Daily Archives: Monday, 17th March 2008
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1
Funny, isn’t it? Web browser betas are like buses: you wait for ages, then two come along at once. Not only is Firefox building up to a new version, but quite remarkably, Microsoft are working on a new version of Internet Explorer. The first beta of IE8 is available now. This version is intended for the use of web developers to play with, and make sure their sites work with the new browser.
I installed it on my little Toshiba laptop, and so far, I have to say that it’s working nicely. This site appears exactly as intended, which presumably means I’ve done something right. Sites that have adopted assorted tweaks, cheats, hacks and other such things to make things display as intended on earlier versions of IE are quite likely to crash and burn quite horribly unless some changes are made.
By default, IE8 will behave as a standards-compliant browser, in much the same way as Firefox, Safari and Opera. Users can click a button to make it act like older versions when browsing sites that are broken. This is a major change for Microsoft, and a change from what they said they would do initially – the original idea was to make the default behaviour like IE7, and would require site developers to code their sites specially to make IE8 act like a modern browser. For what it’s worth, my opinion is that this change is a good one, and makes IE8 a much more useful piece of software.
For a first beta, this is good stuff – even things like Outlook Web Access (the webmail interface to Microsoft Exchange Server) work perfectly without any apparent oddness. It’s good to see that IE7 really was just a first step towards making a better browser.
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Firefox 3 Beta 4
Firefox 3 should be released some time in the next couple of months. I’ve been playing with the recent betas on a Windows machine, where they’ve been very well behaved so far. So, I decided to bite the metaphorical bullet and install the latest version on the Mac. First impressions are good. For a start, it works. Most of my preferred extensions are working, though some needed the usual edit treatment, and one made Firefox cry (that was Colorzilla, which presumably does something FF3 doesn’t like). I’m doing without the Web Developer Toolbar for now, as I’ve seen reports that it’s a bit broken.
The developers have made a major effort to make Firefox look like it belongs on whatever platform it’s running on – certainly the Mac version now looks nicely grey, and has all those pretty rounded controls that native applications have. I don’t care all that much about that sort of thing, but I think it will help make FF more attractive to Mac users who have never tried anything other than Safari.
The address bar now comes with added magic. Quite apart from the now usual auto-completion of URLs you’ve typed before, it now automagically searches your Bookmarks and history for matching sites. There’s now a nifty little star icon in the address bar – click it once to bookmark the current page, then click it again if you want to move the bookmark into a relevant folder.
I’ll be playing with the beta a lot over the next few weeks, and I’ll report any oddness, or indeed any cool things that I discover. With the usual Dire Warnings about using betas[1], you can download it for Windows, Mac or Linux in your choice of language from this page.
And once I pop over to another computer, I’ll have another browser beta to talk about…
[1] May crash, eat your bookmarks or kick the cat
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The Making of Doctor Who (1972)
I mentioned in my review of The Sea Devils that the DVD included a complete book in PDF format. Well, I just had a look and I’m really happy about it! It’s called The Making of Doctor Who, and I actually had it when I was a kid! Now I haven’t seen the book in, I dunno, must be well over 20 years, but there were bits I remembered – it has documents allegedly from the Time Lord archives about the Doctor’s trial, memos from the Brigadier, and loads of background on the history and development of the series over its first nine years.
If you have the DVD, make sure you put it in your computer and have a look at the extra stuff. The old Radio Times listings are worth a quick look, too.
