Month: July 2009

Monday’s post Comic-con news

27 July 2009 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Doctor Who

Film

British TV

Canadian TV

US TV

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: The Companion Chronicles 3×10 – The Magician’s Oath

24 July 2009 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Magician's OathThere’s been a bit of a gap in my Companion Chronicles coverage. Sorry about that, but there’s far too many podcasts on my iPhone as it is, and the mainstream Doctor Who releases, which take priority anyway, seem to be getting longer and longer.

Anyway, I’ve listened to the last three of the third season and I’ll gradually be putting the reviews up over the next week. Woo hoo?

The Magician’s Oath features someone, like Sara Kingdom, who is only debatably a companion (the next one’s even more debatable but more on that next time). It’s Captain Mike Yates, the potential UNIT love interest for Jo Grant during the Jon Pertwee era, who went a bit looney after looking in a crystal and seeing some dinosaurs.

Here, though, he’s in fine form, telling us all how a PJ Hammond-esque magician was more than met the eye.

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Sitting Tennant

Friday’s Sitting Tennant (from Ms Rullsenberg): Something in an asylum

24 July 2009 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

Ms Rullsenberg's Sitting Tennant

Roll up, roll up. Come one, come all. It’s time for Friday’s Sitting Tennant. This week’s winner in the coconut shy of life that is pictures of Scottish actors on load-bearing surfaces is Ms Rullsenberg, who has successfully provided us with this piece of insanity to fend off Sister Chastity’s advances on her position. Where is it from, I wonder?

  1. Rullsenberg: 43.5
  2. Sister Chastity: 40
  3. Jaradel: 27.5
  4. Rosby: 2.5
  5. Amy: 2
  6. Persephone: 1

Meanwhile, over in witty captions, Toby returns to fight anew with a pun on cheeks which wins him this week’s 10 points. At least, I think it was a pun.

  1. Marie: 142.5
  2. Toby: 141.5
  3. Rullsenberg: 92
  4. Jane Henry: 70.5
  5. Persephone: 45.5
  6. Jaradel: 38.5
  7. Electric Dragon: 31
  8. Rev/Views: 25
  9. Scott 2: 14
  10. Joe, Sister Chastity: 10
  11. Scott: 3
  12. Aaron: 2
  13. almostwitty.com: 1
  14. Stu_N: 1

Remember, you can submit as many captions as you like for today’s picture, with the wittiest getting 10 points next Friday.

Got a picture of David Tennant sitting, lying down or in some indeterminate state in between? Then leave a link to it below or email me and if it’s judged suitable, it will appear in the “Sitting Tennant” gallery.

Every photo displayed on Monday (one per person who sends one in) gets a point, with a bonus point if it’s from the latest DT production; the best pic in the stash each week will appear on Friday and get three points.

You can also enter the witty and amusing captions league table by commenting on Friday’s Sitting Tennant photo, the best caption getting 10 points.

What have you been watching this week (w/e 24 July)?

24 July 2009 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

I think you know what I’m asking, by now.

This week, I caught up via the S4C web site with the first episode of the new series of Caerdydd – only five more to go. Perplexed by recasting of Adam and Siwan Morris’s new/old hairstyle, but enjoying its bleak moodiness and the dumbness of Natasha.

Keep forgetting what happened in previous week’s Royal Pains/Burn Notice, but I’d say Burn Notice is probably having its best season so far, while Royal Pains is proving the deserved hit of the summer. Burn Notice is really shaking up the formula for the better this year. I also have minimal recollection of this week’s Top Gear but I definitely remember laughing a lot.

Dragons’ Den is becoming quite fluffy this series. I think the ending of this week’s episode was probably the loveliest of all the series so far, with Peter Jones being ever so nice, and wasn’t that woman from Sutherland desperately impressive and clever?

The second episode of the second series of Leverage was basically just an advert for MMA fights, which even to my martial arts-loving heart, was way too much. The con was moderately cleverer than normal, was still too telegraphed to really be a surprise. And it’s interesting how Christian Kane’s character has been downgraded from ‘absolutely indestructible and incredible’ in the pilot to just ‘a pretty good fighter’ over the last two series.

I’ve still got Dark Blue and the last episode of Valentine to watch, as well as lots of Samantha Who?. Wish me luck then tell us all what you’ve been watching.

As always, no spoilers unless you’re going to use the <spoiler> </spoiler> tags, please

Technology

Elgato EyeTV Sat: the missing Freesat settings

24 July 2009 Rob Buckley 13 Comments

Elgato EyeTV Sat

For a big chunk of this week, I’ve been fighting to the death with an Elgato EyeTV Sat box. This is a nifty little gadget that lets you get Freesat on your Mac, including BBC HD in full high def quality, provided you

  1. Live in the UK
  2. Have a satellite dish and a spare lead from it somewhere
  3. Have £180 or so

The full review is going to be in MacFormat issue 212, so you’ll have to wait until then for my full review of it. However, one of the issues I had was actually tuning it to receive all the Freesat channels, since the auto-tune failed to pick up big chunks of them (including Channel 4, More4, E4, Film4, BBC3, BBC4, ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 as well as their time-shifted siblings). Elgato swear this shouldn’t be a problem, but it was.

Fortunately, after a bit of liaising with Elgato over the settings, I was able to get all the channels. Since Elgato doesn’t seem to want to publish them on its web site according to my exchanges with them – and since MacFormat simply won’t have the space to print all this – after the jump, all the settings an EyeTV Sat owner might need to get his or her box working properly.

I suspect I might get as many as 10 or even 20 hits on this page, but I figured it might be useful to some people. The rest of you? As you were.

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