Phlogiston

I blogged previously about Microformats (and mentioned in passing Structured Blogging). I’m glad to be able to say that there really seems to be some momentum building behind this. Structured Blogging is basically an impetus to bring microformats to blogging, and they currently make available plugins for WordPress (which is what I use) and Movable Type. I’m now on the mailing list for Structured Blogging and have slowly been reading through the source code of the plugin and the microformat descriptions to see where I can contribute.

Sadly, I had a devil of a time getting the Structured Blogging WordPress plugin to work properly on Phlogiston, but that seems largely to be due to idiosyncracies with Phlogiston. By contrast it worked flawlessly when I installed it into a local copy of WordPress on my laptop.

The first problem was that the Structured Blogging plugin didn’t play nicely with wpLicense, another WordPress plugin which allows you to cleverly manage the Creative Commons licensing of your blog. (I’ve had to disable it until I find a workaround.) Both use a bunch of common AJAX libraries, such as Prototype and script.aculo.us, and it seems they were somehow treading on each other’s toes despite no warnings showing up in Firefox’s Javascript console.

The second problem was that my hosting service, Positive Internet, who I am generally very happy with despite occasionally grumbling about them, had firewalled all outgoing HTTP requests without telling me. Thanks for that, as it meant all of my Meerkat news feeds were broken on the main DZR pages. Still, despite the fact that they hadn’t told me they’d done this, they were very helpful about opening up particular hosts (by IP address) on a per request basis. Okay, I thought, well in order to get the Structured Blogging plugin working properly I need to get all its requests to Amazon’s Web Services through the firewall. This turned out to be no easy matter, as the IP address of, say xml-uk.amznxslt.com seems to vary—presumably they have some kind of load balancing thing going on. But on top of that their load balancing seems to be flakey, as sometimes I get a 500 Internal Server Error, sometimes a 404 Page Not Found Error, and sometimes I just seem to get redirected (with no 3xx redirection response) to something not allowed by the firewall. Oh, and occassionally it actually works. None of this is the fault of the Structured Blogging plugin, by the way. It just seems to be the fault of Amazon, who I’m sure will fix it eventually, and being behind a firewall that’s a little bit too restrictive.

But I do want to make it plain that the Structured Blogging plugin is very cool, and when Amazon are playing nice it is a joy to use. I do highly recommend it, despite the problems I encountered.

My first post to this blog, just over a year ago now, was a round-up of the latest TV shows, especially the American ones, so it seems only appropriate that I mark my return from my long hiatus from the blogosphere with my thoughts on what I’m watching (and not watching) right now.

So, it seems that last year Desperate Housewives was one of my fave new shows. Sadly, it didn’t hold my attention. What grabbed me about it to begin with was its Twin Peaks vibe, the dark surreal underbelly of American suburbia. Well, at least that’s what I thought I was getting. Instead, it’s descended into Sex and the City for older married chicks. I was already getting bored in season one, and after the first couple of episodes of season two I just gave up on it. Another show I raved about last year is currently teetering on the edge of my watch list: Lost. Lost started off incredibly well; I liked the ensemble cast, I liked their back-stories, and I liked the mysery of the island: are they insane, in purgatory, in some supernatural Bermuda triangle, or caught in some heinous conspiracy? Frankly, who knows and who cares by now? Last year I expressed surprise that J.J. Abrams, creator of Alias, could have written something like this. But now the similarities with Alias are becoming all too obvious. Alias was always a bit hokey, with its knowing Mission Impossible riffing, and its ridiculous (and seemingly endless) spy-family patriarchs and matriarchs. But the first season had panache and verve, and promised a payoff in terms of unravelling the Rimbaldi mystery and playing out the complicated romantic involvements of the leads. But none of it went anywhere. The Rimbaldi mystery was a huge McGuffin, and the romantic involvements slipped all too quickly into juvenile exercises in do they or don’t they love me more than them? Sounding familiar yet? That’s right, Lost is rushing headlong in the same direction. Originally, show runners J. J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof claimed that an entire five season story had been worked out in advance, and that they knew exactly what was happening and where the story was heading. Then David Fury left the writing team to join the 24 team and said in an interview that they were just flying by the seat of their pants, making it up as they went along. Recently I’ve heard (Hannu, leave a comment with the details) that in a recent interview Abrams and Lindelof have admitted that they intend to drag the mystery out for as long as the show is on air. So those of you hoping for some explanation of what is going on might as well give up now. Personally, I’m giving it to the end of this season, and if there isn’t enormous improvement I’m gone.

