Little Storping-in-the-Swuff

To friends who are trying to use Windows as their primary operating system, owning a digital camera can be a pretty unrewarding experience if you rely on the software that comes with your camera (using a Mac with iPhoto you’ll never get round to putting the Camera manufacturer’s CD in your machine). To them, I recommend Picasa, an reasonably good iPhoto clone which comes free from Google.

Now Google have launched Picasa Web and even better an iPhoto plugin for the Mac users. This is Google doing it right: at Google labs there is a Linux beta version of Picasa which has been developed using a customised version of Wine and offers almost all the features of the Windows version. They’re making sure they are including users of all platforms.

So, I thought I’d install the plugin and give it a try, and in so doing I’ve posted half a dozen pictures from my trip to Scotland last weekend:

Speyside (Picassa Test)

Aug 11, 2006 - 6 Photos

Uploading was extremely slow, but the web albums look really good (far better than the static pages iPhoto posts to .Mac, if you have it). You can resize and zoom in on the photos, there’s a slick slideshow function and an RSS feed. And as well as uploading from iPhoto, you can fully manage your albums through the web interface: uploading, reordering and reorientating. Very promising.

I’ve looked at three possible measures: the time spent as the “official” Doctor (ie. the time between first broadcast appearance as the Doctor and their successor’s first appearance) not including Two/Three/Five Doctor stories, radio appearances etc.; the amount of Doctor Who to appear on screen with each Doctor in the lead role; and the lengevity of each incarnation within the Doctor’s own personal time line. This last is clearly the most controversial because of the difficulty in establishing the Doctor’s age at any given time. I’m fairly sure he’s 1,137 years old now (ie. just after leaving Rose). Where he’s been travelling with a human companion I’ve used their aging as a guide to the time elapsed (that’s assuming the Doctor hasn’t gone off for a few years and come back to rejoin them). The Doctor spends 180 years in his 7th and 8th incarnation and I’ve no idea at what point he regenerates (ie how old he is at the time of the TV movie) so I’ve just shared that time between them.

The First Doctor
Played by William Hartnell, Richard Hurdnall (TV Series); Peter Cushing (Films)
“Official” TV Doctor for 3 years (our time)
or approx 3,350 minutes of Doctor Who (screen time)
and 449 years (the Doctor’s time).

The Second Doctor
Played by Patrick Troughton
“Official” TV Doctor for 3 years 2 months (our time)
or approx 2,975 minutes of Doctor Who (screen time)
and around 3 years (the Doctor’s time).

The Third Doctor
Played by Jon Pertwee
“Official” TV Doctor for 5 years (our time)
or approx 2,550 minutes of Doctor Who (screen time)
and approx 296 years (the Doctor’s time).

The Fourth Doctor
Played by Tom Baker (TV Series), Jon Culshaw (Big Finish Audio)
“Official” TV Doctor for 6 years 3 months (our time)
or approx 4,300 minutes of Doctor Who (screen time)
and approx 149 years (the Doctor’s time).

The Fifth Doctor
Played by Peter Davison
“Official” TV Doctor for 3 years (our time)
or approx 1,840 minutes of Doctor Who (screen time)
and around 3 years (the Doctor’s time).

The Sixth Doctor
Played by Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy
“Official” TV Doctor for 3 years 5 months (our time)
or approx 1,100 minutes of Doctor Who (screen time)
and 53 years (the Doctor’s time).

The Seventh Doctor
Played by Sylvester McCoy
“Official” TV Doctor for 8 years 8 months (our time)
or approx 1,015 minutes of Doctor Who (screen time)
and, er…, about 92 years (the Doctor’s time).

The Eighth Doctor
Played by Paul McGann
“Official” TV Doctor for 8 years 10 months (our time)
or approx 85 minutes of Doctor Who (screen time)
and, well, um… 90 years (the Doctor’s time).

The Ninth Doctor
Played by Christopher Eccleston
“Official” TV Doctor for 3 months (our time)
or approx 585 minutes of Doctor Who (screen time)
and about a year (the Doctor’s time).

The Tenth Doctor
Played by David Tennant
“Official” TV Doctor for at least a year (our time)
or least 625 minutes of Doctor Who (screen time)
and, er…, I dunno? (the Doctor’s time).

No, Doctor! No!

There was a young man from St Bees
Who was stung on the arm by a wasp
When asked “does it hurt?”
He replied “Yes it does”
“But I’m jolly glad it wasn’t a hornet”

(I’ve been to a wine tasting)

I’ve got some fairly large files in iTunes - audiobooks and radio shows. Add to this the fact that they’re stored on a network drive, and that I usually connect to the network using plain Airport (ie the 802.11b version, not Extreme) and updating the ID3 tag on a single file can take some considerable time. Unless I convert it to and ID3v2.3 tag (from iTunes’ default v2.2 for MP3s) in which case changes seem to be almost instantaneous. What’s going on?

The mystery is not the strange anomaly between the speed of updating a v2.2 and v2.3 tag (although I really can’t explain this). The mystery is, given that iTunes can read and write v2.3 tags, and convert (go to Advanced > Convert ID3 tags) why doesn’t it do this by default and speed everything up?

Update: Ah. I may have posted prematurely. I’ve been changing the tags with the excellent Easytag which updated to v2.3 and speeded things up. Updating with iTunes does not seem to speed up subsequent changes, so it’s obviously something groovy Easytag is doing…

A few things in this past series made me wonder about the Doctor’s past. To my surprise there’s no concise biography. There are more comprehensive guides to the Doctor’s adventures, the most biographically comprehensive being Who’s Doctor Who? and the brand new (and extraordinarily detailed) Expanded Universe at Outpost Gallifrey. But I thought I’d have a go at writing a very condensed version just sketching out the most important events in the Time Lord’s life, like being born, having a family, or getting elected President of his people. Let’s see how short I can manage to make it.

