I have been meaning to post all week, but I've just been so tired. Work was busy and I keep getting woken up by the heating coming on. Which is bad enough usually, but was worse on Friday when I got up extra early to collect for Children in Need at 8am. I would have caught up on my sleep this weekend, if I hadn't been waking up early for no reason.

But I do have a meme from selenay936:

Comment to this post, and I will list five things I associate with you. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your blog/LJ/DW (or just add a reply back to me). Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

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I got Frontier in Space from Lovefilm today after dbskyler talked about the commentary I decided I wanted to see it. It comes in a set with Planet of the Daleks, which I don't like much because it has Daleks in it. Each story has two discs, but Lovefilm only lists one. I just assumed it was because they're a bit useless (given that they're a bit useless), but no, it's because they send you both and count it as one! Very handy.

I've only made it through episode 1's commentary so far, but it's quite interesting and funny.

Confidential just reminded me that I wanted to say this after the first episode at Easter, but I don't like to put spoilers in here because hiding them depends on how people are reading and whether they can hold off from clicking on them.

There are spoilers for The Eleventh Hour in here, but not for any series 5 episodes after it. Read more...

I enjoyed both Red Dwarf and Doctor Who this weekend. The former more, of course, since it is Red Dwarf and the first new Red Dwarf for ten years.

However, I have a big, major, non-spoilery problem with each of them. In Doctor Who's case it's the swirly vortex thingy they have in the background of the beginning and ending credits that I couldn't watch because it made me dizzy. In Red Dwarf's case it was Dave's tendency to launch straight into adverts without the usual putting up the logo to warn you. Once I thought something had gone horribly wrong with the signal and once I thought the episode had gone a bit bizarre. It's bad enough watching Red Dwarf with adverts as it is, but that was a bit much.

But, in more spoilery thoughts: Read more...

My trouble when I'm ill is I tend not to want to talk to people, mostly because I have to be polite and I don't have the energy for that extra thinking. So it's usually better just to shut up and ignore everyone. Which has extended to me not wanting to post in here either, although I do have things I want to blog about.

I am getting better, if slowly (and don't have concussion, which is good after I hit my head on the kitchen side on Thursday night) and this has been marked as unread in my emails for a while:

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your blog and elaborate on the subjects given.

tanaquilotr gave me Doctor Who, Elrond, food allergies, Davis Cup, fencing: Read more...

I think DWM is trying to tell me something. Before I went to Canada I decided that when my subscription ran out (in the spring) I won't renew it. Increasingly the magazine annoys me, especially with the space they take up with the comic. I've never worked out how to read comics or understood why the pictures are there, apart from being in the way. And even when I do make the effort to read them I can't remember what's happened in previous parts months before.

They also annoy me by reviewing episodes that have been on telly. The whole point of reviews is to tell you whether to bother buying them, but I've seen all the stuff on TV, so there's no point in reading their review of it. It's just more space being taken up when they could do something with it.

Also, I can get it two days earlier in the shops.

When I got back from Canada there were two packages, each with my name (differently) spelt wrong. Inside one was a The War Machines DVD and inside the other with The Ultimate Adventure on CD, each with a note to say that I won a DWM competition. Now, I enter all of them on the basis that you do win stuff occasionally.

The Ultimate Adventures I got round to listening to today while writing a very will-to-live-sucking database and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The extras with them talking about how the stage play came about and how they adapted it were very interesting. The play itself is a lot like a panto in that the actors clearly aren't taking it seriously, so you have to listen to it in that vein. Plus it has Colin Baker in it, who comes across as just such a nice man.

Then when I got home today I found a parcel propped up against my front door. My postman might wake me up at 7am with the post on Saturdays and then not make it until lunchtime any other day, but at least he has a brain. Anyway, inside was a very cold copy of The Writer's Tale! So I was quite excited about that because I'd been meaning to look at it so see if it was anything I wanted, since it has such good reviews (although it'd have to be very good at £30). But now I have it!

I haven't posted for so long I have such a big update. With headings. Read more...

Except lots of Wimbledon excitement after the Mixed Doubles tomorrow. In the meantime, I don't care who wins out of Federer and Nadal as long as it's a really good, close match. All the finals so far have been good (including the girls singles finals, who would have thought I'd have been watching that!).

Whereas last week's Doctor Who couldn't live up to the Wimbledon excitement, this week's did quite well (mind you, that could have had something to do with Virginia Wade, who didn't shut up even when I shouted at the TV). But, to tonight's Doctor Who, with SPOILERS:
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Funniest episode ever. Except possible The Romans.

