craigoxbrow

Greetings from new computer! I now have internet, due to having thought to try the non-USB option at the back of my modem.

Star Trek is 45 today. They even found a nice thing to say about Voyager.

Meanwhile, a group in the UK is trying to re-contact the British satellite Prospero sixteen years after the original programme ended. Look at us, we're a space power. :D

( Two rather different experiences )

So, yes, lessons learned... pack a lunch if you're going to a foreign city where you don't know anyone, try and go broke in the city with lots of free museums and a British embassy rather than lots of $20-at-the-door museums, expect hotel quality to vary not by price but by location as I was in a fantastic hotel then an okay hotel and then a hole for about $150 a night each, have phone numbers handy in case of emergency, buy a robust suitcase rather than a cheap one, spare a day or two before a major event in a new timezone for jetlag and/or food poisoning, and don't trust credit cards at all.

Happy birthday to Joss Whedon.

And Alan Turing as well.

Data recovery was somewhat successful. The main stuff I seem to have lost is the stuff that was partitioned separately on the main drive to keep it safe. So I've lost the original Corel files for a couple years' worth of stuff like the TWH DVD boxes, pictures downloaded from the net for gaming, all the music I moved out of "My Music" - which, naturally, copied over just fine...

Looks like I'm good for photos and Word stuff, which is the main thing. (And I can't do anything with Corel files anyway unless I find or re-buy the software package, since they don't copy program files.)

The new external drive being arranged so it has a hundred numbered folders called "Found", which are all empty, seems to have been designed just to worry me for no good reason. Thanks guys...

So, after dozens of fruitless miles to and from Livingstone, I got a new computer at Kinnaird Park which I could have gotten last week.

There was some panic regarding the monitor doing nothing despite being connected until the discovery that it could be connected to a different port with the addition of a widget. This seems strange to me.

There was some aggravation about not being allowed to download something as an administrator until I discovered that right-clicking magically proves I am one. This seems strange to me.

There was some shouting at the broadband installer as it crashed and refused to find the modem, and then the discovery that the computer had already found it despite not reaching the end of the program. This seems strange to me.

But here I am. In two hours flat.

Now to hand the old hard drive over to the local data recovery guy and hope for the best...

Forty years ago, a human being set foot on the Moon.

It's been more than thirty-six years since the last time.

It was all Kennedy and LBJ's idea, but the only world leader to actually send people to the moon was Nixon.

Can we maybe do something about that, someday?

Not about haircuts or arts festivals infested with comedy, it's JJ Abrams's new show about the FBI responding to a mysterious secret organisation, or something, unleashing superscience on the world for fun and possibly profit. It's like the "guy freezing solid while still alive" episode of Alias season four made into a series, basically.

It features Anna Torv (apparently a reverse-engineered second-generation Cate Blanchett) as the heroic Scully type Muldering into every threat, and Joshua Jackson as... basically Pacey.

Despite starting with a planeful of people melting, it doesn't really get going until Denethor arrives as Pacey's estranged mad scientist father, suggests a completely demented idea in a way that implies even he knows how absurd it is, and then cheerfully exclaims "let's make some LSD!" when he gets the go-ahead. He at least will be entertaining.

Oh, and there's a cyberarm for no real reason. And floating location tags that act like they're actually in the scene.

We'll see. It took Alias three or four episodes to reveal just how thunderingly insane it really was, so give it time.

Well, now we know.

(What's the betting someone firing it up says "chevron one encoded"?)