Garacesh

Fine by me. I'm sure there'll be plenty of moaning that there's no Doctor Who on Christmas Day 'cause people like to pretend every little inconvenience is the first sign of the apocalypse, but ah well. It's a bit of a shame, I always watch it with Mum, but it's no big deal. Life goes on, we're still going to eat our body weight in pigs in blankets, and completely ignore the Queen's speech. C'est la vie.

That bit can actually be explained.. They said all the medics had those ocular implant thingies that recorded everything they saw.

The Pting was kind of adorable in its own weird way, and I really don't mind the fact that it was an episode where the 'big bad' isn't actually a big bad. As I've said previously, I like having one of those episodes every once in a while, but I do think they should've waited a few more episodes instead of broadcasting it right after Arachnids... which similarly didn't have a typical big bad. This one should have been a bit later in the season, maybe around Ep 8 or 9. The pregnant man was clearly only there to provide another bonding moment between Graham and Ryan and to pad out the cast, though I do think the fact that it was just 'a pregnant man' and not a 'proper' alien species was a bit weird.. I get what they were going for it but it came off as a bit lazy or bizarre. I am still enjoying the character growth between those two though. It's incredibly well-written. It feels real. Honestly, I feel like Doc Brown (Ben Bailey) stole the episode. I've never actually seen him act, only doing stage comedy and Taskmaster, so I didn't expect him to nail his role so well but he really did. The subplot between him and his sister was pretty good, but having them both so conveniently being neuropilots and being able to fly the ship felt a bit of a deus ex machina. Overall, it was enjoyable, but it was still a bit m'eh. It wasn't terrible, but there wasn't really much substance to it either. The sister was forgettable, the doctors were forgettable, and Yaz didn't really do all that much either (though I think that's just an intrinsic difficultly with giving three different companion proper pacing, character growth and screentime) It certainly won't be one of the more fondly remembered ones from this series.

As have I

A'ight, we just need 2 more peeps and a timeslot

Got, don't got, got and got. Might have to pick up Worms though I do need dependable peeps to play Castle Crashers with though.. I've never completed the campaign

We've been chatting about it on Discord enough I spied Antichamber on sale for £6 and I'd definitely recommend it for anybody that likes puzzles. It's a 3D puzzle game that takes place in non-euclidean geometry. It also has a plethora of pretty deep/inspirational comments that make you think.

Not til it comes to PC (And I say 'until' cause the companion app apparently alludes to a PC version, so fingers crossed!)

That's what I was thinking.. With all the faff surrounding Alan Wake getting pulled from Steam, I figured music royalties would play a part

Ah, ballchinians, the only decent thing to come out of Men in Black 2.. Some good questions mixed in with a lot of rubbish ones. I have no idea why, but I absolutely love the idea of Bradley Walsh playing pranks on people Spoilers for a future episode, maybe? Although.... WE RIOT NOW!

Mandip Gill's AMA thread is up for anybody wanting to ask a questions or two

Perhaps. But I don't think we can call 'initial signs', well, initial signs, without seeing the end-result, can we? I mean they can give you reason to worry, or say "I'm going to keep an eye on this.." but we can't for definite say "This is the beginning!" without taking a deep dive into a slippery slope fallacy. Feeling the ground shaking beneath your feet could be an initial sign of an earthquake... Or it might just be someone with a wrecking ball knocking down the shop at the end of your street. Yeah, OK, I'll concede that. It's a fair point. Which I think is where a lot of people challenge the idea that your stereotypical SJW is often called 'liberal', because they do refuse you the right to discuss certain topics and question certain ideals. But that's probably besides the point and I'm trying to stay wary of drifting the topic. That being said, Doctor Who is still a television programme broadcast on the state broadcasting network. Can you imagine the uproar if they'd made this episode and it didn't outright say Racism = Bad? If they'd concluded that, 'Yeah, actually, $BigBad might be on to something there'.. There'd be outrage. They still have to play to the ratings. Maybe they could've made it work if they'd gone deeper into what made $BigBad a space-racist, they certainly could have made a good conversation piece that way, but maybe the limited timeslot prevented that. Well I suppose we just have to figure out where the threshold is between "A storytelling element that sometimes gets used" and "A recurring theme exposing an underlying agenda." But in the interest of fairness, I'll admit that's going to be subjective and we can't really quantify it, so we can't tell anybody theirs is wrong and nor can we say our own is right. I still think the people raising the complaints I listed previously have their thresholds set a little too low, but, y'know, that's like, my opinion, man. To be honest, I reckon there'll always be people complaining either way. This episode had a few eye rolls and at least one "Oh of course the white guy is the villain! Hidden agenda!", except if it were a person of colour there'd be others declaring "See? Making the black guy a villain! Institutional racism!", but making every big bad an alien would have responses of "Another alien we're never going to see again. Why is Doctor Who so inconsequential now?" and repeating the aliens so much would get "Getting bored of the Stenza now, give us someone new would you?" You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time.. And a small subsection of people are just looking for outrage for outrage's sake.

