I seem to have got through a fair bit of Doctor Who recently, partly courtesy of a free trial from Sofa Cinema, although not helped by the post being weekly and a week behind. Although it must be improving - I've had post twice this week and one was a credit card bill which was on time. Although wrong. The saga seems never-ending.

I bought Planet of Evil from amazon and to make it up to free delivery I ended up also getting Ark in Space and Genesis of the Daleks, so I have every Harry DVD. I watched the first two episodes of Ark in Space to remind myself how Harry talks. Although by watched I mean listened. I'm fine with the green bubble-wrap monster slithering along the floor, it's the fly-like thing (which they put on the cover!) and the bloke with the green arm I just can't cope with. There was a bit I ended up winding back and then turning subtitles on for because Harry says he once got his nose caught in a sliding door in Pompey Barracks! I never knew that. But now I do. A lot of his postings aren't mentioned in canon, but it does make sense he was at Portsmouth - it's the only naval base in this country I can name for a start.

I watched some Two and Six as well. First, there was The Mind Robber. I thought from the first episode it was going to be quite a scary thing with no real alien menace revealed. Which I was quite excited about, but then it turned out to be like The Celestial Toymaker. I enjoyed it, it just wasn't quite what I was expecting based on the first episode. I did get quite excited by the quote from Little Women, which I recognised. Zoe annoyed me at first - at the end of episode 1 she points out to Jamie that the Doctor seems to be flying away from them when the TARDIS explodes. Then she pauses and then screams. It seems like she's perfectly normal and rational and then decides that actually, she'll scream. After that, though, she settled down and annoyed me less. Although she works out the pattern for the maze that bears no relation to the picture of the maze we're shown on screen...

'recommended' Mark of the Rani to me. I liked the Rani in it. The only other story I've seen her in is the Seventh Doctor's first and she spends a fair bit of that time pretending to be Mel. So this was my first chance to really see what she was like, and I really liked her. More than I like the Master. They were quite funny bickering and competing, but ultimately, the Master was a bit pointless in this story. Although what the actual story was I'm really not sure, but it was quite entertaining.

I listened to the two SJA audios. I preferred the yellow one (The Glittering Storm) to the pink one (The Thirteenth Stone), but I listened at work and was interrupted a lot during the pink one, so that probably didn't help. Although I also didn't like the premise of Sarah accompanying a school trip, so I was slightly against it from the start. It was definitely interesting in places but the alien aspect took a long time to show up. I felt that The Glittering Storm was in there much quicker. Mostly it was nice to listen to them as it made up for not watching SJA this week (or next, since I'm in London, but then I do get two in a row and that'll be the end of the series!).

I was terribly excited to discover one of the Companion Chronicles was Steven & Dodo and read by Peter Purves. I much prefer his narrations to any of the others. I liked this one - I liked the story, the setting and his impersonation of the Doctor. Most interesting was the interview at the end. Although the trailer at the end for the next one read by Frazer Hines was amusing because it sounded awfully like he'd forgotten how to do anything that sounded vaguely like a Scottish accent...

For some reason, until I heard an interview with Peter Purves a while back, I hadn't connected him with the Blue Peter presenter at all. I'd heard of him, everyone has, but I hadn't realised the actor and presenter were the same person at all. In my defence, he was a bit before my time - he stopped a year before I was born. John Leslie is the one I remember well and I hated Diane-Louise Jordan. I think it was because she replaced someone else and I felt like she dressed not like an adult (I don't think I'd grasped the idea of fashion).

Everyone and his dog seems to be doing this meme this evening. I wanted to do it because I am yet to see anyone agree with no 1:

1. The Doctor at no point fancied or slept with any of his companions, except Benny. None of them ever fancied him, except Martha. Which is not to say that none of the rest never loved him, or he never loved them, it's just a platonic love.

1a. The only companions who had any romantic feelings for each other were Ian & Barbara and Steven & Dodo, but nothing ever happened while they were travelling with the Doctor.

