I have created a new journal here:

http://torchwolf.wordpress.com/


I will remain on LJ to interact with my friends and the communities here, but most of my posting will probably go to the new journal.

A random meme, taken from eponymous_rose.

Because, I was in avoiding-more-productive-things-I-should-be-doing mode.



1. What do you want for your Birthday?

Umm... nothing in particular. The nicest thing about birthdays is being able to get together with family. So it would be great it my sisters / nieces / nephews could make it London round about then.


2. Who will be your next kiss?

Don't know.


3. When is the last time you went to the mall?

Mall? Don't go to malls esp. Last time to the shops last weekend I think.


4. Are you wearing socks right now?

Strange question. Yes. Black.


5. When was the last time you went out of the province?

This is a question for Canadians. Pass.


6. Have you been to the movies in the last 5 days?

No.


7. What was the last thing you had to drink?

Tea. Or, technically I suppose, water.


8. What are you wearing right now?

A casual shirt, sorta pink with white stripes. Grey jeans. Socks.


9. What was your last purchase?

Mmm... I think it was a top-up for my Oystercard. For the London transport system.


10. Last food you ate?

A sandwich with cheese and salad.


11. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone?

Actually talked to rather than left a msg for? I think it was a guy called Andy who is on a course with me,


12. Have you bought any clothing items in the last week?

No.


13. Do you have a pet?

No.


14. What's the last sporting event you watched?

TV or live? On TV, Wimbledon, this afternoon.


15. What's the most played song on your iTunes?

Don't use iTunes.


16. If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be?

Hmmm. Anywhere? If you could assure me of life support, safety, and getting home in one piece... let's say: in orbit around Saturn, with a good view of the rings and moons.


17. What is the last thing you purchased online?

Not sure. It may have been a domain name. Or possibly a ball ticket.


18. One thing you hate about yourself?

Procrastination.


19. What's your favorite soup?

Don't know that I have a favourite. It might be something like Butternut Squash.


20. Do you miss anyone?

Not missing anyone at the mo. Only really miss people when I'm madly in love, and apart from the person.


21. Last play you saw?

Can't remember, it's been a long time.


22. What are your plans for the day?

Plans? If only I was capable of making plans. And following them. After I have finished this meme, perhaps I will give thought to making some plans.


23. Last person you msg'd?

Text msg? I think it was a friend who wanted to check the date when we're next meeting up.


24. Ever go to camp?

We don't have camps in the US sense. So no.


25. Were you an honor roll student in school?

We don't have honour rolls as such. But if we had them, and if they are what I think they are, I suppose I would have been.


26. What do you know about the future?

I know that I know nothing. :)

Also as told to us in Terminator II: "The future's not set, it's ours to make." (A view which was abandoned in Terminator III however. )


27. Are you wearing any perfume or cologne?

Nope. Not a big fan of such.


28. Where are your best friends located?

Hard to pick which of my friends are "best friends". But I have good close friends located all over the place. Well English-speaking places: UK, US, Canada, New Zealand.

29. Do you have a tan?

No.


30. How old do you want to be when you have kids?

How old is not the question. The question is more how long would I want to be with someone, and how much money would I need to be making, before I would consider it even as an option.

Also, what would work for my partner?

On the whole, it's not a burning question. I'd probably be perfectly happy if I never had 'em.


31.Who was the first person who made you cry?

Made me cry? I dare say we all cried a lot as babies. And as toddlers we probably thought our mummy made us cry when she wouldn't give us what we wanted etc.


32. Do you have any tattoos or piercings?

None whatsoever. Don't see the attraction of people sticking needles in you.


32. Have you ever drank your pop from a straw?

Not sure what pop is exaxctly.


33. How do you like your pop?

See above.


34. Do you like hot sauce?

Not sure what exactly is meant by hot sauce.


35. Next time you'll take a shower?

Don't know.


36. What's the last movie you saw at home?

Saw part of a movie on TV last night, but don't know what it was.

Can't remember the last whole one I saw either.


37. What is your current mood?

Playful? (Whilst also avoiding that which you should be doing.)


38. Are you someone's best friend?

Mmm... I think all my friends have a number of close friends, and probably no-one they would classify as best-friend. So probably not.


39.Have you ever been to Virginia?

I think I have. I've been to Williamsburg, which I think is VA, a long time ago. And have been to the DC area a few times, and may have wandered into bits of Virginia then. Not sure just where DC ends, and MD and VA start.


