The BBC recently announced they'd obtained nine lost Doctor Who episodes of the Troughton era, thereby completing all six episodes of The Enemy of the World, and giving them five of the six episodes of The Web of Fear. ^_^ (Ep.3 of the latter remains just a sequence of still images. No pedantry, please =:) They've duly put them up for download on iTunes: Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear. The trailer for EotW (12MB) shows off just what a good job they've done of the restoration. (If you have a choice of iTunes accounts, both stories are cheaper in the US: $10 versus £10, for reasons known only unto Auntie)

I happened upon quite a fascinating discourse by Bertrand Russell the other day, titled In Praise of Idleness. It's not a flippant piece, as one might be tempted into thinking.

A music video I thought worth making note of: Kaly Live Dub "Allaxis". It's an animated production, telling a story in a way that might appeal to David Lynch fans, but in quite rapid style. Bonus points for incidental furriness. ^_^


What was originally a fan petition for a Dredd sequel has been officially adopted by 2000AD! (As an aside, here's a selection of before & after shots, showing the compositing involved in creating Mega-City One out of Johannesburg and Cape Town)

furtech pointed out an outstanding, beautiful webcomic, inspired by Finnish mythology: Redtail's Dream. (It recently ran an IndieGoGo fundraiser for $29,000, to fund a hardcover edition. It wound up raising $151,684)



The BBC's launched a beta of a new service in conjunction with YouTube, Spotify, and Deezer: "The aim of Playlister is to give audiences an easy way to find out what music is being played on BBC Radio networks (and, later, on BBC TV shows) and to listen to it again. From Wednesday, every song played on BBC radio will be made listed on the relevant programme website. Anyone with a BBC account can click an 'add this' button to add tracks to a personal playlist, and export them to a outside streaming service, such as YouTube, Deezer and Spotify, where they can be played back in full." I'll be particularly interested in the extension to TV, given there are so many occasions where an interesting track is used during a small part of some show, but, of course, never credited. True, there are services like Shazam, but I'd certainly find it more convenient to just hop online at some point, rather than have to quickly launch some app.

Apparently, Harrison Ford is "chatting" with Ridley Scott about a sequel to Blade Runner.

Sesame Workshop and CBeebies are going to co-produce a new show at the BBC's Salford center, starring Cookie Monster and Elmo as staff at high end hotel The Furchester. ^_^

There's a new Asterix book! But, not without some controversy - Goscinny left us some time ago, and Uderzo retired in 2011, so this has been entirely the work of a new pair of creators, with some supervision by Uderzo. The story also notes that Asterix will be the focus of an exhibition at the National Library of France, the first such for a comic work. I suppose I'll have to give it a try regardless - it'll be a good excuse to brush the dust off my French, too. ^_^ (Tintin and the Blue Lotus, f'rex, took forever to appear in English. Even then, as I recall, they irksomely translated "opium" as "drugs", a dreadful simplification)

relee's been wondering about the usefulness of LinkedIn. So: what's your experience been? Personally, I've had no use for them. It was fun reconnecting with folks, but as far as future employment prospects have gone, it's been a zero. But am I unusual? (Okay, in this regard) The capper came with their proud recommendations of job prospects, which usually had only one common factor - the location of my first job. Not a bad thing, per se, except LinkedIn believes that if you've had a job in a given city, you're thereafter qualified for every other field, providing it's in that location.

I recently traded in the Sigma 2x TC, as I didn't feel it was really a high quality combination with the 120-300mm f/2.8 OS. In its place arrived a shiny new Sigma 30mm f/1.4 (not the new "Art" model, but the previous one), as I didn't have any wide aperture lens for close work. A lens as bright as that makes for some fabulously shallow depth of field, if desired, and the ability to shoot in quite modest light, as demonstrated ably by this delicious example of belly pork from a few weeks ago, at one of my local favorite pubs. =:9