Cheryl's Mewsings

Herewith, a bunch of things that I have been meaning to post about. – If you are in the UK, and have the bandwidth, please download Paul Cornell’s Pulse from the BBC iPlayer. The BBC will be counting downloads when deciding whether to commission a series. – If I’d been more alert yesterday I would [...]

As you may have noticed, I’m not a big fan of TV drama. I tend to have serious suspension of disbelief problems, and find much TV unwatchable. If I want melodrama I can always take a leaf out of Chris Gracia’s book and watch Mexican wrestling. However, Paul Cornell kindly asked if I would take [...]

Those of you who, like me, did not get to see Neil Gaiman’s appearance on CBS Sunday Morning can view that segment online here. They ended up not talking about the Hugos at all, but there are a number of scenes from Worldcon in Montreal. Mostly, of course, they went for people in weird costumes, [...]

I’ve finally got around to watching the Arena special on Brian Eno (thank you, iPlayer). If I were asked to play the dinner party game, Eno would definitely be on my guest list. He’s great at off-the-wall ideas that are very thought-provoking. Here’s something he said during the program. Asked what artists could do to [...]

I have just done a post for the SFX Awards over on SFAW. What I didn’t put in there was the other snippet of news that Dave & Barry of Geek Syndicate tweeted during the ceremony. According to them, Neil Gaiman has written an episode of Doctor Who, which will air in 14 months time. [...]

Joe Gordon at Forbidden Planet gets email from the BBC: Does your avatar do more exercise than you? Are you happier running round World Of War craft than pounding the treadmill at the gym? If you love playing high-octane games or reading sci-fi and action based comics from the comfort of your sofa, but are [...]

Back in 1979 the BBC produced a series of five half-hour documentaries about science fiction called Time Out Of Mind. I don’t think that I saw the programmes at the time, and I’m not sure that they have been shown again since. Given how sloppy the BBC are with their archives, they may even have [...]

And he has given me an order of magnitude speed increase in my DSL service. Many thanks to him, Zen and BT for the improved technology. I now have a good enough connection to watch steaming HD TV. Unfortunately it is Christmas and most of what is available on the iPlayer is pretty awful.

If any of you in the UK did not see the BBC4 documentary about Oliver Postgate this evening, catch it on the iPlayer while you still can. It is marvelous.

… You are talking to a feminist, career girl friend and your realize that she’s too young to have been inspired by this… Never mind, Mary, there are plenty of us who grew up wanting to make it on our own because you gave us hope. (Sorry about the opening and closing ads, but this [...]

Today’s issue of The Economist includes a fascinating article about Internet television. Economists love talking about disruptive technologies, and this one seems to be a classic. According to the article, cable TV companies are doing everything they can to resist the adoption on Internet TV because they are terrified that it will destroy their business [...]

Heads up Ireland and Doctor Who fans. I have finally got the video of Paul Cornell’s Guest of Honour talk from P-Con online. There is much interesting Who talk in it, but I have to admit that the highlight is where Paul starts to talk about Alan Moore and things get a little silly. If [...]

I have acquired a new heroine. Cerrie Burnell is an actress and TV presenter who has recently been given a top job on the BBC’s children’s channel, CBeebies. Parents are outraged. Does no one think of the children? Surely vulnerable little minds must be protected from such a monster? This is political correctness gone mad!!! [...]

I have just learned that David Hedison will be at Wondercon this year. Of course it is silly to want to meet someone that you had a crush on 40+ years ago, but there you go. Cool things are happening, and I can’t be part of them.

Last night I watched the final of the current series of University Challenge. I’d seen several of the earlier rounds and I knew that both of the teams in the final were very good. I wasn’t disappointed, it was an excellent contest, and I wasn’t surprised to see it reported in the papers today. Interestingly, [...]

It is rare that I have anything good to say about the Daily Mail, and this is probably an accident, but it is rather amusing. As some of you may remember, Russell T Davies thinks that Doctor Who can never be a woman because it would mean that fathers would have to explain sex changes [...]

Today I got email from the BBC – or rather the Hugo Awards did, and as I’m one of the people who helps maintain the web site it got forwarded to me. The message was from a researcher who works on Doctor Who Confidential. They wanted some information on Steven Moffat’s Hugo Award wins. Sadly [...]

YouTube has a whole collection of them here. I haven’t had time to watch them all, but I do like Coca Cola’s “Heist” ad. Also, I know it isn’t new, but I dearly love Sprint/Nextel’s “What if Roadies Ran the World”.

The week’s Economist has a couple of interesting articles on display technology. The first one is about electrophoretic displays – the sort of thing that is used in the Kindle and Sony Reader, which helps make them much easier on the eye (and on the battery) than an LCD screen. The exciting news about these [...]

Gosh, a Doctor Who post! Whatever has prompted this? Well, I have absolutely nothing to say on the subject of Matt Smith. However, over at Biology in Science Fiction Peggy asks whether there are any good scientific reasons why the new Doctor could not have been black or female. On the gender issue, she’s unusually [...]