Outpost Gallifrey - Interviews has an interview with Lloyd Rose, upcoming author of The City of the Dead, the first Doctor Who novel entirely written by an American.

I'll be interested to see how it'll handle a southern setting, as it's one part of the US that Doctor Who has always handled poorly -- if you've listened to Minuet in Hell you'll know that, or if you've watched Silver Nemesis. It's a part of the country that's just so easy to get wrong, especially if you're from the UK. I know I'd get it wrong, as I'm about as Minnesotan (and Midwestern) as it gets. (Well, I could be a bit more -- I don't sound like I'm from the movie Fargo , but still :) )

A List Apart: Smart Tags
An interesting article about the whole IE 6 Smart Tags thing.

I'm generally pretty pragmatic when it comes to OS issues. I'm skeptical about what Microsoft does a lot of the time, but I'm pragmatic enough now that I know that they control the world as well, and there's not much I (or any mere mortal) can do about it. Most of my post-college career has been on Microsoft platforms, even when I've been doing Java projects.

I'm not sure smart tags are a good thing or a bad thing really. But I think they could definitely be problematic, and could be used with melicious intent -- not necessarily by Microsoft, but by the same sorts of people that sent out trojan horses written in VB Script that accessed Outlook's address book, or whatever else.

But Microsoft can't -- and shouldn't -- be trusted too much. They are so big that they are like a government, or perhaps even more so. They're massive, and there are very few computers out there that don't have the hand of Gates somewhere in them. I don't know what the solution is to it though either -- naively saying that everyone should become a penguin is tempting, but I'm still unconvinced. My thought is that Linux is great if you want to have the hood up on your car all the time, tinkering around with it -- but most people are using computers because they want to do other things, like send e-mail, balance checkbooks, read webpages, surf the internet, play video game -- whatever-- and not play around with the OS all the time. (Yes, Apple is good for making computers for "the rest of us" -- but the numbers say that people haven't gone that direction very often either....and Apple has been around a long, long time, and I don't see that changing.)

Doctor Who: The Year of Intelligent Tigers: a cover and description has been posted for the latest Doctor Who novel by Kate Orman

In non-Doctor Who reading, I finished Lyda Morehouse's Archangel Protocol, and I'll probably write something for the MISFITS site about it at some point. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Of course, this is the first weekend in a long time where I haven't had much to do, and so I spent most of the day sleeping away, when I really need to do a whole lot of cleaning around my place, as it's a disaster. It's just well over due for a lot of cleaning.

I finally had a chance to listen to the Death Comes To Time trailer. Obviously, it's somewhat a non-event to have yet another Doctor Who audio, what with Big Finish releasing one every month. But the Big Finish casts are fairly small, where it looks like Death Comes to Time has a bigger cast. (And Stephen Fry.) So this sounds bigger -- a bigger finish, perhaps :)

I just hope the story stays online for a while so I can hear it....

Shh. I've been playing around learning php, and I came up with a little web app based around the CONvergence Panels that lets you check the panels that you are interested in, and then it displays a report of only the panels you selected. I might enhance it further....

BBC News | SCI/TECH | Sexiest geek declared
Ah, I'd never have a chance :)

I took my MISFITS Favorite Comedy List and put it on amazon as a Listmania

Salon.com Technology | Google à go-go.
I've thought Google was the best search engine for quite some time -- I especially like searching for those that link to a site and for those that are similar to a site. because you discover some interesting things that way.

Salon.com Technology | End of an affair?
I haven't gotten a TiVo yet -- I've managed to cut back my TV watching a great deal, and I imagine I'd spend my time eliminating shows I don't want to spend the time to watch...and this article makes me a little nervous as well. I don't mind much if TiVo knows what shows I watch -- in the end, I think it's a good thing, as that information means the shows I watch have more of a chance to stay on the air. Though a few people I know swear by them, and it does seem to be a way to make sure I catch shows that I'd watch on a whim, but wouldn't plan ahead and tape. (And I'm taping fewer and fewer shows; especially if they all come out on DVD. I'm counting on them releasing all of Buffy and Angel, for example...

Neil Gaiman says that he got Tori Amos's new album Strange Little Girls. I've been less enthusiastic about Tori after her first two albums, but she's still a favorite, so I'm excited that she has a new album out and will get it immediately. (I'm far enough behind in my reading that I probably won't get Neil's new book American Gods until it comes out in paperback though.)

I stained my deck today, as the weather was beautiful for it.

Today's Music: Crowded House, Anoraknophobia, Rumours

Today's Reading: Archangel Protocol

Some funny signs -- good for a laugh!

Today's thought: what percentage of e-mails have a subject line of "Hey"?

Home Page - Welcome to The Digital Bits!
looks like a good DVD site. I think I've looked at it before, but not recently....

Star Wars: Episode I | DVD: The Wait is Over
Yeah, I'll buy it again. Actually, I think it's better than a lot of people say it is -- it's better than Jedi, actually. It's no Empire or A New Hope, and Jar Jar is a bit much.

(They don't have the pricing on amazon yet, but they will, I'm sure..)

Neil Gaiman has his new website on line as American Gods will be out soon. I'm way behind in reading his books. It was so much easier when he was a comics writer!

Welcome to Software Methods and Tools
looks like an interesting software development site. (from http://www.camworld.com, which also looks interesting)

sometime I should let loose my rant on the state of software, os preferences, and the like...

I was a bit bored, so I added my
Favorite SF Books and
Favorite Movies to the amazon listmania thing. They're pretty much the same links I did on the MISFITS site, but not identical...

News Askew - Your Daily Source For All Things Askew! said that Kevin Smith was in town last week filming some of the Prince celebrations for a documentary. Too bad I missed seeing him back in Mallrats land.... :)

(I've got a copy of the enhanced Dogma release on pre-order, can't wait for it...)

Salon.com People | The Python returns
Holy Grail re-release? Yes, I can go with that.

Kiplinger.com Calculators: Your Rebate
I'm not sure if I'm happy about the politics of the whole rebate thing -- I think we might end up paying for being so enthusiastic with the cuts in the years to come -- but if you want to know how much you'll get back and when, you can find out...

Making Light has some good "history of science fiction/fandom" type links, or at least does right now, they might scroll back as time goes on,but it'll still be an interesting read, I'm sure...

Salon.com Books | Once upon a dimension
I was sent a copy of Flatterland for the MISFITS site to review a couple of weeks ago. I haven't had a chance to read it yet -- though since I read Flatland as a junior high school math geek, it's very much on my to-read pile. And Salon has an article about it as well, which is cool...

What Peter Gabriel is doing these days...
But will he actually get a new album out? :)


Though he does contribute to the new Afro Celt Sound System album, which comes out soon.

I was linked to on www.popculturejunkmail.com within the last day or so. It had a disturbing link to Timothy McVeigh's Death Certificate. And lots of other interesting links as well....

I saw The Band Wagon (1953) at a friend's house, it was a fun little movie musical.

Oh -- I read in some e-mails on a mailing list I'm on from Gary Russell, one of the producers of the Big Finish Doctor Who audios that Anthony Stewart Head wasn't up for the Master, but that they would certainly like to have him do something for them. And it was reported a while back that they considered him for the very Buffy like (and disappointing) Minuet in Hell, but now that ASH will apparently be in England more, I'd say the chance of him appearing in an audio is more likely...

Well past time for me to get to sleep.

Steve Jackson Games: Chez Dork
I think I'm going to have to get this one....