Doctor Who – Beneath the Surface
It’s become something of a tradition for the first Doctor Who DVD release each year to be a themed box set. We’ve had the set with the first stories, the set with the transition from Tom Baker to Peter Davision, and now a slightly different set. Rather than consecutive stories, this one contains all three stories featuring the Silurians and the Sea Devils, and it’s something of a mixed bag, as we shall see. As usual with sets, I’ll deal with each in turn…
Doctor Who and the Silurians
Notable for being the only story to have “Doctor Who and…” in the title, due to a mistake made by the people doing the title cards, this was the second story in Jon Pertwee’s first series, shown between January and March 1970. As with most of that year’s stories, it’s a rather long seven episode affair. The fun starts with inexplicable power losses at an underground research centre, which UNIT and its new scientific adviser[1] are called in to investigate. It gets even more entertaining when what appears to be a dinosaur is seen in the underground tunnels. Then we learn that the work at the research centre has awakened an ancient race of intelligent reptiles who ruled the Earth millions of years ago. They went into hibernation when it appeared that an asteroid was going to collide with the Earth. As it happened, the asteroid took up a new job as the Moon rather than destroying the planet, and in the absence of the reptiles, humans evolved and took over. Now the reptiles are awake, and they want to take their planet back from those nasty apes[2]. Of course, none of this makes any sense historically, and the label “Silurians” is completely bonkers, as it refers to a completely different geological era, but we’ll pass over that…
It all gets a big complicated. Factions develop in the reptile ranks – they have a Cunning Plan to destroy humanity with a virus, the Doctor wants to negotiate, the Brigadier isn’t so keen, and much fun is had by all. In the end, not at all surprisingly, the reptiles are sealed in forever when the Brigadier uses explosives. The Doctor isn’t too happy about that…
The seven episodes are spread over two discs, with some quite tasty special features:
- What Lies Beneath: A moderately serious documentary about (and I quote) “the socio-political climate of the late 1960s helped shape this Doctor Who story”.
- Going Underground: A look at the problems of shooting caves and monsters in the studio
- Now and then: They really should do more of these – a look at how the locations used have changed over the years
- Colour Silurian Overlay: Nice geeky stuff – how the story was restored from a combination of black and white film prints and American Betamax recordings, together with some damn clever video processing toys.
- And of course, those production subtitles
The Sea Devils
This one was first shown between February and April 1972, and again stars Jon Pertwee, now accompanied by Katy Manning as Jo Grant. Following the events of The Daemons[3], the Master (Roger Delgado) has been imprisoned on a remote island. The Doctor and Jo pay a visit, and find that he’s apparently a reformed character, and if you believe that, you’ll believe anything. Odd things are happening. Ships are being lost, and there are reports of sea monsters in the area.
Yes, the Master is once again up to no good. He’s collaborating with some more of those ancient reptiles – aquatic ones this time, and just like the last lot, they want the planet back from those nasty mammals. Lots of fun follows, made more realistic than normal for the period, thanks to the full cooperation of the Royal Navy, who provided men and machines for the fight scenes. Good stuff, and again the Doctor tries to find a peaceful solution.
Extras this time include:
- Hello Sailor! – Cast and crew talk about making the story
- Amateur cine film made by one of the sailors who appeared as an extra
- Production subtitles
- Some nice stuff in PDF format, including a 1972 book
Warriors of the Deep
This one was first shown in 1984, and stars Peter Davison as the Doctor, Janet Fielding as Tegan and Mark Strickson as Turlough. It’s the weakest story in the set, but despite its flaws, it’s worth watching at least once. The Tardis arrives at an undersea base in the 21st century, when the world is divided into two (undefined) factions, with the threat of war always close.
The real trouble starts when the base is approached by a fancy submarine, which the Doctor recognises as a “Siluruan battle cruiser”, or some such. This presumably means he’s had another meeting with Earth’s ancient reptiles which we haven’t seen. Either that or the writers decided to ignore silly little matters like continuity. The “Silurians” have some friends with them – Sea Devil warriors, which leads to the fun question of why they would refer to themselves by a name that wasn’t even mentioned previously, but never mind…
Perhaps the best bit is the brilliantly realised monster that the reptiles send in to the base. The Myrka is a fearsome beast with a very nasty electrical charge. Unfortunately, it’s not an animated model, or a clever bit of CGI. No. It’s two guys in an unconvincing suit. Two guys whose normal job was playing a pantomime horse. Oh dear.
All of this would be quite bad enough, but there’s trouble on the base – there are agents of the opposing faction present, and they’re trying to sabotage things. In the end, after the Doctor’s attempts at negotiation with the Silurian leader (who he recognsies) fail, the only way to save the world is to kill the reptiles with a suitable gas that just happens to be available in large quantities. And at the end, the only survivors are the Doctor and his companions. A bit sad really, in several ways…
Special features include:
- The Depths: All the usual suspects recall making the story. I’m sure some of them have been trying to forget…
- They Came From Beneath The Sea: A small feature about making the monsters. Oh dear.
