Tom Charman

Sometimes, the name of a weblog post comes before you know what you’re going to write about. But this was easy. And if we want to keep on going, there’s heaps more Oz book titles to choose from.

We have a terror alert level, did you know/remember? I’d pretty much forgotten, though I vaguely recall some kind of fridge magnet doing the rounds at some point. Anyhow, it’s still at medium, despite our ultra-scary and important specific intelligence concerning a potential threat that Mr Howard kindly told us about yesterday. Now why is that? Probably an oversight I imagine.

Ah, it also turns out that our government has specifically told New Zealand that nothing is actually supposed to be happening soon, however. It must some kind of diversionary measure against the terrorists. Once you get them confused, they’re easier to catch.

Oh, we also didn’t tell our anti-terrorism infrastructure about it. That’ll really confuse those awful men. It’ll be like when you steal someone’s chocolate to get a rise out of them, but they don’t react amusingly and so you grudgingly give it back because you’re bored. I’m sure the bombs will be left, defused, outside Parliament House tomorrow.

So, there’s something bad happening, at some point, in the future, possibly. Very important, but only if you’re an Australian Senator or just an Australian pleb. Now, if group A could just remove group B’s social liberties quickly and neatly? Or, hey, we could just discuss these really important and potentially useful changes without cheap tricks and political sleight of hand. That’d be nice.

There’s lots of different ways to review TV. Over the years, we’ve had group reviews, we’ve had rants, we’ve had letters… It’s not usually hard to come up with something interesting when you’re watching something happen every week.

But when you’re watching old stuff, it’s harder to get an entire essay out. You’re watching it again, you’ve read stuff about it, it’s distractingly old… This is why people write episode guides the way they do. And that’s why now, some of the Grapefruit reviews of old TV will be in a different format to the usual. A more episode-guidey form.

Let me know what you think… We’ve almost made a separate Grapefruit episode guide in the past, but I think this is a better solution. It’s certainly easier.

Well, it’s about bloody time. Though we apparently don’t have any music from Sony BMG, the Australian iTunes Music Store is up and running — with tracks available for $1.69 and albums for (usually) $16.99. Bought me a Sarah Blasko track this morning and it was easy as pie (the greek letter pi! ahem, no, not really).

Ah, but is anything free, you ask? Well, they have a free single of the week (This week it’s ‘Shadowlands’ by Youth Group) and a nice collection of Australian Podcasts too.

So, er, yay. Hopefully we’ll get some TV at some point in the future…

Well, knock me over with a feather. I wasn’t expecting this.

An M-rated spin-off from Doctor Who set in the modern day, starring John Barrowman as Captain Jack. A kind of sci-fi crime show soap thing. Written by Russell T. Davies.

That comes to 27 episodes of Who-ish television per year. I just hope Davies doesn’t do too much writing on Torchwood. I don’t want him burning himself out too soon. When the Doctor starts sending people “straight to hell”, or twenty useless brats join the TARDIS crew, we’ll have our clue.

But, wow.

So, the new iPods are out. As the rumour sites had been alternately predicting and denying, they play videos. The American iTunes Music Store has an arrangement with both ABC and Disney to offer such shows as Lost and Desperate Housewives as 320×240 movies for US$2 each.

So do I get one? To replace the struggling battery on my current iPod would cost me $100; the 30GB iPod is now $403 for a student and the 60GB is $538. And you can get them in black. Hmmm. I was kind of hoping that the iPod would have a widescreen, that would just be a very tall display normally, and then be turned on its side to watch TV. But that would have made it kind of a long iPod. The new ones are quite small, thinner than they’ve ever been before.

The idea of watching my innumerable TV DVDs re-encoded for iPod use on the train is appealing, but having black bars on an already teeny screen seems a waste. I also have a certain reluctance to get the ‘first generation’ of iPods with video.

Meanwhile my lovely iMac was superceded — the new ones come with built in webcams, a remote control (and software to show large-type menu options when using it) and a few smaller additions/subtractions. I’m vaguely jealous, but I’m also aware that this moment of supecession must come to all technology. Imagine how my iPod feels.

So… to iPod or not to iPod?