40. What are you doing right now?

I am doing this meme! What else could a person be doing when answering this question?

Recently I've been wondering if I need be quite so anonymous online, esp for blogging.

I mean... lately I've been writing some quite sensible and serious stuff - as well as DW Drabbles! - and might it not actually be a bonus for me to be associated with that stuff?

Plus, is it not good that people should know me in the round?


I happened to come across some salutary stuff as to why you might want to stay anonymous, including this:

http://chronicle.com/jobs/2005/07/2005070801c.htm


Food for thought for blogging and other online activities.


When you next apply for a job, most likely you will be googled. And the conclusions people draw from what they find may be to your disadvantage. Thought I should point this fact out to you all, my dear LJ friends, so you can think on it also.

This was a new kind of Dalek, a Diplomatic Dalek.

It had infiltrated the Koovari worlds, where the Daleks were as yet unknown, pretending to be a peaceful envoy.

Now it slid quietly through the gala reception, listening to everything, noting the weaknesses of every species present. Its advanced training suppressed the instinct to immediately exterminate the filth.

An orchestra started playing.

A very tall, very slender Koovari female approached.

“It is our custom that the guest of honour should lead the dancing.”

“DAN-CING?”

“Yes.”

The female took the Dalek’s “arms”, and the couple waltzed away, slow, graceful and majestic.

These were too big to paste in a comment, so I'm putting them in my own journal.

Hard to say if either of these are accurate. In places, certaibly. :)



My Personality

Neuroticism	45
Extraversion	57
Openness To Experience	82
Agreeableness	77
Conscientiousness	6

Test Yourself Compare Yourself View Full Report MySpace Surveys, MySpace Codes and MySpace Layouts by Pulseware Survey Software

You are neither a subdued loner nor a jovial chatterbox. You enjoy time with others but also time alone. Stressful and frustrating situations can be upsetting to you, but you are generally able to get over these feelings and cope with these situations. Novelty, variety, and change spice up your life and make you a curious, imaginative, and creative person. You have a strong interest in others' needs and well-being. You are pleasant, sympathetic, and cooperative. You like to live for the moment and do what feels good now. Your work tends to be careless and disorganized.

Orpheus 33% Extroversion, 66% Intuition, 100% Emotiveness, 100% Perceptiveness

You are an artist, an aesthete, a sensitive, and someone who has never really let go of that childlike innocence. To you, all of life has a sense of wonder in it, and the story of Orpheus was written about someone just like you. When the Argo passed the island of the Sirens, Orpheus played a song more beautiful than the Sirens to prevent the crew from becoming enticed. When his wife died, he ventured into the underworld to charm Hades but, in his naivete, he looked back becoming trapped there. You can capture your unique world view and relate it to others with the skill of a master storyteller. Your sensitivity and creativity make you a treasure to the human race, but your thin-skinned nature and innocence can cause you a lot of disenchantment and pain. What's doubly unfortunate is that, if you try to lose those traits, you never will, and everyone will be able to tell that you're putting up an artificial shell to prevent yourself from being hurt. Famous people like you: Hemingway, Shakespeare, Mr. Rogers, Melville, Nick Tosches Stay clear of: Icarus, Hermes, Atlas

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on Extroversion You scored higher than 99% on Intuition You scored higher than 99% on Emotiveness You scored higher than 99% on Perceptiveness

Link: The Greek Mythology Personality Test written by Aleph_Nine on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

My beloved Tamino BadWolf Forum appears to have been hacked, and is currently not working.

This topic is for any of my Tamino friends that want to make contact, and also for discussing how to get Tamino back up and running.

I don't have contact details for a lot of the people on Tamino, so if you do find your way here, make yourself known. And let any other Taminoites that you are in contact with know that they can use my LJ to keep in touch until normal service is resumed. :)


*anxiously scours the horizon for lost Tamino-ites*

Ok... it's been a long time since I've been on LJ.

So is this an easy (cheat!) way to post? A quiz that my friends may like...

Your Aura is Violet

Idealistic and thoughtful, you have the mind and ideas to change the world. And you have the charisma of a great leader, even if you don't always use it! The purpose of your life: saying truths that other people dare not say Famous purples include: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Susan B. Anthony Careers for you to try: Political Activist, Inventor, Life Coach

An interesting piece from the BBC Technology site:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/happiness_formula/5052078.stm

Is it possible that we can find friendship, fulfilment and contentment on the internet?

