Forgiven

Doctor Who: Last of the Time Lords, by Russell T. Davies.

Tell you what Russell, never mind the countdown, everyone in my house was thinking the same thing during the whole episode. Can you guess what it was?

Based on the reviews on TV Scoop, The Stage and the responses to my last post, it seems I was in the minority in hating last week’s episode. So, to pre-empt you: Bring. It. On. For this week’s episode was EVEN WORSE.

The good: the Face of Boe, the Doctor waiting all this time to forgive the Master (cheesy but also moving), most of the acting (can’t say I’m going to miss Martha’s family though).

The bad: the telepathic rejuvenation, the random return of the Master at the end, the dialogue.

The ugly: it was boring. Totally boring. Up until the ending, when it was exciting, but also made no sense whatsoever.

Our pizza arrived halfway through the episode so we paused (yay Sky+) but then someone went ‘do we have to watch the rest?’ We all felt the same. Last week, the panto like nature of the episode drove me crazy. This week, I found it hard to care at all. There were some small moments that I liked, but these were few and far between. Should also point out the stupid decision to extend the episode by 10 minutes (totally unnecessary) but to put the extra footage at the beginning. Which means many people across the country will have tuned in at 7.15 only to find they’ve missed the entire opening 10 minutes. Nice one. Then again, maybe they were the lucky ones.

Put Down That Weapon

Running for just 3 more nights at the National Theatre, ‘Landscape with Weapon’ is the new play by Joe Penhall (writer of Blue/Orange). Joe also adapted Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love for the big screen, directed by Roger Mitchell. Roger has re-teamed with Joe to direct Landscape, and does so spectacularly.

The show focuses on Ned (Tom Hollander, Pirates 2 & 3 and Harry Potter premier balconies), a lonely genius who has invented a revolutionary new weapons system for the military. His brother Dan (Julian Rhind-Tutt, henceforth known as Green Wing Guy) is horrified when he discovers what Ned truly does for a living and tries to persuade him to quit, whilst his colleague Ross (Pippa Haywood, Green Wing Gal) is busy trying to make the best deal. Ultimately Ned makes his choice, and SIS officer Brooks (Jason Watkins, not in Green Wing but apparently pops up in Tomorrow Never Dies) is called in to change his mind.

Performed in traverse (audience on 2 sides with the stage a thin strip in the middle), the staging emphasised the distance between the characters and the dual sides of every conversation and argument. There’s also a lovely symbolic UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) in the large room lampshade, hovering over all the action.

The direction was superb, making excellent use of the space to show us the ever-changing relationships between the characters, and even includes a stunning table brawl / food fight. The script was wonderful: informative, funny, chilling and managed to give equal time to every viewpoint. The acting…

Tom (I’m not in the film but look everyone I’m on my mobile) was magnificent, which was a revelation as to date everything I’ve seen him in has seen him playing the same, slimy, character. Of the 6 scenes in the play, he’s only off stage for one of them, and his presence is sorely missed. Funny, sympathetic, arrogant, confused, lonely, he absolutely inhabited the role. Bizarrely, he also seemed to be channelling Griff Rhys Jones. A flawless performance.

Jason (I’m not in Green Wing) Watkins was great with the limited stage time he had, switching between funny and chilling with masterful ease; but unfortunately he never got to share a scene with just Tom. Instead, he was always stuck with one of the Green Wing gang. Ah yes, the Green Wing gang (sounds like they should be selling vegetables). They were both trying their best, and it’s not like they were bad, but both of them totally failed to convince me of their characters. It was like they were both putting on a persona, rather than becoming it: forced verses natural. Both were funny and enjoyable, but did prevent a very good show from becoming excellent.

Definitely worth watching, but would be interesting to see what a different cast made of the material.

Face to Face

I'm currently trying to get Facebook to import this blog. Last time I tried, it imported everything fine. And then it did it again! Won't seem to accept the RRS feed so currently trying Atom. Will get there in the end...

