormal simple-brained hairflaps deserve to be utterly wiped from existence, and I'm more than happy to take "one for the team" in this particular instance (assuming they are guaranteed WIPED OUT). Now. Here's the thing. Tomorrow will be much like any other, independent of any high-energy impacts that might be occurring under Swiss soil. There will be traffic jams. You will run out of milk. Those eggs will continue to be slightly iffy. The universe, at least locally, will continue unperturbed. Let's consider the evidence: The universe is a big place. Collisions at far higher energies *must* have taken place and continue to do so ALL OF THE TIME. And yet, we continue to exist! Even people who believe in ancient sky pixies and tooth fairies! Nature is a cruel place indeed. I hope they choke on excessive enamel. The only guarantee in life is increased entropy. Which makes me start thinking about entropic tax, and this can surely be no good to anyone. Which reminds me: At my funeral, I want S-Club 7's "Don't Stop Moving" playing as my body wends its final journey into the fiery heart of the crematorium, whilst mourners look up at a massive blown-up photo of my gurning face with the caption "EPIC FAIL" underneath. Anyway. I digress. The big story coming out of tomorrow will be the LHC's failure to detect any bosons of the Higgs variety**. ** If I were a betting man. And only because the odds are several orders of magnitude better than the whole world evaporating in a black hole/strangelet soup-related event. Although if there are noodles, I could change my mind again. Mmm. Quantum noodles. It's like punk never happened...Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-09-22 03:17:02
According to people with a room-temperature IQ , tomorrow (or strictly speaking, later today) might mark the END OF THE UNIVERSE. Or at the very least, the end of the world. A part of me hopes this will actually happen, because these utterly subnormal simple-brained hairflaps deserve to be utterly wiped from existence, and I'm more than happy to take "one for the team" in this particular instance (assuming they are guaranteed WIPED OUT). Now. Here's the thing. Tomorrow will be much like any other, independent of any high-energy impacts that might be occurring under Swiss soil. There will be traffic jams. You will run out of milk. Those eggs will continue to be slightly iffy. The universe, at least locally, will continue unperturbed. Let's consider the evidence: The universe is a big place. Collisions at far higher energies *must* have taken place and continue to do so ALL OF THE TIME. And yet, we continue to exist! Even people who believe in ancient sky pixies and tooth fairies! Nature is a cruel place indeed. I hope they choke on excessive enamel. The only guarantee in life is increased entropy. Which makes me start thinking about entropic tax, and this can surely be no good to anyone. Which reminds me: At my funeral, I want S-Club 7's "Don't Stop Moving" playing as my body wends its final journey into the fiery heart of the crematorium, whilst mourners look up at a massive blown-up photo of my gurning face with the caption "EPIC FAIL" underneath. Anyway. I digress. The big story coming out of tomorrow will be the LHC's failure to detect any bosons of the Higgs variety**. ** If I were a betting man. And only because the odds are several orders of magnitude better than the whole world evaporating in a black hole/strangelet soup-related event. Although if there are noodles, I could change my mind again. Mmm. Quantum noodles. It's like punk never happened...Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-09-22 03:17:02
Drivers Alarums (1)
I realise I've not blogged for a while (quelle surprise!) but given the fraught hour that's just passed, I thought now would be a good time. It all started in the dim and distant past, with Diablo 2. A popular game that first came out about eight years ago, it ran on both PC and Mac operating systems, and has been updated to keep it running happily under both operating systems ever since. Well, until fairly recently, where an updated graphics driver to the chipset of my notebook computer killed the 256 colour mode that Diablo 2 requires to run. Anyway. Enterprising hackers realised they could downgrade the graphics drivers a notch, and restore the ability for Diablo 2 to run once again. Everyone wins! And I was happy. But another game I play an awful lot more (EVE Online) didn't really enjoy using the slightly older drivers and in fact loved the shiny new drivers. It was possible to work around this by opening up the game package and running cider from the command line, but I'd inevitably forget and end up with a blank screen, forcing me to quit, relaunch, etc. etc. Also, the framerate was noticeably crappier. Since I managed to get Diablo 2 working happily on XP under VMware Fusion, I decided to revert my drivers back to the "latest and greatest" and enjoy EVE at full pelt and without the startup workaround. Now, the package that I originally used to downgrade my drivers also provided the facility to back out and revert to the new drivers. What could possibly go wrong? A few