My reaction to the Beast Below and to Victory of the Daleks

I am running a little behind with my commentary to the new Doctor Who espisodes, so I am going to do a two-for-one special today.

I liked the espisode The Beast Below. I found the Smilies to be particularly disturbing. I also liked how Amy Pond had to save the day; bottom line, she really understands the Doctor. It was also nice to see her notice something that the Doctor missed, which reveals that for all the sensory poweress that the Doctor displayed in The Eleventh Hour, the Doctor still does not understand human nature...or for that matter, even alien nature as well as his companions do on occasion. I loved the final shot of the espisode.

My feelings towards Victory of the Daleks are less warm. Despite the iconic nature of the setting and characters, I think that espisode was rather lack-luster. Obviously, there is going to be an espisode down the line that drives how important this espisode is...but I can sum up the entire espisode in three sentences.

Spoiler alert!!!---sort of.

Do not read the next section unless you want to know all you need to know about the espisode.

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Doctor Who and the Daleks meet Winston Churchill. The Daleks fool both the Doctor and Churchill. The Daleks get a new paint job.

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Ok, maybe the three sentences are not a major spoiler. But you get the point...the espisode is just a set-up for something coming down the line.

Wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that Amy Pond (and probably the entire human race) do not remember the planets in the sky.

Doctor Who RPG

When you're done with that, be sure to check out Timelord: Adventures Through Time and Space, another Doctor Who RPG that's now available for free. (You can also find a fan site here for the game.)And be sure to check out the other links I've come across previously.
FASA - Doctor Who RPG - Sourcebook for Field AgentsFASA - Doctor Who RPG - Players ManualFASA - Doctor Who RPG - Game Operations ManualFASA - Doctor Who RPG - Character SheetFASA 9101 Doctor Who RPG - The Dalek Problem - A SymposiumFASA 9101 Doctor Who RPG - The DaleksFASA 9201 Doctor Who RPG - The Iytean MenaceFASA 9203 Doctor Who RPG - CountdownFASA 9206 Doctor Who RPG - City of GoldEdit: Added a couple of modules that just got sent to me.

Banned my favorite torrent client

This is going to be a whine session, so someone better bring some crackers and cheese.

Earlier, this month one of the private torrent trackers that I get stuff from banned the use of uTorrent 2 on their tracker. (Basically, it favors other people using uTorrent 2; therefore it was unfair to those who used other clients.) In fact, every torrent client I like is on the banned list.

Now, I realize that no matter how you dice it, sharing torrents is stealing, unless you are sharing your own material. I have mixed feeling about the torrent sites. The reason I fluent the torrent sites is that I am hunting for out-of-print books, and I do not currently have a DVR (my VCR setup is pretty bad because I am using a digitual converter box and do not have cable). Basically, I can only tape what I am currently watching; therefore I would have to pick between House and Chuck. And we all know that the books I am after will never be reprinted (there is no market for them---there are only about a dozen of us interested in them).

Nevertheless, I know that I am doing wrong by downloading torrents. On the same grounds, DVRs, VCRs, and photocopy machines are also instruments of evil.

I did briefly try kTorrent: just long enourgh to realize that it was not really user-friendly (how the heck do you get it to download a torrent to an external hard-drive?). I do have one torrent client on my computer that I can use, but it it not great if you need to restart seeds after restarting your computer (bittornado). And I have a lot of files to seed.

I have came to the conclusion that this torrent site is out to annoy me. Heck, one of the clients they suggest, you have to compile yourself. Hmmm...my computer programming days are long past; I prefer my programs to come in prepackaged form.

Anyway, that is my complaint of the day---I can no longer use my favorite torrent client.

Now, give me that cheese and crackers.

Doctor Who: End of Time back to back espisodes

Well, last night I finally got around to watching both parts of the Doctor Who Christmas/New Year special: The End of Time. Back to back, that is. I had watched the second part of The End of Time in January, but was not impressed as much by the second part as I was by the first part.

I will admit that I was wrong. Both parts are equally good. I just failed to take in account the fact that the first part ended on such a high note.

Quite simply, I loved the entire world, every living person in it, turning into the Master (played ably by John Simms). On some level, I found that the second espisode lacking because it did not start on that high note. Watching the espisodes back to back eliminated that big letdown.

My advice to anyone watching The End of Time: watch the espisodes back to back.

(I would also like to point out from a fandom viewpoint, The End of Time opens up a lot of possibilities for fan created fiction. Some of the possibilities I plan on exploring myself in the coming months.)

Doctor Who: End of Time Part 1

I watched the first part of the Doctor Who special End of Time last night. I will not spoil it for anyone, but I must admit that their solution was much better than mine. Those who have watched the espisode already will understand what I am talking about. I may still write up my solution, just because I think that my solution would have been interesting to play around with.

Only 3026 words so far, many more to go

Well, I have only done 3,026 words so far for NaNoWriMo. I should be almost at twelve thousand words (11,669 to be exact) at the end of the day if I was on schedule. Basically I have written six nights for a little while each day, and have only accomplished like two days worth (a touch short actually from even that short goal of 3,334 words).

It is enourgh to drive home the point that I might not even be capable of being a hack. But then again, I had homework, newspaper articles and finished off reading Dracula. I might not be a great writer, but even on a busy week I hacked out three thousand words. I guess that is something to smile about.

In the old days, we used to travel by couch and buggy, or maybe horse and buggy, horses, boat, or just on foot. There are some that believe that we used to (and still do) travel by fairy circle, stone hedges and by flying around on broomsticks. The latter has always puzzled me. Why would anyone trust their existence to a slender piece of wood with straw tied to the end? I do not care how strong of a candle you light, the rarity of the feathers that you tie onto it, or the awesome power of your charms; it is still just a stick being held up by the power of positive thinking. I will stick with mechanical means of travel, thank you no. Then again, given the security line and the reliability of pilots nowadays, going to a broom closet and selecting your own means of travel might be preferable if it wasn’t for the exhaustion that making a broom fly would result in.

Snow Days 2009

The last couple of days, I have been snowed in. Oh, I could have gotten someplace if I really wanted to, but I am finding that as I grown older that the urge to brave the weather lessens every year.

I have discovered that you can tell a lot by how someone spends a snow day. In my case, I napped a lot. My wife, Toni, spent the day napping also (she thought she was coming down with some bug).

I could have spent it working, but my heart was not into it. The same goes for homework. I am still having days when I hear my sister's opinion of my entire life in my head (basically, she thinks that I am doing everything wrong and generally wasting my time while leeching off of others).

It is for that fact that I really do not feel guilty about not accomplishing anything on these snow days; after all, I am not expected to. There is also the little fact that I am doing National Novel Writing Month starting on November 1^st. I figure that considering that I am going to be attempting to write 50,000 words in thirty days, plus do everything else that I need to do in November, that a couple of naps while being snowed in are not the end of the world. In fact, I might actually earn them next month.

Early warning---most of my posts that I do in November are going to read: Day X of NaNoWriMo, Y words done, Z words to go.