The IT Crowd Returneth!!!

Ok, with the void left by the series final of Hyperdrive, I have felt a 'yearning' of sorts for more of that unique style of British comedy. A Bit Of Fry And Laurie fits quite nicely, but what I've been waiting for since the end of last year is the return of the brilliant IT Crowd.

After telling Film Guru and Musicpie that season 2 wasn't out yet, I figure that it had been a few weeks since I checked, so I double checked.

The official website doesn't list it, but wiki tells all! Season 2 began airing on August 24th, not 2 days ago!

With luck it will be done before I leave for uni, so as to have something to do during the programming lecture. (I spent the last one at www.willitblend.com). Ok, maybe not during the lecture, but definitely during the lunch break. Maybe.

Anyway, the only downside is that instead of the originally planned 8 eps, we only get 6. Nothing unusual for British TV.

It took the ABC about 8 to 10 months to air the last series, so I've looked to other means to get it. Shame there's no direct to DVD stuff, really.

Also, The Sarah Connor Chronicles looks interesting. Set after Terminator 2, it will either turn out to be a huge disappointment like Torchwood after the 1st ep, or be another Prison Break/24. Probably not the best comparison, but it will have to do.

Even better, House Season 4 is due to begin in September. Why are we only about to see the end of season 3?!?! Again, I would rather buy the DVD now than wait for the barstads at 10 to get going (Uh, the 'r' should be after the second a, but otherwise, very good). Yay for inserting random british comedy jokes!

Anyway, channel 7 is supposed to be airing some of their big name shows in parallel with the states, so we might have some decent tv to finish off the year after all!

And Film Guru, you bastard, you've gotten me hooked on Boston Legal! Damn you for telling me about that show!

So, it seems I've become the TV show guy, particularly for the British market. Film Guru had better step up with some awesome movies now!

It occurs to me that I have to leave for uni in 20min, so I better finish this off. In short, great TV being produced, but Australia will get screwed once again.

Viva la revolution! (Never really though about what this actually means, but it sounds cool so I'll finish with it)

Or...

For Pony!

EDIT: Ok, I've been stunned into silence. Words can't express my dumbfounded disbelief that Channel 10 are actually airing House Season 4 in line with the states!!! All the shows I want to watch are actually being aired in Australia in line with the states!!! TV networks, it seems, have finally realised that people will just pirate it anyway, I guess. Could it be that 10 learnt from Jericho??? Might just be optimistic thinking on my part, but one could hope.

ASCII Star Wars

So, in researching of telnet, I have come across what could be the most unique ripoff of all time!

I present to you... ASCII Star Wars!!!

Anyway, I couldn't take much more than a minute or so of it, so I don't know how long it goes. All I know is that it is also available through telnet (an aging form of network communications - I use it to configure routers at uni).

I can't think of a way to stretch this out for much longer, so I'll leave it at that.

I'll post something a little more substantive next week.

Fare ye well!

A picture speaks a thousand words

I would like to start this week's entry by apologising for the erratic (not erotic) nature of previous posts. They are making less sense all the time.

So, in the name of improved cultural information exchange, this week I give you pictures, from the blag (their spelling, not mine) of the dude at xkcd. The cartoon to the right inspired the guys below to give it a shot.

Also of interest was the xkcd home noticeboard.
Clearly these people have too much time on their hands.

Oh well, I think that will do it for this week. I figure that if a picture speaks a thousand words, than I've just written a brilliant 3000 word essay. Take that year 12 English teacher! (Whose name I've completely forgotten - I think it's Mrs Moyle/Moran/something)

What to do...

For some strange reason I have recently been thinking about the whole future thing. Where do I see myself in x years, etc. And I gotta say, it looks pretty boring from a personal free time point of view. Not that I'll have much time once uni kicks off properly, but that's only a couple of months. And those months can drag if there aren't many work shifts around.

Given that my free time is largely spent in assorted media, whether TV, movies or gaming, and that my future career will be spent designing some computer networks of sorts, I figure that it would be a good idea to get into something a little more diverse and less electrically mo.