quick clicks and a reboot later, it became very apparent that something had gone significantly awry. And I was left staring at a lifeless display. Because of the way networking starts up, I had no way of connecting to the machine. It was essentially transformed into a shiny and expensive paperweight. So, I dug out the installation disks and prepared myself psychologically for a system restore. I really didn't want to system restore. I spent many hours cleaning out the parts of OS X I didn't need to save space -- not only printer drivers, but also languages and localisation things I didn't need. A system restore would whack them right back in, and still leave me needing to upgrade my OS from 10.5.0 to 10.5.4, a download of considerable girth and time consuming to boot. After booting up from the DVD ROM (the old hold-down the C-key on restart trick), I noticed for the first time that the installer has a 'Utilities' menu. This was very interesting, as it opened up another path for salvation -- for one of the utilities was the 'Terminal' app. Running this provides root access to the volumes mounted on the disk, which included the partition with my broken drivers on it. Also of note was the fact that I could reattach my wifi network in the usual way. And so, a plan was hatched. Unfortunately, there was a degree of fiddling and investigation. First of all, I needed to locate a source of non-broken drivers, which I found in the /System/Library/Extensions folder on my iMac. I then needed to copy them across. Then came the first problem. The OS X installer mounts a bare-bones, read-only operating system at /, and scp wasn't there. So the next thing to try was "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/usr/bin/scp" to see if that worked. Success! Actually, short-lived success, for as soon as you try to actually copy anything, it complains it can't find /usr/bin/ssh. Now, I've long-known that ssh supports file transfers and that it is used under the hood, but I'd never actually used it in this capacity before. I'd only really ever used scp. After confirming I could "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/usr/bin/ssh" into my iMac, I tar'd up the driver files I needed (keeping my fingers crossed that tar would run successfully when I needed it) and set about discovering how ssh could be used to transfer a file. In the end, it was remarkably simple. I found an excellent resource here describing how to backup using ssh alone. I settled for the "ssh target_address cat remotefile > localfile" format and transfered my hopefully non-broken drivers across. Untarring proved uneventful. But would my replacement drivers work? Yes. Rebooting bought up a very welcoming log-in screen. And a great big sigh of relief on my part. There is probably a cautionary tale buried in here somewhere.Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-09-22 03:17:02
I realise I've not blogged for a while (quelle surprise!) but given the fraught hour that's just passed, I thought now would be a good time. It all started in the dim and distant past, with Diablo 2. A popular game that first came out about eight years ago, it ran on both PC and Mac operating systems, and has been updated to keep it running happily under both operating systems ever since. Well, until fairly recently, where an updated graphics driver to the chipset of my notebook computer killed the 256 colour mode that Diablo 2 requires to run. Anyway. Enterprising hackers realised they could downgrade the graphics drivers a notch, and restore the ability for Diablo 2 to run once again. Everyone wins! And I was happy. But another game I play an awful lot more (EVE Online) didn't really enjoy using the slightly older drivers and in fact loved the shiny new drivers. It was possible to work around this by opening up the game package and running cider from the command line, but I'd inevitably forget and end up with a blank screen, forcing me to quit, relaunch, etc. etc. Also, the framerate was noticeably crappier. Since I managed to get Diablo 2 working happily on XP under VMware Fusion, I decided to revert my drivers back to the "latest and greatest" and enjoy EVE at full pelt and without the startup workaround. Now, the package that I originally used to downgrade my drivers also provided the facility to back out and revert to the new drivers. What could possibly go wrong? A few quick clicks and a reboot later, it became very apparent that something had gone significantly awry. And I was left staring at a lifeless display. Because of the way networking starts up, I had no way of connecting to the machine. It was essentially transformed into a shiny and expensive paperweight. So, I dug out the installation disks and prepared myself psychologically for a system restore. I really didn't want to system restore. I spent many hours cleaning out the parts of OS X I didn't need to save space -- not only printer drivers, but also languages and localisation things I didn't need. A system restore would whack them right back in, and still leave me needing to upgrade my OS from 10.5.0 to 10.5.4, a download of considerable girth and time consuming to