Matt Buck

1) OK, yes, Megan Fox is pretty hot, but she's not #2 in the world hot like FHM believe. More on that story later.
2) Isn't it kind of... weird to be making out with your girlfriend on the bonnet of a massive yellow death robot?

1) What's with all this industrial complex stuff for the engineering levels?
2) Jennifer Morrison is too hot to only be on screen in a wheelchair and giving birth. Give her a bikini or something.
3) The USS Kelvin had 800 people? The Enterprise-D barely had that many.
4) Nero's ship looked ridiculous. Who would build a ship with so many pointy bits? It's a waste of space.
5) The shuttlecraft interior.
6) Why do we have to see Kirk driving a car? Why do cars even exist in 2180? And really, driving it over a cliff? Come on...
7) A "Cardassian Sunset" in the 22nd century? The Cardassians didn't come into contact with the Federation until at least 2300.
8) You can become captain four years out of the Academy? That seems a bit quick...
9) Klingons do not have warbirds. Romulans have Warbirds, Klingons have Birds of Prey, but the ships in question were I believe D7 class battlecruisers.
10) Starfleet really didn't have any ships to defend Vulcan with? The entire fleet was on manoeuveurs? Except for the flagship and a few others, which are to be crewed by cadets? WHAT? Where did their crew go?
11) Why would Pike make Kirk Spock's first officer? Wasn't there someone more qualified? You know, maybe someone who had actually graduated and done some time on a starship before?
12) Why does a machine that is firing a huge energy beam at the surface need to vent flames? And why would it do that UPWARDS? You know, where someone might be standing.
13) Fencing is NOT hand-to-hand combat.
14) Surely a structure that can transfer a huge energy beam, and survive fast entry into a planet's atmosphere, can survive hits from two disruptor rifles.
15) What the fuck was with the spinny bits on Spock's ship?
16) Amanda Grayson dies... that was unnecessary.
17) Why was a human on the Vulcan high council anyway?
18) Why did said high council not have their own means of evacuation?
19) I thought all Orion women were meant to be really sexy...
20) Uhura in her pants. In fact, that entire scene.
21) Vulcan is destroyed. Vulcan is DESTROYED. WHAT?
22) Vulcan had 6 billion inhabitants? The place is a ruddy desert world with radioactive wastelands.
23) They really allowed Spock to MAROON Kirk?
24) That second monster. And Kirk running from it. He looked like a numpty.
25) And he just happens to stumble upon Spock's cave.
26) Why could Spock see Vulcan as a disc in the sky, I thought he was in a different star system. If not, why wasn't he sucked into the black hole?
27) Romulus's sun went nova? You think maybe they'd have noticed a few... oh... MILLION years beforehand? These things don't happen overnight.
28) Old Spock.
29) Sulu.
30) Chekov.
31) Sulu's swordsmanship - the guy's a champion fencer, so why's he losing to some random Romulan mine worker?
32) Needs more Klingon.
33) Oh look, they found Scotty. What a surprise.
34) Scotty killed Porthos?
35) That gremliny thing that followed Scotty around.
36) Oh look, Earth's in peril. I haven't seen that before... oh wait, yes I have. As a side query, why do the Borg care so much about humans?
37) The viewscreen is an actual WINDOW? And why is the bridge on the bottom of the saucer anyway?
38) Scotty has never been on the Enterprise and suddenly he becomes chief engineer? And where are all the other people in engineering anyway?
39) Why would you have a needlessly meandering pipe like that? And why have a big blender at the end?
40) There's a black hole at the core of Vulcan... shouldn't the planet collapse into it pretty much at the same time, rather than as if it was only sucking in one direction?
41) Transporting onto a ship at warp? Scotty worked out how? No way. Scotty was not a theorist or an innovator, he was a fixer. Ditto transporting between planets/star systems, though admittedly the Dominion and Borg appeared to be able to do things like that.
42) Sarek.
43) Who designed that Romulan ship? Why would you design a ship with bottomless pits and platforms without any rails suspended in mid-air?
44) Kissing on the transporter platform. Really Spock...
45) They made Kirk a captain. HE HADN'T EVEN FINISHED STARFLEET ACADEMY.

