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I actually thought the newest couple of Torchwood episodes (‘Something Borrowed’ and the one after) were pretty good. (Note: if you haven’t watched the next episode, this may contain spoilers…)

‘Something borrowed’ did have a few moments which made me think “Hmmmm”, but for the most part they kept it pretty interesting all the way through. This could be because I always find “shape-shifter” stories a little intense, possibly because I’m always reminded a little of “The Thing”.

The next episode (in which a bunch of crazy travelling show people who have somehow escaped from film) wasn’t quite as good — i.e., absolutely no explanation of what was happening was given at all — and the suspense wasn’t done quite as well as Something Borrowed, but in general I think they pulled it off.

All in all, I’m glad to see Torchwood return to the more entertaining style of the first part of the series, after the weak previous couple of episodes!

On Friday evening, Alex and Elisa came round for pizza and to watch “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. Elisa hadn’t seen the Holy Grail before, but she wanted to after going to see Spamalot earlier this year. It’s always good to watch some Python, although I’m not quite sure what she made of the film as opposed to the musical — the film is much more surreal! But that was a good evening, anyway, even if Alex & Elisa couldn’t eat the jaffa cakes they brought round because of lent (they’re off chocolate, I think). [Note to Alex: we will save the special jaffa cakes for after Easter!]

On Saturday we spent most of the morning in town. In the afternoon Phil went off to buy some food from the Mark’s Tey Food Company (more on that later) and I popped into town to get a couple of bits and pieces. I stopped in at ‘Zavvi’ (still can’t get used to it not being Virgin anymore!) and bought a few CDs — ‘Abbey Road’ by the Beatles, ‘Hold Your Colour’ by Pendulum, ‘Head Hunters’ by Herbie Hancock, and ‘Chichester Psalms’ by Leanord Bernstein. Quite an eclectic collection, actually! But all very good in their own way. The Pendulum album is one which I’ve been wanting to get since I listened to their essential mix last year, and it doesn’t disappoint.

Anyway. On Saturday evening, we had our next-door-neighbours round for dinner. It all seemed to go pretty well – we had a really nice time, and they liked all the food! Phil bought a few unusual cheeses from the Mark’s Tey Food Company, including a red leicester with pepper and chilli in it, which went down particularly well.

On Sunday, we went to church in the morning, and in the afternoon we spent the time relaxing and did a little bit of gardening. In the evening we went to the lent service at St Albright’s, before coming back home to watch ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’ and then ‘Love Soup’ (on the iPlayer), which were both very good.

And… that’s it from me!

I’ve just published a new article on FocusOnFaith entitled “The Ten Commandments, Part One: Context”. As you may gather from the ‘part one’ reference, it is in fact the first of a series — although I haven’t written the other parts of the series yet, so I don’t know exactly how many more there will be.

I’ve also added this article into the creations section of this site.

Well, it’s been a fairly busy weekend! On Friday evening, we headed down to Phil’s parents to stay for the weekend. We got there at around 7:30, and then just had dinner and just spent the rest of the evening rather quietly!

On Saturday we met up with a couple of friends for a little while before lunch. In the afternoon we went to look around a Mini showroom – we’re considering buying a new mini. Having seen one close up it does look good – the problem is, they’re quite expensive (even second hand)! If we’re going to buy one we will have to save up for a fair bit longer, I think. Still.

In the evening we headed into London, to the ‘Hidden’ nightclub in Vauxhall, for a trance night. Foz had invited us down, and there were also a couple of other people I knew from Colchester (Rich and Andy, from the DJ Workshop a few years ago). There were a few big names playing – Lange, Gareth Emery, The Thrillseekers… I was a bit disappointed with Lange’s set. He was playing some really dark, fairly minimal kind of trance, I couldn’t quite work it out. In the end I went into the next room where the DJ was playing some good stuff!

I didn’t stay for Gareth Emery or the Thrillseekers – Phil and I headed back for home at around 3:30 (what with me starting a new job today I thought it was probably a good idea not to be too late back!). But it was a good night all in all, though – apart from Lange’s set I enjoyed it, I do still like trance even if I don’t listen to it much anymore! And it was good to catch up with people as well.

On Sunday we didn’t really do much. We slept in late, watched the new episode of “Love Soup” (which was very good), before having a lovely roast dinner and heading back home. We managed to get to the lent course at St Albright’s, and then came back and watched Lark Rise to Candleford… so there you have it, that’s our weekend!

After a couple of weeks of pulling in pretty good, solid episodes (one of them being one of the best episodes I think Torchwood has done – ‘Reset’), they put out ‘Dead Man Walking’. I’m sorry, but — well, it was just poor! The episode just didn’t really make much sense, end-to-end. We also watched the follow-up episode on BBC3, and that’s not so brilliant either, but I’ll come to that in a minute.

‘Dead Man Walking’ was just full of things which I didn’t quite follow:

• Why was Jack so keen to revive Owen? Owen’s been nothing but a git all last season and most of this one. I just can’t see the motivation behind Jack risking life and limb to get the glove.
• Speaking of Jack getting the glove, what was up with that church? It was just kind of bizarre!
• What was going on with the glove anyway? – was it being controlled by ‘Death’ or something? Not exactly sure why it suddenly decided to try and attack people when they were going to inject Owen with something or other.
• Why, at the end of the episode, does Martha go back to her usual self — but Owen still remains undead? Owen remaining ‘undead’ is never really explained (more on that when I’m talking about the next episode).
• The worst thing about the episode, in my opinion, is the whole premise: ‘Death’ is an actual entity? WHAT?!!! I just won’t even bother going on about it – it’s ridiculous. (Oh, another random thing — why did death move so SLOOOOOWWWWWLLLYYY?)