There's a Small Hotel

After 14 or so hours I’ve finally completed Hotel Dusk: Room 215 on the Nintendo DS. You play Kyle Hyde, a retired detective who now works for a ‘recovery’ service, finding items for clients. 3 years earlier, Kyle found out his partner on the force, Brian Bradley, had double crossed him and was working for the gang they’d been trying to catch. Kyle shot him, but the body fell into the river and was never found. Kyle believes Bradley is still alive, and has spent his spare time ever since looking for him.

As the game opens, Kyle is sent to Hotel Dusk to pick up some items for a client. There he stumbles across various other guests at the hotel, each with their own stories and agendas, and comes to realise the Hotel may be the key to locating Bradley.

You play through a series of chapters: talking to the guests, searching rooms, and picking up items and information. Every so often one of two things happens: a puzzle, or an interrogation. Both occur natural during the course of the story, the former requiring you to use the different DS functions to solve a problem, the later consisting of choosing the right questions to ask the other characters. Get a puzzle wrong, you’re stuck until you figure it out. Get an interrogation wrong, it’s game over.

You hold the DS sideways, using the right screen to point to where you want Kyle to move and the left showing his POV. During conversations, characters appear on both screens as black and white illustrations (straight from A-ha’s Take On Me video).

I’ve seen a lot of reviewers describe it as a book, but that’s a little misleading. A book implies pages of text that you have to scroll through. Hotel Dusk’s more like the transcript of a play: almost entirely dialogue. What this means in practical terms is that you don’t scroll down a long page of text; you get two lines of dialogue and then have to hit the ‘next’ button. Which, considering just how long the conversations are, can get a little frustrating. The characters also have a tendency to repeat things, and if you make a mistake during interrogation it takes a while to get back to the same point (if you don’t save regularly it’s even worse).

Aside from that one quibble (which affects me more than average because of my low patience threshold), the game is fantastic. Great puzzles, nicely balanced difficulty, interesting story, good graphics and well designed levels. The music is a little hit and miss, but there are some tracks that work very well.

Some hints: use the ‘R’ button to skip through dialogue – it’s easier than tapping the screen every 5 seconds: look at everything you can as you go along, but you won’t be able to pick it up until you need it – don’t get frustrated, just remember where the unusual items are; there a two endings, the main one and one after you finish the game (I’ve still to see the second ending. This comes courtesy of wikipedia); you shouldn’t have to guess in interrogations – the choice always matches the character’s personality; save regularly – can’t stress this enough; and the one puzzle spoiler I’ll give (because I got stuck on it) – <Spoiler> when you hear the distant ‘thunk’ later on, check the trash can in the utility closet <End Spoiler>.

Children in Bloom

Just got back from the Empire’s Children launch party. Fantastic night and great to see so many of the contributors there. The evening also featured one of the strangest dinner conversations I’ve ever had and a very unexpected game of hide and seek.

Stand By Me

Or, ‘How Does Your Garden Grow?’

Creating a community is hard. Helping one grow shouldn’t be. The first part is coming up with something the community can form around, a new meme that draws people in. That’s the tricky part and I’m not going to go into it now. But once enough people have got behind your meme, they’ll start talking to each other. That’s the start of your community. Now comes the easy part…

There are 3 things you need to do to grow your community (well, there’s probably a lot more, but as we all know, 3 is the magic number):

Respect

Treat your community with respect. Never take them for granted. Never abuse their passion. If they take the time to write in with a question, you give up twice your time to answering it. Problems always come up – let the community know in advance and apologise. Don’t just say you’re doing everything you can to fix it: actually do everything you can. Multiple communities can form around the same meme, so treat them all equally. If you have an update, tell all of them at the same time, and post it somewhere they can all see e.g. on your homepage. Don’t play favourites. Here’s a tricky one – listen to the community on practical issues but not narrative ones. If lots of people can’t use you GUI, you need to change it. If lots of people don’t like a character, it doesn’t mean you should kill them off. The fact they’re all talking about the person is good thing. And there may be a lot of people who love the person, but aren’t as vocal.