Almost two-thirds of all adults now log on to the web. We spend more and more of our time staring at computer screens.

The question is whether this behaviour is driving human beings apart or bringing us together.

Some random thoughts on the article...


Like most things, a person could go either way with it.

But the way technology is set up does make certain things either easier or harder, and we tend to go for the easy options. The idea (also in the article) that TV "makes" people into couch potatoes and "displaces" social interaction is inherently nonsensical.

But it does make it easier to entertain yourself without having to step outside your door.

It does make it easier therefore to cope with a lack of social interaction.

Like a lot of social phenomena, you need to look at what happens in terms of a whole ecology of inter-related factors that co-evolve. i.e. Society gets more fragmented, and more people live alone, which creates a demand for TV entertainment, among other things. The availability of TV (among many other things) makes it easier and more viable to live alone, and so might add to social fragmentation. So just like a rainforest, a whole ecology of lifestyles grows up where each element supports others, and no one thing is "the cause".

TV viewing is now actually going down, partly because people spend time online instead.


If we go back to the "real world" - well frankly a lot of it not tremendously well-designed to support any kind of real social interaction either. I daresay we've spent many hours in bars having banal conversations with people who we never really connected with in any meaningful way. But the bar didn't "make us" do that. :)


In some ways, the internet could facilitate a deeper level of connection.

True, anonymity means you could pretend to be somone that you're not. But conversely, anonymity means there is freedom to be who you are, without worrying what people think of that.

Psychologists talk about the "Strangers on a Train" phenomenon. Sometimes you neet someone travelling on train, feel connected, and find yourself telling them things you haven't told your best friends. Because no fear of what they might think, of consequences to the future of the relationship, of being gossiped about, and no past baggage between yourselves.

Also applies online. But unlike on trains, the relationship can keep growing from there.

And unlike on trains, or for that matter bars, you tend to be hanging out in places where people who share your passions and interests and general take on life are also hanging out.


In one of the first comments on the article, a woman writes about her son marrying someone from South Africa:

My son, based in Worcestershire, met a girl in South Africa whilst doing some research online. After six months of online dating including endless games of chess and meeting her family and friends during a link up to a party in SA, he finally made the journey to meet her. They married 6 months later in South Africa and she joined him at university in England a few months later. I find it amazing that he found his perfect partner (she shares his love of fishing, camping, travel and sport) thousands of miles away from what started out as an argument in a chat room. We feel so privileged to have such a lovely young woman as part of our family.

So, speaking from personal experience...

It is quite possible to have banal conversations and superficial relationships in "real life".

It is also quite possible to have profound conversations and deep relationships online.

And having great relationships seems to take much the same kind of things online and offline.

On Monday I signed up to do the Landmark Forum for the third time. I'll be doing it this weekend. The couple of times I've done it before both led to remarkable changes in my life, so I'm hoping for that again. Hoping, but not entirely believing.

It feels kinda like resorting to using a sledgehammer, when faced with some problem that's so stuck that nothing you've ever tried has had any real effect.

This time, what I'll be out for is a breakthrough in getting things done.


I am rather staggered at how much other people seem to be able to get done. Like cantralian working as a lawyer, studying for an MSc, writing lots of fic and journal entries, keeping pets, running a home, and even having a life. Or Timbo, who is also a lawyer, a husband and stepfather, active footie fan, and scout group leader.

How do they do it all? I'm stretched to do even one of those things.

I have my saving graces, but generally it's far from funny how little I seem to get done.


On Tuesday, I heard from my ex that she's getting married soon. Which brings up a variety of complex feelings. And is an interesting coincidence in that the first time I did the Forum, it played a major part in the development of our relationship. Strange coincidences seem to abound around the Landmark Forum.

Due to that having been a long-running on-off relationship, I've actually seen her get married before.

*chuckles to himself*


And tonight it is the Champions League Final.

Logically, football should not be that important, especially compared to such things as someone who means a lot to you getting married, or getting down to sorting out what is a horrible long-running problem in your life.

But football is that important!

Well, almost. :)

Arsenal winning the Champions League is very high up in the list of things that I want!


So it's a very interesting and big week in my life.

A piece about internet use in South Korea, the most wired country in the world.