Which brings me back to music, which thinking back I think I've mentioned on here before. It's something I've always had some sort of invested interest in, and considering a large portion of my life has been spent in lessons/practice/finding ways of avoiding practice, I figure that returning to it would be a wise investment.

Trouble is, music can take up a lot of time. Sure, I play the piano occasionally, but as it requires a great deal of practice to get something going, nothing ever improves enough for a decent regular performance ie worship group.

So, having established it would be almost pointless if it were not put to good use, I could go back to the trombone. I still like the idea, and quite frankly it was probably the only reason I stayed with the Salvos for so long. When I got sick of the music being played there, and once I had finished with the school music program, there was no point in staying for the free rental trombone. (Wow, that sounds kind of blunt when I put it that way. That wasn't the real reason I left that church, but it helped. Although I did leave only a few months after the school musical...) Also, I thought the Salvo uniforms were bad, but this image has helped remove that opinion completely.

Anyway, given that my recent attendances at church has been, shall we say, poor, and a new trombone costs upward of $700 at absolute base price, it seems kind of a waste. Although, it would give me greater motivation to actually attend church once in a while. And I was better at it than I was at piano, so it'd be less strenuous.

So, where have these rantings got me? Nowhere. I can either spend a lot of time on the piano for free, or I can buy a trombone with my tax return and actually use it for something useful.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know where this is headed. I just started typing and stuff came out. So... yeah. What was the topic???

Oh, yeah. Spare time stuff. Music was just an option, but I figure that since I actually have that talent I could kill 2 stones with one bird as it were (and yes, I know the phrase is the other way around). Or, I could train to be a ninja. But I'm too clumsy, and I'm not sure people could handle the increased awesomeness that ninja would bring. Or I could think up useful titles for blog posts. Also, I've gotta stop bagging out the Salvos. It's become a bad habit, and they're not as bad as I make out at times.

Another option would be to actually read the bible instead of occasionally picking it up for small group. I haven't properly looked at the thing for months. Not good for a professing Christian, hey?

Ok, some I'm going to finish this off before I break some vilification law, or tell one of King Kohl's awful racist jokes, thus offending all 3 or so readers I actually have.

I'm... Disappointed. And Slightly Irritated

Wow, after being called in to replace sick staff at work all week, I nearly forgot to post anything for the blog!

Well, here's a poor rectification (probably not a real word, I know, but close enough. Although firefox spell-check says it is. But then again, firefox spell-check doesn't like the word "Firefox").

So, after recording all the heroes episodes during semester, I finally finished watching them. What a disappointment. Seriously, after all the promising lead-up, the advertising hype, and the general popularity of the show, it went from awesome manga-style storyline to Naruto ending. Ok, so comparing it with Naruto was a bit harsh (Heroes is no where near as slow), but I stand by my opinion that it was disappointing.

I'm going to assume that everyone reading this has either seen the show, or has no plans to do so, since it finished airing like 2 months ago. So I'm just going to go on without the usual "SP0iLleR ALlErT1!!11111!!1oneone" crap that usually precedes it. Although that sentence alone predicted spoilers...

As I was saying, after such a build up, the big build up between sylar and peter, and we get, what? A couple of punches and a few bullets. No super cool ninja moves. Hiro comes along with his sword after all his training, and sylar just stands there for hiro to stab him. Nathan comes along and flies peter into space to explode, but didn't peter already have this talent? Right from the first episode?

What's more, a nuclear explosion is actually more effective above a city, because of the nuclear fallout. So they would have had to fly quite a ways up to avoid that happening in that very short instance, but that's probably just nit picking.

And, at the very end, there's a blood trail from where sylar was stabbed to a conveniently placed man hole. Do the writers of this show expect everyone to believe that everyone stood around and just let him sneak away? I guess it could be argued that he crept away when everybody was distracted, but it wasn't very well portrayed.

So, in short: crap action sequence, crap storyline, crap ending. There was so much more that could have been done, but instead they didn't leave much at all, not even a cliff hanger ending like most other shows. Disappointing. And Irritating.

Oh, and possibly the worst fan site ever. Apparently this is what the general use computer is used for at work during lunch breaks.