boot. After booting up from the DVD ROM (the old hold-down the C-key on restart trick), I noticed for the first time that the installer has a 'Utilities' menu. This was very interesting, as it opened up another path for salvation -- for one of the utilities was the 'Terminal' app. Running this provides root access to the volumes mounted on the disk, which included the partition with my broken drivers on it. Also of note was the fact that I could reattach my wifi network in the usual way. And so, a plan was hatched. Unfortunately, there was a degree of fiddling and investigation. First of all, I needed to locate a source of non-broken drivers, which I found in the /System/Library/Extensions folder on my iMac. I then needed to copy them across. Then came the first problem. The OS X installer mounts a bare-bones, read-only operating system at /, and scp wasn't there. So the next thing to try was "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/usr/bin/scp" to see if that worked. Success! Actually, short-lived success, for as soon as you try to actually copy anything, it complains it can't find /usr/bin/ssh. Now, I've long-known that ssh supports file transfers and that it is used under the hood, but I'd never actually used it in this capacity before. I'd only really ever used scp. After confirming I could "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/usr/bin/ssh" into my iMac, I tar'd up the driver files I needed (keeping my fingers crossed that tar would run successfully when I needed it) and set about discovering how ssh could be used to transfer a file. In the end, it was remarkably simple. I found an excellent resource here describing how to backup using ssh alone. I settled for the "ssh target_address cat remotefile > localfile" format and transfered my hopefully non-broken drivers across. Untarring proved uneventful. But would my replacement drivers work? Yes. Rebooting bought up a very welcoming log-in screen. And a great big sigh of relief on my part. There is probably a cautionary tale buried in here somewhere.Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-09-22 03:17:02
How to stop Mac OS X dimming your display (2)
Now, I like Mac OS X. But one thing that really annoys me, especially when I'm watching a youtube link or some other kind of video, is the propensity of the display to dim itself after the computer doesn't get any input after what feels like 30 seconds or so. It's like it thinks I've gone away and left it on its own, poor dear, and that it can slack off and power down a bit. But it's this kind of behaviour that completely *sandpapers my teats*. I've ended up developing a nervous twitch, tapping the shift-key like some kind of numpty, just to reassure it I'm still there. It's this neediness that finally got me motivated to do something about it, and after a fair old amount of digging, I finally managed to come up with something that Works For Me (On My Machine). The trick, as it most certainly is, is to delve into the dark and mysterious depths of power management settings from the command line. It's all right there *in the manpage*. Who'd have thought it? So, what is this magic command of utopian salve of which I speak? None other than: $ sudo pmset -a halfdim 0 And that's all there is to it. No muss, no fuss, just (more) juice. As obviously, you use more power this way -- but I'm a manual kind of a guy and am perfectly capable of dimming my display manually if I ever feel the need. And as it turns out the 'pmset' command is surprisingly useful for other related settings too! So there you have my OS X tip of the day! Well, of the week. Well, of the mon-- oh you get the idea. Feel free to leave your adulation of my mastery in the comments. Or mock me for taking eight years or so to cotton on to this tidy snippet. Delete as applicable, as it were.Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-09-22 03:17:02
Now, I like Mac OS X. But one thing that really annoys me, especially when I'm watching a youtube link or some other kind of video, is the propensity of the display to dim itself after the computer doesn't get any input after what feels like 30 seconds or so. It's like it thinks I've gone away and left it on its own, poor dear, and that it can slack off and power down a bit. But it's this kind of behaviour that completely *sandpapers my teats*. I've ended up developing a nervous twitch, tapping the shift-key like some kind of numpty, just to reassure it I'm still there. It's this neediness that finally got me motivated to do something about it, and after a fair old amount of digging, I finally managed to come up with something that Works For Me (On My Machine). The trick, as it most certainly is, is to delve into the dark and mysterious depths of power management settings from the command line. It's all right there *in the manpage*. Who'd have thought it? So, what is this magic command of utopian salve of which I speak? None other than: $ sudo pmset -a halfdim 0 And that's all there is to it. No muss, no fuss, just (more) juice. As obviously, you use more power this way -- but I'm a manual kind of a guy and am perfectly capable of dimming my display manually if I ever feel the need. And as it turns out the 'pmset' command is surprisingly useful for other related settings too! So there you have my OS X tip of the day! Well, of the week. Well, of the mon-- oh you get the idea. Feel free to leave your adulation of my mastery in the comments. Or mock me for taking eight years or so to cotton on to this tidy snippet. Delete as applicable, as it were.Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-09-22 03:17:02