BBC News writes about the virtual lives many South Koreans are living via the net.

I must admit I find the extent of this a bit disturbing, esp as we are heading in that direction also.


While I love my online life, does it already take up far too much of my time?

I seem to be losing access to LiveJournal from time to time, not even able to find the server.

I can access other sites, and I've found other people can access LJ while I can't.

Don't what is causing all this.


Anyway, thought I would let people know. If I'm unexpectedly non-responsive, it's probably that.


If anyone has any idea what could cause this, help would be appreciated!

My friend  vasco_pyjama mentioned an article in Slate about Blogoholism.


Well, I wonder about blogoholism too.

Though I read and comment more than I write entries to my own blogs.

In my case, I think I'm always likely to have some kind of -oholism though, so if it's not blogging, it'll just be something else.


Blogoholism is better than most, as I do get to connect with interesting people all over the world, and have worthwhile conversations with them.

And I get a lot of pleasure out of writing my little stories and having people enjoy them. Which without interested readers and immediate feedback, I wouldn't be doing at all.


The article in Slate is about a would-be novelist. I'm thinking there is a bottom line about the demand and supply for writing. One good novelist (or whatever other type of writer) can meet the needs of millions of readers. So there have always been far more people that would love to be writers than could ever earn a livelihood from it.

And reading the blogosphere, I see that there are actually very many good writers out there. It's not their lack of ability that would prevent them from being professional writers, simply the reality that there are far more potentially good writers than available readers for all of them. We can only read so much.

So the blogosphere is an outlet for writers who want to write for the love of it, not to reach a wide audience. Instead of everyone being famous for fifteen minutes, it's everyone being famous to fifteen people.

It's like amateur drama, or playing in a band for fun.

For a few it might be a pathway to being discovered, but for most it's all about the fun, the fulfillment, and the creativity of the act itself.

The Doctor sat down to his lunch. It was an ordinary lunch, in an ordinary caff, in an ordinary town, somewhere in England. Egg, beans, and chips, washed down with a nice mug of tea.

“So long since I’ve had decent chips!” he thought, as he tucked in happily. “You’d think in all the galaxies there’d be more than one planet – one country even – where they do proper chips.”

He took a swig of tea, his contentment rising.

Yes, there was a lot to be said for Earth.

Then he froze, fork to mouth, as three giant insects walked in.

It looks like Torchwood will be this year's "Bad Wolf" after all!

So it's time to remind ourselves of all the Torchwood sightings so far:

• In the series one episode Bad Wolf, one of the quiz answers reveals that the Great Cobalt Pyramid was built on the remains of "the famous Old-Earth Torchwood Institute".


• The Torchwood spin-off series has been described as being about a group of maverick investigators, a kind of British X-Files.


• In The Christmas Invasion (TCI), Harriet Jones asks UNIT to contact Torchwood. They are a group so secret that she's not supposed to know about them, though they do seem willing to take orders from her.


• At the end of TCI, the Sycorax spaceship is destroyed by a powerful weapon built using retrieved alien technology. The weapon is controlled and presumably built by Torchwood.


• In Tooth and Claw (T&C), Queen Victoria's encounters with an alien werewolf and the Doctor lead her to realise that the Empire faces threats she'd never imagined. She decides to launch the Torchwood Institute to investigate mysterious phenomena, and protect the Empire from them. The Doctor is seen as one such potential threat, maybe not directly, but in his dangerous habits and casual attitude.


• The Torchwood Institute is named after Torchwood House, where T&C is set, in gratitude to the MacLeish family whose efforts saved the Queen and the Empire.


• In the commentary track for T&C, David Tennant confirms that there will be Torchwood references all through this series, and there will be a big payoff when they're all be pulled together in the two-part season finale.

Time to start keeping a lookout - and let the speculation begin!

Copied from Bad Meme Hunting.

Tooth and Claw was an episode in the traditional Doctor Who mould, with a classic mixture of horror, mystery and sci-fi neatly put together. It was rather unlike most Russell T Davis episodes, and didn’t have the typical RTD weaknesses, but it also lacked some of that RTD magic.

The story was nicely atmospheric, with a remote Victorian estate taken over by evil monks, and our heroes besieged by an alien werewolf, all in a moonlit Scottish landscape. Throw in Queen Victoria, and the mysterious contraptions left behind by the previous Lord, and it’s a great setup for a Who story.