Challenge

Communities thrive when you give them a challenge they have to work through together. Give them a time limit and as much guidance as you can – it’s no good if everyone goes off in the same wrong direction for 2 months. Encourage them to search a wide answer space. Don’t state there is only 1 acceptable answer and turn the challenge into a guessing game – use the variation and difference in your community as an advantage, allowing for multiple solutions. Don’t offer a single large prize: yes, there will be groups in your community strong enough to remain together through this, which is a great thing, but you’ll also keep others away as they search for answers by themselves.

Sharing

Give your community the tools to spread your meme. In the past companies threatened legal action against fan sites posting non-official pictures or information. Now, the companies are embracing it. Nobody encourages someone to adopt a meme better than their friends, so make it as easy as possible for them to show why your meme is so great. Give out free handouts, banners, images, information packs, embedded video, embedded games. If you’re going to give out cash/point incentives for getting a friend to join, make sure both the old member and the new joiner get the same bonus, and make sure it’s not so great a bonus that it’ll annoy existing members. Oh, and don’t take things aware from the community – if it used to be free, it should remain free.

And that’s about it.

The Unforgettable Fire

Chili Con Carne:

-400g lean Mince
-1 teaspoon Jalapeno peppers, chopped
-1 tin Chopped Tomatoes
-2 tablespoons Cumin
-1/2 teaspoon Chilli powder
-1/2 teaspoon Oregano
-1/2 teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
-1 tin Kidney Beans, drained and washed
-1 Onion, finely chopped
-Olive oil
-Salt and pepper to taste

Heat a little olive oil in a frying pan. Add the chopped onion and fry on a medium heat until translucent. Remove and set aside.

Heat some more oil in the pan and add the mince. Fry on a medium/low heat until browned. I tend to keep frying until all the water comes out of the meat and has boiled off.

Add the cooked onions to the mince, along with the jalapenos, cumin, cayenne pepper, oregano and chilli power. Mix thoroughly.

Add the kidney beans and mix in. Add the tinned tomatoes, stir and cover. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Leave on a low heat for 50 mins, stirring every 10 mins (more frequently near the end).

Meanwhile, boil some rice in a saucepan (80g per person) or use a crock pot (1 cup per person).

Serve with Doritos, salsa and ice cold beers.

Jack's Smirking Revenge

‘You do not mess with the Special Investigators’.

If you’re not clear on that at the start of Lee Child’s new Jack Reacher novel, ‘Bad Luck and Trouble’, you will be by the end. Mainly because it’s mentioned on every single page.

So Jack’s back (hearing that a lot lately), and he’s bringing some friends with him. When an ex-army buddy is dropped 3000 feet out of a helicopter, it sets off a chain of events that brings Reacher to L.A., along with the remains of his old army unit, the Special Investigators. They’re going to find out who killed their friend, return the favour and ‘piss on their ancestors' graves’. Charming bunch.

It’s more of the same action, crime solving and humour that’s come to characterise the Reacher franchise, and whilst it’s a fast and enjoyable read, it also feels like little more than a repeat of the previous novels. It’s great to see Reacher meet up with his old friends, but we’d don’t learn much more about him, or see him in a situation we haven’t already seen him in a dozen times. I’m also suspicious that the book is setting things up for a co-authored spin off series in the style of Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler and James Patterson. There’s a lot we don’t find out about the Special Investigators, almost as if it’s all being saved for something in the future. Whatever happens, we won’t have seen the last of these characters.

It’s perfect airplane fodder, or for sitting out in the garden over a sunny weekend, but offers little more than a pleasant (and occasionally brutal) break from more thought provoking reading. Or in my case, SF. Seriously, have you tried reading ‘Last and First Men’ in one sitting? Anyway, I enjoyed it and I’ll get the next one and the twelve after that, but I’ll not be counting down the days.

