Month: April 2006

Davies Brought Back “The Shooty Dog Thing”

Lorin Olsen

Russell T. Davies should get a medal from the Queen. While the Time Lords could live beyond a single lifetime through a process known as regeneration, Mr. Davies has done something far beyond their capacity: he has resuscitated this timeless series. And while the ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) was a great new Doctor for a new generation, David Tennant (under Mr. Davies’ writing) is just as wonderful.

So far this season, we’ve seen talking cats (that were dressed as nuns), werewolves, and now “bat-things” who want to become gods. And they are willing to bribe Time Lords and despoil school children to make this happen. The writing in the first three episodes has been magnificent. Each new episode has gotten better. And this third episode is now one of my favorite Doctor Who episodes ever.

Why? That’s simple. Two of the first companions I ever saw were Sarah Jane and K9. And in this episode, we see both of them. And we also see something uniquely witty and wonderful: the transformation of Mickey. Just as K9 was more than the “tin dog” for Sarah Jane, Mickey maybe come more than the doe-eyed, puppy dog that follows Rose around. He became a man – and he may become a companion (if even for a short time).

I can’t wait to see each new episode. I sure hope that the Sci-Fi channel will pick this series up as well as last year’s episodes!

-CyclingRoo-

BTW, the name “Torchwood” can also be found in this episode. So it’s now three for three.

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Davies Brought Back "The Shooty Dog Thing"

Lorin Olsen

Russell T. Davies should get a medal from the Queen. While the Time Lords could live beyond a single lifetime through a process known as regeneration, Mr. Davies has done something far beyond their capacity: he has resuscitated this timeless series. And while the ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) was a great new Doctor for a new generation, David Tennant (under Mr. Davies’ writing) is just as wonderful.
So far this season, we’ve seen talking cats (that were dressed as nuns), werewolves, and now “bat-things” who want to become gods. And they are willing to bribe Time Lords and despoil school children to make this happen. The writing in the first three episodes has been magnificent. Each new episode has gotten better. And this third episode is now one of my favorite Doctor Who episodes ever.
Why? That’s simple. Two of the first companions I ever saw were Sarah Jane and K9. And in this episode, we see both of them. And we also see something uniquely witty and wonderful: the transformation of Mickey. Just as K9 was more than the “tin dog” for Sarah Jane, Mickey maybe come more than the doe-eyed, puppy dog that follows Rose around. He became a man – and he may become a companion (if even for a short time).
I can’t wait to see each new episode. I sure hope that the Sci-Fi channel will pick this series up as well as last year’s episodes!
-CyclingRoo-
BTW, the name “Torchwood” can also be found in this episode. So it’s now three for three.

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IE7 Beta 2: This Beta Is Mo Betta

Lorin Olsen


Oftentimes, I judge the overall “goodness” of a software product based upon my wife’s general perceptions of product “look”, product “feel” and general product usability. And her initial view of IE7 was simple: “Go ahead and make it the default browser on our system, honey!” Well, alright then. I will – and I did.
For my part, I am really liking IE7 Beta 2. Why? Well, it’s a large number of things. First of all, I love all the features that were in the previous publicly available builds. Tabbed browsing is in the base build – and has been for months. Security enhancements are everywhere – including phishing filters. And the “out-of-the-box” RSS integration is great.
When I first installed an IE7 preview a few months ago, I wasn’t certain if I liked the RSS browser in the product. I had grown accustomed to the LiveBookmarks interface that is part of the Firefox browser. But the RSS “preview” has grown on me. Yes, I’ve grown accustomed to it through the Vista builds I’ve been running. But it’s more than familiarity. I ike the casual simplicty of the feed being reduced to a simple scrollable page. And I think the team has really tightened things up with this release. And the biggest treat was the inclusion of OPML feed imports. So my feed lists were easily loaded from Sage (a Firefox extension) into the new IE browser. Thanks for finally getting this into the base build!
The most encouraging thing about this release is that it is now feature-complete. In Microsoft parlance, Beta 2 is synonomous with feature complete. It is also the general designation for builds that are rolled out to the whole company. Yes. That does mean that IE7 will beocme the default build for browsers that all Microsoft employees use – and show to customers.
And while this is pretty neat in and of itself, it is more important to note that this says that RSS will now become part of the corporate culture. Everyone in the company will now have a feed reader. So that means that feeds will proliferate even further into the corporate consciousness. And the feed store will become an even more visible part of the computing ecosystem found within all Microsoft products.
It is great to see the strides taken last summer that are now becoming the products of today. Once again, I’m reminded of the reasons that I joined this company.
-CyclingRoo-

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Vista Is Sweeter: One Build at a Time

Lorin Olsen

It was another wonderful Vista weekend. On Saturday, I loaded Vista Build 5365.8. Based upon all the information I can assemble, this build will become the next EDW (i.e., externally available) build of the product. And it merits that distinction. It is a generally stable and feature-complete build. Here is a brief list of the good, the bad and the ugly.
The Good

  • Everything that worked before is still working now. I am glad. Regression errors are pretty darned pesky. So ensuring that fixes remain fixed is pretty pivotal.
  • M4 hardware detection and driver installation is getting very close to flawless. The video drivers installed flawlessly. I don’t have any Bluetooth devices. Consequently, I can’t give you any feedback on whether the BT issues have been resolved. There are a couple of unknown devices that still remain, but things are now very usable (w/o intervention).
  • Windows Mobile connections (and ActiveSync) all appear to be working nominally.
  • Once I joined the domain, I did receive the appropriate digital certificates. That means that wireless connections to our corporate LAN now operate w/o any additional action. Yippee!! My previous problems were almost certainly related to being on an interim and/or less stable build.
  • IT Communications Manager (our VPN into the corporate network) works with this build. This is fabulous. I can now connect from at home w/o booting to XP.

The Bad

  • I’m still having trouble with the audio drivers. But, as noted before, you can simply load the XP drivers as they work without a problem.

The Ugly

  • When I swap video modes, I run into all sorts of video problems. The screen does not render images properly and I generally need to switch users or logoff and log back on in order to resolve the display issues that arise.

So what am I going to do? Well, I think I’m going to run on this build as my default build – at least, for now. All of the standard apps (Office, Groove, OneNote, Office Communicator, and the IE applets I use) seem to work. I still have to try Siebel (our corporate CRM). But beyond that, things are looking pretty darned good for a Beta 2 in a couple of weeks.
-CyclingRoo-

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