The bank holiday weekend turned out to be nice and productive, with a decent amount of gardening done, some good progress on my next assignment (using an AI package to simulate robots on a packaging production line) and some bits of culture. Sort of.
Saturday saw the return of the Daleks to Doctor Who. Or rather, a Dalek. I've heard plenty of people moaning about how much of a letdown this Dalek was, but I really enjoyed the story -- pathos, redemption and a display of awesome destructive power. Good storytelling from where I was sitting.
The other major bit of culture was the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which we went to see twice. Well, the first time we watched the Earth being destroyed, closely followed by watching the projector committing suicide. The cinema people apologised profusely and offered refunds, vouchers, or a chance to see the Heffalump Movie instead. We opted for vouchers (this is a small local cinema that is in severe danger and we don't want to lose) and came back the following day, when everything worked fine.
To digress for a moment, on the first visit we had a family sitting behind us, who had all brought along towels which they were wearing on their heads at appropriate times. The following night, they sat next to us (having recognised us) and much silliness ensued.
And the film? Well, again I've heard lots of moaning about how pants it is, how it isn't a patch on "the original" and how Ford shouldn't be American, but once again I'll put my hand up and say how much I enjoyed it. Yes, it's different, but the book, the radio series and the TV series were all very different, despite the latter two having largely the same cast. H2G2 is a movable feast of silliness and for me it worked, even though there was rather more plot in the film than I'm used to. And Ford wasn't British in the "original", he was from Betelgeuse.
