Sunday, December 11, 2005
SeeHearReadDo
Greetings my favoured children. I'm taking a well-earned break in the middle of Christmas card sending (thanks to Patrick for his one which turned up a few days ago). I feel like I've spent a lot of the last few days reloading music onto my iPod after taking the now foolish decision to start it all again. For some reason, probably piracy, you can't copy music from iPods back to computers, so before thinking that it might be sensible to just not worry about it, I can after all reach all my CDs from where I sit in front of my computer, I decided to wipe it and start again.
I've also organised myself with my podcasts. At the moment I'm getting the New Scientist 'cast, pleasant enough but hardly vital, Ricky Gervais on The Guardian's dime, Koan Bremner's Crossover, the BBC's 'In Our Time' podcasting experiment, Small World, which does suprise me when I find an interview with someone who runs an ice-cream shop near MIT to be really interesting, Gendertalk, which I've listened to for years. But Escape Pod is currently my favourite, a weekly half-hour of science-fiction, really beautifully done.
The odd thing about Lord of the Rings that I've found is that, since the movies, I've found it really difficult to read the books at night. I don't think I've found the books scary since I was about 10 and reading them for the first time, and I didn't find the movies frightening, except perhaps for that bit where Bilbo freaks out in Episode One. But book three, when Frodo and Sam are struggling across Mordor towards Mount Doom, I found that really hard to read the first time I read it post-movies, probably because it brought to mind those images from the last film. Peter Jackson said that there were lots of changes made that people didn't really notice, like the middle-aged Frodo of the books becomming young whipersnapper Elijah Wood in the films. Now it's difficult to read the books and remember Tolkien's intention was an older type of character.
The proper trailer for the Christmas Doctor Who episode is up at last. Rock!
I've also organised myself with my podcasts. At the moment I'm getting the New Scientist 'cast, pleasant enough but hardly vital, Ricky Gervais on The Guardian's dime, Koan Bremner's Crossover, the BBC's 'In Our Time' podcasting experiment, Small World, which does suprise me when I find an interview with someone who runs an ice-cream shop near MIT to be really interesting, Gendertalk, which I've listened to for years. But Escape Pod is currently my favourite, a weekly half-hour of science-fiction, really beautifully done.
The odd thing about Lord of the Rings that I've found is that, since the movies, I've found it really difficult to read the books at night. I don't think I've found the books scary since I was about 10 and reading them for the first time, and I didn't find the movies frightening, except perhaps for that bit where Bilbo freaks out in Episode One. But book three, when Frodo and Sam are struggling across Mordor towards Mount Doom, I found that really hard to read the first time I read it post-movies, probably because it brought to mind those images from the last film. Peter Jackson said that there were lots of changes made that people didn't really notice, like the middle-aged Frodo of the books becomming young whipersnapper Elijah Wood in the films. Now it's difficult to read the books and remember Tolkien's intention was an older type of character.
The proper trailer for the Christmas Doctor Who episode is up at last. Rock!