1b. The following pairs of Doctor/Companion had parent/child-like relationships:
Three & Jo, Five & Adric, Seven & Ace

2. The Doctor came to like Earth after he and Susan lived there for five months - it's the longest he's lived anywhere apart from Gallifrey, so it feels a bit like home.

3. After they get back to Earth Ian and Barbara get married and live a long and boring life, which makes them both very happy. Ian doesn't realise he loves her until he's faced with the prospect of not seeing her all the time. Barbara works it out far sooner.

4. Steven and Dodo had a crush on each other but neither of them quite got round to doing anything about it.

5. Steven was good at being the leader of a group of people he'd not known long. So good, in fact, that once he introduced him to the idea of democracy they got rid of him.

6. As much as he complained about travelling in the TARDIS, afterwards Harry couldn't quite go back to an ordinary life. Which is why he ended up working for MI-5 and NATO and going on hush-hush missions.

7. Sarah and Harry love each other like brother and sister - which is to say that they snipe and bicker and compete about everything but are really the best of friends.

8. Nat is Sarah and Harry's daughter.

9. Harry's not dead.

10. Season 27 happened in that eventually Ace ends up on Gallifrey and shakes the Time Lords up rather a lot.

I spent more time at the weekend playing with the blog. I discovered a plugin to make the RSS Feeds have the whole post, even if there's a more. I didn't realise the more cut it off until recently because it's so obviously a stupid idea. Who is going to bother reading if they have to go to the extra effort of going to the page itself to read posts? *looks at large swathes of LJ I can no longer be bothered to read*

I have also tagged all my posts, which took quite a while. So I now have an exciting little tag cloud beneath the category listing. A tag cloud being the only way you can display tags - the codex on template tags has no information at all on some of the tag tags, which is unhelpful. I think I have to fiddle about with it all some more, since I feel that there should be few categories with lots of posts, and lots of tags with few posts. At the moment I have some that are the reverse.

There's still things I can do, as usual, but I should stop, as November I'll be doing and I have to do my Yuletide fic.

Me and Lis Sladen I tried to post this from flickr but it was having none of it, so you'll just have to go to the link yourselves to see the photo.

I went to London today to the Lis Sladen signing at Borders.

I had a fright getting out of the car park to get to the train station, when something big and black with lots of legs suddenly appeared at the top of my windscreen, which then resolved itself to be a cat jumping from my roof to the bonnet and then to the ground. It must have got on once I was in the car because I never saw it before then. As I got over the shock, it sat in the road in front of the car, and I had to get out and shoo it away.

I got to London without further incident and met up with , , , , and her friend Sasha. The signing was on the top floor, where we went and picked up the audio books, then went down to the ground floor to pay for them, then back up again to try and work out where to queue. Which turned out to be the wrong place and we were moved to queue in a thin strip of space between the wall and the escalator. Which meant that not everyone in the group could hear what everyone else was saying. had made badges saying 'What would Sarah Jane do?' and 'Eldrad must live!' which she handed out to most of the queue, and Lis.

When Lis came out, just past 2pm (to cheers and clapping) she then spent time with each of the people there, taking photos and chatting as well as signing. I managed to confuse her (I have this effect on people for some reason!) by giving her one cover with my name and one with and then she was confused which my name was and whether she'd signed the right one with the right name.

But I mentioned that the one that wasn't for me was for my friend in America who would like to be there, but was in America. Lis said that she liked America but hated travelling (I agreed with the latter). She said she did like the American conventions but hadn't been to one for years. I said that if she went a lot of people would love to meet her.

By the time we'd all gone through it was 2.30pm, so it had all gone really quickly. We then spent the next couple of hours chatting, eating and drinking before going back to the tube station. Except that spotted her outside Costa Coffee, so we went over and thanked her for coming and doing the signing.