So yeah... I saw the new Star Trek film. To sum up, JJ Abrams, get your hands off Star Trek and go back to confusing everyone with Lost. If you do not, I shall hunt you down and destroy everything you hold dear, just as you have managed to do to all the Trek-lovers out there. A decent film, but a terrible Trek film. 1.5 stars.

1) The design of the USS Kelvin.
2) Jennifer Morrison.
3) The shuttlecraft exterior.
4) The Kobayashi Maru again. Nice touch.
5) The design of the Vulcan and Earth cities.
6) Starfleet Academy.
7) The manoeuveuring scene above Vulcan was good.
8) Zachary Quinto.
9) Orbital skydiving to the rescue - nice idea.
10) Spock/Uhura.
11) Pike.
12) They did not destroy the Golden Gate. That's quite amazing.
13) Amanda Grayson.
14) That black uniform - very stylish.

Two weeks ago I had a job interview up in London. I don't like London. I've felt that way for a long time, and I'm not entirely sure why. I guess I've never been much of a city fan, and I didn't like how the traffic in London, when we went to visit my dad's family, was as bad at its best as Bristol is at its worst. Another possible answer is the time I hurt my foot on a miniature railway somewhere in London. Point is, London was not somewhere I really wanted to go. Still, I didn't have much choice.

I got on the 0828 Taunton to Cardiff service at Nailsea - it was the train that's been going around recently. Three old Intercity carriages hauled by 67016 and 67017. I'd seen them before, at Parson Street and Weston-super-Mare. I got off at Temple Meads, and saw a nice trio - Cross-Country 221141, First Great Western 158763 and South West Trains 159014 - one train from each company that goes to Temple Meads. I wandered around for a while - I would be travelling to Paddington on a train hauled by 43148 and 43189. I saw 158769 leaving, and then 43148/43189 and 150278/153XXX arrived more or less simultaneously. I saw 153370, and then we were off. I saw 150279 and 150238 on the way, as well as a load of trains at Reading, but spent most of the trip reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (I managed to read all seven books within nine days). We arrived a few minutes early, and I had a while before I needed to get on the tube for the next stage of my journey, so I took a wander around Paddington. I saw a load of the Heathrow Express Class 332s (36% of the fleet by my reckoning), and took that requisite for any real visit to Paddington - four trains side-by-side. I saw 43041, 43122, 43143, 43148, 43150, 43168, 332005, 332007, 332013 and an unidentified class 332, then headed onto the underground.

I planned to take the circle line from Paddington to Moorgate, but ended up getting off at Edgware Road to look at a huge bundle of brightly-coloured cables. While I was there I even managed to get a photo of a completely empty underground train. I continued on, stopping at Farringdom, then finally got off at Moorgate, where a guy told me you weren't allowed to take photos on the underground, and a girl asked me whether I was a press photographer.

Moorgate was where I changed - I headed down a spiral staircase, and found myself on what looked like another tube platform, but incongruously had a mainline train on it - 313057, my train. This was the terminus of the "Northern City Line" - there was meant to be a station another 300 yards further on, but it was realised that a train at that station wouldn't have actually left Moorgate fully, and the project was abandoned. After a while we set off, through a tunnel of several stations, before finally emerging into the light near Drayton Park. Beyond that was Finsbury Park, where I saw the minaret of the infamous Finsbury Park Mosque. Unfortunately I couldn't get a decent photo of it. Soon after we passed the Hornsey TMD (317038, 317341, 317342, 365515, 365521, 365530), and then at Alexandra Palace I saw an Intercity 225, which I admit was somewhat exciting as they don't come down my way due to a lack of electrification.

