Skara Brae, Orkney
Skara Brae, Orkney
Reading: Still These Old Shades. Not to rehash last week's discussion. It is fun enough, especially later on, but it has bought into the idea that Nobility Will Out and its heroine also seems somewhat naive given her age and background.
Listening: A lot more of 13 Minutes on the Artemis mission, interspersed with various podcats of Doctor Who fans watching no longer missing episodes.
Watching: We managed to get to the end of an old series of Taskmaster before the Sparrow left, this being what we mostly watch when she is around. And missing Doctor Who episodes, of course.
Listening: A lot more of 13 Minutes on the Artemis mission, interspersed with various podcats of Doctor Who fans watching no longer missing episodes.
Watching: We managed to get to the end of an old series of Taskmaster before the Sparrow left, this being what we mostly watch when she is around. And missing Doctor Who episodes, of course.
Late last year, maybe early this? Toby Hadoke asked various people he knew what 17 missing Dr Who episodes they would pick if they were the only 17 left to be found. It now transpires he almost certainly knew, at that point, that 2 episodes of The Daleks' Masterplan had been found, but it got me thinking. My list is something as follows:
1. & 2. The Tenth Planet episode 4 and The Web of Fear episode 3. These both complete stories and are significant, in the first case for the regeneration of William Hartnell into Patrick Troughton and, in the second, for the first meeting with the Brigadier.
Then I have a string of picking one episode from any story for which no episodes exist so.
3. Marco Polo - there are three episodes in contention for this: episode 3 (which features Ping-Cho giving a storytelling performance something not attempted elsewhere in Doctor Who, or much at all these days), episode 5 which features Tutte Lemkow who is mildly (in)famous for having been in Doctor Who three times, none of which survive and having provided choreography for a fourth episode which also doesn't survive, and episode 7 (which is believed to have good fight scenes which, obviously, don't survive well on audio). I'm going to go for Marco Polo episode 3 for the storytelling - alas poor Tutte Lemkow.
4. The Myth Makers episode 1 - the choices here were episode 1 which sets the scene or episode 4 which pivots from farce into tragedy and introduces new companion Katarina. Doctor Who rarely enough does outright comedy that I've picked the introductory episode and it also features Tutte Lemkow so yay!. Also, with the recent returns we have 3/5 of Katarina's episodes and I've no real desire to see more.
5. The Massacre episode 4 - on the other hand, I'd rather see the conclusion of this one, which seems to have been pretty grim throughout, but I'd be interested to see how the Massacre of St. Bartholemew's Eve portrayed via woodcuts worked in practice. It does mean we miss out on William Hartnell's turn as the Abbot of Amboise however.
6. The Savages episode 4 - Episode 4s are tempting in and of themselves, but in this case we get Frederick Jaeger's impersonation of aspects of the first Doctor - seems well worth it.
7. The Smugglers - lots of choices here. Episode 4 once again has a lot of fighting that doesn't work well on audio, but I'm going to go for The Smugglers episode 2 where Polly convinces the stable boy that she can do voodoo.
8. The Power of the Daleks episode 1 - the other side of the regeneration of William Hartnell into Patrick Troughton.
9. The Highlanders episode 2 - in which the Doctor repeatedly bangs a man's head on a desk in ruse to convince him he is ill with a headache.
10. The Macra Terror episode 1 - because it includes the scene in which the Second Doctor is neatened up by a machine - which was cut from the animation.
11. Fury from the Deep episode 3 - which ends with Maggie walking out into the sea.
So now I have 5 left.
12. The Space Pirates epsiode 5 - The Space Pirates is not much loved but people hypothesise this is because the only episode we have involves the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe stuck in part of a disintegrated space station for the whole episode. So let's have another and I've picked one that features the character Dom Issigri because no one seems to know what he looks like.
13. The Power of the Daleks episode 4 - for no other reason that it would be nice to have a later episode of this, after the Doctor has ceased to be quite such a stranger to everyone, and episode 4 of 6 seems as good a place as any to stick the pin.
14 & 15. Marco Polo episode 7 and The Smugglers episode 4 for the aforementioned fight scenes.
16 & 17. The Daleks' Masterplan episodes 4 and 12 for the deaths of Katarina and Sara respectively.
1. & 2. The Tenth Planet episode 4 and The Web of Fear episode 3. These both complete stories and are significant, in the first case for the regeneration of William Hartnell into Patrick Troughton and, in the second, for the first meeting with the Brigadier.
Then I have a string of picking one episode from any story for which no episodes exist so.
3. Marco Polo - there are three episodes in contention for this: episode 3 (which features Ping-Cho giving a storytelling performance something not attempted elsewhere in Doctor Who, or much at all these days), episode 5 which features Tutte Lemkow who is mildly (in)famous for having been in Doctor Who three times, none of which survive and having provided choreography for a fourth episode which also doesn't survive, and episode 7 (which is believed to have good fight scenes which, obviously, don't survive well on audio). I'm going to go for Marco Polo episode 3 for the storytelling - alas poor Tutte Lemkow.