The demographic of the queue was interesting, because it was partly people with kids, partly blokes, and then there was us - a group of 7 girls.

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I've been so busy at work this week. And I was so tired that last night I tried to go to bed at 9.30pm. But my neighbours decided I need to hear every word of the football, and even with ear plugs in it just went down to a really annoying drone.

I feel like I have a million things to do and no time to do it in, which isn't helping. I'm going to see Lis Sladen tomorrow and I haven't even got excited about that yet.

Although, I did watch half an episode of Whose Line is it Anyway? and laughing at that made me feel a lot happier.

Tonight I travelled in time and watched tomorrow night's Spooks through the magic of digital TV and my PVR. I don't think it was as exciting as last week's ep, but it will be interesting to see what the repercussions of it will be. I wouldn't be Harry for anything, though, he has such a hard job.

The most interesting thing in it was when one of the spies introduced herself to a member of the public using the false name of 'Bernice'. Which made me sit up because that's not exactly a common name. Then when said member of the public starting speaking I thought she sounded awfully like Lisa Bowerman. And sort of looked like her, but she didn't say much and wasn't shown in a very clear light. I happened to not quite stop it after the trailer for next week's episode and discovered there were credits (since when were there credits on Spooks?) and it was her. I can't believe that name was coincidence.

Then I watched SJA: Warriors of the Kudlak. SPOILERS follow:
Read more...

Last night was our Retro Birthday Party. We played Musical Chairs, Pass the Parcel, Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Wink Murder and What's the Time Mr Wolf? As well as having a paper aeroplane competition and a colouring competition. And proper party food including jelly and ice cream. I even made some blue jelly - it was entirely academic what flavour it was because it tasted of blue (as proved by my A Level Human Biology group - jelly tastes of the colour, not the flavour).

It was slightly nerve wracking, as always, with whether we had enough people and whether they'd take part and enjoy themselves or whether there was the right amount of food. But everyone said they enjoyed it, which is good.

I actually got round to putting some insoles into my roller skates this morning. They're old, so the insoles in there are looking a bit tatty. I used to skate quite a bit when I was little, so I was expecting it to be easy. No. I did get the hang of it again by the time I'd been to Waitrose to the bottle bank and back. But some of the surfaces are really hard to skate on - lots of leaves and holes lead to nearly falling over. So I think that next time I'll walk to the tennis courts and skate round them instead.

This evening I finally got round to sorting out my LJ friends list. Since I added a whole load of people recently, and I keep adding communities too, the people have been in three folders in RSS Bandit, as I don't like them going off the bottom. So I took off anyone I wasn't reading (and some by accident that I decided was fate and I couldn't be bothered to put back), thereby reducing the number of people on the list from 105 to 72. I still need to play about a bit, I think, but that's a distinct improvement.

I have finished/admitted defeat on the blog fiddling. Apart from the backend extras that upgrading to 2.3 gave me, there is also now the following:

• 20 posts on the blog home page
• A list of titles of those posts
• More obvious links to individual posts, archives and categories (and tags, if I had any)
• A list of my recent books in LibraryThing (with pretty pictures)
• My recent photos in Flickr
• Because I've had a blog for five and a bit years, the archives by month now have a page with a complete list on - along with all the categories
• If you post a comment and I reply, it'll email you the reply
• LJ user links now have a pretty picture and the name of the journal, rather than the name of the person. If I use it

What it doesn't have is:

• Tags. I'm a bit wary of changing over some categories to tags and I think it's going to get complicated, not helped by there being 900 posts to do it on. Also, there's no tag management as yet. The only way to do it is with a plugin that doesn't like my theme. There's nothing in the codex to tell you how to display a list of all tags as anything other than a tag cloud. You have to type the tags in - the same plugin that breaks my theme is the only way to get a list.

So basically, I'm waiting for WP to sort out their tag system before I use it.

Apart from that there are some other things I could do with the blog that I'm still deciding whether I want to.

