Posted by forestdragon on Thursday, April 16, 2009
The Easter Special of Doctor Who was a hoot. If you want to view a synopsis of the story you can go here. I think these specials are meant to be fun and keep us involved in the Doctor Who franchise. It’s got a few good lines like “you look human” and the Doctor responds “you look time lord”. Malcolm was a good bumbling genius sort of what you expect for someone who must think outside the box. The U.N.I.T. Captain seemed a bit extreme but she did her job. Lady Christina was a good foil for the Doctor and demonstrated brains and beauty. Some of the more serious viewers were disapointed by the story but to me it was more interesting than the Christmas special.
Posted by forestdragon on Sunday, December 28, 2008
Christmas Eve, 1851, and Cybermen stalk the snow of Victorian London. But when the Doctor meets another Doctor, the two must combine forces to stop the rise of the CyberKing.
Rosita and the 2 Doctors
Cybermen
The 2 Doctors
Rosita
Cyberleaders, Doctor, Miss Hartigan and Doctor 2
Mr Scoones and young slaves
Miss Hartigan, The 2 Doctors, Cyberleader and Rosita
Cybershades
Miss Hartigan flipping the switch with the Cybermen
Miss Hartigan confronts the establishment at the graveyard
The Cybermen take over the graveyard
Miss Hartigan and the Cybermen
This was a fun episode. The Doctor arrives in 1851 London to be greeted by the Doctor who knows all about The Doctor but doesn’t know about our Doctor. There is trouble afoot with the Cybermen looking to create the CyberKing. They have an ally in Miss Hartigan who has a lot to prove and a lot of revenge to extract on the people of London. Overall the episode was entertaining and light.
Posted by forestdragon on Saturday, August 2, 2008
My cousin George or “GeeGnome” recently retired from working the rails. He got a bit restless and seized an opportunity to crew abord the Schooner Niska
As GeeGnome writes “
For the last month or so I have been a crew member on the schooner Niska traveling from Georgian Bay to her new home in Twillingate NL. The boat was built 35 years ago by the skipper Heiko Bank and has plied the waters in and around Georgian Bay where he lived and chartered until his move to Newfoundland a few years ago. Now he’s come back to fetch his boat and take it to Twillingate where he owns a B&B called the Rumrunners Roost. She’s 60′ spar length, 13+ beam, 25 ton, fiberglass on wood, replica of east coast staysail schooners designed and built by the skipper. She has a very reliable 65 hp Perkins Deisel for power. This is not your turn on a dime space ship dinky toy power boat. No joystick operated, voice activated bow thrusters. It’s basically 1850’s tech with only a few modern additions.
We have managed to get the schooner from Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, St.Clair River, Lake St.Clair, the Detroit River, Lake Erie, the Welland Canal, Lake Ontario, the Seaway system, the St.Lawrence River to Montreal where he is regrouping for the rest of the trip. She’s made it halfway and has another thousand miles to go. We’ve sailed and motored through, mishaps and misfortunes, trials and tribulations but surmounted all and sailed her gloriously through these magnificent Great Lakes and waterways covering a thousand miles. It’s a grand adventure in a seat of the pants old school way.”
I lost a personal hero today, Professor Randy Pausch, 47, lost his battle with pancreatic cancer today. His was a brave fight that helped us all with his Last Lecture and his philosophy of making every moment count. I hope that he was able to accomplish his objectives for his children since they were the primary reason for him to do the lecture.
Thank you, Randy, I’m sure you’ve made it to a good place and you’ve left us with a great gift.
God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
What can I say but well done. Things got tied up with a bow and we know that come Christmas 2008 we will see the return of the Cybermen.
Cliff hangers were resolved. There were many linkages to past facts and story lines. You have to be on your toes to keep up with things although there were some new questions to keep things interesting. To get it all you have to view it multiple times.
The hand did play an important role in the regeneration/repair and the final trick to solving the Dalek problem. With the Tardis and Donna seconds away from being destroyed she touched the hand and there was an instantaneous biological meta crisis and we had another Doctor who was half human/half timelord. Everyone thinks the Tardis and Donna were destroyed but we know better.
It’s rather funny to hear the Doctor talk like Donna or as he says “disgusting”. The Doctor(2) only has one heart and that’s the sound that has been linking him to Donna.
Davros was following Dalek Caan’s predictions and they sought to destroy reality but the children of time worked to stop it. Davros shows the Doctor how he has been responsible for many deaths and then we flash through the many characters that have died in these episodes, Davros succeeds in exposing the Doctor’s soul.
The osterhagen key is a nasty piece of work but it wasn’t to be. Then Sarah Jane’s warp star was wired into the mainframe by Jack but the Daleks captured all of them except for Donna and The Doctor(2) who appear with the Tardis just before the weapon is fired.
Davros zaps the Doctor(2) and stops him for using his DNA weapon, he zaps Donna when she tries and then they destroy the weapon. Zapping Donna awakened the human-time lord meta crisis Donna who now has the mind of the Doctor and she sets about to make things right as Doctor Donna as per the prediction earlier this season.
They deactivate the Daleks and it turns out that Dalek Caan didn’t like what he saw about the Daleks and manipulated time to get to this point. They manage to get 26 of the 27 planets back to their original location but the supreme Dalek destroys the magnetron before they can get Earth back. The Doctor sets about to use the Tardis to bring Earth back but The Doctor(2) realizes that the Daleks must be destroyed which he accomplishes.