Karma Police

The Master’s back! And so is Russell!

Yes, after last week’s surprisingly gripping Utopia, Russell T Davies is on writing duties again to pen the first of the two-part Doctor Who series finale, ‘The Sound of Drums’. There’s the Master, The Doctor, Captain Jack, Martha Jones, Sharon Osborne, McFly, Ann Widdecombe, and a load of balls. Yes, a load of balls. I don’t care if it’s an easy joke, I’m going to say it anyway: how totally appropriate.

It’s like Russell looked back over the third series, saw how good it had been, and decided to make up for it with 45 minutes of nightmare television. Let’s get the good out the way first: the reference to jelly babies that actually had me punching the air (yes, I’m a fanboy) and the shots of Gallifrey. If nothing else, for 30 breathtaking seconds, tonight’s Doctor Who was hauntingly beautiful. Oh, and Tennant was great. It seems even Russell’s scripts can no longer hide his acting chops. I can only hope he stays on when RTD leaves at the end of series 4.

And so to the bad. Take a deep breath and hold on tight, it’s going to be a bumpy ride…

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARG!!!!!

The opening that should have picked up straight from the previous episode, instead of flashing back: it actually destroyed the pace, instead of enhancing it. Think of the boost the episode would have gotten from diving straight into our heroes trapped in the future with the Future Kind (Oh! Well I never! was there ever a cat so clever as…) closing in. And the teleporter get out was lame.

John Simm was much less panto than last week, but was still too schizophrenic. He’s a bloody amazing actor so I’m pinning this one firmly on the script and direction.

The videos of Sharon Osborne, McFly and Ann Widdecombe praising Saxon: a) cringe worthy, b) unnecessary and c) will totally date the episode. Not that that will matter much seeing as anyone with taste will never be watching it again.

The death of the reporter. For a moment, there was a danger it could have been scary. Well, never fear, RTD is here, ready to deflate tension and drama in a single bound. The opening and closing of the door to cut the screams was silly, pointless and painful to watch. Not the most painful moment thought, that’s still to come. I can hardly wait.

Small thing, but bullets aren’t supposed to bounce off regular cars. And yes, they did hit the car because someone rigged spark effects to imply bullets ricocheting.

Jumping ahead a little, but our heroes spent a lot of the episode running or sneaking around, when apparently Jack’s ‘get out of everything’ watch is also a teleporter. Why did no one mention this earlier when it might have been some use?

What the hell is ‘Cloudbase’ from Captain Scarlet doing in the show!? And the rift from Star Trek: Generations?!

The sonic laser. Oh for goodness sake, is that the best you can do? Take someone else’s concept and make a pale imitation. Oooo, nice opportunity to take a wider dig at RTD there. Shall I, or would that be mean?

And now we come to the pinnacle of this overblown monstrosity: Voodoo Child. I know some reviewers out there are going to claim this is the genius of RTD, counterpointing horror and comedy to create something even more chilling. Now, even the great Joss (cue angelic choir) can’t always get this balance right, and RTD is no Joss. Well, he managed to get half way there tonight: watching the Prime Minister’s wife jigging along to a dance track while we watch a repeat of the second season invasion finale (and first season too now I come to think of it) certainly made me scream…

And the best thing is, there’s still another episode to go. If you’re in London next Saturday evening and hear an ear piercing cry of agony, you’ll know it’s 7.59pm precisely.

Foolish Games

Designing puzzles is tough. Designing good puzzles is even harder. Here’s my two cents worth.

First off, is your intended audience a single solver, or a community of solvers? It makes a big different. Sure, a single solver puzzle might still, and should, be attempted by a community of solvers, but you need to forget about that when creating it. For a good example, look at the difference between Season 1 and 2 Perplex City puzzle cards – they got easier for a reason folks. Here’s how to go about creating a good (single-solver) puzzle:

1. You want people to solve it.

2. You WANT people to solve it.

If you don’t, you’re an arrogant git who’s just trying to show off how much smarter you are than other people, and have no place designing puzzles.