Further discussion as to why contains spoilers for tonight's episode funnily enough...
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The trouble with Doctor Who at the moment is that they will persist in casting people who had been in other things. So, much as I enjoyed last night's episode this morning, it did annoy me that I couldn't remember where I recognised Lesley Sharp from (it was Second Coming).

Only when it came to the credits did I remember David Troughton was in it. The trouble was that he looked familiar and the only other thing I could think of that he was in was The Curse of Peladon. Until I looked at the imdb and it turned out he was Roy Merchant Jnr in Drop the Dead Donkey.

Then the other blonde woman, who was in Eastenders, so I recognise her name, was also in a couple of things I've seen. I think I recognise her more from Eastenders though, even though I don't watch it. There just are some actors who you've never seen in anything, but you can recognise anyway.

Fortunately, most of the rest of the cast haven't been in much I've seen, although nearly all of them have been in The Bill, unsurprisingly.

A few things about this morning last night's episode because I am confused.

BEWARE SPOILERS.

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I was convinced I recognised the Vicar in last night's Doctor Who, but had convinced myself I was imagining it. But no. It turns out he was Peter Pettigrew in Harry Potter and Ben in The Worst Week of My Life. And he was in Broken News. Also, an episode of Spooks. So I've seen him all over the place.

I haven't checked but I'm sure I set the video for 6.59 last night. It was taping Small Gods on BBC7 form 6.30 so I can't tell what time it started taping both. Anyway, at 7.25 when I'd cooked dinner and was ready to watch it, I started the file, had my finger ready over a skip button to skip forward to where it started and it had already started! I wasn't quite sure at first but I've watched enough Poirots to know what I was watching was either Doctor Who or something 1920s-like before it.

And now for the actual spoilers: Read more...

There are a whole load of things I planned to do this evening, and then I found the Doctor Who trailer maker...

An hour later, I present to you, my trailer.

Last weekend I went home for the District Rotary Conference, which quite a few Rotaractors were going to. Since it was in the town next to where my parents live, it makes it nice and cheap for me. I took Friday afternoon off work to drive down, although I stopped off on the way (although it's in the wrong direction) at the hospital to have my back x-rayed. Slow was not the word for them, as I spent the best part of an hour there and there were only three people in front of me. By the time I got home it was four hours after I left, and it's only a two hour drive (without a stop). Read more...

Going slightly backwards in time from my last post, last Thursday I picked hhertzof up from the station and we went back to mine past what's now a housing estate, but was where they filmed The Invasion. The relevance of this will be more obvious later.

Then we went to a different train station via the village where they filmed The Android Invasion. I accidentally went through it rather than round, so when I got back and watched bits I honestly can't say whether it's the same place or not. If it is then they've put road markings down since.

By the time we got to Cardiff it was raining (unsurprisingly for Wales). We went to see Sarah Jane's house, and Alan and Maria's.

A quick trip to the castle (well, as fast as you can go up a keep with steep, slippery steps) and some second-hand bookshops and the Oxfam bookshop, and then we visited Torchwood. And I can prove that the invisible lift really works.

It turned out the Doctor Who Exhibition opened past 5pm and only cost £4, so we went round that taking photos of nearly everything - it was handy it was so empty. When we came out I might have accidentally bought a sonic lipstick and little remote control dalek. The latter is a black version of an ordinary gold dalek I have, so I will have to get myself some pink paint and paint them in the summer when I can do it outside - it doesn't matter if I accidentally paint the grass pink.

Spoilers, funnily enough... Read more...

It's amazing what a bit of sleep will do. Except for the part where I only slept till 8am and wanted to sleep till 10, but I feel more awake this morning, even though it's cloudy and I haven't opened the curtains and haven't seen the sun yet.

I rewatched the Doctor Who thing from last night. I was most amazed to find it was 8 minutes long - it felt about 2!

There are still large parts of it I dislike. The Hotel Babylon thing, which was probably about the same length, was clearly poking fun at itself, whereas the Doctor Who one felt like it couldn't decide whether to poke fun or be serious and it's ended up being a bit of both and neither and doesn't work. And I dislike the Confidential where they said that Peter Davison was the first of the modern Doctors, because you could pretty much define that to be any of them.

But, I did like:

• Belgium
• Describing the console room as having a desktop theme
• The Master's beard being described as rubbish
• The Cloister Bell - it's such a great harbinger of doom
• That at the start when they say the world's only got 5 minutes left, it really means 5 minutes of real time
• How it fits between the end of Last of the Time Lords and the epilogue

I didn't watch it quite so closely, so the Fifth Doctor felt better. The trouble is that in the original episodes he's Tristan and now he's just Peter Davison. It's only in the audios that I can believe he's the Doctor.