The plot drives along nicely, keeping you wanting to know what happens next. And for once, RTD’s plot makes good sense and avoids convolutions and a profusion of subplots. And as the plot rolls along, there are plenty of scenes of terror, and plenty of nice one-liners.

But what is missing from Tooth and Claw are those moments in Who that reach the parts that other shows seldom reach. Moments that are moving and thought-provoking, maybe even profound. Strangely, New Earth had many more of those moments, even though it also had more weaknesses than Tooth and Claw.

So, I think I’d rate Tooth and Claw as 7/10, good Whovian fare. One to watch and enjoy, but perhaps not come back to time and time again.



Related Topics:

For detailed comments on New Earth, see my earlier posts, including New Earth - Initial Thoughts and Lightweight Villains?.

For discussions of RTD’s strengths and weaknesses see the Tamino BadWolf topic: RTD - The Good, the Bad and the the Ugly, plus many other threads in the forum, such as episode discussions of The Christmas Invasion.

Spoilers for New Earth and Series One. As if you hadn't guessed.


I've posted several posts on New Earth at Bad Meme Hunting.

I don't know if LJ friends hop across to read them there. It's a bit of hassle to keep copying posts backwards and forwards, and it's debatable if I should be spending so much of my time writing about one TV show in the first place!


What I have not yet written about is all the moments I specifically enjoyed.

Some of them - "bouncy castle" comments and Cassandra!Rose generally, the disinfections, the legend-of-Boe speech, and Cassandra's final moments.


What I have also not written about is The Year Five Billion. Last year, in the EOTW, there was a real sense of just how much can change over such a long time. Trees evolving into intelligent beings, the Sun dying, the continents shifting on the Earth, there being no "pure" humans any more, and the Last Human looking nothing like a human being at all. And the perspective that all gave on our current preoccupations with global warming and eggs. :)

I loved all those things.

In New Earth, it wasn't so at all. Recognisable humans, hospitals, lifts, even Cassadra watching her old home movies on a cine projector. No-one uses that for home movies now, never mind in the Year Five Billion! No sense of being unimaginably far into the future at all, and no sense of what it might mean.

*sigh*

Am getting oodles of "You are about to leave a secure site" messages as I navigate around LJ.

Is it just me? What's up?


*Adds a Site Meter to find out if anyone is reading this*

Copied from Bad Meme Hunting 

Spoliers for The Christmas Invasion


New Earth was our second chance to see David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor. My second impressions of the character were much more favourable than the first.

In The Christmas Invasion (TCI) the Doctor didn't make much of an appearance until the last few scenes, when finally he recovered from his post-regeneration illness, made a dramatic entrance, and saved the day.

Although I enjoyed TCI there were a number things I didn't like about that portrayal. I didn't take to the manicness, his cockiness, or his seeming preoccupation with his looks -right bang in the middle of a world crisis. And while the sword fight was fun, I'd hate to see the Doctor turn into just another handsome action-hero.

I was much, much happier with the Doctor we saw in New Earth.

Cheery and cheeky, but not cocky or arrogant.

Slightly bemused at being attractive to women.

Intelligent, curious, and compassionate.

Much more the Doctor we know and love, somehow the same man, despite all the changes.


I'm very much looking forward to seeing the Tenth Doctor develop.

Thanks to my dabblings with Site Meter (see earlier post) plus various forays into the world of Internet Marketing and search engines, I've discovered a very intriguing fact.

If a person were to Google for "Adam cybermen", the #1 match would be my story "Adam and the Cybermen" in my blog Bad Meme Hunting, on Blogspot. The very same story with the very same title is also posted in my LJ. But this does not appear anywhere in the Google rankings at all.

The reason is probably that Blogger creates a page for the entry called:

http://badmeme.blogspot.com/2005/09/adam-and-cybermen.html

And LJ creates a page for the entry called:

http://torchwolf.livejournal.com/2793.html


Also Blogger being owned by Google may have some bearing, but I think mainly through the fact that Blogger creates very search-engine friendly pages.


Moral: If you want your writings to be found, post on Blogger?

But if you want to make friends the world over, LJ communities are best!

The Torchwolf Law:

"More often than not, actions have the exact opposite effect to that which was intended."


(c) Torchwolf, 2006. :)


See here for the origins of this important discovery:

http://chicklet73.livejournal.com/221195.html?view=3234059&style=mine#t3234059