3. It should be interesting. Either the puzzle should be framed in an interesting way, or be about something interesting, or have an interesting way to solve it, or the final solution should, in some way, be interesting. Ideally you want all 4.

4. Think of the puzzle as a story, with a beginning, middle and end: the puzzle should flow naturally. The beginning is what draws the solver into the puzzle, and tells them how to start. The middle is the meat of the puzzle, where the solver has to figure out how to solve it. This can often involve an intuitive leap on behalf of the solver, but should NEVER involve total guesswork. Sometimes the middle might be made up of a series of steps. You should think of each one as a mini-story with its own beginning, middle and end. Finally we come to the end, where the solver applies the method and obtains the solution. Wherever possible, the solution should link/refer back to the beginning in some way.

5. Try and do something different. This is often the really hard part, as there are so many great puzzles out there already. You could always apply a method from one puzzle to a different situation, or combine elements of multiple puzzles to create something new. Coming up with something truly original is rare, and should be cherished.

6. Think about what the solver will need to get to the solution. Just their head? Pen and paper? Access to the internet? To visit a specific location? Where a person is when trying to solve a puzzle can make a big difference. Personally, I prefer puzzles you can work out sat in a coffee shop with only your brain, a pen and a napkin, but this can be limiting, particularly in making the puzzle interesting.

7. How will the solver know they’ve got the right answer? With a good puzzle this should be intuitive without the solver having to look it up to check. This is where linking the end back to the beginning helps.

8. Different people like different things. You’re not going to please everybody, so don’t try. Make something you enjoy. But remember, a puzzle is for sharing, so at least one other person needs to enjoy it too.

9. Make it look nice: either in the way it’s written, or by adding a visual element such as a background image. No one wants to solve 12 paragraphs of gibberish. (Okay, some people do, but that’s not the point)

10. How will your solver check their answer? How can you make this as easy as possible for them? No one likes to get the right answer only to start doubting themselves when the way they enter it in doesn’t match the only accepted phraseology. If the solutions are being entered online, think about adding labels to multiple choice options, give drop down boxes, and ask people to give short (1 or 2 word) answers instead of writing out a paragraph of text.

So in short: solvable, interesting, flows, different, accessible, intuitive, enjoyable, clear, checkable, solvable. Have fun puzzling.

Heat of the Moment

Basque Chicken:

-4 chicken breasts
-8 strips of bacon, chopped (1x2 cm pieces)
-2 green peppers, chopped (2x3cm pieces)
-2 onions, finely chopped
-2 cloves garlic, crushed
-1/4 teaspoon marjoram
-2 tins chopped tomatoes
-150ml Chicken stock
-olive oil

Add a little oil to a large frying pan (one that you can cover). Fry the chicken breast on a medium heat. You don need to cook then, just seal them.

Remove the chicken and set aside. Add more oil and fry the chopped bacon on a medium heat until cooked.

Remove the bacon and set aside. Add more oil and fry the onion and garlic on a medium/low heat for a few minutes. Add the green peppers and marjoram. Fry until the onion becomes translucent.

Return the chicken and bacon to the pan, and mix with the onion, peppers etc.

Add the chopped tomatoes and stock. Add a salt and pepper to taste. Increase the heat until the liquid start to boil. Cover and reduce the heat to low (the liquid should continue bubbling). Cook for 50 minutes, stirring every 10 mins (more frequently near the end)

While this cooks, boil some rice in a saucepan (suggest American Long Grain) or use a crock pot (highly recommend getting one) and prepare a green salad (or green vegetables).

Serve and enjoy, ideally with a glass of red wine.

