Masterful

This weekend's Doctor Who was, quite frankly, the best episode since the new series has returned to our screens.

I was literally blown away with the reveal that an old enemy of the Doctor's has returned to the series and, despite knowing The Master would return (for the forums are littered with spoilers like this), I thought the way he was brought back was absolutely fabulous. In previous series they have left clues throughout the entire series as to how the show would end, and this series was no different. However, in previous years the "clues" have been as unsubtle as a brick to the head (with phrases like "Bad Wolf" and "Torchwood" emblazened throughout the shows leading up to the finalé). This year was so much more subtle and the final reveal, as a result, was so much more of a payoff than we've ever previously had. It was also a bit of genius casting to get Jacobi and Simm in as the Doctor's nemesis. All in all it was brilliant television and I am REALLY looking forward to the show's season finalé now.

In other news, my kids were very generous this year for Father's Day, and have bought me tickets to see the "One Man Star Wars" show at the Lowry next week, which has gone down a storm off Broadway and at the Edinburgh fringe. Cannot wait. Bit of a Sci-Fi geek triumphant weekend all in all. Marvellous.

Sweet Dreams..

I have started dreaming again - yay!
Dreams have been noticeably absent (well, proper lucid ones that you can actually remember, anyway) in the last year or so mainly because of a small squeaky daughter of mine waking up in the night. It's taken her the best part of twelve months to begin sleeping the night through you see (mainly due to the fact that she has always been quite little), and so sustained periods of sleep have been few and far between (certainly without the aid of alcohol anyway).

And it's a shame that the dreams have been absent, as my imagination certainly has quite a large special-effects budget on any given night, providing photo-realistic images of everything from the surreal to the apocalyptic. My sub-consious really does pull no punches when given the opportunity to flex its imaginative muscles.

So even if they've started slow (last night's dream seemed to be concerned with the inability to get served with three pints of lager in the space of a lunchtime), I look forward to the Hollywood-esque effects-driven spectaculars that I've had in the past, as sweet dreams are made of these..

Cool

As well as being a fantastic racer, Forza 2 also allows you to add your own custom designs to your motor. Now, most likely due to copyright reasons, you cannot just upload a jpeg, but rather you must create your designs yourself, building them up from a number of basic shapes. You can apply up to a 1000 layers to each side of the car, and that will allow for some fairly groovy images (in fact if you do a search on some of the Forza forums you will see that some really talented indiciduals have already adorned their cars with images of the Simpsons, Family Guy, etc, etc).



Now, although not being abundently artistically talented or having a huge amount of time on my hands, I'd thought I'd have a go. And you can see the results, my Nine Inch Nails Golf Gti. Looks pretty cool I think..

Of course, that's not the main point of the game, and Forza is still proving to be an excellent racer (although I hate having to drive American muscle-cars, they are unwieldy beasts that cannot corner for shit!).

Saying that, even in European cars, it's still important to brake for corners..
Otherwise this happens:

Lost And Found

So.
Is your mind still reeling from the season 3 series finalé of "Lost" last Sunday (or earlier if you watched it using the power of BitTorrent)?
Was a bit good wasn't it?

If you're still trying to piece together all the pieces of the puzzle shown so far (what is the black smoke? what is the purpose of the Dharma Initiative? Why are there Polar Bears on the Island, etc, etc), then you might want to point you browser at the Lostpedia (a Wikipedia just about Lost). It has all of the current threads, plots, subplots and theories covered.. however it is full of spoilers if you're not up to date - so be warned!!!

Anyway, check it out, there are some answers there to be sure!!