The whole group boards the Tardis to bring Earth back and they have enough pilots to do just that, seems it takes 6 pilots to run the Tardis properly. Even K-9 gets into the act to provide information the Mr. Smith. In the end Earth is returned.
The Doctor says goodbye to Jack and Martha, Mickey joins them and it looks like Jack has asked them to join Torchwood so that answers part of the Torchwood question.
The Doctor takes Rose back to her alternate universe and the Doctor(2) has to sta there as well since he is dangerous. Rose is confused but in the end Doctor(2) whispers the right words and accept the since he only has one heart, he will grow old with her.
Doctor Donna (sound familiar) has a breakdown because Human/Time Lord meta crisis isn’t supposed to be so he removes all memory of him and their adventures and takes her home to Wilfred and her mom. She wakes and doesn’t remember and can’t remember if she is to survive. The Doctor tells Wilfred and her mom that Donna Noble was the most important woman in the universe and her mother says she still is. Donna must go back to her life as a temp and the Doctor is off on a new adventure.
The preview for Christmas shows the Cybermen in victorian times.
The collapse of New York’s World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001 is arguably one of the most well documented events in human history. Less well documented is the controversy over why the buildings fell as they did.
At the time of writing, 357 architectural and engineering professionals have signed a petition which directly challenges the National Institute of Standards & Training’s official finding that the destruction of these massive buildings was caused solely by structural damage from the impact of jet airliners and the resulting fires.
[…]
Current research indicates that an incendiary (thermite) may have been used to sever the massive box columns of the towers, causing the buildings to plummet to the ground at close to free-fall speed.
[…]
“As no reports have come to light of any steel framed buildings collapsing due to fire, and as all steel framed buildings which had collapsed had done so due to explosive demolition, the logical way to have started the investigation of this surprising event would have been to question whether explosives had been used. This apparently did not occur.
William Rodriguez, an acknowledged hero of 9/11 who single-handedly rescued fifteen people from the North Tower, described a massive explosion in the basement which occurred before the first plane struck, pushing him upwards out of the seat of his chair.
The New York Fire Department’s oral histories project contains 118 witness statements which are strongly consistent with explosive demolition. Incredibly, none of this shocking testimony was included or acknowledged in any official investigation, including the 9/11 Commission.
If the towers were wired with explosives by terrorists prior to the planes, that would imply a lack of security on a massive scale that would be worth hiding. On the other hand, how do you hide that much work to rig buildings like that? If terrorists didn’t do it, why would the towers be rigged with explosives? Leaving aside the wacko’s government conspiracies, are other buildings routinely wired to blow to bring them straight down if something happens to prevent them falling onto other buildings? An interesting ‘protection’ scenario for the neighborhood that would be worth hiding for many reasons.
And then there’s this article from a few months ago with quotes from military experts like this one:
“A lot of these pieces of information, taken together, prove that the official story, the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 is a bunch of hogwash. It’s impossible,” said Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret). With doctoral degrees in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering, Col. Bowman served as Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
“There’s a second group of facts having to do with the cover up,” continued Col. Bowman. “Taken together these things prove that high levels of our government don’t want us to know what happened and who’s responsible. Who gained from 9/11? Who covered up crucial information about 9/11? And who put out the patently false stories about 9/11 in the first place? When you take those three things together, I think the case is pretty clear that it’s highly placed individuals in the administration with all roads passing through Dick Cheney.”
“> I have known Randy since 1992, and over the years I have been collecting and archiving his video lectures and newspaper articles, which I am happy to share below.
Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch gave a lecture on Time Management at the University of Virginia in November 2007. Randy Pausch — http://www.randypausch.com — is a virtual reality pioneer, human-computer interaction researcher, co-founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center — http://www.etc.cmu.edu — and creator of the Alice — http://www.alice.org — software project. The slides for this lecture and high-res downloadable versions of this and other lectures can be found at: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Ra…
Another interesting story which will take more than on episode to see the resolution. The Sontarans are good solders and are planning some sort of takeover but it’s not quite clear yet. Donna meets Martha.
**Check the post for April 12 – Environment Canada updated their figures and there are additional statistics available.
Apr 6/08 **Update** no data available in climate db for Apr 4 so no idea how much snow, they have just skipped a day – hopefully they will add the missing data on Monday.
Update: only trace amounts of snow for April 1 and 2 so no change in totals.
So we are 15 cm from the record – one good freaky April or May snowfall could do it. The final tally for March was 116.0 cm bringing this winters total 429.1 cm (441.1 Ottawa Record 70-71). According to the climate database we still have 52 cm of snow on the ground. No wonder our snowbanks are so still so high. Hopefully we will have minimal flooding with this massive thaw.
**Check the post for April 12 – Environment Canada updated their figures and there are additional statistics available.
Updated: March 30/08 – Total unchanged as of 29th March. ;-}
Updated: Mar 28/08 10:00 am – no change 8-)
According to Climate Data Online we have had 426.7 cm of snow from November ‘07 to March 25 27 ‘08 at the Ottawa Airport. The record is 444.1 cm so we are still 17.4 cm away from tying the record.
