Messages

Ey, up, Chris! Welcome aboard!

Please see the link below ...

Cheers

Jim

Link: http://www.2000adonline.com/index.php3?choice=fan&page=help" target="_blank">Get yerself an icon

"Hmmm. I know I'll probably get verbally lynched for this, but I've never really considered Andy to be a very good writer, so I shan't be jumping back on board for this."

I must confess, I haven't picked up any of Andy's US stuff, but I did think that the sample pics looked verrry nice.

Cheers

Jim

Surprised that no-one seems to have mentioned ...

Link: http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=88058" target="_blank">... this.

"Noisybast MSc, currently working near-permanent lates in a call centre. At the weekend. In Warrington."

Yup. Jim - BA (Hons) - Customer Service Supervisor for a national chain of opticians, currently developing a near-psychotic loathing for the great British public.

"No, sir, that's fine. Please feel free to be as rude to me as you like. You do realize that I know where you live, don't you?"

Cheers!

Jim

PS - Oh ... and to answer the original question: English and Technical Drawing, neither of which seemed like proper lessons to me, because they were such a doddle.

"I must have had some terrible "guidance" when choosing my A-levels"

Ahh ... 'guidance' at school. I should fucking sue those bastards.

Here's what I wish they'd said to me:

"Be a plumber. Seriously. People will always need plumbers. And plasterers. And electricians. No ... I know your nice, middle class parents want you to go to University, but, trust me, in twenty years time all the people you know who didn't do a degree and learnt a trade instead ...? Well, they'll all be self-employed, work about 30 hours a week and make more money than you'll ever dream of."

Ain't hindsight a wonderful thing?

Cheers!

Jim

"Yeah, why is it always the last piece of the jigsaw you need that's missing?"

Why is it that the only buses that are early, are the ones you're late for, whilst the ones you're early for, are always late?

Cheers!

Jim

"Here's the cover, I can't wait!"

About fuckin' time! You've been sorely missed, Si ...!

Cheers

Jim

"I'm not authorized to view that page."

That's strange ... it seems to be working for me.

Can you get at it via his blog?

Cheers!

Jim

Link: http://d-taylor-comics-music-ford-mustangs.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Blog!

Possible spoilers, I suppose, but Dave Taylor's recently popped another page up on his blog, and I haven't seen anyone else mention it.

I've not linked directly to the pic in order to avoid any possible spoilerage (I don't think there is any, though!)

Cheers!

Jim

Link: http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/943/3216/1600/4weeblog.jpg" target="_blank">Nice.

"So, was the thread nuked deliberately or is it just a database error?"

Well, given that, from the title, it sounds like a duplicate of a post from He Who Shall Not Be Named over on a.c.2000ad, I don't think you have to be a genius to work out who the original post was from, or what happened to it ...

Cheers!

Jim

"Ratings were falling on 4 and everyone I knew personally seemed to be feeling a bit sick of it."

Dunno ... I really found the pace flagging in the middle of Series 2, to the point where I was thinking about packing it in, but I thought it rallied in the last four episodes or so, to the point where I'll certainly be checking out Series 3.

Cheers!

Jim

"Confession time, I was on a TV viewing figures panel"

Fair enough ... so, now, I sort of vaguely know one person who's actually participated.

And that's in 20 years of intermittently bringing this up in conversation with people.

Consider: a statistically significant sample (for example, in general election polling) is around 1000 people. 1000 to 1500 people in the sample gives a margin of +/- about 5%.

1000 people per week, over 20 years gives a figure of 1,040,000 people polled over the total period. That's about 1 in 6 of the total population of Britain, regardless of age (and I'm assuming that the under 5s, for example, don't figure that largely in the poll sample).

I'm sorry, but I know more than six people. If I ask twelve people and no-one has ever even heard of anyone who's been involved, then the sample size has to be less than 500. As near as I can figure, the average sample size per week is probably less than 100 people.

Statistically speaking, that's completely fucking worthless.

Sorry, whoever compiles these figures can stick them up their arse!

Cheers

Jim

"shadowy cartel of Who fanatics have positioned themselves as BARBS"

I'm genuinely suspicious of both the official viewing figures, and of audience approval stats for this one reason:

I don't know anyone who's ever participated in any these things. Not only that, I don't know anyone who knows anyone who's ever participated. I don't know anyone who's even met or heard of anyone who has ever directly participated in contributing to this research.

And I've been curious about this for the best part of 20 years.

This only really suggests the following possibilities:

1) The sample audience is so infintesimally small as to be statistically irrelevant (see also: any women's cosmetic ads - "92% of women saw a visible difference in two weeks [small print: sample size = 98])

2) The sample audience is geographically skewed towards certain regions, also invalidating any extrapolation up to national levels

3) The sample audience is relatively fixed (ie - they basically poll the same bunch of people week in and week out), which also invalidates extrapolation up to a population of 50-whatever million.

These are only idle thoughts ... if anyone has any definite info on the statistical process behind this sort of thing, I'd certainly be interested to hear it!

Cheers

Jim

"Damned by faint praise perhaps, but that's all it can hope for. Because damned it surely is."

I have to admit, I have no idea how this show is playing beyond the confines of this message board!

Does anyone know what the wider opinion is? Viewing figures? Googling 'Torchwood review" seems to get pages of stuff pre-launch or about the first episode, so I'm curious as to how opinion has developed as the series has gone on ...

Cheers!

Jim

"Jim, I believe your fine dose of bile belongs on Outpost Gallifrey as well...?"

Be my guest. I'm already signed up to more forums than I can manage, but if anyone wants to copy 'n' paste then feel free!

Cheers

Jim