Beyond that the journey was fairly uneventful - I got off at Enfield Chase, ate lunch, and had my interview. I didn't get the job, but I did do an aptitude test that was older than me, and answered a "thinly veiled network packet analogy" involving the slaves of Greek philosophers. I spent a while wandering around Enfield Old Park, then went back to the station, running in just as a train arrived, and just getting on it (313062/313063). I saw plenty of trains on the way back - plenty of twin 313s heading the other way, a bevy of 365s, and 82219 at Bounds Green TMD. By the time we got back onto the Northern City Line again (rather than East Coast Main Line) I had the carriage to myself and took the opportunity to get out of my suit - so that's "been on a train in just my underwear" chalked off the bucket list. I got back to Paddington via a Metropolitan Line train to Baker Street and then a jam-packed Circle Line train. Amazingly I got a seat, but I was right at the end of the train and thus the doors didn't open at every station. Nevertheless, at one station I could see a sign helpfully saying "alight here" - I assume there was meant to be a "do not" at the front of it.

I got back to Paddington, but couldn't actually get on another train as my ticket was off-peak only. I wandered around for a while, but got bored fairly quick, and got on the train back home as soon as I could. I finished my book just before Temple Meads, then had a bit of a panic trying to change trains as all the information boards were down. Still, I got back to Nailsea after what was a decent day. Maybe London's not as bad as I thought.

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I have to say, I was very excited by the grand prix this weekend, moreso than usual. Of course the start to a new season is always exciting, but considering how close qualifying had been, I was anticipating a great race. I was not disappointed. To get it out of the way, I think the cars are pretty ugly, the BMW especially. The high noses are horrible - much as I hate to say it, the Ferrari is the best looking car out there, though I do like the McLaren front wing.

It was great to see Jenson Button win pretty much lights-to-flag, though it was a shame that Barrichello didn't win. That start cost him dearly. Hamilton's third (pending) was more by luck and attrition than anything, but that's what Australia is about - keeping your head. The Brawn cars look good for the season, but not quite as good as had been expected after testing, and if the teams using a standard diffuser copy Brawn's then they could be in trouble, as it's apparently worth half a second. I'm not one to believe the guff about the winner of the first race having a 75% chance of winning the title - that's since usually there aren't many title contenders, and the one who gets off to a good start (usually Schumacher) has enjoyed a large advantage over the other teams. It's close, so it may not be that way this year. IE I want Rubens to win.

Ugly as they are, the new aero rules seemed to work - there was plenty of overtaking, and the cars were following each other closely. I'm not sure about the value of KERS, but if it helped the show then that's a good thing. It will likely play a bigger role next race, so we shall see. And wait expectantly.

Well, I have to say I am very surprised. While I knew McLaren weren't front-runners this year, I didn't expect their pace to be so close to the top. But the surprise is that it is so close - in Q2, positions 3-8 were separated by 0.16 seconds - I'm pretty sure that's almost unprecedented. I've never seen the field so close. That being said, Brawn's pace is remarkable - faster by a fair margin, but with significantly more fuel. Obviously their car isn't that great at low fuel, but is very fast when heavy.

I still say Barrichello to win.

I'm curious as to how Toyota are going to fix their rear wings before the race, and why this "flex" wasn't discovered at the pre-practice scruitineering. Still, their progress through the field will be interesting to watch as a test of the new overtaking abilities.

It's a shame that the Force Indias didn't do well - they're 15th and 16th on the basis that three other cars were penalised and put behind them. Their practice pace was good. I'm disappointed by Bourdais, I thought he would be beating Buemi easily, instead he qualified last. That being said, considering how close the field is, that could easily change.

It's good to see Ferrari not winning, though their startline KERS jump will be fun to watch. I predict a Massa/Kubica coming together at turn one.

I'm pleased by the pace of the Williams - I didn't think they'd be doing too well this year, but they look to have produced a good car.

Tomorrow morning I am going to be bloody tired.

A few thoughts:

1) I tip Barrichello to win.

2) The diffusers are legal. Good.

3) Virgin will sponsor Brawn. Good for Brawn, but shame an un-sponsored car can't win.

Jade Goody is dead. I can't say I'm especially sad about it, if I'm honest. I don't like the way when someone dies it's as if we just forget all their faults. There are some things that I feel pity over - that someone who was only 27 should die of cancer, that she had two children who will now grow up without a mother. But I don't feel pity over the lack of Jade Goody herself.