CentOS on a Stick (2)
Having recently taken delivery of a spangly-new 8Gb USB stick (20 quid including P&P from picstop), I was wondering what to put on it. Idly poking around my disk drive for large files I could potentially offload, I noticed that I'd created an Ubuntu VM for messing about with under VMWare Fusion. "I wonder if it'll work off my stick?", I asked myself (or words to that effect). A few minutes and a confirmation popup click later ("Have you copied or moved your VM?"), I was booting into Ubuntu. Sure, it wasn't speedy, but it worked. This gave me another idea: "I wonder if it'll work with a full 64-bit OS?" Now, there are many 64-bit operating systems out there, but I wanted to be perverse, so I finally settled on the clone of "a Large North American Linux Company"'s distribution, the 64-bit version of CentOS 5.1. It took me a few goes to get it right, but the trick is to remember to select the 'split drives into two gigabyte files' option when you create the initial VM -- if you don't, then you have to reformat the stick drive with a non-FAT based structure, which limits you if you want portability -- whilst Windows, Linux and OS X are perfectly happy with large files for the most part, only FAT works with all of them 'out of the box'. Configuration was fairly straightforward, but I was only able to successfully get the VMWare tools installed and set up from the command line, using the tar.gz version. I think this was mostly down to the configuration part not starting automatically from the rpm install, but I got there in the end. The last trick I wanted to try was moving my new CentOS on a Stick about. So I tried it on my iMac running downstairs; needless to say, it worked perfectly. The final challenge was running the 64 bit OS under 32-bit Windows -- would it work? Well, what do you know? It seems to work just fine! In fact, I'm writing this entry in CentOS running under VMWare Player, running under a vanilla Windows XP. Okay, it's not going to win any awards for speed, but it works and that is quite amazing enough in of itself... And whilst it's cliche, my last trick will probably be to run VMWare Fusion under OS X to run my Windows XP bootcamp partition, to run VMWare Player and access my 64-bit CentOS USB drive installation. I mean, I'll need to fiddle with memory configuration and stuff like that before there's any possibility it might work (and it'll be even less speedy due to the USB stick's connetion will have to be passed back into Windows via the VMWare USB bridge... Ha. Well I've got to try it now... I just might be some time... ;-)Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-09-22 03:17:02
Having recently taken delivery of a spangly-new 8Gb USB stick (20 quid including P&P from picstop), I was wondering what to put on it. Idly poking around my disk drive for large files I could potentially offload, I noticed that I'd created an Ubuntu VM for messing about with under VMWare Fusion. "I wonder if it'll work off my stick?", I asked myself (or words to that effect). A few minutes and a confirmation popup click later ("Have you copied or moved your VM?"), I was booting into Ubuntu. Sure, it wasn't speedy, but it worked. This gave me another idea: "I wonder if it'll work with a full 64-bit OS?" Now, there are many 64-bit operating systems out there, but I wanted to be perverse, so I finally settled on the clone of "a Large North American Linux Company"'s distribution, the 64-bit version of CentOS 5.1. It took me a few goes to get it right, but the trick is to remember to select the 'split drives into two gigabyte files' option when you create the initial VM -- if you don't, then you have to reformat the stick drive with a non-FAT based structure, which limits you if you want portability -- whilst Windows, Linux and OS X are perfectly happy with large files for the most part, only FAT works with all of them 'out of the box'. Configuration was fairly straightforward, but I was only able to successfully get the VMWare tools installed and set up from the command line, using the tar.gz version. I think this was mostly down to the configuration part not starting automatically from the rpm install, but I got there in the end. The last trick I wanted to try was moving my new CentOS on a Stick about. So I tried it on my iMac running downstairs; needless to say, it worked perfectly. The final challenge was running the 64 bit OS under 32-bit Windows -- would it work? Well, what do you know? It seems to work just fine! In fact, I'm writing this entry in CentOS running under VMWare Player, running under a vanilla Windows XP. Okay, it's not going to win any awards for speed, but it works and that is quite amazing enough in of itself... And whilst it's cliche, my last trick will probably be to run VMWare Fusion under OS X to run my Windows XP bootcamp partition, to run VMWare Player and access my 64-bit CentOS USB drive installation. I mean, I'll need to fiddle with memory configuration and stuff like that before there's any possibility it might work (and it'll be even less speedy due to the USB stick's connetion will have to be passed back into Windows via the VMWare USB bridge... Ha. Well I've got to try it now... I just might be some time... ;-)Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-09-22 03:17:02
