Over the weekend I got to catch up with some TV I’d taped over Easter. The most important thing I’d been wanted to watch being Bear Grylls: Mission Everest which had been shown on Channel 4.

The special featured the efforts of Bear and Gilo to become the first men to paramotor higher than Mount Everest (originally they’d planned to paramotor over it, but Bear judged this route too hazardous, partly due to the danger of flying into Chinese airspace.

Watching the 90 minute special was basically a case of spending 80 minutes thinking they must be nuts. The project was met with disaster after disaster, with Gilo, the paramotoring expert, designing a completely new paramotor to make the attempt. This meant him spending hardly any time at home, and his business suffering as he had to dedicate all his time to its design and construction.

The project then started to run on, with the initial test flight in the French Alps delayed, and a later test flight in a wind tunnel turning to disaster when the engine froze and cracked.

When they eventually did test fly the engine, Bear came close to dying when his wing tangled, although he fortunately managed to untangle it in time to slow his descent (although not slow enough that he didn’t still hit the ground at some speed - I’m no expert but that looked flippin sore).

However they did manage to make it to Everest, and despite Gilo being forced to fly in an untested second paramotor (which he only finished constructing in time for it to be shipped out), the final 10 minutes showed what it was all about. As they soared into the Sky, it was truely breath-taking to watch, so it must truely have been an awesome experience for them both. Sadly their instrumentation froze at 25,000 feet, so they’ll never be able to know for sure how high they got. Gilo was forced to land early after his engine broke down, but Bear flew even higher, and says that he managed to be above all the peaks.

It was an awesome spectacle, and a great special. The new series of Born Survivor starts next week, and I’m really looking forward to it

Well, Friday night was the latest Riechoes gig.

This time they were playing Nice ‘N’ Sleazy in Glasgow, and the place was packed. Despite being the first band up, the downstairs was standing room only (and not much of that), with a great atmosphere as they played through their set. Some great new tracks as well.

Another cracking gig. Looking forward to the next one, and hopefully this time I’ll be able to drag some people out with me

Well, I was having fun again today playing more of Exteel. I’m very hooked, and the customising is great fun. I’m glad they’ve limited the amount of kit you can hold per mech though, otherwise there’s a lot of scope to go nuts in the shop.

Here’s a quick video of the game in action. Here I’m using my Stallion mech, which is nice and light so its pretty nippy. I’m flicking between my trusty SMGs for close range, and my rifles for a bit of distance shooting.

Ok, the final installment in my comics-talk for today.

Green Lantern #29, the first part of the Secret Origins storyline. Its definitely a change of pace from what we’ve had over the last 6 months or so. Johns moves the pace away from the epic to spend a bit of time getting into Hal’s head. I enjoyed the issue, although parts of it were just expanding on what had been established in issues 1-6, and I’m not convinced it needed retelling aready. Issues 1-6 spelled out fine for me that Hal had joined the Air Force against his mother’s wishes, and when she fell ill he go himself discharged by decking General Stone. We’d already seen him get to the hospital too late to see her, so to an extent this to me felt like trying to spell-out what had been said before.

It was enjoyable enough though, and this is only part one of the story so there’s no doubt that the rest of it will cover some new ground. I suspect this issue was more setup for what’s to come in the story. The glimpse of Abin Sur trying to get more information on the Blackest Night from the Empire of Tears was interesting ad I suspect we’ll see a lot more of this, especially once Sinestro turns up to train Hal. The scene with John I was a bit unsure about though. While its always nice to see John turn up in this book, it seemed strange to have John sticking up for a guy that was clearly out-of-line, marine or not. Again though, I suspect this will be followed up in future issues.

All-Star Superman was another cracking issue from Grant Morrison. While All-Star Batman remains readable in only a train crash-like manner, Morrison and Quietly have nailed what people were expecting from an All-Star line. Taking everything classic and iconic with the character and enhancing it.