Dear Tesco

Taking a red grapefruit, putting a 'pink grapefruit' sticker on it and putting it in the pink grapefruit section does not make it a pink grapefruit.

No love,
Me
(missing her pink grapefruit)

Due to the party tonight, I have a fridge that smells of jelly and a freezer of poisonous ice cream. Other poisonous foods are in the boot of my car. Which I had to de-steam before I could go anywhere yesterday - winter has definitely arrived.

Dear Yuletide Author

This is the first time I've done Yuletide, so I'm just excited that I'll get a story to read on 25th December. I've tried to write my prompts using all the advice I can find, but basically, feel free to ignore anything I've written in there. What I wrote is what I'd most prefer, but at the end of the day I'd far rather get something well-written than something you're less happy with but fits in with what I've put.

Generally speaking, I love stories that make me laugh or make me cry. But I like pretty much anything in between too. What particularly fascinates me are the relationships between characters, whether romantic or not. So even if you're writing one of my prompts where I requested a pairing, I'll be just as happy if all you show between them is friendship. I like gen in all the fandoms I requested.

What I'd much rather not have in any of them is any sex above a PG-13 rating.

In all these fandoms, what I like are fics that read like they could be in the series, be they another episode/book/chapter or a missing scene (even if it's a missing scene that came through from a parallel universe).

Apparently I am Jo. It's because I had a tendency to answer questions by saying I'd attack a guard and try to escape...
Read more...

I clearly have no clue what's going on in the world because my dad just pointed out there's a new channel called Dave. It shows comedy, which I'm interested to see includes The Apprentice. According to the TV guide it's on channel 19, which means it's on channel 12.

There's rather a lot of Top Gear and Whose Line is it Anyway? on it, so I might not get quite as much work done any more...

But they're also showing Red Dwarf. I don't know if they're going through VI, but tonight was Psirens. It's been a long time since I saw any Red Dwarf. I really need to get it on DVD because all my videos are at home. So it was interesting to see. Since this episode was first shown in 1993 I've grown up and watched other sci-fi stuff. The story was something that wouldn't be out of place in something like Star Trek or Farscape. It's just the way it's handled that is.

I've definitely got the script in my memory, even though I thought I might have forgotten some of it by now, because I was anticipating most of the jokes - more as the episode went in and I got back into it. Some of them still made me laugh out loud though.

The adverts in the middle threw me, though. Red Dwarf with adverts in just isn't right. However, I really enjoyed it - I'd forgotten how good it is. Mind you, I'm saying that because it's VI they showed, if it had been VII I might not have been quite so enthusiastic...

A bit of a round-up of things I've been watching. And not watching in one case.

In Doctor Who, I've been working my way through The Key to Time and recently finished The Androids of Tara, which was okay but not particularly exciting. But, there was fencing at the end. Some of which was actually proper fencing, even if they were just playing about with parrying and riposting at one point. And their moves were all far too big. But, it's still a lot more realistic than a lot of the sword fighting you see on TV.

I'm sure amazon changed my rental DVD list around, but it meant I got to see Revelation of the Daleks, which was my first Sixth Doctor story. I haven't been putting him off for any reason, I just haven't got to him. I liked the Doctor and Peri and the interactions between them. I hated the story, but then I'm not that excited about Daleks and I haven't really been that keen on any Dalek story.

After that I went back to the Second Doctor. I listened to The Moonbase while I was away, which I enjoyed - not least because I had no idea it would have Cybermen in it. I'm three-quarters of the way through The Tomb of the Cybermen now. The Cybermen don't look scary, since they're obviously just wearing material. And some of them don't have chest plates. But I love their voices, their appropriately horrible. I'm really liking Jamie so far, and Two. Jury's still out on Victoria since this is only the second story I've seen her in and I don't feel like I know her yet.