I did really hate:

• wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey - that joke only works once and not with Five
• A black hole and supernova at the same time. I can suspend my disbelief for some science but there's a limit and that's over it. The one leads to the other - they can't possibly be simultaneous
• Ten going 'You're my Doctor'. I can sort of see Ten loving his past selves rather than hating them, but that was just OTT

I've seen lots of people talk about it this morning on my RSS Feeds (I think I'm the only person who didn't love it) but only one person mentioned giving any money. So if you bothered to take the time to watch it on TV, or go to the website to watch it, then you'll know where to go and give some money to help disadvantaged children in Britain.

I ache this morning, but collecting money yesterday morning was still the best part of the day.

Being tired last night and needing an early night was not a good start. When my day started this morning, it was dark. It wasn't really light until I left the house in the freezing cold, dressed in two jumpers and two pairs of trousers as well as other layers. It's not easy to get a pair of jeans with slim legs on over a pair of trousers with baggy legs. I'm very glad I did though, because at one point I had cold legs. At least it was the traditional cold weather for Children in Need and not pouring it down like it did last year.

Then I walked down to where I was collecting money from cars stopped at the lights on the bridge. For an hour and a half I had great fun attempting to get money from people. One bloke gave me a massive pile of coppers. Another gave me a bag of 5ps. As a result my bucket was really heavy - I am discovering muscles that ache when I lift my arms. It almost makes me wish for the American way of lots of notes. Towards the end people did mention how cold it was while they were looking for their change. By that time I was hot and looking forward to stripping down to a normal number of layers.

I have seriously not had enough sleep, though, so today has been such a struggle. But I saw Doctor Who on TV. Which I thought was a bit crap - it seemed to me like it was easy to tell you were watching something fictional. But perhaps it's tiredness - I'll watch it again on the website tomorrow. (I quite liked Peter Davison in Confidential, though).

The Bill doing the Rat Pack were very good. Although their behind the scenes thing was almost more interesting than their song! Of the four actors I only recognised two: Graham Cole (who I've met) and the one who plays Terry. I think the ginger one is the Super. No doubt all will become clear if I watch any of The Bill at Christmas - it was last Christmas that I watched an episode.

Now I'm just waiting for Sybil Fawlty on after the news. I've never seen Hotel Babylon, only trailers, but she's got to be good.

I think I got a week's worth of post yesterday: SFX (which took half an hour to read), DWM (the back of which scares me - I thought you could get Doctor Who everything by now, but no, there's also a skateboard, scooter and a toiletry bag. With a sound chip), and my DVD from amazon which literally took a week to arrive, first class. Annoyingly, amazon seem determined to send me the first half of each of the first three series of Hustle, which I am catching up on. Hopefully, they'll go back to the second halves soon.

Last night I did a talk at Rotary about my trip to Romania. Which went all right. I'd never used a projector before, so that was an experience. Some of the Rotarians knew what they were doing with one better than I did. The scariest part was, as always, parking and getting out of the car park. It's built on a particularly steep hill, so when you pull the handbrake on and take your foot off the brake it creaks and rolls forwards, towards the Thames. The only way to to do it is to pull very hard and leave it in first. Then getting out requires your foot flat to the floor on the accelerator to get it to move away from the Thames. I hate it every time I have to do it.

I got back tonight from playing tennis in time for Heroes. The mad part was that Unmasked was about stunts they did last week. As well as most of it spent talking about how great they all are. I don't think I need to bother with it in future. Especially as they've decided to put the next episode on after Unmasked on BBC3. I am taping it - I don't think I can watch two in a row, it's too much. But this week's was interesting enough. I still don't really care about any of the characters, the Japanese is a complete pain because not only do I have to stop cross stitching during those scenes, but also because they have a tendency to do it in white on a white background. Which is really not helpful. Now that we've vaguely seen him (was that black man in the bar with Weiss from Alias him, I wonder?) I wonder if he has everyone's abilities, since we saw telekinesis and regeneration. I imagine we'll find out - in five months time when we get to the end of the series.

It's been a really frustrating day. It's the one day of Wimbledon you get to spend the whole day watching tennis, not just in the evening. But instead we got nearly an hour of one woman thrashing another. I could have watched a different match on 301 or 302 but frankly, it would have just been the same. I would have been quite happy watching tennis from 12 till 9ish, then watched Doctor Who, but it wasn't to be.

The only good thing about it was I got time to clean the house and make flapjacks and they decided just before Doctor Who started that there would be no more play today, so I was free to watch it live. Although I shouldn't have done because I had five minutes of Galaxy 4 part 2 to go, which was a bit surreal to listen to afterwards.

There were some things in the episode that I liked and other things that annoyed me, but I'll put them behind a more since they contain SPOILERS:
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