Friday Night TV

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Right, for those of you still reading (guess we’re down into single figures here – if we were ever higher!) here’s a review of my little telly feast tonight.

We start off with ‘My Family’ (8:30, BBC1). Fairly average sitcom fare, tonight’s was not great really apart from Nic – always great to have around. The climax was especially weak with Ben being carried off in a coffin (couldn’t have seen that coming, could you? but all round still makes for fun viewing after a long week.

Next, ‘Friends’ (9:00, Channel 4). Now I’m not too familiar with the adoption system in the States, but how many people here get to give their future child’s biological mother a tour round New York (“I wanna do all the tourist things!”) followed by a nice little chat about the child’s ‘real’ father. Still, seeing Joey learn French was interesting…

OK, now we bring out the real stuff. ‘Have I Got News For You’ (9:30, BBC 1) Tonight’s TV gem was hosted by Des Lynam and Kilroy was on Paul’s team, leading to a rather embarrassing moment when the, um *cough* could be described as racist *cough* ex TV presenter had made a rather big fool of himself continuing his anti-Arab theme and had a row with Merton! You could actually see the looks on each regular’s faces – I think Kilroy has rivalled Piers Morgan for HIGNFY foolish appearances. Still, a man who respects Richard Desmond after his Nazi tirade deserves it…

Finally, ‘Darren Brown – Tricks of the Mind’ (10:00, Channel 4) was as intriguing as last week. The thing I love about his show is that he never for a minute pretends he is using supernatural powers, physic barriers or any other such rubbish. His use of science for great mind games is incredible, demonstrated when he asked the viewer to choose an object in their room and successfully predicted our heads would turn to look right. Brilliant!

Well that’s it, ‘you’ (whoever ‘you’ is, most likely no-one but I’d like to point out my blog has become one of my most visited pages in a few days) have a good weekend.

Cheerio!

Apologies if my last blog seemed rushed – that was because it was. I had to eat!

Now following my shopping spree in Brent Cross today I want to ask a simple question – why do WHSmith not accept Solo cards? HMV do. So do Dixons, and McDonalds. Not to mention Amazon and all the other major online shops.

So why does WHSmith refuse to drag themselves into the present day? I only shop there because they seem to be the only ones who stock magazines nowadays. Ah well, I guess it’s yet another reason why they are literally falling apart.

Talking of falling apart, did anyone else catch the Channel 4 documentary on Royal Mail yesterday? Quite astounding that their management seems completely incapable of sorting out the problems and generally gave the impression that the sorting offices are an uncontrolled riot filled with untrained staff, broken machines and credit card thieves. Their PRish statement at the end merely made my thankful email has rendered the post obsolete (apart from parcels, of course!)

The EU expands from 15 to 25 members. While some continue to insist we are going to be flooded by Estonians and that the Slovenians are putting the finishing touches on their invading army, those more level headed are grinning broadly at the idea of a united Europe, working together to help solve the problems in the world.

But if you really want to, go swot up on Michael Jackson’s court appearances.

George Bush said today that he was ‘disgusted’ over the Iraq torture images. This is “not how we do things” – clearly forgetting about our little dirty secret in Cuba.

OK – international news bulletin ends here.

And now the REALLY exciting news, the continuing stories about the new Doctor Who series with Chirstopher Eccelson! Check out www.doctorwhonews.com for more.

Yah! Exams are over and I don’t have to go back to school until Tuesday.

I’d also like to post a ‘shout out’ to Will, who told me doing this blog ‘shows I care’ about this website. Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but thanks all the same…

Yesterday I found a website owned by some loonies in the States which seemed to gather every bad idea every thought up and suggest them all. From why Harry Potter is an evil influence, to why AOL is the best ISP, why gay people should be burnt at the stake (obviously these people are quite unsure about themselves, judging by some of the other posts) and why you should need a licence for the internet.

There are others, many others, but one of my favourites is an article (I can’t believe this isn’t satire!) entitled “Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?” and gives some top tips to recognise hackers, such as ‘The safest policy is to limit your children’s access to the computer to a maximum of forty-five minutes each day,’ ‘Quake is an online virtual reality used by hackers,’ ‘If your son is using Quake, you should make him understand that this is not acceptable to you’ and my ultimate favourite:

“BSD, Lunix, Debian and Mandrake are all versions of an illegal hacker operation system, invented by a Soviet computer hacker named Linyos Torovoltos, before the Russians lost the Cold War. It is based on a program called “xenix”, which was written by Microsoft for the US government. These programs are used by hackers to break into other people’s computer systems to steal credit card numbers. They may also be used to break into people’s stereos to steal their music, using the “mp3” program. Torovoltos is a notorious hacker, responsible for writing many hacker programs, such as “telnet”, which is used by hackers to connect to machines on the internet without using a telephone.”

along with a more physical description

“If your son has undergone a sudden change in his style of dress, you may have a hacker on your hands. Hackers tend to dress in bright, day-glo colors. They may wear baggy pants, bright colored shirts and spiky hair dyed in bright colors to match their clothes. They may take to carrying “glow-sticks” and some wear pacifiers around their necks.”

OK, I’d admit – this is SATIRE. And it’s incredibly well written!

Just to make clear though, the rest of that website is mostly right wing trash. Entertaining until you realise they really are stuck in the middle ages.

Woo hoo! Just got my domain name registration letter from Nominet and printed off my certificate using their rather wonderful ‘registrant’s online’ service. I love Nominet – when you compare them to the US equivalent you can see why!