This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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March 2008
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DVD: Doctor Who: The Invasion: Disk 1

It was finally time for a another Doctor Who DVD. This time it was time for The Invasion. Well, actually the first half. This story is split into two disks. It is an eight part story, the first four parts of which were on this disk.

This had the typical slow pacing of a Second Doctor episode. Things progress VERY slowly and not all that much happens. As an example, the reveal of who the real bad guys in this story are happens at the very end of the 4th 25 minute long episode.

The most interesting thing about this disk is actually the fact that Episodes One and Four are actually among the “missing episodes” which were destroyed or lost from the BBC archives and which have never been found or recovered. However, some fans recorded the AUDIO of the episodes by putting tape recorders next to their televisions. And this audio did survive. So in 2006 when they were looking to do a DVD release, they produced ANIMATED versions of the two “missing” episodes using the audio which still existed.

So part of this was a cartoon. And that was kind of interesting.

Not GOOD mind you, just interesting.

These early Doctors definitely are an acquired taste that I haven’t actually acquired yet. I watch them out of a sense of wanting to learn more about that era, and curiosity. But not so much for actually enjoying the episodes. Now, there are a few good moments. But for the most part, these are a bit tough to watch with modern eyes.

But there we go, another Who.

Electoral College: Added Leaning

As I’ve been promising for awhile, I went ahead and adjusted how I am reporting results for the electoral college extrapolations. Previously, any lead by a candidate of less than 10% was simply classified “weak”. But a lot was obscured by that. So I now classify leads of less than 5% as “leaning” states, with 5% to 10% now being termed “weak”.

I have also added a “just the previous month” chart in addition to the chart showing the full year before the election. Changes can often be seen better at this scale.

In the end, what seems to be clear is just how up for grabs this election is. While if you include all the leaning states you end up with a McCain win (by about 293 to 245 at the moment), if you take into account the fact that any lead less than 5% is just barely outside the typical margin of error of polls, and is an amount that can clearly be erased overnight by changing events, what you actually see is that if the election was held today anything could happen between McCain winning by 76 electoral votes and Obama winning by 106 electoral votes. (On the chart this is represented by the area between the two “weak” lines.)

So anything could happen.

Not to mention of course that we are still seven and a half months from the election.

This will be a fun seven and a half months.