All That You Can't Leave Behind

Empire’s Children is finally live! It’s been a hectic 3 months, creating a site with over 750 pages, ~3 hours of video, ~60 archive photos, and a sampling of archive audio. Hopefully it does the show justice (first episode airs 2^nd July, 9pm, Channel 4). Lots of people were involved with the project, but in particular I can’t sing the praises of these guys enough: Rebekka and Sam for battling through against all odd to create the editorial content; Andres for his stunning designs; Chris for somehow making them work in HTML; Tasha and Trent for building a kick ass CMS that does everything you could ask and more; Andrew for Exec Producing; Vanessa for ‘turning up to the meetings Andrew couldn’t make’; Adam for giving us the project; Susan for project managing from ‘the other side’; Colette and Alex for creating such a brilliant show in the first place; and all of them for being such wonderful and talented people to work with.

Check it out, and tell your own story.

Say Hello Wave Goodbye

Machine Learning Workshop, Day 2.

Once again there were 3 talks in the morning and 2 workshops in the afteroon. In the morning we covered:

-Random Forests. Take data with a classification variable e.g. active/inactive. Split the data by each variable in turn to optimise the separation of these two classes. Find the variable which ‘best’ splits the data. Take the two subsets that this split creates, and repeat the process. This forms a classification tree. Problem: the tree is greedy i.e. overfits. Solution, create lots of trees by resampling from the data with replacement (Boosting). For each sample, build at tree. At each node of the tree, restrict variable selection to a subset of the variables. Pick the ‘best’ variable from this subset and move down to the next node, where you again pick a subset of variables. Repeat to form lots of trees, a forest if you will. Since it’s based on random sampling, you might even call it a random forest. Clever, eh.

-ILP (inductive Logic Programming). Oh dear. Where to begin? Perhaps with the unjustified dig at the previous speaker during their Q and A. Or maybe with the explanation of how we can look at ‘facts’ about the molecules, rather than rows of data in a table, and how we can store these ‘facts’ in what looks suspiciously like… rows of data in a table (or at the least a database of table. Which does raise an interesting question I’ll come back to later). Or maybe with the lack of any information on how these ‘facts’ were used to create a predictive model. Or maybe with the random and completely irrelevant video footage of a robotic laboratory set up back at the speakers lab. Yes the robots looked cool, but they also had NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH MACHINE LEARNING. Ahem. But it did raise an interesting question: sometimes we have a priori knowledge about the relationships between datapoints e.g. information that we might naturally store in a database of cross linked tables. How can we use this database in our analysis, rather than a single table?

-QSAR Applications of Machine Learning. A great talk covering a lot of ground, mainly focusing on how we can create alignment independent descriptive variables. Nice example was building a 2D histrogram from a 3D molecular surface by moving around inside it, changing direction when you hit an outer wall, and then recording the path lengths (1D histogram) and also the properties at the surface where you hit it (to get a 2D histogram). You can then compare histograms of molecules with known strong binding affinity to look for patterns, and then test to see whether these patterns appear in ‘new’ molecules. Only talk to beat my 30min impatience gene.

Then came the second half of my R workshop, this time covering:

-linear regression models (lm)
-how to asses them (r.squared, AIC, summary, ANOVA)
-how to test the predictive ability of the model (predict.lm)
-overview of principal components analysis (princomp,screeplot,biplot)
-overview of cluster analysis (hclust,cutree,kmeans)

Didn’t go as well as the first half, mainly because I got nervous and fell back into my bad habit of talking at 500mph (mental note – never check email just before a talk). Hopefully it was still of some use, and people will go back over the slides at their own pace. At the end of the day, if I persuaded 1 more person to try R, I’ll be happy.

I’m now on the train back to Cambridge, having spent two days back in a department I hadn’t expected to ever visit again. It was great catching up with people, and fun to go back and talk about statistics after spending so much of my life studying it.

Everybody's Talkin'

Machine Learning Workshop, Day 1.