No harm done @LeMarchand On a lighter note... I can't seem to stop reading 'Chibnall' as 'Chinball' Have to double-check and remind myself of the proper spelling whenever I type his name lmao.

Well yes, but generally speaking my issue with the extreme-liberals/SJW/whatever-else-they-get-called isn't so much what they say it's how they say it. Yes, Doctor Who is doing a bit of moral posturing, but Nu-Who always has, but it's not so rabidly devoid of nuance that plagues what I'd call 'the stereotypical SJW mindset'. And whilst in principle I often agree with the opinions of that crowd (and liberals in general), in practice I cannot in good conscience support them because they're too dramatically black-and-white and you're never allowed to challenge it or ask 'what if'; they have such a 'You're either with us or against us' attitude that you can't ever really debate anything; and even if you try they tend to just resort to ad-hominem and shouting in louder numbers than you. The thing is.. I don't feel Doctor Who does that. I feel that Doctor Who does tend to add nuance and ask questions, for the most part. Sure, in 'Rosa', they were hardline Racism = Bad without any nuance but I feel that's acceptable because racism is something we (at least the western world) tend to universally agree on is bad, but as a whole I feel like Doctor Who more often than not tries to drum up some sympathy for the 'baddies' sometimes and shine a light on the fact that maybe it's not so clear-cut as we'd like to be.. First example off the top of my head is the Silurians. I do think the Donald Trump remark in 'Spiders...' was a bit of low-hanging-fruit though. Could've done without that. But anyway, the people that I've seen complaining about it (who I wholeheartedly do not agree with, for the record) have been remarking things like "Oh look, they've shoved even more mixed race people in. So much for equal representation, barely any of the cast is white now.".. "Of course it's the white guys that're the baddies, I knew SJW's would ruin this season!" etc. Proper petty stuff.

Who said anything about it being a valid complaint? I just said it was a complaint I'm seeing. I think it's utter tosh myself and complaining about nothing. And it isn't just the daily fail (well, could be them too, dunno, don't read it, don't care to), I just see it from generic Internet folk in general. I'm not going to rope them all up under one banner 'cause I can't, but just 'some people'[Weasel Words]. Yeah, gonna have to agree with that one. I mean, I'm enjoying the series but that doesn't mean it's beyond criticism. It's not always the same parts that are feeling a bit rushed, though. The ending to Rosa didn't feel rushed, but how they dispatched the Big Bad of the episode certainly felt it. In 'Spiders..' it was the ending/'resolution' that felt rushed, though that might have been because we spent so much of the episode not knowing what was causing the spiders to grow so huge (which I have to say I liked). I wouldn't say that the ending to The Ghost Monument was rushed, it was just... not satisfying. It was an ending, not a resolution, and it just made the episode feel sort of.. "Well that was all a bit pointless then wasn't it?". Kinda, maybe, but I don't feel like it could be. I think for a mercy killing to be a mercy killing the intent of it being a mercy killing has to be there rather than it being arguably 'better' for the thing being killed. This one didn't have that, it was just your run-of-the-mill "I'm an American, I have a gun, I don't like you, KABLAMMO!" type of killing. I'd argue that The Doctor 'killing' the Star Whale (The Beast Below) would've been a mercy killing even though it wouldn't have been dead, and didn't even need to be 'killed'. But tha's just me In other news! Mandip Gill (Yaz) will be doing an AMA on /r/DoctorWho this afternoon, at 4:30PM UTC.

M'MEEP! M'MEEP! M'MEEP! Aaanyway... I quite enjoyed Arachnids In The UK.. It was a nice step away from the heavy and more towards the inconsequential-but-still-fun type of episode that's refreshing after a one that was as big on the heavy as 'Rosa' was, but still did a little bit to have a moral in there. I know a lot of people are still whining about Doctor Who being 'too PC' or 'too liberal agenda' etc but to be honest I don't see a problem with a little bit of 'don't dump your waste into landfills' shoehorned in there. Spoilers below I'm genuinely surprised that Ryan and Graham are sticking around, though. After Graham going home and clearly starting to grieve for Grace, and Ryan's remark about not liking his Dad using the term 'proper family', I thought we were going to see Ryan really warming up to Graham and, in reflecting that if his Dad was 'proper family' but never there, maybe 'proper family' doesn't quite mean as much as he once thought it did, which is a message I can certainly relate to. But I'm kinda happy we still have our little foursome together. They've all grown on me.

