Place of Stuff

For the uninitiated, Sapphire and Steel was a short lived UK television series which ran from July 1979 to July 1982.  There were only 6 seasons of the series in total and it is a great cult classic.  For an overview of the shows and the ideas around them, please see the first post in this series.

By design, the seasons and the episodes were not named.  They are known as “The Assignments” and run, naturally, from one through to 6.  The first of these was originally to be a chldren’s show and this can be seen by the fact that the supporting characters throughout the first set of episode are mostly children.

The story begins in a remote house.  The parents are reading nursery rhymes to their young daughter, Helen.  Downstairs, their son Rob is doing his homework.  The clocks in the house stop ticking and the parents disappear.  The children are alone in the house, after verifying that their parents have vanished, they call the local policeman.  Shortly afterwards, Sapphire and Steel arrive at the door.
Continue reading ‘Assignment One’ »

Coverage of the recent Olympics has made me realise that despite the fact that Political Correctness is widespread and pretty much ingrained in Western society, there are still 2 groups of people that we can still be patronising and rude to without any comebacks. I don’t know if this is a loophole or whether the groups aren’t deemed worthy of our protection. Oh, and before I go any further, use this at your own risk! I am not liable for any damage you receive…..

This whole thing was prompted because of a cheesy BBC slot. A reporter was asking the locals in Beijing whether they recognised certain London landmarks - Big Ben being the main one. None of the people on camera could name them. Cue the reporter looking at the camera with a wry look. Oh dear, people in China can’t recognise landmarks from a city more than 5000 miles away. Those ignorant Chinese people! But let’s flip that around. I’m relatively intelligent and know things about foreign countries. I doubt I could recognise any landmark from China apart from the Great Wall and maybe the Forbidden City. Does that make me mockable? Would anyone in China reading this be rolling about the floor in tears because the ignorant round eye doesn’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of their places of interest? Or would they, and I think this is more likely, just say “OK” and forget about it? Because it doesn’t matter and I’m sure the Chinese have better things to do with their time than memorise landmarks. Unless there’s a Chinese version of Jeopardy, of course.

Secondly, and this really really annoys me, is the use of a short phrase which is employed to encompass a whole range of people. “Simple folk/people”. As in “I would love to live in a rural area among the simple folk”. This isn’t restricted to the UK and is used to describe people in small villages/towns and rural areas. Basically, using it means that those people couldn’t possibly understand the horrible pressures that traders and bankers and accountants have in the City, because life is so much easier in the country. Let’s forget that farms are going to the wall every day and that suicide rates among the farming community are on the rise because farmers are seeing their livelihoods disappear and land held in their families for generations are being sold so the family can survive. Forget the bankruptcies and having to negotiate the minefield that claiming subsidies entails. Forget the fact that abattoirs are closing regularly and new regulations mean that farmers have restrictions on transporting the animals to be slaughtered so end up with a lot of dead livestock rotting on their lands. Their lives are just so simple.
Continue reading ‘It’s Safe to Insult Certain People. Apparently.’ »

Now that you’ve read the title, the text should be of no surprise to you.  Yesterday I gave blood again, this

National Blood Service

was my twentieth donation and it took me less than an hour.  I’m too much of a scaredy cat to donate bone marrow and I’m not nearly clever enough to be a doctor, so this is what I do to do my bit.
Continue reading ‘Give Blood Regularly’ »

All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic, heavy elements may not be used where there is life. Medium atomic weights are available: Gold, Lead, Copper, Jet, Diamond, Radium, Sapphire, Silver and Steel. Sapphire and Steel have been assigned.

These words opened every episode of the series.  Sapphire and Steel aired on, what was then, the third channel on UK television.  At the time there were only 3: BBC1, BBC2 and ITV.  Channel 4 was still a few years off and ITV was the newcomer to the UKTV scene.

Continue reading ‘Sapphire and Steel - UK TV Series’ »

Another short post!  I have begun looking for a new job.  Nothing against my current employer, I just need a change after almost 10 years.  My search is UK, US, Australia and New Zealand.

My CV is up to date and neat and tidy and my hair is combed.  Not really wanting to quit my job without a safety net really.  Now I just need someone to offer me an interview……

Anyway, wish me luck.

The PC is becoming ever more ubiquitous - as well as games, you can receive radio channels, listen to various types of music, watch DVDs or other movie files, upload, download, share and do all sorts of other things. Television, though, has always seemed a little trickier - at the very least you need a TV card of some description.

We have a main TV in the house, but with 4 people and differing requirements, scheduling time to watch can be difficult. Especially when one half of the household only want to watch at particular times. Watching on the PC or laptop is, of course, possible. But because I don’t watch more than one or two hours per week, even the relatively low cost of TV tuners for the PC is more than I want to pay. The BBC iPlayer goes some way to resolving the problem, but maybe I want to watch the programme when it’s on rather than after it’s finished.

Zattoo solves that problem - for me. It’s a free to download program which uses peer to peer sharing to stream channels over the internet. Sign up, give far fewer details than most other services, download the program and install it and you’re good to go. It uses Adobe Flash to handle the viewing, but otherwise is pretty self contained. There are a number of channels available for it - in the UK this means the 5 terrestrial channels and a number of satellite/cable only channels, effectively all the Freeview ones.
Continue reading ‘Zattoo - Real TV On Your PC’ »