Today I went back to my old university department to reprise a workshop I gave back in '05 at the end of my PhD. It's part of a 3 day series of talks and workshops on 'Machine Learning' (so, statistics with computers) and I'm giving two 1.5hr workshops on Monday and Tuesday afternoon. It's great to be able to split it into 2 parts as the workshop was originally given in a single 1.5hr session, and things got a little rushed.

The day started with 3 speakers from around the world (okay, technically the day started with me getting up at 6am and catching a train to Cambridge, but I digress...) presenting lectures on Fuzzy Clustering; Support Vector Machines and Kernel Methods; and Ant Colonies.

All three were genuinely interesting, though sadly I've been cursed with the impatience gene and can't concentrate for longer than 30mins. Short versions:

-Fuzzy clustering. 'Fuzzy' lets you say a data points belongs to more than one set, and have different degrees of 'belonging'. Very handy with clustering when you have 2 distinct clusters and a single point in between them. Regular clustering assigns the point to one of the clusters, botching up your analysis. Fuzzy clustering says it's 50:50 as to which cluster it belongs to, leaving the rest of your analysis untouched.

-Support Vector Machines. Separate data into two groups using a hyperplane. Hyperplane positioned so as to minimise the distance between the line and a set of data points (the supports). Can use Kernal methods to fit non-linear partitions: increase the dimensionality of the data, fit a hyperplane in this increased space, and then drop back down to the original data space. Hyperplane can now be non-linear. V. cool.

-Ant Colonies. Hadn't come across this before. Based on natural pheromone where ants leave a pheromone trail when walking to and from food sources. Other ants follow, building up the trail. If you have two paths: one long and one short, ants take both paths but the short trail ants get to the food first. They turn to head back and see their original pheromone trail on the short path, and nothing on the long path, so take the short path, again leaving pheromones. This doubles the strength of the short path, so that when the long path ants arrive, and turn to go back, they see a weak trail on the long path and a strong trail on the short path, so take the short path back. All future ants now only take the short path. Now apply to searching algorithms e.g. the travelling salesmen. Go on. Off you go.

Then came a workshop on Kernal techniques which I skipped as a) the room was packed, b) I wanted to email my wife and c) it gave me a chance to write this entry before I forgot it all. After that I gave part one of my workshop which covered:

-What R is (a statistical programming language)
-How to load, write and manipulate data (read.table, write.table,name<-dataset[i,j])
-Some simple statistics (dim,summary,cor, cov)
-Some simple plots (pairs, plot, hist, boxplot)
-Kernel Density Estimation (density)

Seemed to go well. A couple of people came up to me afterwards and said they enjoyed the talk and found it useful, which was nice.

Then is was off to the hotel to check in, quick catch up with Phil and Fiona at 'The Snug', and finally dinner at Peterhouse where I got to meet a man who had been shot at in Sweden for threatening their princess (due to an unfortunate series of misunderstandings).

Silver Side Up

Just got back from "4 - Rise of the Silver Surfer" (apparently the team is no longer 'fantastic'). Fun, frothy and forgettable. Some nice character moments, great CGI and performance from Doug Jones as the surfer, and refreshingly short. Also, some really bad CGI for Mr. Fantastic stretching, no-one's figured out how to use Invisible Woman's actual power well, 'aw, crap' featured way too much (I'm no prude, but it just felt pointless), and the main plot was very slight. Oh, nice 'empower the nerds' speech - yup kids, someday you may be able to get revenge on that school bully by flying into space, getting hit with cosmic radiation, gaining the ability to stretch your body into all sorts of weird shape, and hook up with Jessica Alba. I'll let you make the obvious joke...

Utopia

I'm worried. I used to practically throw things at the TV when a Doctor Who episode said 'written by Russell T. Davies' in the opening credits. But this series, I've found myself actually enjoying several of his episodes (apart from Gridlock - 20 years in a traffic jam! seriously?!). So, in a nutshell, Captain Jack's back (hmmm, where have I heard that before...) , hitches a ride on the TARDIS and they arrive at the end of time where even Time Lords have never been (really? If I was a Time Lord first two places I'd visit would be the beginning and end of time. Maybe that's why I failed the entrance exams.) There the cast of CATS are glad to have gotten some work now the musical’s closed, and to celebrate decide to chew on some human flesh. Cue much running. The Doctor, Jack and Martha leap in to save the human by running very fast. They make it to 'the silo' just in time, where they meet The Professor a.k.a. Derek Jacobi, who proceeds to act them all off the screen.

