I am Ashley Elsdon

someone who's doing some things

Month: February 2016

Making my way through the third Doctor, Colony in Space

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Doctor Who, Colony in Space
Doctor Who, Colony in Space

So I’m slowly collecting the Third Doctor, and, currently, not in any kind of chronological order, as I’m sure you can tell. However, I will be remedying that soon enough. For now I’ve been watching the Colony in Space, which, certainly by today’s standards is a very violent story. It was the 70’s of course and different standards applied, we shouldn’t forget that. Even so, I think that the body count was probably high for its time.

All things being equal I thought it was a good story. Of its time of course, and quite different in every way to the Doctor Who of today (that’s a good thing of course). The Master is possibly one of the most changed elements from later Doctor Who. Roger Delgado’s Master is very different even from the later Master of Logopolis (a personal fav of mine).

It’s certainly interesting to watch, and completely enjoyable to see Mr Pertwee. He was an excellent Doctor.

Doctor Who, The Feast of Axos

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Doctor Who The Feast of Axos
Doctor Who The Feast of Axos

I got this on sale at Big Finish, and, as I do quite like Colin Baker’s audio stories I thought it would be a good one. To be fair it isn’t bad at all, it’s ok. It’s part of the main range, which is about 200 stories. The main range is where I found Big Finish, with the first few Paul McGann stories. I keep meaning to go back to the main range and see what I should get.

I must do that soon.

Some early thoughts on Day One 2

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I mentioned that I was probably going to upgrade to the latest version of Day One. Well I did. So far, it’s ok. The interface is very similar and has some things that are improved, like for example, being able to add more than one photo per entry. That’s good. I like that.

I thought I might make use of the multiple journals functionality, but so far I can’t think of a single way to use it. Perhaps I will in the future, but for now, as far as I can see, tags do the job just as well.

The only real down side for me was the widget. The previous Day One app had a great widget, which allowed you to see a lot of data and also showed photos of either a month ago and a year ago, or random photos. However, Day One 2 doesn’t provide anything like that, and it’s a big loss. Apparently, according to the developer, this is coming in another release. I hope it is, because so far this has been a big backward step.

Watching Predestination

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I’ve been meaning to see this film for quite some time, but just never got around to it. Also, a few people have said that they didn’t like it or didn’t rate it, or had similar views. So I kind of put it off as my expectations of it dropped over time. I remember seeing the trailer for it and thinking it would be very good, but didn’t get to the cinema to see it.

Anyway, finally I’ve watched it, and I really enjoyed it actually. I didn’t expect to for the reasons I’ve mentioned above, but I thought that the story was good. I got me thinking a bit anyway.

Enjoying a (not so) quiet night in

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Olegtron and components
Olegtron and components

The more I use this little machine the more I enjoy it, and the more I think that it has some truly amazing possibilities to it. In the session I had with it tonight I managed to get what sounded like a whole track from it. It was amazing. I’m in the process of putting the samples up now. Actually, I’ve just finished.

I’ll post them here too just in case, but they’re on my SoundCloud pages if you want them.

I’ve been meaning to grab these samples for ages now

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A set of samples from the Victoria line, well I have to do something with those right. Of course I do. I’ve been meaning to grab them for ages and ages, and now I’ve finally downloaded them. So I’ll make something with them soon. If you want to grab them yourself then you can find them here.

Day One 2 arrives

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I’ve been waiting for this for some time now, and the new version of Day One (a personal journal app if you didn’t know) does look pretty good actually. Of course, it isn’t a ‘free’ upgrade. No, it’s a new app. I had suspected that it would go that way. I guess that’s ok. I know that it costs money and takes a lot of time to get new apps out, so you should expect it.

But it does look good though, and there’s a lot of new stuff in there too. I won’t go over everything they’ve done, because if you’re interested you can find all of that on their blog.

However, their roadmap is very interesting, because it includes:

  • Audio Recording
  • Places
  • Activity Feed
  • Night Mode
  • People Tags
  • Advanced Search (as a filter)
  • Publish 2.0
  • native embeds
  • attachments
  • and lots more…

That’s a good list. I especially like the audio recording option. However, one thing that I was expecting to see was IFTTT in there, but it isn’t there. Of course that doesn’t mean that it won’t be included. I really hope that it is.

I expect I’ll upgrade to it. Probably in the next day or so as it’ll go up in price soon. When I do I’ll let you know what I think of it.

Listening to the West Norwood Cassette Library

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With a band name like that I could do nothing else but listen to them. I remember the days of using cassette libraries and borrowing tapes. All too often the tapes would be somewhat damaged and wobbly, but that was in many ways the nature of cassettes themselves.

Of course cassette libraries are all but gone now, but a band name like that makes me remember the old days, so, as I said before, I had to give them a listen, and guess what? Yep, I quite liked their stuff too!

Doctor Who, The Time Warrior, Sarah-Jane Smith’s first adventure

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Doctor Who, the Time Warrior
Doctor Who, the Time Warrior

This is a great story. Sarah-Jane’s first outing with the Doctor, and a great one to start off with too. Sontarans are always good fun right!

I hadn’t seen this in ages, but it really has stood the test of time, and, as ever, Pertwee is brilliant.