The episode did have its moments, and it was quite tension-making at some points, but I spent more of the time thinking about what was stupid about the episode than actually enjoying it. In other words, it was like a Torchwood episode from last season. I was surprised that it was written by Matt Jones (‘The Impossible Planet’ / ‘The Satan Pit’ from the second season of Doctor Who). Although apparently it was quite heavily re-written (as were those episodes) so perhaps I’m doing Matt Jones a disservice.

I will talk about the next Torchwood episode now, but I just want to warn you that this may contain spoilers (if you haven’t already seen it).

It was a bit better than ‘Dead Man Walking’, but didn’t really hit the spot. There were still a few too many things — mainly about Owen — which still didn’t make sense: they draw attention to the fact that he doesn’t actually breathe, but then don’t answer the question: how the heck does he actually TALK then? I think I would have shied away from the whole ‘Owen being dead’ thing completely and just had his life come back after he ‘defeated Death’… it would have made more sense.

Still, the episode’s not all bad – Richard Briers is pretty good, and the episode does have quite a nice touch with Owen and the suicidal woman (if you haven’t watched it, that will sound strange…it’s not really). But it’s just overshadowed with me thinking “What??” every time they make reference to Owen being dead.

Aaaaanyway, I’d better stop ranting now!

I just love Rule 51 of the Oxford Union Society Rules:

Rule 51: Dogs

Any Member introducing or causing to be introduced a dog into the Society’s premises shall be liable to a fine of £5 inflicted by the Treasurer. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat. Any animal entering on Police business shall be deemed to be a wombat.

Why a wombat I do not know, but one of my ambitions in life has just become to take a wombat into the Oxford Union Society…

I’ve been looking round for a new Linux MP3 player for a while now. My previous MP3 player of choice was XMMS, but that’s getting old now and I’m not sure how much longer it’s going to be around (and supported) for. The interface itself, despite using Winamp skins, is pretty old and horrible – the menu system look terrible on my computer.

So I decided that I should get a new MP3 player. The problem is, I didn’t want one of those ‘full featured’ MP3 players which can do everything including make you a cup of tea and teach your child Hungarian. I just want something basic – I give it a playlist of tracks, it plays them in a random order. I’d also – if possible – like the capability to stream audio, i.e. listen to internet radio.

I really like Classic Winamp, but aside from XMMS I didn’t know of any similar Linux MP3 players. Until today. Audacious seems to fit the bill pretty nicely. It looks pretty, does everything I want it to, and looks like it will be supported for the time being!

So, I can recommend it 🙂

It was my last day at work on Friday! Although I’m technically still working there until the end of this week, I had five days holiday left so I’ve got a few days off before starting my new job (next Monday). It was quite a good day – a few people came down to the pub at lunchtime, and then after work a few of my old colleagues came down to the pub – including a couple of people who I hadn’t seen in nearly a year! So that was good.

Anyway. On Saturday, my sister Julie and brother-in-law came round with their children and my parents for lunch. We had a really good time – we don’t see Julie and family very often especially up here (it was the first time they’d seen our house) so I think everyone enjoyed it.

Afterwards we met Alex, Elisa and Esther for a milkshake at “Shakey Jakeys” in town, before going into Wivenhoe for PhilB’s birthday party. It should be mentioned that PhilB’s birthday was ages ago. Don’t ask. Anyway, that was another good evening, with a few people being there who I haven’t seen in a while – including Foz, and Chris and Louise.

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then in the afternoon Anne-Marie came round with her bass guitar: she’s been learning to play it over the past few weeks during the lent period, and as I’ve just started to learn the guitar it seemed like a good opportunity to have a bit of a jamming session and see where we got! Phil got her clarinet out as well so there were three of us playing in some of the songs. Although I say it myself, we were sounding pretty good – although unfortunately we only had two books between us (and quite a few songs were only in one or the other) so it was a little difficult at times to see the music.

In the evening we gave Anne-Marie a lift back down to Wivenhoe, before coming heading out to the third part of the lent series at St Albright’s. This week’s talk was on “I Am the Good Shepherd”. I found it quite helpful — I think a lot of times people read the “I Am”s superficially, without really going into any depth.

Afterwards we came back home and watched ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’ which was very good once again.

Think that’s enough to bore you with for the time being…

Have you ever felt that there’s just simply not enough thrill about your eating experiences? Have you ever wanted to dine while floating through mid-air?

Well, look no further, because Dinner in the Sky is here!

You eat at a table suspended 50m above ground, giving the food that additional “death-defying” feel. I hasted to add, in case of libel, that it seems to be quite safe (you’re strapped in to your seat). But it doesn’t say what happens if you need to pee, which seems a little bit of a flaw…

I was listening to Virgin Radio last night, and Ben Jones interviewed Matt Bellamy of Muse. What interested me was Matt’s response to the possibility of doing the new Bond theme.

Virgin Radio have been saying that Muse should do the new Bond theme for a while, and a lot of people agree (see the number of people who’ve joined the Facebook Group). Anyway, Matt said that he’d quite like to write it, although felt that they needed someone else to perform it (i.e. you really need a diva in the style of Shirley Bassey to sing it).

I for one would love to hear a Bond theme written by Muse, even if they didn’t perform it. If you agree, join the Facebook group, let’s see if we can make a difference… the last couple of Bond themes haven’t been all that Bond-theme-esque, IMHO.

Muse have got that dramatic edge to them, I think they’d be fantastic.

Who would sing it though? Apparently the name Amy Winehouse was mentioned… I don’t know… maybe someone like Amy Lee from Evanescence?