There follows much pulling of levers and flicking of switches, Captain Jack hitting on anything with a pulse (I swear they cut a scene where he proposes shagging the engines into life) and Derek gets some very strange headaches that have Doctor Who fanboys stroking their beards. Martha makes an alien girl swear, because she needed a character moment, and the Doctor and Jack have a heart to heart about Jack becoming immortal and kinda messing up time, or something.

They fix the engines of a very big spaceship so that the remaining humans can fly to Utopia. Meanwhile, Derek’s found a pocket watch that looks very similar to the one the Doctor had a couple of episodes back. Hmmm, where can this be going...

Well, anyone who's been getting the classic series DVDs (all 27 of us judging by the apparent need to create new, redesigned reissues) will have known what's coming for a while. I mean, when every single DVD has The Master in it, you kind of get the hint. Though at this point in the show, I was really hoping the production team had put out false spoilers and that Derek was actually going to be a future generation of the Doctor.

Anyway, Derek opens the watch, turns evil and kills his assistant. He opens the gates so that the cast of CATS have somewhere to sleep for the night, which is really very nice of him, with the small side effect that they now want to eat the Doc. The assistant uses the last of her strength to shoot Derek, who takes a surprisingly long time to die. The Doctor, Jack and Martha run along a lot of corridors as Murry Gold's score does it's usual thing. They get back to the lab and use a combination of the sonic screwdriver and Jack smashing stuff to get in. There the Doc and Derek look at each other very intensely, before Derek ducks into the TARDIS and locks the door. Now, as much as I hate the 'deadlock seal' cop out that was brought into overcome the whole 'sonic screwdriver can do anything' cop out, I did love Derek actually using the TARDIS door deadlock and giving a reason to the name.

Then came the bit we'd all be waiting for (by we, I mean the 3 of us watching at home). Derek regenerated into John Simm. Amazing actor, looks fantastic in the part, and everything he touches turns to gold. And then he spoke. I'm hoping it was first day nerves, but he seems to have gone a little bit panto villain with the part. We'll see what he's like next week when he gets to play an evil and manipulative politician who looks set to doom the world. Cue obvious joke.

Here was the big surprise, the episode ended on a cliff hanger, with the Doctor, Jack and Martha stuck at the end of time while The Master hops off with the TARDIS. And the trailer for next week even had the good grace to not show any footage of the three leads, so we don't know how they get back.

Overall impression: good, but the scenes in the quarry felt a little unnecessary. Know they wanted a threat to keep up the drama, but it felt a little underdeveloped. Derek was, unsurprisingly, awesome, and it's a shame they felt the need to cast a young actor as the Master to go up against David Tennant (who has been absolutely cracking this season). Still, looking forward to seeing what John does with the part. 'Till next week...

Start Something, a.k.a. Everybody Else Is Doing it so Why Can't...

...I.

Well, felt like it was a good time to start blogging: been happily married now for almost 5 years to the wonderful Naomi, have a new(ish) job at Illumina Digital, moving house in a few weeks (4 doors down - we're adventurous) and, as of 1 hour ago, a new haircut.

There's a new Doctor Who tonight written by Russell T. Davies so I'll be posting/ranting/sobbing later on, and I'm off to Cambridge on Monday to resurrect my old workshop on R. Empire's Children has launched (sort of) and at some point I'll talk about the fall of *that* ARG. Oh, and there's Alice is Lost, the fantastic new project from Eric Harshbarger coming up. And I was wondering what to write about...

Catch you later.

Paul