wee doors banging

In previous instalments of this blog, I’ve questioned the apparent lack of science fiction television programmes aimed at adults made in the UK, singling out the evergreen Doctor Who as an example of such a show that is aimed squarely at children and teenagers. Having said that though, the fifth series of the new Who has just finished its run and I must admit that this particular adult enjoyed it very much.

Doctor Who returned to the nation’s screens recently for the fifth series of the modern (post 2005) era. A new lead actor, Matt Smith, plays the eleventh incarnation of The Doctor and the appropriately titled first episode, “Eleventh Hour”, has been well received by critics and the series’ many fans alike.

That’s all very nice, but the return of Who has left me wondering, where’s the grown up science fiction on UK television?

I like to keep abreast of new technology, and recently I came across some new research from a group of networking boffins based in Silicone Valley that outlined a relatively simple plan to enlarge the volume of data the internet can carry.

The computing pioneers of the 1940s could not have envisaged the recent surge of bandwidth heavy internet applications such as music and video streaming, online gaming, social networking and so on. The binary systems they invented, while adequate for the requirements of the past, are creaking at the seams under these modern workloads.

The new research describes a plan to break away from the outdated and limiting two-value binary principles, by adopting instead three valued trinary logic.

The Amiga Revival Fair 2009 was held on Saturday 12th December 2009 in Enfield. Organised by the Amiga North Thames user group, it featured a number of Amiga hardware and software exhibitors as well as demonstrations of new products (yes there are a few!) and games competitions. I couldn’t make it, but a fellow Northern Ireland based Amiga user did and this is what he found.

A bit of geeky fun cropped up on Twitter a few days ago in the form of the #songsincode hashtag game, the purpose of which was to rewrite popular songs in the form of programming code and still have the song be recognisable (I said it was geeky). I’ve listed all my entries below, written in a Java-like code. Can you name the songs?

On Saturday 13th June 2009 I got up just before 5:00 a.m. and fired up my web browser. Surprisingly enough, this isn’t what I usually do at that time on a Saturday morning. The reason? Facebook launched it’s username vanity URLs at 5:01 a.m. BST (12:01 a.m. EDT) on Saturday, June 13 and I wanted to grab mine.

Here’s a little verse to recite for all those struggling to develop websites to work Microsoft’s latest and “greatest” web browser, Internet Explorer 8.

Our Browser, Which art after IE7…

Googling myself is something I do from time to time and, from time to time, it turns up a surprise. This time, the surprise turned up was that one of the search results was a link to a Times Online article that mentions my earlier post, “25 Random Things About Me”.

This weekend saw the return of the highest rated comedy show in BBC history. Space based cult sitcom Red Dwarf returned to UK screens after a nine year hiatus, not on the BBC as before, but on satellite channel Dave which has resurrected the show for a three part special, Red Dwarf: Back To Earth.

When we last saw the Boys From The ‘Dwarf back in 1999, they were in trouble. Red Dwarf itself was being consumed by metal eating space bacteria and on the verge of breaking apart. The crew had abandoned ship, our heroes Lister, Cat, Kryten and Kochanski had fled to a mirror universe leaving Rimmer trapped on the burning mothership with the Grim Reaper and a vending machine with a bad attitude.

How did they get out of that one?

Originally written by Rupert Goodwin, I first read this excellent ode in an issue of The Home Computer Course back in the 1980′s. The C programming language is just as popular today as it was back then, and this poem is just as funny too.