The Smart TV stuff is pretty impressive. Aside from having built-in iPlayer (and ITV/4oD) it also offers a slew of “apps” including the ubiquitous YouTube. As a bonus it’s DNLA enabled so it can stream stuff directly from our media server. Sadly it doesn’t seem to be able to cope with all the audio codecs the PS3 can. About the only wrinkle was convincing it it was on the ‘net. Despite having been given an IP address it was convinced it could access the “Gateway”. It was still able to access the media server and download a firmware update through the ether so I suspected it was just some needless self-test the wizard went through. Once I plugged it in via a spare broadband router I had lying round it worked fine. I suspect it was trying to do something UPnPish to prove it was on a home network.

First impressions are good, HBO don’t skimp when it comes to production quality which explains why we have so many of their Box Sets on our shelves. They have done a good job at portraying the varied landscape of Westeros and have some impressive sets I hope they are going to make good use of. The cast seem to be well chosen and the performances so far have been good.

The show has Martin signed up as a non-honorific executive producer. This explain why the show seems to be sticking fairly closely to story of the book. It will be interesting to see if that changes over time as the books do tend to wander through a lot of characters. Also having read all the books so far we both know whats coming up. I don’t know if this will get annoying or if we will just sit back and enjoy the ride. We are certainly looking forward to the next episode with anticipation.

My only worry is the same fate will befall this that befell Rome which is high production costs making the show uneconomical. It’s doubly annoying as I would love for HBO to start a streaming on-demand service where I could pay as I go to watch those HBO shows when they are on. I’m afraid I can’t justify paying Murdoch £20 a month just to watch one show.

I spent a chunk of Sunday attending to tasks as directed by the head gardener while she continued attempting the Saturday Times crossword. We seem to have become Saturday Times readers purely on the basis of the quality of their puzzles. Marcus assures me that the Gruniad provides a more brain twisting Cryptic Crossword which Fliss aspires to graduate to one day. Personally I’m happy to manage one clue per crossword but I think I’m getting better at them over time.

We spent a large chunk of the weekend watching through C4′s alternative take on teen super heroes Misfits. It’s been a fun show to watch and I suspect we’ll get to the end of the season 2 box set in short order. We’ll have to be careful because there seems to be a lull in any decent TV until Easter when we’ll be spoilt for choice. Recommendations for other box sets welcome

We were at Maelstrom this weekend. We splashed out for a van so we could take our proper IC tent to the event which we also slept in. Although our normal sleeping tent is quite spacious the IC tent is a lot more so and benefits from not broiling you in your sleeping bag when the sun rises.

I tried Google’s Navigation mode on my software pimped up Hero. I can see why the shares in TomTom and Garmin shares fell so sharply on it’s announcement. I particularly liked the street view picture that’s presented at the end of the journey for extra confirmation. I predict the era of the dedicated GPS road navigation unit is coming to an end – to be replaced by multi-functional smart phone type data pads.

I awoke this morning to the latest Wikileaks data dump as reported by the Guardian. I can understand why the armed forces are upset about this but it’s really an OpSec fail on their part that someone can extract that much data from their systems. Going after Wikileaks will ultimately be a futile exercise. Also baring a live twitter feed of current manoeuvres I’m not sure there should be an expectation of secrecy for historical military data. Transparency is coming to government which I think is a good thing, why not the military? At the same time we need to take some steps to educate the public on the limits of data. If people consider an entry in a database as equating to actual truth on the ground they are going to find themselves disappointed.

We watched the latest Grand Moff/Gatiss collaboration on TV last night. Although the final third had us shouting at the TV for the slowness of the protagonists to put two and two together overall we liked it. The text overlays were fun and the writing has done a good job of bringing the characters forward into the 21st century. We shall be watching the rest of the series.

The debate was certainly livelier than the chancellors debate. Part of that was down to the aggressiveness of the moderator Alistair Stewart. Perhaps he felt he had to cut people off mid-flow to demonstrate he was in control of the debate (despite the times he obviously wasn’t) but it annoyed me. I’d prefer the firm but tolerant David Dimbleby who will be moderating the final debate. Although I’m sure all the parties where monitoring talk time awarded to each participant I doubt any of them will complain, it did feel as though Nick Clegg was getting more than his fair share.

The coaching all the participants had gotten was very obvious. Some where making sure to address the camera, some the questioner. All of them employed the trope of recalling anecdotes as part of their response to questions in an effort to “bond” with the audience. After around 60 minutes you started noticing a tendency to fall back on rehearsed lines, David Cameron in particular fell back to the £1 in 100 illustration which I assume is part of the “message” when discussing savings. Gordon Brown had a few prepared jokes up his sleeves, “It’s not question time, it’s answer time” and “You can’t airbrush your policies like your posters”, which were actually quite good lines but their delivery came across as very forced much like his occasional rictus smile. Cameron looked uncomfortable and uncertain at points, normally a confident orator I think he found the dead quiet more disconcerting without the noise of the House of Commons behind him. Nick Clegg was by far the most relaxed and confident. He even made some good meta-references to the debate format, breaking the rules by getting acknowledgement from questioners if he was answering in the right way.

By the end it felt as though it had been a long debate. The format is still too restrictive, especially with the strict deadlines on rebuttals forcing them all to stick to prepared soundbite points. While I appreciate the need to be “fair and balanced” all of the participants were clearly frustrated that they couldn’t fully develop some of their points.

While Nick Clegg certainly won on style I don’t feel he was pressed enough on policy points. He was happy to sit back and take pot shots at Cameron and Brown slugging it out between prepared attacks and quoting statistics. While it payed off for him in this debate I doubt he’s going to get off that easily in the next two debates.

I’ll be watching the next debate with interest.

Even so while the show may have made stuff up on the hop (the mysterious numbers are one documented example) it has always consistently followed strong themes. One of the themes I have enjoyed is the way the series has played with time. The first season made extensive use of flashbacks and over the seasons there has been use of flash-forwards and even time travel. The final season has started using alternate time-lines. Of course these time lines may be more closely related than we suppose, I’m assuming this is part of this seasons arc.

TV Sci-Fi has come along way since the Babylon 5 made a point of developing a series story arc. It’s nice to see the form is well embedded and surviving well in the 21st century. I suspect Lost could have pushed for a seventh or possibly eighth season but given the vagaries of TV commissioning it makes sense to bring the series to a close now. After all not many people will buy the box set of a series that doesn’t come to some sort of conclusion (Firefly being a notable exception on my DVD shelf).

Episode 4 of Season 6, “The Substitute” airs somewhere tonight