The over-arching theme of Superman’s death playing strongly into this issue. With Superman writing his last will and testament while also trying to close off the loose threads in his life, shown in this issue with him finding a resolution for the people of Kandor that finally frees them from their bottle. The stuff with Superman creating a new universe to see how Earth will cope without him and creating our own world in the process was just brilliant.

Its a great book. Its just a pity its not a full monthly.

The big win of the week for me though was Blue Beetle. I’d picked up the first few issues of Keith Giffen’s run, but I didn’t really get into it. However the JLI-reunion promised on the title suckered me and I picked up issues 23 and 24 as well to get a better feel for the story.

What an absolutely cracking title. I’d only read 3 issues of this storyline (which has been built up to throughout the run) yet I was still reading it with a huge grin on my face. Jamie’s plan to stop the Reach’s invasion plans was really well presented and there was a big “coming of age” feel here with him risking everything to stop the invasion.

As a GL fan though, Guy Gardner was just the icing on the cake:

“My brother calls you the crazy one.”

“That’s right, baby girl. I’m the crazy one.”

“We’re dead.”

Classic Guy.

I really need to get the trades of Rogers’ run on this book.

I’ll talk about GL #29 in another post, but the last DC comic of the week I got was the Booster Gold Showcase. I’ve really been enjoying reading his early stories, as I largely only knew the character from JLI. Dan Jurgen’s stuff is brilliant. Its interesting to read the mystery that was applied to the character in the beginning, with his stories launching with him already established, and only later issues revealing that he was from the future. Jurgens does a great job of presenting a hero that’s only out for number one, raking in the money from merchandising from his public status as a superhero. Its a great take, especially since most DC heroes were about the greater good, so its interesting to have a more self-interested hero. And its a testiment to that direction how well the character’s lasted, enjoying more of a spotlight thanks to 52 and his own re-launched title. Its also interesting reading the two-parter where he teams up with Rip Hunter to return to the 25th century, since it nicely serves as a pre-cursor to Booster’s current storylines. With Geoff Johns leaving the title, and Jess Katz rumoured to be leaving, there’s a lot worse things could happen than Dan Jurgens taking over the writing. Although the current rumours have John Rogers (from Blue Beetle, above) relaunching the book as Blue and Gold. Something which, given my glowing review of Blue Beetle, you’ll understand me being excited about the prospect.

The only other title, which I won’t really go into too much, is Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. Usually this is one of my favourite reads when it comes out, but to be honest, the much-hyped Vector crossover hasn’t really been working for me. I’m missing the regular cast and storylines (although Griff’s on good form), and the art’s not been great. Frankly I’ll be glad once the crossover’s done, and I may skip the Legacy issues (the only other SW title I buy).

Right, catching up with my comics ranting

Countdown #5 continued the transformation of the Earth to the world of Kamandi. While this and issue 6 were an interesting read, they also felt like a diversion from the main event of Countdown. I realise the Great Disaster’s been what the Search for Ray Palmer storyline was playing towards, but these issues, while fullfilling that, just didn’t seem part of the main story to me for some reason. Possibly this is related to the decision to focus on this Earth’s Buddy Blank for the narration, a character only in these two issues, while every other character in Countdown took a back seat. Given that we should be firmly in the “wow! This is finally paying off!” stages of Countdown, frankly it just served to underline the disappointment of the title for the last 45ish issues. I’m pretty much sticking with it because there’s only 5 issues to go, but frankly, there’s no chance of me picking up the next weekly, and Countdown’s left me fairly unenthusiastic for Final Crisis. If they’re smart Superman Prime’ll turn up next issue and blow something up, because those were the best issues.

The other Countdown monthly I’ve been picking up was Countdown to Adventure. I’ve really enjoyed this epilogue to the Space Team’s adventures in 52. I’m a sucker for Adam Strange stuff and he, Animal Man and Starfire work well together. The Forerunner backups seemed fairly pointess, just serving a character that appeared briefly in Countdown. Its a structure that was handled much better in last year’s Mystery in Space title. Talking of which, I’m now really looking forward to Rann-Thanagar Holy War. Adam Strange and Captain Comet. Two characters I’ve really enjoyed the last few years. Although I see they’re still trying to drop the “Captain” from Captain Comet’s name. Gah!