The new season in America saw three new shows, all sounding nearly the same (”They’re amonst us, but we can’t tell who they are”): Invasion, Threshold and Surface. Personally I had no real interest in any of them, but a lull over Christmas in anything to watch ended up with me catching up on all three. Threshold was simply dreadful. Brent Spiner was wonderful, but one good actor does not a show make. It’s no surprise it was cancelled after ten episodes. Surface, currently showing on ITV2, failed to hold my attention. I don’t have much more to say about it than that. Invasion, currently showing on Channel 4, is probably the best of the three, but honestly it’s nothing to write home about. It is at least more character driven, and contents itself to build slowly, and it does have a nice creepy “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” feel to it. But when all is said and done, the last few episodes have felt weaker than the openers, and it just doesn’t feel like it has the quality to keep it going.

One new show and one returning one that I do enjoy, despite thinking that they’re kinda daft, are Supernatural and Medium. Medium, currently showing on BBC1, bugs me slightly with its “hang-’em-high” conception of justice, but Patricia Arquette is simply wonderful in the title role, and I really enjoy the quotidian details of her home and family life. Supernatural, currently showing on ITV2, is totally daft, but enormous fun. A dark chiller, riffing on American urban legends, it has just enough hokem and creepiness to make a hit of a fairly obvious formula.

Three new sitcoms of note: How I Met Your Mother, Kitchen Confidential and My Name is Earl. The first two were of note to me because they starred Buffy the Vampire Slayer alumni: Alyson Hannigan in the former and Nicholas Brendan in the latter. How I Met Your Mother was aimed at people who were mentally deficient, and of course is a big hit; Kitchen Confidential was edgy, smart and cancelled after about four episodes. My Name is Earl is currently showing on Channel 4, and so far has been funny and enjoyable. How long that will last is anyone’s guess.

But now on to what I do think is good:

24, the crack cocaine of TV, has gotten off to a spectacular start in its fifth season, with the first four episodes so far rivalling what we saw in season one. Whether it can maintain that is another question, but so far so good. I’m reassured by the fact that David Fury and Manny Coto are on the writing staff this season.

Battlestar Galactica just goes from strength to strength. This season (two) has just been incredible. I blogged about this show before, but if you still don’t believe me, here’s another very positive review. This is the kind of show that people who don’t even like sci-fi love. There is more drama, politics, and human fallibility in one episode of this show then there is in most seasons of other drams.

Veronica Mars continues as the greatest undervalued, and in many cases unknown, show. As a great man said, “this show knows from pain”. My current fave alongside Battlestar Galactica. Why the hell isn’t this on UK TV? I don’t know how to begin even describing what this show is about; I do know that any description I try to give is almost certainly going to fail to do it justice.

One returning show I’ve only just gotten hip to is The Shield. The guys at RE5ULT rave about this, and I’d heard that it’s won more Emmies and Golden Globes than any other cable show, but when I saw the first two seasons going cheap on DVD in the January sales and picked them up I don’t think I was prepared for it to be just this damn good. Picture NYPD Blue meets The Sopranos; a cop show where the lead character is a corrupt policeman, a decent man who does horrendous things. That’s The Shield. I’ve also heard that I need to check out The Wire but I haven’t yet. Speaking of The Sopranos it’s due to return in, I believe, March of this year. What a wait it’s been. It has to be pretty much the gold standard in American TV drama.

And finally, a plug for yet another cancelled before its time show: The Inside. Created by Tim Minear, co-executive producer of Angel, Firefly and Wonderfalls, it’s no normal police procedural (in fact, Tim Minear admitted in an interview that he wouldn’t have a clue how to write a police procedural as he hasn’t a clue about police procedure). Instead, it’s a very dark, gothic, psychological drama, featuring normally outlandish serial crimes, a la The Silence of the Lambs, in which the crimes often reflect unflatteringly on those investigating them, illuminating and sometimes reflecting their dark and troubled psychologies. It’s really worth checking out, especially if you give it a few episodes, although be prepared to get hooked on a show cut off in its prime. The Inside is currently showing on ITV4 on Fridays at 9pm.

Well, okay, I haven’t actually been anywhere, but I am blogging again. So, it’s hello from me, and it’s hello from WordPress 2.0. Anyway, shame on me for not blogging for so long, but I have been vey busy. I kept meaning to blog, and in fact had a special folder of bookmarks of links I was going to blog about, and half a dozen half-written draft posts. That was what ended up being the problem. Everytime I thought I’d blog something, I saw the huge back-log and was paralysed into inaction. The solution? Simple! I deleted the folder of bookmarks and all but two of the half-written posts and lo-and-behold I am up-to-date!

News? Well the only really important piece of news is that there is a good chance I will be relocating to Cambridge in the near future and working for RE5ULT on a permanent basis. Nothing is final yet, but it seems like the right move if all the pieces fall together.