The Ting Tings (1)
As it turns out, for reasons I have yet to fathom, I have been distinctly enamoured by a two-piece band from Salford called "The Ting Tings". Well, by three of their songs, anyway. Receiving masses of airplay at the moment (and hotly tipped for a high chart position tomorrow) is the fabulously bittersweet "That's Not My Name": (Which was originally released with the mesmeric "Great DJ" on the B-side.) Also noteworthy is the iPod-advert fueled "Shut Up and Let Me Go" (yay for cheesy youtube slideshows!), which is very CSS-like -- in a good way. It remains to be seen if they are the new Republica, but at least they've got one more great song under their belts than that particular band ever managed...Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-09-22 03:17:02
As it turns out, for reasons I have yet to fathom, I have been distinctly enamoured by a two-piece band from Salford called "The Ting Tings". Well, by three of their songs, anyway. Receiving masses of airplay at the moment (and hotly tipped for a high chart position tomorrow) is the fabulously bittersweet "That's Not My Name": (Which was originally released with the mesmeric "Great DJ" on the B-side.) Also noteworthy is the iPod-advert fueled "Shut Up and Let Me Go" (yay for cheesy youtube slideshows!), which is very CSS-like -- in a good way. It remains to be seen if they are the new Republica, but at least they've got one more great song under their belts than that particular band ever managed...Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-09-22 03:17:02
Galactica-ca-ca (3)
There aren't (and indeed, haven't been) very many programmes on the television where I absolutely, religiously need to see each and every episode. Thinking about it, the list is very short. My first great televisual love was "Twin Peaks", which I hold in such high regard that I can't bring myself to watch the second and final season to see if it is still as good as I remember (DVDs of these episodes were only released last year). The next thing I can really remember loving was an obscure British comedy called 'The Asylum' made for about 23 pence and a cornetto. Now, it played repeatedly on the Comedy Channel every night, and I never really got around to watching it properly for a very long time. Flicking around the cable channels over the course of six months or so, I barely saw an episode, and what did see I thought was hideously unfunny. And then a strange thing happened. I became hooked on it. All of a sudden, with enough context, it became very clever and funny. So I watched and recorded it religiously, taping every episode that broadcast. The timing was perfect. It was the last time it was ever broadcast on television, and rights issues deny its release on DVD. It starred a few people who have gone on to bigger and better things; Simon Pegg (as a pizza delivery boy), Jessica Stevenson (playing two parts -- a nurse-ratchett like force of malevolence, and a politics student who was only allowed to watch daytime TV who ended up believing that 'The Vorderman' was sending her secret messages encoded in the countdown conundrum), a pre-Boosch Julian Barratt (a painter and decorator locked up with nothing but access to renascence art), and directed by Edgar Wright (Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz). Probably the subject of another post before I digress too far. Anyway. Next up was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Which was something I was very sniffy and dismissive of for years, until I finally fell for its charms when practically forced at gunpoint to watch the 'Once More, With Feeling' episode in the middle of Season 6. DVD boxes were ordered, and I didn't have to wait long for the 7th season to come out after I'd caught up. I downloaded each episode every week as soon after it was aired in the US as possible, and bought the box set when it was finally released (I say bought, but what I mean is 'pre-ordered the moment it was announced'). Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes -- both must-see. Oh, and "X Factor" like nonsense, but I'll gloss over that little personality peccadillo. The only current 'Must Watch' are new episodes of Doctor Who -- now, I enjoyed the old ones well enough, but they were rarely don't-miss TV. I've been hooked on the New Who since the first Ecclestone 'Run!'