There was SJA on TV yesterday. My PVR decided not to record it though. It did that once before with Life on Mars. The BBC iPlayer, which doesn't quite work anyway last time I tried it, only has the BBC1 episode on. So next week I'm going to watch the BBC1 episode followed by the CBBC episode - so both parts of Warriors of the Kudlak in one go. Which I was considering anyway because I hate cliffhangers.

Then tonight there was Spooks. And another Harry, they're breeding like Jacks. I wasn't convinced at all about them doing one 10 week story, rather than 10 (or however many episodes they usually have) stories. So this one did take a while to start up but it was exciting once it had. How on earth they're going to come back from that I don't know. The strangest thing, though, was the Glenister brothers between them being in all Kudos productions - Philip Glenister is in Life on Mars & Ashes to Ashes, and Robert Glenister is in Hustle and Spooks.

I know the next episode starts soon, but everyone at work just watches the BBC1 one because the BBC3 one is too late at night. And since I'm out most Tuesdays, I'm taping it to watch Monday (plus if the PVR decides not to tape it again, I have the BBC1 one to fall back on, since the BBC hate repeating things).

Today I spent a large part of the day working on the blog. So it now does less than yesterday.

I thought I'd start by adding a plugin to allow people to comment using openid (which includes LJ ids). There are three of them. One is v0.1 beta and doesn't work. Another one is a fairly high version number and it did. Except that I'd seen another one in operation elsewhere and I liked it better.

The last one didn't work for a long time no matter what I did. Eventually (and I do mean eventually) I had no choice but to go back to the one that worked. Except that now it didn't. And then I had a mess of the template, which I eventually discovered was caused by the plugin that allows you to subscribe to comments.

It's just as well it's that well, though, because I discovered yesterday that all it's done is pick up spam subscriptions, so I was wondering whether to get rid of it.

I have, though, added my most recent books at LibraryThing down the left, and my most recent photos from flickr beneath it.

So now, I just have to decide what other plugins I want and then spend hours wrestling with them to get them to work. The crazy part is, I think this is quite fun...

From Jen

Name either a character or a relationship between characters (not necessarily romantic) from canons I know and I will a.) give my rambling opinion of him/her/it and b.) tell you one thing I really like about him/her/it.

(On another note I'm really liking how in 2.3 it doesn't automatically tag all posts as Uncategorized - I keep forgetting to untick it and end up posting in lots of categories, including Uncategorized)

Considering I'm having a weekend of doing not a lot I've done quite a bit today.

I got up when my neighbours banged and shouted (although didn't put their music on loud, oddly) and went to Tescos for 10 minutes, so I could get the bus once it turned round and came back, rather than spending over an hour there.

Then I came back and made flapjacks, since I didn't have any for lunch. I've also made chocolate rice krispie cakes and muffins today. Tomorrow I'll make bread and more flapjacks.

I thought I'd spend the weekend upgrading my blog. And I've done it. Well, I have everything working that was working before. Tomorrow I'll worry about adding in plugins so I can get it to do more things. And working out what to do with tags. I find it quite amusing that in the codex list of template tags they have a category labelled Tag tags.

I am preparing to spend time gnashing my teeth and pulling my hair out as I upgrade to WordPress 2.3. I know it won't go well because I tried upgrading to 2.1 when it was the latest release and some of my tags were deprecated. So I went back to 2.0 because I didn't need 2.1 that desperately. Sadly, though, I do have to upgrade at some point.

I am also, moving the blog. Well, by moving, I mean taking the 42 off the folder name. It's only there because my old Blogger blog was at /blog and I needed that one to still work while I set up the WP one.

I am starting by moving it, so you'll need to change your links/RSS feeds. Although it's probably not a good idea to go looking at the actual page of the blog yet, since it'll probably be mostly broken. Both do link to the same database, though, so until I delete the blog42 folder, I think you'll be able to see the posts whichever you link to.

Reply to this post, and I will list three things I love about you. Maybe more than three. Then repost to your own journal and spread the love.