The Doctor was born to a Human mother and a Time Lord father on Gallifrey, home planet of the Time Lords, a race who mastered time travel. Little is known of his parents or his early childhood. His education was at the Academy on Gallifrey, where he studied a variety of subjects. His contemporaries included Time Lords who would later call themselves The Master and The Rani.

The Doctor became a father, although again little is known about the child (or children) or their mother. All that is known is that a child of the Doctor had a daughter, who was known as Susan. The Doctor found it hard to tolerate the Time Lords’ class ridden society, and in particular their rule that they must never intervene in history. At the age of 236 he stole a type 40 Tardis, and, with Susan, left Gallifrey to travel time and space.

When Susan fell in love with a freedom fighter on 22nd Century Earth, the Doctor left her behind but continued to travel with companions, often Humans from Earth. During his travels he also encountered for the first time a genetically modified creatures called Daleks. In his mid 400s, having become increasingly frail, he regenerated for the first time.

The Doctor’s travels finally came to an end when the Doctor found himself forced to call upon the Time Lords for assistance in resolving a conflict. The Time Lords put the Doctor on trial, and unlimately, condemned him to a forced exile on 1970s Earth and a forced regeneration.

Whilst stranded on Earth, the Doctor worked with the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce helping them to investigate paranormal and extraterrestrial phenomona. During this time the Doctor struggled to repair his TARDIS but never succeeded, and it was not until the Time Lords requested his help that it was re-enabled as a reward. The Doctor was able to roam time and space again, although this lead to several traumatic regenerations following injury and poisoning.

As the Doctor’s standing with the Time Lords improved they sent him on a mission back in time to prevent the creation of the Daleks: a first strike in a Time War that would ultimately lead to the demise of both races.

When the President of the Time Lords was assassinated, the Doctor found himself implicated, and so ran for the vacancy to avoid execution. This lead to his being elected President by default, although, not actually wanting the responsibility he left Gallifrey, leaving the Presidency in a consitutional limbo. He later took up the role, and left again; and when the High Council’s nominated replacement died he was offered and accepted the role once more before again doing a runner. Over 250 years of consitutional turmoil was finally ended when, at the age of 900, the Doctor found himself once again on trial before the Time Lords for “conduct unbecoming”.

Not long after originally being elected President, the Doctor met the Time Lady Romana, who, although some 600 years younger him, was more than an equal. They would have a close companionship that would last until Romana was summoned to return to Gallifrey.

Following his pivotal role in the Time Lords’ attempt to prevent the creation of the Daleks, the Doctor found himself involved in the escalating conflict. Davros, the Daleks’ creator, used the Doctor in an attempt to infiltrate the high council; the Doctor in turn used Davros to destroy Skaro, the Daleks’ home planet. Finally, the Doctor found a way to destory the Daleks at the cost of destroying his own race and his home planet, making him the last of the Time Lords.

Following his 9th regeneration at the age of 1137, the Doctor met and fell in love with a Human, the accomplished Reinette, Madame de Pompadour. Tragically, however, they were separated by a faulty time window and death.

Well, that about brings us up to date, I think. Please use the comments to point out all my errors.

A few notes about gaps:

• Many of the original TV serials (which I have regarded as the definitive documentary evidence on the Doctor’s history) follow on from one another, making it easy to follow the time line. But there are gaps (there had to be, considering the Doctor aged at least 300 years between his 1st and 4th regeneration).
• Particularly big gaps occur before and after the TV Movie, and in the new series Russel T. Davies has deliberately given the impression there are unseen adventures between televised stories (or even during, in the case of Love & Monsters).
• Into the gaps TV writers have inserted “back story”. I have accepted this, although since it is related by characters on screen, it is second hand subjective evidence. (Most notably, the conclusion of the Time War occurs in the gap between the TV Movie and Rose.)
• Into the gaps, other writers have inserted novels and audio plays. These are not consistent with each other, and frequently stretch the gaps beyond credibility. I have ignored these.
• All sorts of things may have happened in the gaps. In particular, in attempting to answer a previous question I’ve considered the Doctor’s romances: with Susan’s grandmother, with Romana, and with Madame de Pompadour. However, I find it unlikely that the Romantic Eighth Doctor didn’t get up to all sorts of hanky panky after kissing Grace and before destroying his own people.

Concerning the Doctor’s age, another question I raised in that previous post, it has been very difficult to establish, not just because of the time travel and the regenerations and the changes of personality, but because he lies about it. However, I’m satisfied that he is, in fact 1137 (if you really want to know: in The Ribos Operation, the first Romana said the Doctor was 759 years old and had been piloting the TARDIS for 523 years, and in The Empty Child the Doctor speaks of 900 years of Phone Box travel, see here and here). The next question is: at what age did he regenerate each time?

Well, okay, there’s no evidence to support the K9 bit, but Outpost Gallifrey is carrying a quote from Ariel (the BBC’s in house rag) that Russel T. Davies is to write a new Sarah-Jane series for CBBC staring Elisabeth Sladen.

We’ve heard this one before (quite a lot around the time School Reunion aired) but if it’s in Ariel it has a bit of credibility. So this could be a second/third spin-off (will the K9 series make it to air first) albeit essentially a continuation of the first. But will it have K9 in it? There’s no mention of it, and the Jetix K9 Adventures series makes it unlikely, but after that scene in School Reunion with the wee cyber doggie zapping the Krillitanes, I’d definitely watch it for K9.