4. The Myth Makers episode 1 - the choices here were episode 1 which sets the scene or episode 4 which pivots from farce into tragedy and introduces new companion Katarina. Doctor Who rarely enough does outright comedy that I've picked the introductory episode and it also features Tutte Lemkow so yay!. Also, with the recent returns we have 3/5 of Katarina's episodes and I've no real desire to see more.
5. The Massacre episode 4 - on the other hand, I'd rather see the conclusion of this one, which seems to have been pretty grim throughout, but I'd be interested to see how the Massacre of St. Bartholemew's Eve portrayed via woodcuts worked in practice. It does mean we miss out on William Hartnell's turn as the Abbot of Amboise however.
6. The Savages episode 4 - Episode 4s are tempting in and of themselves, but in this case we get Frederick Jaeger's impersonation of aspects of the first Doctor - seems well worth it.
7. The Smugglers - lots of choices here. Episode 4 once again has a lot of fighting that doesn't work well on audio, but I'm going to go for The Smugglers episode 2 where Polly convinces the stable boy that she can do voodoo.
8. The Power of the Daleks episode 1 - the other side of the regeneration of William Hartnell into Patrick Troughton.
9. The Highlanders episode 2 - in which the Doctor repeatedly bangs a man's head on a desk in ruse to convince him he is ill with a headache.
10. The Macra Terror episode 1 - because it includes the scene in which the Second Doctor is neatened up by a machine - which was cut from the animation.
11. Fury from the Deep episode 3 - which ends with Maggie walking out into the sea.
So now I have 5 left.
12. The Space Pirates epsiode 5 - The Space Pirates is not much loved but people hypothesise this is because the only episode we have involves the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe stuck in part of a disintegrated space station for the whole episode. So let's have another and I've picked one that features the character Dom Issigri because no one seems to know what he looks like.
13. The Power of the Daleks episode 4 - for no other reason that it would be nice to have a later episode of this, after the Doctor has ceased to be quite such a stranger to everyone, and episode 4 of 6 seems as good a place as any to stick the pin.
14 & 15. Marco Polo episode 7 and The Smugglers episode 4 for the aforementioned fight scenes.
16 & 17. The Daleks' Masterplan episodes 4 and 12 for the deaths of Katarina and Sara respectively.
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On Friday, while B talked to an electrician I took a walk along the canal at Whaley Bridge.
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Easter was cheerful. We warmed up our traditional Greek takeout and had a nice lunch with my mom after church, and then spent the afternoon watching baseball. She brought me some more new baseball cards for my collection, which I need to get around to organizing at some point. She's mostly feeling better now, but her blood pressure is still kind of all over the place.
Connor had a meeting with his advisor a week ago, and was talked into registering for one or two classes over the summer. I still need to get the pertinent info on those and remind him to register for fall classes as well.
I've made a good dent in the pile of book boxes in the spare room, unpacking them for Will to go through. Some books he's shelving in his room, some are being reboxed for organized storage in the library, and a few are being donated. Unfortunately, my prize for finishing with the book boxes will be the task of going through the boxes of photos and miscellaneous memorabilia that are taking up the rest of the space in the spare room. But at least it's progress.
Most of my mind lately has been taken up with D&D. We had game sessions both of the past two weekends, and on the second one, we finally lured Robby into joining in. I spent most of my spare time over the preceding week poring through source books to help him build his character, and he seemed to have a really good time.
Of course, the Artemis II mission was also top of mind over the past two weeks, and I'm glad that it was so successful. There are so few things these days that make me feel good about the possibilities of the future. And their views of the eclipse were breathtaking.
Like a lot of people, I've been recently sucked into the music of Angine de Poitrine. I also received an early release of the new TMBG album coming out this week, and it's very good.
This past Saturday night we got to see Empire Strikes Back with the symphony, and they did a fantastic job. That movie was everything to me growing up as a kid, and I still have all of my toy action figures packed away in one of those Darth Vader-shaped cases. (I still find it hard to believe that my mother sold my Millennium Falcon at a yard sale. It was the only one of the Star Wars spaceships that I ever owned.)
I need to buckle down and finish the books I checked out of the library this month so that I'm ready for the new Murderbot and Dungeon Crawler Carl books that are coming out next month. I also just saw that the final book of the Alvin Maker series is finally about to come out. I started reading those in high school and didn't think it would ever be finished.
Connor had a meeting with his advisor a week ago, and was talked into registering for one or two classes over the summer. I still need to get the pertinent info on those and remind him to register for fall classes as well.
I've made a good dent in the pile of book boxes in the spare room, unpacking them for Will to go through. Some books he's shelving in his room, some are being reboxed for organized storage in the library, and a few are being donated. Unfortunately, my prize for finishing with the book boxes will be the task of going through the boxes of photos and miscellaneous memorabilia that are taking up the rest of the space in the spare room. But at least it's progress.
Most of my mind lately has been taken up with D&D. We had game sessions both of the past two weekends, and on the second one, we finally lured Robby into joining in. I spent most of my spare time over the preceding week poring through source books to help him build his character, and he seemed to have a really good time.