- Science in Action: This is nice – a clip from a BBC Schools programme in which visual effects designer Matt Irvine talks about the techniques and materials used.
- And those production subtitles
[1] That’s the Doctor, do keep up 
[2] That would be us
[3] Overdue for the DVD treatment…
Related posts
Doctor Who – Planet of Evil
Oh fun. This one, first shown in 1975, stars Tom Baker as the Doctor and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith.
This was the period in which the series was borrowing a lot from horror movies, but in this case the most obvious source was Forbidden Planet. And if you’re going to borrow ideas, you might as well borrow from the best.
The Tardis picks up a distress call from Zeta Minor, a planet “on the edge of the know universe”[1], where we find the ever-popular base under siege. Some unseen thing is killing members of the expedition one by one. The Doctor and Sarah arrive at the same time as the rescue team, and quite naturally fall under suspicion. It seems that Zeta Minor is on a boundary between our universe and one of, yes, it’s anti-matter again! Maybe someone should have told Omega about it, it would have saved him a lot of bother with the Time Lords…
As with most Tom Baker stories, it’s lots of fun, and well-worth watching. The jungle sets are particularly well done, especially when you consider the minimal budget…
Special features include:
- A Darker Side: A “making of” documentary, featuring most of the usual suspects.
- Planetary Performance: Another look at the making of the story, from the actors’ point of view
- Those lovely production subtitles
[1] Yes, this is a silly notion, but never mind..
Ian McNabb – How We Live
Ooooh, this has been sitting on my pile of things to talk about for months. So long in fact, that my initial comments about it being only available from those nice Townsend Records people are no longer accurate. Yes, you can get this one from Amazon, and you really should. If you’re not familiar with Ian McNabb[1], this is as good a starting point as any. It’s the man himself, solo, in front of his home crowd in Liverpool. Most of the songs are familiar from his earlier solo albums, but there’s also a cover of a John Lennon song, Steel and Glass and a new song.
Proceedings open with a fine performance of They Settled For Less Than They Wanted, with some nice audience participation, followed by an excellent version of The Absentee, running through a great selection of songs and ending with May You Always.
Ian is in fine voice throughout, and the sound quality is excellent. Buy it now! You know you want to!
[1] And you really should be, you know
Doctor Who – Time Flight & Arc of Infinity
Yes, I’m way behind with my DVD reviews again, but I’ll make a start today, and see how far I get…
This was a special double release of the end of the 1982 series and the beginning of the 1983 series. The “theme” such as is, is Tegan’s temporary departure. anyway, here’s the run-down on the two stories in the box:
Time-Flight
Oh dear. This is really not Doctor Who at its best. The plot involves the Doctor (Peter Davison) together with Tegan and Nyssa, arriving (accidentally, of course) at Heathrow Airport, where they soon get involved in a mystery: a Concorde has disappeared in flight. Naturally, the Doctor goes along with a typically bonkers plan of flying an identical plane along the same route, which ends up along with the first plane in the deep past. There, they discover a suitably mysterious sorcerer, who quite naturally turns out to be the Master in one of his typically bonkers disguises. After all the usual fun and games, everyone gets back to the present, after the quite unlikely sight of a Concorde taking off from a very rough surface…
Back at Heathrow, Tegan decides to stay on and return to her job as a flight attendant, but changes her mind just in time to see the Tardis dematerialise. Oooh, cliffhanger!!
To compensate for the dodginess of the story, there are some decent extra features, including:
- Mouth on legs: Janet Fielding talking about her time playing Tegan
- Deleted scenes and out-takes
- The ever-popular production subtitles
Arc of Infinity
This was the opening story of the 20th anniversary season, in which the production team made a conscious decision to bring back enemies from the past. For this story, the lucky returning villain was Omega, first seen in the 10th anniversary story, The Three Doctors. Despite having been trapped in his anti-matter universe last time, he’s back! This time, his plan is to cross over to the normal matter universe by bonding with a Time Lord. And of course, the Time Lord in question just happens to be the Doctor.