The BBC have posted the new “Campfire” trailer to Youtube. Looking good.

Can’t wait till Saturday…

Ok, so I’ve been playing with this tagging thing for a week or so now.

I’m still not convinced by it, but that I think is partly because I’m used to just using my categories. I’m trying to ensure that I at least include the categories of a post as tags, but a big problem I’ve got with tagging in Wordpress 2.3 is that its hard to keep track of which tags I’ve already used.

The good thing is that this is one area that’s been addressed in Wordpress 2.5. I installed the release candidate to get a look at it, and while for readers there’s not a huge difference, once you go behind the scenes as the blog admin, its had some big makeovers that I think will make a big difference. Primarily of interest to me at the moment is that the tag field now prompts you with existing tags when you start typing in that field. Magic.

Well, cracking start to the new series last night.

Poor Nicholas. He definitely deserved to go, but not for his performance on the task. Rather for his boardroom performance.

From what I’d seen, he went in with a strong hand. The team leader had told him to price the lobsters at £4.90, something no one else commented on. He priced the monkfish based on what was written on the box. He was then the one who took the initiative and checked the girls prices and raised the issue that they were selling things way too cheaply.

All he had to do was keep that in mind, and make a big deal of the time Alex wasted assigning blame to anyone other than himself whenever something went wrong.

But the minute he made it about class, he lost the argument. I see what he was trying to say, and there’s a strong argument to be made about the fact that the boys have obviously split into two camps already, but I think he realised straight away he’d made a mistake, and then he tried to get himself out of it, but instead kept digging.

From watching “You’re Fired”, I thought he came over a lot better in that. He seemed a bit more relaxed and able to laugh at himself. From the extra clips shown there, its obvious that he was feeling quite isolated by the other guys from the beginning, so from that perspective I think it maybe worked out for the best for him leaving early. I can’t imagine he’d have found it fun being in that house for the next several weeks, as isolated as he was.

As always, I find it hard to get a feel for who the ones to watch will be this early in the show. Raef, obviously, looks like he should be quite fun to watch though. I hope he goes far, but I also can’t see him winning it. From wht we saw last night as well, the way Alex was trying to shift the blame away from himself constantly won’t go unnoticed for long I’d have thought.

It was a good start for Claire on the girls team as well. Although things were a bit of a disaster at the beginning of the day, she managed to turn things around and reign things in that were getting out of control. Plus she’s gotten her stint as project manager over with early, which can only be a good thing. Lindi seeed to be very strong with the sales as well. She’ll be a big boon to her team in future challenges I think.

Well, the finale of Ashes to Ashes has just aired, and I enjoyed it.   It dragged in places, and the Life on Mars season 1 finale felt better overall, but this did provide a really satisfactory wrapping up to the season.

The biggest shock for me was Evan not being evil.  A really well done red herring by the production team there.   I’d previously been wondering why we weren’t seeing much of Alex’s father, when we’d seen so much of her mother, and it became obvious tonight.  The minute I saw him properly in the court room I noticed straight away he was the clown, so from that point of view, keeping his appearances limited in the past episodes was a good move.

Overall, Ashes to Ashes has been a bit hit-and-miss for me.  Its definitely lacked Life On Mars’ instant grab factor, but over the last few episodes its picked up for me.  Saying that, I think a lot of it was just to do with the direction the show took in terms of Gene Hunt being a bit defanged and institutionalised, and Alex Drake’s very knowing, and at times very smug attitude towards the situation.  In this regard Sam Tyler was a lot more likable.  I don’t agree with the flack Keeley Hawes has been taking.  She’s done a great job with the character.

I’m definitely on board for season 2, and I was glad to see the finale throw open the question of Gene Hunt.   Now we know he’s not just a fictional character.