The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

Way back in 1963 the actress Carol Ann Ford fluffed her lines in the recording of An Unearthly Child, the first ever episode of Doctor Who.  Her character Susan tells her two school teachers that she had made up the name TARDIS from the initials of the words “Time And Relative Dimension In Space” when it should have been “Time And Relative Dimensions In Space”.    So because back in the early 1960’s stopping the tape and going back to do a take was almost impossible the fluffed line was preserved for all eternity.  I don’t really suppose that anyone noticed the slip-up at the time, and even if they had, and were able to stop and rewind, it is doubtful that they would have as this recording was a remounting of a previous disastrous recording and the crew simply did not have the time to do so.

So the fluffed line became the Great Doctor Who Fan Myth #3.  Ever since thousands of annoying Fanboys have cringed every time they heard the correct full name of the TARDIS. It became like a  Wikipedia  entry where some idiot insists on restoring a commonly held misconception every time the real facts are put in place.   Lets look at things logically, what in the name of reason is a Relative Dimension anyway?  The use of “Relative” suggests a relationship between a number of things, so therefore there must be at least two dimensions involved.  Also lets not forget that in the episode itself Susan complains that doing a calculation that involves just three dimensions is silly, so the dimensions of the TARDIS must be relative to the five she was banging on about.

Ask any Doctor Who fan about the Cybermen, and they will trot out the Great Doctor Who Fan Myth #2, that these cyborgs have a different design each time they appear on screen. The first appearance of the Cybermen, in William Hartnell’s final story The Tenth Planet was in a  costume that was never used again.  It  was let down by the fact that a race of cyborgs from the planet Mondas, who were driven by pure logic would contemplate wandering around everywhere with an enormous electric fire welded into their chests, a huge car headlight plumbed into craniums and that their mouths would lock open when they were speaking. So, when the Cybermen returned later in 1966 in The Moonbase they had been redesigned , with their NCB miner’s helmets replacing the headlight and with a much smaller chest unit.  Here is the important bit, the same costume was used again in The Tomb of the Cyberben and again for the Wheel in Space a few months later.  So four appearances for these monsters and only one change in appearance, if the Great Fan Myth #2 were to be believed, then there would have been new look for each of these stories.  And then we move on to the Cybermen’s last appearance in the 1960’s introducing what I call The Invasion Paradigm, because  in every appearence the Cybermen will make for the next four decades, they appear with the same basic design.  There are only cosmetic differences between the cyborgs that feature in The Invasion and those who appear their colour debut Revenge of the Cybermen.  Even though they have new suits made for Earthshock and the 1980’s, these suits are then reused for the rest of the decade, until Doctor Who disappears from television for sixteen long years.

So along comes the new series in 2005, and plans are drawn up for the Cybermen’s return.  Sure enough, the 2006 series sees the first major redesign of these creatures in my lifetime. The Cybusmen design created by John Lumic in  the Art Deco isnspired alternative Earth has produced something that is still essentially a Cyberman, but that has moved with the times.

So two changes in the 1960’s and then no change until 2006 is hardly every changing is it.  Cybermen in the stories they have appeared in have been very conservative creatures, seeking the unchanging survival of what they know at the expense everyone else.  As it is with their characters, so it is with their costumes.

My G2 Touch - Front View

The last time I renewed my contract with T-Mobile, I  upgraded to a (Motorola) T-Mobile Sidekick Slide.  Unfortunately, this phone got  lost when I went on a cruise back in 2008, and I had not set up insurance on it, so ever since  I had been using a dodgy Blackberry that I could not get to work properly, that I had bought cheap off eBay.  A few weeks ago,  it was  time to renew my contract again, and opted for a phone upgrade at the same time.  I now have a Google G2 Touch, this is what the HTC Hero is marketed as by T-Mobile in the UK. It is the second smartphone using the Android operating system that T-Mobile have made available for their Contract customers.

Unlike its predecessor, the G1, this mobile phone is completely driven by its touch screen, so there is no mechanical keyboard attached. This is not really a problem though, as typing on the screen with one finger is easy enough most of the time.  Although I do find that the keys on the edge of the screen are a little less sensitive than I would like.

My G2 Touch - Side View

Unfortunately, like the G1, its battery life sucks.  T-Mobile honestly tells you that it has a battery life, in stand-by of 440 hours.  Yes, this is perfectly true, if I have nearly every thing switched off and not making or receiving any calls.  As soon as you want to do anything remotely interesting with this wonderful piece of kit, then battery life falls of rapidly.  The biggest drain on the battery is the  the 3G Internet connection, everything else, including the GPS receiver pales in comparison. Most of the time I do not need a connection to the Internet that is constantly on, so I have installed widgets on my home page to toggle the Internet connection on and off.  However, as long as I remember to plug the phone in at night, I should have a fully charged battery each morning.  I think that it only takes about three hours for a fully discharged battery to get a 100% charge.

My G2 Touch - Back View

The phone is run by the Android Operating System, which is the latest Linux Kernel with a groovy GUI.  This means that the line between mobile phone and small computer is even more blurred than ever before.  This phone has so many different pieces of software available for it that it has its own Package Management system called Android Market that allows me to search for whatever piece of software I am looking for and to simply download it and install it onto my phone, some free and some  for a small charge. Because it is badged as the Google G2, it has all the various Google applications pre-installed.  I can read my emails with GMail, search in Internet with the Google search engine, and most importantly for me find out exactly where I am by looking at images generated by Google Maps when used in conjunction with the built in GPS.  OK, so it is not a real time turn-by-turn sat-nav system like TomTom, but it is good enough when I want to find my way from Point A to Point B on foot. (Apparently Google’s free real time turn-by-turn  Sat-Nav software is on its way, and caused a collapse in the share price of TomTom when they announced it).

My favourite download is the LocService app that will track the location of my mobile phone, so if it ever gets lost, all I have to do is either look it up on the application’s web page, or send the phone a SMS text message, and it will reply with a GPS fix, and an estimation of the phone is located in.  Also, I have installed the SIM-Checker application by the same author, that will send me an email ever the phone gets stolen and the theives try to put a different SIM card in the phone.  These applications used to be able to switch the GPS receiver on and off, as and when needed, but that particular feature was seen as a potential security risk by Google, and now only the System Applications that are pre-installed have that sort of access.  The author says that by gaining Root Access to the phone, it is possible to move these two  applications to the phone’s System, but this seems like something that is far too risky for me to even attempt.  Whilst I can see that allowing unlimited access to the GPS receiver by any application on the phone is a security nightmare, but certain application should have this power.

As you can see, the phone has been adorned wit an “I am the Stig”  sticker.  Thanks William, and it will probably remain there forever, as the phone sits within a cover that I got from T-Mobile. Not that I really mind, it makes the phone less anonymous.  There is also a thin layer of plastic that covers the all important touch sensitive screen.  This film also does wonders for reducing she glare on the screen, so that it is readable in the brightest of sunshine.  I wonder if i could get a big enough peice of this film so do a similar job for my laptop’s screen?

Naturally, with a modern phone, it is also an MP3 player, and I can set any suitable sound file as the phone’s ringtone.  Although, I have decided to be really old fashioned and have the phone literally ring, with a recording of a bell from an old fashioned fixed landline phone.  The final personalisation to the phone was installing the picture that is the background of this web log, for use as the wallpaper on the phone.

All in all, the Google G2 Touch (HTC Hero) is a wonderful new technotoy.