Of course, the Artemis II mission was also top of mind over the past two weeks, and I'm glad that it was so successful. There are so few things these days that make me feel good about the possibilities of the future. And their views of the eclipse were breathtaking.
Like a lot of people, I've been recently sucked into the music of Angine de Poitrine. I also received an early release of the new TMBG album coming out this week, and it's very good.
This past Saturday night we got to see Empire Strikes Back with the symphony, and they did a fantastic job. That movie was everything to me growing up as a kid, and I still have all of my toy action figures packed away in one of those Darth Vader-shaped cases. (I still find it hard to believe that my mother sold my Millennium Falcon at a yard sale. It was the only one of the Star Wars spaceships that I ever owned.)
I need to buckle down and finish the books I checked out of the library this month so that I'm ready for the new Murderbot and Dungeon Crawler Carl books that are coming out next month. I also just saw that the final book of the Alvin Maker series is finally about to come out. I started reading those in high school and didn't think it would ever be finished.
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I keep forgetting to post about this: we've been troubleshooting the "missing notifications" problem for the past few days. (Well, I say "we", really I mean Mark and Robby; I'm just the amanuensis.) It's been one of those annoying loops of "find a logical explanation for what could be causing the problem, fix that thing, observe that the problem gets better for some people but doesn't go away completely, go back to step one and start again", sigh.
Mark is hauling out the heavy debugging ordinance to try to find the root cause. Once he's done building all the extra logging tools he needs, he'll comment to this entry. After he does, if you find a comment that should have gone to your inbox and sent an email notification but didn't, leave him a link to the comment that should have sent the notification, as long as the comment itself was made after Mark says he's collecting them. (I'd wait and post this after he gets the debug code in but I need to go to sleep and he's not sure how long it will take!)
We're sorry about the hassle! Irregular/sporadic issues like this are really hard to troubleshoot because it's impossible to know if they're fixed or if they're just not happening while you're looking. With luck, this will give us enough information to figure out the root cause for real this time.
The Bath House, Chesters Roman Fort
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siderea Apr. 7th, 2026 03:43 am)
siderea Apr. 7th, 2026 03:43 am)This is legitimately one of the most alarming things I've heard about AI. I can see no lie.
2026 Apr 6: Alberta Tech [YT]: "Vibe Coding is Gambling" [56 seconds]:
2026 Apr 6: Alberta Tech [YT]: "Vibe Coding is Gambling" [56 seconds]:
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So! Some people went around the moon! And are on their way back!
I know the live video feed was super compressed and low-res intentionally, but I hope there is high-res eclipse footage when they land.
Also I know returning to the moon is not necessarily the best use of limited resources from a science perspective, but (one) I want people to feel aspirational about people doing science in space again, so we're not just getting press about billionaire assholes who want to, I dunno, put a casino in orbit around venus; and (two) this was all a mission by and for The People. This isn't a damn SpaceX or Blue Origins launch, this is NASA (with an assist from ESA and CSA).
I am going to love good things when they happen and space is a good thing.
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As well as a pub whose loss is to be mourned, there was a bus terminal plus petrol station/car wash thing on the corner. This was abandoned, then occupied by squatters, then reclaimed and finally demolished. Then Lidl applied for planning permission.
We have been waiting for our Lidl to appear.
This weekend diggers appeared on the site.
We have been waiting for our Lidl to appear.
This weekend diggers appeared on the site.
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Polka-dotted extraterrestrials with prehensile toes and monster groove have come to save humankind with virtuoso looped microtonal rock in compound time signatures.
Look, based on that description, I wouldn't have given this the time of day myself either, but there's a reason these maniacs have become an absolute phenomenon.
Gentle readers, Angine de Poitrine.
Absolutely read the comments. As much of a treat as the band.
Like a lot of things that have arrived from space, their initial point of impact on this planet was Québec. Some clever person noticed that their track titles are phonetic spellings of Québécois slang (Joual).
ETA: 2026 Apr 4: David Bruce Composer [YT]: "Angine de Poitrine's Math Rhythms Explained". 2026 Mar 21: David Bennett [YT]: "How Angine de Poitrine use Microtonality ". 2026 Feb 18: Stephen Weigel [YT]: "Sarniezz (Angine de Poitrine) transcription".
Look, based on that description, I wouldn't have given this the time of day myself either, but there's a reason these maniacs have become an absolute phenomenon.
Gentle readers, Angine de Poitrine.
Absolutely read the comments. As much of a treat as the band.
Like a lot of things that have arrived from space, their initial point of impact on this planet was Québec. Some clever person noticed that their track titles are phonetic spellings of Québécois slang (Joual).
ETA: 2026 Apr 4: David Bruce Composer [YT]: "Angine de Poitrine's Math Rhythms Explained". 2026 Mar 21: David Bennett [YT]: "How Angine de Poitrine use Microtonality ". 2026 Feb 18: Stephen Weigel [YT]: "Sarniezz (Angine de Poitrine) transcription".
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