Goody came to public attention when she as on Big Brother 3 or 4 or 10,582,692 or something, where she proved to be possibly the most annoying person in the world, and to be totally lacking in any sort of knowledge. I seem to remember she thought Essex was abroad. What's more, she was the worst sort of idiot - an idiot who not only didn't know they were an idiot, but who seemed to revel in it. I don't like the idea that people can be wilfully ignorant like that. She didn't win Big Brother, but she did better out of it than any other housemate.

Oh, and no I did not watch Big Brother 3. I watched a bit of BB2, which included three naked women in a hot tub, but couldn't be arsed after that.

Goody came back and appeared in "Celebrity" Big Brother with (if I remember from the headlines correctly,) her mother and boyfriend, who all proved to be as obnoxious as she was. She also proved to be racist. And yet through it all she remained somehow popular, which I don't understand. Oh yes she's racist, but she's from a working class background, so it's ok. Yeah right.

Then she got cervical cancer, which was covered ad nauseam in the media, got married to someone who was convicted of assault or something, and has now died. I find the relentless media interest - her death was top news item on the BBC headlines - to be sickening, and frankly her entire life fills me with loathing. She was to me little better than a maggot, squirming around in shit. But if her death means that young women will get themselves checked for cervical cancer, and her media exposure provides for her children's education, then least some good will have come of her life.

I'd been meaning to go to Bath for a while now. I'd been through the station, Bath Spa, six times in the past few years on my way to and from Reading, and it had seemed like quite a nice place. Last Sunday I decided to see for myself.

I took the A4 from near Temple Meads, though I turned off at St Philips Marsh, went round a roundabout slightly more than once, and stopped off at the maintenance depot there. There was an annoying mesh fence in the way which made photography annoying from several angles, but I saw a few trains - some carriages, 43183, 153382 and 150278. I'd seen the last of those three at Temple Meads before - for some reason it's one of several First Great Western class 150s which are painted in Arriva Trains livery.

I left fairly quickly, as I couldn't get good photos (mostly), so I set back off along the A4. Frankly it was further than I remembered, but then I 'm not sure I'd been along it for over ten years - since I used to go to Victoria Park with my parents. Unfortunately one thing I'd forgotten was that it was the day of the Bath Half Marathon, and so traffic was quite horrific. That and the whole way in to the city I was driving over a carpet of discarded water bottles. I eventually found my way to the station, but found the pay and display meter was out of order, so had to park in the Parade Garden instead. I headed back to the station, but going in the front door found ticket barriers. However, I went up back into the car park and simply walked onto the platform through the open gate. Quite why they bothered with ticket barriers with an open gate is a mystery to me.

I'd seen a class 43 headed to Paddington while I was walking to the station, and once I got onto the platform I saw two Class 158s - 158950 headed to Cardiff and 158957 headed to Portsmouth. I had a wander around after they left, and took the underpass to the westbound-platform. It was a nice place after all, not quite as sweet as Bridgwater, but nice nonetheless. It is a bit odd though - the tracks cross the River Avon, then there's the station, and immediately it crosses the river again. Why not just go around? A westbound Intercity (43063/43175) stopped at the station, and another (43127/43040) passed through. I'd had enough, and was just leaving when a coupling of 150249 and 150239 stopped on its way to Bristol.

I had a wander round Bath - looking at the Abbey, and walking over Pulteney Bridge, then having a quick look at the Recreation Ground, before heading back to the car before the meter ran out. It was past five, and time to go home, but I had one stop to make on the way - Oldfield Park station. I tried to make my way through the backstreets to it, but found myself at the Westmoreland Rail head instead. Still, another few glances at the map and I found my way there. It was a pretty dull station - straight platform, standard purple bus shelter, and a button you push to find out when the next train was due. I waited, during which time 43040/43127 came through, headed back towards London, and after a while 158953 came through on the way to Portsmouth. I figure it was essentially what I'd seen at Bath Spa, just two hours later and a bit further up the line. Sure enough, 158958 came back the other way, headed to Cardiff. Unfortunately for the people waiting, it was full and so nobody could get on. After that I left for home. A good day.

