Like a lot of people, Robyn and I have been entranced with the BBC/Discovery Channel production of Planet Earth, especially the HD broadcasts. It’s been fascinating viewing, amazing cinematography capturing sights rarely seen.
I mean, what’s not to love about a nature documentary series that captures incredible shots like this?
A Great White Shark leaping out the water to catch a seal off the South Africa coast, scary but beautiful… As is most of the series, from Polar Bears coping with their habitat disappearing to a cave with 3 million bats in it, and a huge mound of bat droppings. Even the “cutest” looking animals can turn out to be killers, some of it is quite sad to see…
This is must see TV, and if you can see it in HD then do so, this is the perfect example of the difference between standard TV (and indeed even DVD) and HDTV, it’s mindblowing when you see flocks of birds, hundreds of thousands of them, and shoals of fish in crystal clarity. We’ve enjoyed it so much we made our own DVD set from Netflix, and watched them again as the DVDs are the BBC edition with David Attenborough narrating as opposed to the Discovery version narrated by Sigourney Weaver… As good as Sigourney Weaver is, she’s no David Attenborough.
I look forward to rewatching this again and again. Makes me wish we had either an HD-DVD or BluRay player or even a HD TiVo so we can rewatch in HD over and over and over.
A rocket carrying the ashes of Scotty from Star Trek is stranded on top of a remote mountain range in New Mexico. Actor James Doohan had asked to be blasted into space after he died. Last month a portion of his ashes, along with the remains of 200 others, boldly made the journey 70 miles up to the edge of the earth’s atmosphere but the 20-foot rocket blew off course, made a four-minute sub-orbital flight and parachuted back down to land with a bump in the San Andres Mountains.
Tony Blair has announced he will stand down as prime minister on 27 June. An indifferent Prime Minister, where the small bad outweighs the large amount of (on paper) good. I wonder what he’ll do now, I hear there is room for a driver at DEI…
Dale Earnhardt, Jr. announce he’s leaving DEI, the team his father built, at the end of the current season. Cue mass hysteria about a black #3 Budweiser Chevrolet on the track next season…
In keeping with the stereotype of British dentistry, I’m having tooth problems. Anyone who knows me probably knows I’m missing a molar on my lower right jaw, extracted on New Year’s Eve 2001, that was the last time I visited a dentist. The running score now is one missing tooth, 1 chipped tooth, 1 slightly cracked tooth and 2 with corners missing. The most recent one (with a corner missing) occurred about a month or so ago so I’ve been putting off a dentist visit since then.
It’s not that I’m in pain or anything like that, it only hurts when I chew and food gets lodged inside. So with our medical insurance finally through, I took my snaggletoothed mouth down to the dentist today.
Prognosis? Root Canal
Eeep! Even with medical insurance, root canal costs a lot, and is quite the ordeal from what I’ve heard, it certainly doesn’t look like fun. I’m hoping to get this over with sooner rather than later…
An online petition aimed at getting Nike to produce the futuristic-looking sneakers seen in the movie Back to the Future Part 2. Where’s the online petition to get Hasbro to make hoverboards too?
The Scottish National Party have the biggest single number of MSPs in the new Scottish parliament. The SNP won 47, Labour came in second with 46; the Conservatives have 17; the Liberal Democrats secured 16; and others came in with three. This is going to be interesting…
Rafael Nadal edged arch-rival Roger Federer in a thrilling decider in the “battle of the surfaces” in Mallorca. The world’s top two players slugged it out in an exhibition match on a half-clay, half-grass court before the Spaniard prevailed 7-5 4-6 7-6 (12-10).
Map of online communities. I’m waiting for the day when, if you tell someone “I’m from the internet,” instead of laughing they just ask “oh, what part?”
Delta emerge from bankrupcy. Following a 19 month restructuring plan and one attempted takeover by US Airways, Delta exit Chapter 11 and come out kicking with a brand new look.