Stargate SG-1 – Learning Curve

Stargate SG-1, in its long run, had the opportunity to try out all sorts of things, including parodying itself and other programmes on several occasions.

It could be funny, serious, happy, sad, philosophical – all manner of emotions and styles.

Occasionally it was quite thought-provoking in the true sense and ultimate purpose of science fiction: "what are the implications of such-and-such, the what if? scenario.

This is explored in episodes such as the third season's Learning Curve, which has just this afternoon been shown (in the latest repeat showings) on Sky One. The premise of this story is a society whose children do all the learning, then pass on that knowledge to the adults via transferable nano-tech 'machines' inside them (nanites).

This is probably the most beautiful of all the SG-1 episodes, particularly in its second half. In the sequence where Colonel Jack O'Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) takes the alien child Merrin on an unauthorised trip off-base, to a school where he is well known, and in just about all that follows, we see a wondrous unfolding of the (in many ways most un-childlike) Merrin – excellently played by Brittney Irvin – and the interplay between her and O'Neill is truly superb television, the acting near-enough perfect with excellent writing and direction too.

Merrin's parting smile just before stepping through the Stargate on her journey back home tells us that O'Neill's ploy has worked, as we see in the final part of the episode. It is a very, very clever twist.

I always find this episode very moving, no matter how many times I watch it; and the brilliance of the 'painting a flower' scene is a particular delight. You can't help but smile! Highly recommended.

Medway First Annual River Festival – The Video

After the technical difficulties (entirely at YouTube's end, by the look of it) of uploading the complete video, I am now doing it in chunks instead. I have a theory...

As I write this post initially, just one part is up (with no problems, I notice with interest!) but I shall add the later parts as they eventually get up the line and are "processed" (in YouTube parlance). UPDATE: Part 2 is now up, as is Part 3 (at last!), and these are also embedded below.

Part One



Part Two



Part Three 

Sorry for the delay...

YouTube decided to wait until it had fully uploaded my video of the first Medway River Festival before telling me there was a fault (of undisclosed nature) and it had just wasted almost thirty hours with no result.

I have completely remade the video from the project file and am now uploading that.

It seemed to play through all right here, so I am reasonably confident that there is no fault in the source file.

Whether it'll get up the line successfully, a day or so hence, I shall not know until the end of that 28-hour period; but if all is well I shall be able to embed it here late tomorrow evening. (UPDATE @ 0055 hrs on 11 June: It has failed again! I don't know what to do about this. There seems to be nothing whatsoever wrong with the source file here. I am now trying uploading it in three shorter parts, to see if one part fails or all do. FURTHER UPDATE: Exactly the same edited file has now gone up successfully, in three parts, proving that it has been a YouTube failure all along!)

In the meantime, I have another GigaByte or so, in 51 video clips from today's Dickens Festival, to start cataloguing in preparation for editing all of that. I shall probably add something like as much source material again tomorrow, on the festival's final day.

Missing the World

In recent years I have noticed a distinct trend of more and more people in the street, on the 'bus, in shops or wherever spending seemingly every moment they have 'living in the 'phone' as I term it.

If they're not speaking, they're texting or similar, almost completely oblivious to the world around them.

It seems to me to be a very sad kind of life, when passing through the world but experiencing next to nothing of it. I have never made that mistake, even when treading a route or taking a 'bus or rail journey that I have done perhaps hundreds of times before.

Every time, it is for me a new and fresh experience, to be relished and not missed.

It was (and is) bad enough in modern society with Walkman-type gadgets, now replaced by iPod-type devices; but with 'phones it takes all the user's attention away from the world outside that little bubble, not just the ears...

I wonder what would happen if the entire mobile 'phone failed and it took at least a week to get it back up and running. Would these people re-join the rest of us on Planet Earth? I suspect not: they'd be lost for the duration; and as soon as it was restored there'd be million of text messages flying around along the lines of...

"gr8 too b txtng agin LOLOL"

Believe me: I see such messages from time to time, including on Twitter, usually from teen and twenty-something females, when they happen to include a word that one of my standing searches finds. For example, there's a recent arrival on Twitter who calls herself Waybuloo_ (why?) – so I now have to wade through all her dross along such lines, and from those responding, on a regular basis.

Let's All Go Down The Strand

"Have a banana!"

But for those who were unable to do so today, or whatever reason missed the Community Safety event held at The Strand Leisure Park in Gillingham, here are a few photographs I took at the event.

Although the event was in general quite busy, I managed to grab moments when the stands were relatively quiet – mainly to avoid accidentally getting children in-shot, as we as a society are so sensitive about such things these days. As usual, the following images can be enlarged by clicking on them: they are linear quarter-size (i.e. a sixteenth of the originals' area) so should still fit on most computer displays comfortably...

I also went for a stroll along the riverside, and here are a few of the images I took along the way...