Well... that was quick. Already the FIA has backed down over the new scoring system for F1. Good.

Last Saturday, I went on a trip. As usual, it was a trip to a station for somewhat of a trainspotting experience, but this one was further away than I'd been before on my travels. For spotting trains anyway. I took the M5 south and headed to Bridgwater. I'd fancied going south since a lot of the trains around here run from Taunton to Cardiff and back, and from the Wikipedia page, Bridgwater seemed like a nice place. It was a nice day, so off I went.

After a few wrong turnings, I found Bridgwater station. Before that day I had never been to Bridgwater, and all I knew of it was that it caused a noxious yellow band across the sky due to the cellophane factory (now closed). That the sky band was gone was a nice surpise, but the station was moreso. It was just about the nicest station I'd ever been to. Two platforms, with a nice building on the nearside, all painted in white. It was like a timewarp, and even had a closed-in footbridge and a model railway shop on one platform.

I stayed around the station for an hour or so, and saw several trains go through. A Cross-Country Intercity 125 pulled by 43366/43304 went by on its way south, and a Class 220 went by heading north. 158763 stopped on its way to Cardiff, picking up a load of women celebrating an early St Patrick's Day by going to a beer festival in Weston-super-Mare, and 150261 stopped on its way to Taunton. I left shortly after that, though not before looking round the model railway shop and feeling a mix of nostalgia at trainsets, and wonder that it was so expensive. Sixty quid for an engine? Bloody hell.

I decided to head south for a bit to a bridge over the Bristol to Taunton line near Durston. As I went over it I saw a class 220 (presumably the one I saw earlier) head north, and after getting out I saw 150261 heading back towards Cardiff. I carried on, stopping for a look at a swing bridge over the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal, looking for a level crossing. I didn't find it (I think it was down a private road), but I did find "Higher Lock" on the canal where the road crossed it. It also had a large yellow globe which I recognised from a Commons photo as the Sun on the Somerset Space Walk. The Space Walk is a representation of the solar system built along the canal, with the sun at the centre and the planets arrayed in each direction. It's built to a scale of 530,000,000:1. This apparently makes the average adult step as around 400,000km. Another Commons photo, this time of Jupiter, gives a sense of the scale we're talking about. The solar system is something like 16 miles across, and Jupiter, the biggest planet, isn't even the size of a football.

I had one more stop - the Reading to Plymouth line currently joins the Bristol to Taunton line south of Durston with the "Castle Cary cut-off", but north of Durston is the trackbed of the Yeovil branchline. Part of it is now used as part of the cut-off, but for some reason a new junction to the Bristol to Taunton line was built rather than using the old one. There are still several bridges over it, including one just before it rejoins the cut-off at East Lyng. Then, it was time to go home.

Sometimes, I wonder why the F1 teams bother. They know the sport better than anyone, and they do some pretty comprehensive market research. They present that to the FIA, who just ignore it utterly. The latest thing is to decide a (drivers') championship on most wins. Now, I can understand in principle why this would seem like a good idea. The driver with most wins did a good job. But the whole reason for points is that sometimes wins aren't enough. If, to take it to an extreme, driver A wins two races and retires from the rest, while driver B wins once but finishes second the rest of the time. Sure, his peak isn't as high as A's, but, to me anyway, reliability and consistency count for a lot. It's no point being fast if you can't get to the end of a race. What's more, FOTA provided a good change to allow for greater distinction between the top few while retaining the idea of points for the top eight. What they are doing is taking a system which works well (though we shouldn't forget that if it weren't for that ridiculous penalty in Spa, Hamilton would have had more victories than Massa in '08), and has produced a final race decider for the last two years, and a penultimate race decider the previous two, and just making it harder for people to understand.

The problem is that the FIA can't decide what it wants. It spends 20 years restricting development and removing grip, forcing designers to be more and more imaginative about how to generate downforce, and then they realise that that creates turbulence so you can't follow the car in front. If they'd simply asked some designers, they'd have told them what would happen immediately. The FIA are bureaucrats, not racers, designers or mechanics, and have no idea what their changes do because they have no experience within motorsport as a competitor.