For reasons that probably make sense if you look at it the right way, in order to transfer, Omega needs to make use of something called the Arc of Infinity, whcih just happens to stop off in Amsterdam, where assorted events lead to Tegan turning up and meeting the Doctor again[1]. The Time Lords are a bit concerned about Omega trying to get through, so they summon the Doctor to Gallifrey and, err, sentence him to death to make sure Omega can’t get through. Seems a bit drastic, but there you go. For added fan fun, watch out for Maxil, played by future Doctor Colin Baker. It all winds up with Omega managing to arrive in the world of normal matter as a complete replica of the Doctor (including the outfit…), and a lovely confrontation between the two. And after all that fun, Tegan rejoins the Tardis crew.
Overall, it’s a much better effort than Time-Flight. Good fun, and nice to see some location filming. Special features include:
- Anti-matter from Amsterdam: The usual “making of” documentary, with some Amsterdam scenes.
- The Omega Factor: A look at the character of Omega, featuring actors and writers
- Those ubiquitous production subtitles
[1] Resolving that cliffhanger…
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More changes!
You know how it is when you start tweaking things, and then you can’t seem to stop? Well, I seem to be having one of those days today…
Observant readers[1] will have noticed that the header at the top of the page has changed. Not only have I changed the font to something more silly, but I have reinstated a long-lost feature: randomly changing headers are back! If you have a long memory, you might recall that a previous design involved ever-changing header pictures. For one reason or another, I dropped that in favour of clearer text and a small picture, and dropped the randomness. And as the files for the random changing thingy are, err, somewhere[2], and the plugin is no longer available from the author’s site, I couldn’t easily bring it back.
But I was inspired to change the header logo when I looked at Losing it[1] in Safari. For reasons best known to Apple, despite having the same colour values, the background of the image didn’t match the overall header background[3]. Not a huge mismatch, but enough to look a bit naff, so I decided to redo the header images with transparent backgrounds. While I was at it, I created a few more and changed the text to the new style.
Once I’d done that, I decided to revisit the randomness question. A bit of searching eventually led me to a script written by Matt Mullenweg, master of all things WordPressy. All I had to do was put the script and my new logos in a suitable folder inside my WordPress theme, and edit the stylesheet to look at the script instead of an individual image file. Yes, CSS doesn’t care if you tell it to look at a PHP file instead of an image file. The script does its scripty thing and provides an image.
The advantage of this method over the old plugin is that I don’t have to tell anything which images to use – all I have to do is add images to the folder and they’ll be used. And I can easily remove any I don’t want to use any more.
[1] Other than those who stay safely in their RSS reader, that is
[2] Possibly lost in the sad hard disk incident of 2007
[3] It matches in Firefox and Internet Explorer, so this would seem to be Safari oddness
This is the last one!
As I mentioned last week, I’m turning off the email updates service I’ve been running here. If you subscribe to that, this is the last post you will be notified about.
If you’d still like daily updates by email, you can sign up for Feedburner updates on the Subscribe page. Or you can subscribe to the RSS feed in your choice of reader from this Feedburner produced page. Come to think of it, you can sign up for the email update there, if you prefer.
For current email subscribers, I can confirm that I will delete your addresses from my database, and you won’t be contacted again.
Another small change
Up till now, anyone who reads this site through the RSS feed has been deprived. Quite shockingly, they’ve been able to read my reports, but the actual weight figures were hidden from their view unless they clicked through to read the post on the site. As I’ve been getting into the habit of using feeds myself recently, and I know how much more convenient it is to read everything in one place, I decided to do something about this.
The first thing I did was move the weight figure from the heading of each post into the body. About 15 seconds later, I realised that while this does make the figure more prominent and easier to read, it would have no effect whatsoever on the feed, which only looks at the main content, and totally ignores custom fields, such as the one I use for the weight figure.
Now I could have changed how I post things – maybe put the weight at the top of each post instead of in a custom field, but before doing that, I had a quick search. And soon enough, I found a useful plugin written by Kafkaesqui. It just needed a quick edit to make it look for the field I wanted, and a minor formatting change, then I uploaded it and activated it in the usual way.
I’ve had a quick look at the feed, and sure enough it now displays my weight figure after the text of the post.
