The Robin Hobb books I was referring to are technically known as the Farseer Trilogy. Hobb has written 11 books that are all set in the same universe and are to some degree interconnected. The first trilogy is excellent and I would love to see it on screen, the second trilogy is also good, but only tangentially related to the first and the third trilogy tries to connect the two and for me was slightly disappointing. I would love to see the first trilogy adapted and maybe the second, but I could do without the remaining 5 books.
Le Morte d'Arthur is a classic of early English literature and it has been misused by successive generations adapting the parts that appeal to them. What we think of as the core Arthurian story is only a fraction of the 8 books that Malory compiled. The story of Tristan takes up almost as much space as the story of Arthur. I reiterate my call for the whole of the story to be adapted properly.
Couple of really good videos this week. Tahiti 80 provide a Gilliam-esque animated video and Snovonne directs herself in a mental video in more ways than one.
It occurs to me I didn't go into details regarding the changes that Christopher (or Chris) Brookmyre made for his latest novel. Since he's one of my favourite authors I hope you won't mind if I address it here.
Christopher Brookmyre is a Scottish author of crime novels whose books until this point have been full of black humour and a surprising amount of gore. He also had a tendency to go on long tangents and deviations which gave humorous insight into modern Scotland. He's particularly scathing about 'Old Firm' football fans. For his latest book 'Where The Bodies Are Buried' he's changed tack. It's a much more 'traditional' police procedural story with not much humour, no real tangents and no excessive violence. To highlight this change in approach he released it under the name Chris Brookmyre rather than Christopher. I'm a fan of procedural crime novels anyway, so I didn't mind the new approach, but there are a lot of Brookmyre fans out there who hate it. He's still as good a writer as he ever was.
Since I didn't really plan on talking about Torchwood for as long as I did, I think I need to clarify my thoughts.
I enjoyed the first two series of Torchwood and I was also really impressed with the 'Children of Earth' mini-series that made up the third series. I admire the fact that Russell T Davies was brave enough to try something different. The problem is that 'Children of Earth' made it almost impossible to return to the more traditional structure that the show had in its first two years. He made the same mistake that Joss Whedon tends to make in his shows. He killed too many people. The death of Ianto in CoE was a powerful emotional moment, but coming after Tosh and Owen (and to extend a point Suzie) had already died in the series it was a little too much.
I have faith that the fourth series, 'Miracle Day', will be as impressive as CoE was, but it does have the same mini-series approach. I still like the fact that RTD is trying to do something a little different, but part of me wishes that they would go back to a 'monster-of-the-week' format.
Very little on the video front this week. Just another fascinating insight into the working methods of Mikey Dorje from Loopsy Dazy.
One problem with having such a good mid-season finale is that it's going to be difficult to top in the actual series finale. I really hope that Moffat has a good plan to keep the high standards up when the actual finale is broadcast at the end of the year. As I said on the show I still have faith.
The Streisand Effect is a variation on the law of unintended consequences where the attempt to hide information gets picked up by the internet and generates magnitudes more publicity than it otherwise would have. It takes it's name from the attempt in 2003 of Barbara Streisand to have her house removed from a series of publicly available pictures of Californian coastal erosion. There's no way that Ryan Giggs would have been on the front page of The Telegraph, The Independent and The Guardian if he hadn't taken out his injunction and then tried to sue Twitter.
If you like WMVP remember there is now an HD Feed for the show for those of you with iPads and other tablet devices. Of course the Regular Feed is still available as well.
Not a bad selection of videos this week. The No Age vid is very simple and clever.
An Ourobouros is an ancient Greek symbol of a snake biting its own tail that symbolises infinity. The idea is that there is infinite good music out there that people should hear and I intend to play some of that music.
Meursault
"Crank Resolutions" (mp3) 
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