Now, from next year there is a budget cap of £30,000,000. Yes, it's voluntary, but if you do it then you get benefits like being able to use better engines, more engineering freedom, etc. Now, setting aside the fact that Kimi Raikkonen earns £30 million on his own, it's not really feasible to operate an F1 team on that much money nowadays. Force India last year had a budget of around triple that. Yes, I don't deny that budgets need to come down, and yes it would be nice to have some more constructors, but slashing a budget by 65% in one year for the smallest constructor? Toyota, McLaren and Ferrari would have to cut their spending by 90%. Toro Rosso, which is not a constructor, had a similar budget to Force India. Super Aguri had a budget of around £30 million for 2008, and they didn't make it halfway through the season.

Another thing of note is that the FIA will now publish how much fuel each car has after qualifying, thus removing any suspense about how long cars are running. What makes a race exciting is not knowing everything there is to know, it's knowing that some things you don't know, thus building suspense. Oh yes, I'd like overtaking, but since there is a lot of debate about whether overtaking will actually be easier, suspense may have been all that was left. Great job.

I guess my main problem is that the FIA don't seem to care about what the teams think, or the drivers, or frankly the fans. The teams are the ones racing, the ones who have to make a living from the sport. Don't you think maybe they should be deciding what happens to the regulations?

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Quick thought about 24 - the show's called 24, so why do they use a 12 hour clock?

The Bible. Best selling book in history, and the holy scripture to some large fraction of the world's population. Every so often it's slightly edited for the needs of a new generation, and that time has come again. The world's foremost conservative encyclopaedia, Conservapedia, is spearheading the latest effort. So far they've managed the first verse of John chapter one, and they haven't changed a word.

In some ways the retranslation effort is commendable - a lot of errors have crept in over the years due to monks not copying it out quite right in the Latin. The translation effort seems to be working from the original Hebrew/Greek, and translating it line by line. But what's quite interesting is the list of "suggested improvements" - words which mean different things now than they did when the King James Bible was first published. There are some suggestions like changing "word" in "the Word was God" to "truth", changing "Adam" to "the man" and "badger" to "hirax", which is thought to be the correct animal. But let's look at some others:

First, that old chestnut, "thou shalt not kill". Now obviously these are generally words to live by. But of course the original tribe that escaped from Egypt didn't exactly obey them, since the ten commandments were meant to be between jews, so don't kill another jew. Conservapedia suggests changing it to "do not murder" or "do not take up arms without sufficient justification". Now, I can see the sense in this, but what is "sufficient justification" - it really could mean anything, and thus means nothing, effectively removing it from the list of ten commandments (not that there are actually ten, there were several more that are more or less ignored).

The other one I like is changing "rich" in "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:24). Now, maybe "rich" has changed its meaning, and thus that we are pretty much all "rich" nowadays. But instead of recognising that no one's going to heaven, it is suggested that it should be replaced by "idle miser" or something. That or people don't like the idea that Rush Limbaugh isn't going to pass through the pearly gates.

One final thing to note is the list of useful new words to include: bias, censor, conservative, homeschool, media, moral majority, socialism, welfare (government). I don't know, it just seems an interesting list.

I am well aware of the fact that 24 is now in its seventh series, and that by talking about season one I am waaaay behind the times. Fact is, when it first came out, I derided it as being ridiculous - a whole third of the series would have the characters sleeping. That and I disagreed with the general view that Elisha Cuthbert was hot - I saw her in FHM (I had terrible trouble finding somewhere to read it where the shiny pages wouldn't reflect in my eyes) and thought that she was OK, but not as hot as everyone seemed to think. For that matter I've only recently discovered that Anna Kournikova is actually quite pretty - it's just when she was playing tennis she looked like a pig.