. Actually, there is one other TV show I absolutely have to see, and you might guess what that might be by the subtle clue I left in the title of this post. Yes, folks: I'm completely smitten with the 're-imagined' Battlestar Galactica. The one where Starbuck is a woman, amongst many of the gigantic liberties taken with the original. And quite rightly so. Galactica shares very few of the central conceits of the original show: cylons vs humans, finding Earth, vipers. It's taken a dodgy old show from the late 70's and turned it into something fantastic, filled with tightly-plotted political intrigue and paranoia. Genius. I certainly wasn't first in the Galactica queue. I'd been aware of it for ages and thought like it sounded like a complete load of dreck. I couldn't even be bothered to download the pilots from the Internet's popular Internet. Somebody had to lend me the DVDs, and then I had them for ages before I watched the damned things. I've not looked back. If you're not currently aboard the Galactibus, now's the time. I've just watched the latest episode (season 4, episode 4) and it's an absolute corker, and there aren't enough people I can go 'squee!' about it with. This has been a public-service announcement.Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-09-22 03:17:02
There aren't (and indeed, haven't been) very many programmes on the television where I absolutely, religiously need to see each and every episode. Thinking about it, the list is very short. My first great televisual love was "Twin Peaks", which I hold in such high regard that I can't bring myself to watch the second and final season to see if it is still as good as I remember (DVDs of these episodes were only released last year). The next thing I can really remember loving was an obscure British comedy called 'The Asylum' made for about 23 pence and a cornetto. Now, it played repeatedly on the Comedy Channel every night, and I never really got around to watching it properly for a very long time. Flicking around the cable channels over the course of six months or so, I barely saw an episode, and what did see I thought was hideously unfunny. And then a strange thing happened. I became hooked on it. All of a sudden, with enough context, it became very clever and funny. So I watched and recorded it religiously, taping every episode that broadcast. The timing was perfect. It was the last time it was ever broadcast on television, and rights issues deny its release on DVD. It starred a few people who have gone on to bigger and better things; Simon Pegg (as a pizza delivery boy), Jessica Stevenson (playing two parts -- a nurse-ratchett like force of malevolence, and a politics student who was only allowed to watch daytime TV who ended up believing that 'The Vorderman' was sending her secret messages encoded in the countdown conundrum), a pre-Boosch Julian Barratt (a painter and decorator locked up with nothing but access to renascence art), and directed by Edgar Wright (Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz). Probably the subject of another post before I digress too far. Anyway. Next up was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Which was something I was very sniffy and dismissive of for years, until I finally fell for its charms when practically forced at gunpoint to watch the 'Once More, With Feeling' episode in the middle of Season 6. DVD boxes were ordered, and I didn't have to wait long for the 7th season to come out after I'd caught up. I downloaded each episode every week as soon after it was aired in the US as possible, and bought the box set when it was finally released (I say bought, but what I mean is 'pre-ordered the moment it was announced'). Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes -- both must-see. Oh, and "X Factor" like nonsense, but I'll gloss over that little personality peccadillo. The only current 'Must Watch' are new episodes of Doctor Who -- now, I enjoyed the old ones well enough, but they were rarely don't-miss TV. I've been hooked on the New Who since the first Ecclestone 'Run!'. Actually, there is one other TV show I absolutely have to see, and you might guess what that might be by the subtle clue I left in the title of this post. Yes, folks: I'm completely smitten with the 're-imagined' Battlestar Galactica. The one where Starbuck is a woman, amongst many of the gigantic liberties taken with the original. And quite rightly so. Galactica shares very few of the central conceits of the original show: cylons vs humans, finding Earth, vipers. It's taken a dodgy old show from the late 70's and turned it into something fantastic, filled with tightly-plotted political intrigue and paranoia. Genius. I certainly wasn't first in the Galactica queue. I'd been aware of it for ages and thought like it sounded like a complete load of dreck. I couldn't even be bothered to download the pilots from the Internet's popular Internet. Somebody had to lend me the DVDs, and then I had them for ages before I watched the damned things. I've not looked back. If you're not currently aboard the Galactibus, now's the time. I've just watched the latest episode (season 4, episode 4) and it's an absolute corker, and there aren't enough people I can go 'squee!' about it with. This has been a public-service announcement.Chris Carline: Personal Website, 2008-09-22 03:17:02