Venom It was a decent cinematic experience... ... it was just a terrible Venom movie. The film darts from plot-point to plot-point without ever really fulfilling any of them, and injects humour into weird places that, whilst it works and does deliver as funny, just feels out of place. That being said it's cinematically brilliant, the effects are great (for the most part, let's not talk about the crappy high-frequency-sound-shifting-effect), and the film is well-paced. If only it were named 'Generic alien parasites give hosts superhuman abilities and have a fight' I'd rate it higher than it being called 'Venom'.

Finally got round to buying a wireless adaptor for the 360, spent yesterday binge-watching the entire third season of Daredevil. Incredibly enjoyable, everything I've come to expect from it in the first two, and this flavour of Bullseye is considerably better than Colin Farrell's stint in 2003. It was nice that they started actually calling Fisk 'Kingpin', even if only for a short time, and I'm glad they've taken a different direction with Vanessa. Now I find out there are rumours surrounding Season 4, specifically that there might not be one, since Iron Fist and Luke Cage got cancelled

Humans are a sexually dimorphic species and (contrary to what some vocal minorities on the ol' internet would have you believe) you're not sexist for questioning if this is a factor that may contribute in part to an observed trend. I very much doubt that sexual dimorphism will ever wholly account for a disparity, but it's not unfair to question it, provided you're open to the answer potentially being 'no, it doesn't play a part' I do wonder how many people ever study orchestral music instruments anyway. To wholly go into the stereotyping for the sake of the example, I can't imagine we have a surplus of people sat at home with a Harp, Flute, Piano, Oboe, Cello, Bassoon, French Horn, Double Bass, Timpani, Trumpet, Trombone or Tuba. These strike me very much as academical instruments, i.e. ones you're taught as part of an academical curriculum. Which raises the next question: What kind of school has Harps, Flutes, Oboes, Cellos, Bassoons, etcetera lay around? (Making a point of purposely disregarding Piano as I'd imagine most schools have those, or at least keyboards which are similar enough to the untrained ear) Well.. Expensive schools do. 'Posh' schools. Again, sticking with stereotypes here, fancy private schools that the political elite and wealthy send their kids to are the ones with those instruments. You're not going to be getting Harp lessons at your local comprehensive, are you? Violin, perhaps. Piano, probably. Percussion maybe. But the rest I feel are unlikely, drawing from my own experiences with public schools. So the next question then is, what are the gender ratios at fancy private institutions, of which how many study an instrument, of which what instruments do they study? Now to drop the stereotype and come back to reality, not every orchestral musician is going to have gone to a well-off private school, and especially in today's world of YouTube and Patreon I can very much see a person from a working-class family still able to study those kinds of instruments to a reasonably high enough degree to consider further education with it if they can manage to get hold of one at a young enough age and put in enough practice. Of course I could be talking utter tripe, but I'd be interested to see a breakdown of backgrounds for these 2,438 musicians.

I feel like the dialogue is still pretty clunky. Not sure if that's Chibnall not being very good at dialogue or if it's just new season jitters. Time will tell, I guess.

I didn't get that feeling from this one.. After all, they didn't really sort out anything.. They stopped another time traveller from meddling with history. I could imagine the same happening with Tenant or Smith, except they probably would've come out with the 'fixed point in time' speech. The fact that they realised they had to sit there and do nothing as Rosa was arrested was quite powerful, I think, as was all the racism. I think there was part of me that was like "'ang on a minute, tone it down a notch!" but I think that's precisely what they were going for.. It was supposed to make viewers a little bit uncomfortable, but it's a stark reminder that people really were like that once upon a time. Anyway, we're only at one-of-three being a historical piece, and the next episode with the spiders doesn't look to be historical either, so I don't think you've got anything to worry about Quite surprised the BBC went ahead and broadcast the racist-P-word before the watershed though. Wouldn't have thought they'd be allowed to do that. Guess they were.

Huh. Maybe I've just never noticed it before.

I'm getting a 'Not secure' in Chrome. If I had to guess, I'd say that the issue looks to be that it's serving over HTTP not HTTPS? For example the url for this post new thread page I'm typing on right now is showing as http://www.edugeek.net/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=67 Chrome isn't giving me the option to view a certificate either, unlike say facebook which is displaying as https. So maybe that's got something to do with it.

I feel like having Yasmin Khan do the voiceovers for the Case Files is strengthening the likelihood she's going to be the permanent companion.

No sysadmin should ever be able to see what a user's current password is. For a start it's just a huge security risk since we know users re-use passwords. If a sysadmin does need access to a person's account, a change in password ensures that the user becomes aware that 'something has happened' (OK, the sysadmin can just lie and issue a standard password reset, but it's still better than being unaware at all). I admit there's some nuance where it might be beneficial to impersonate a user without them knowing about it and without locking them out of their account, but an option to do that should be a separate thing that doesn't expose password info.