Anyway, I got my hands on the first season of 24 a while back, and finally got around to starting to watch it about two months ago - the night, in fact, that the PSU on my PC exploded and thus prevented me watching any more for several days. The first few episodes left me wanting more, but what with lacking a PC for a few days I got out of the habit of watching it. In fact, that was the pattern overall - watch a few, think it was good, then not watch any for a week. I think this was because while it was really good at the time, it left somewhat of a sour taste in my mouth from the bits I didn't like. I was never keen on Senator Palmer's son, and Kim Bauer managed to get herself in more trouble than Cully Barnaby from Midsomer Murders.

I thought that the series presented an interesting dilemma - what happens when the safety of your family and the safety of your country come into direct conflict. Bauer's position was unenviable by any standards, and to be fair I don't really see what he could have done differently. That being said, I found the bit in episode 24 when he runs in, a gun in each hand, and kills everyone without a scratch to be a bit... iffy. Get enough people with AK47s in a room and it doesn't matter how good you are, you'll get hit.

Another bugbear I had was that some parts seemed a bit contrived, or even predictable. Of course the prisoner was Victor Drazen, of course Kim gets kidnapped again and wants to screw the guy who kidnapped her. That being said, I didn't guess that Nina would be the real evil employee - I thought that using her in the pre-credits sequence until the very end was just because she was looking appropriately evil in that shot, when in fact it was a double bluff. I was rather surprised that it ended with Bauer's wife dying - in my experience these things tend to be "happily ever after", so fading out on Bauer cradling his dead wife was to me a good ending. Another thing that pleased me was that the threat to Palmer ended up being, as he said, not because he was black, or because he was running for president, but because he ordered the death of an eastern-European madman.

Overall, 24 series 1 was good. It's not the best TV ever, but to string a story out over 18 hours of airtime is quite impressive. Strange how Palmer's wife was so evil though - she seemed really nice when she was married to Ben Sisko.

As regular readers (if there are in fact any readers, regular or otherwise) of this blog will know that I am a fan of Star Trek books. The latest addition to my library arrived this past Sunday (or at least after we checked the post on Saturday) - A Singular Destiny by Keith R.A. DeCandido. I would say that DeCandido is my favourite author (followed by Peter David), and so I was really rather looking forward to this one, especially as it came in the wake of David Mack's Destiny trilogy, which featured the (presumably) final defeat of the Borg Collective. It was also somewhat of a successor to another DeCandido book, Articles of the Federation, which I rank as one of the best Trek books ever written. A lot of authors just draw on the standard characters - DeCandido more often that not creates his own cast, and makes you care about them more than the TV characters. That being said, a lot of the characters DeCandido uses have previously appeared on TV, but in a background role.

Not so here. The main character is one Professor Sonek Pran, a "quadroon" (a person whose grandparents all came from different species) of Bajoran, Vulcan, Human and Betazoid, and became possibly the most likeable character who has ever appeared in a book I've read. An academic, and advisor to the President, who goes off on a seemingly impossible diplomatic mission and ends up discovering a conspiracy to hinder the Federation's rebuilding efforts after the devastation caused by the Borg armada. Along the way we are introduced to his family, and meet some familiar faces - Ezri Dax, Klag, McCoy and Fabian Stevens to name but a few. Admittedly, we see all these people from the beginning, but their stories seem disparate, until suddenly they all become connected.

A testament to DeCandido's abilities is how we are made to feel when tragedy strikes Sonek Pran. We have seen the deaths of around 60 billion people in the Destiny series, and it is true that one death is a tragedy, a thousand a statistic (60 billion more so). David Mack helped show that the people we knew were not soulless automatons, but had family and friends on planets which were attacked. DeCandido shows us that while war is deadly, the blood doesn't stop flowing once the guns go silent - people die in the cleanup effort, in simple accidents. Possibly of more interest was the structure of the book - between the chapters came little snippets of communiques and reports - messages sent to family; the log of a counselor dealing with a homicidal Vulcan; a casualty list, including (but with no attention drawn to) the names Miral Paris and B'Elanna Torres. Torres was a major character in Voyager, here she is just one name among several hundred in a list, which is in itself an addendum to a much longer list. It brings home the idea that no matter how important these people are to the viewer or reader, in the end they just become one more fatality in a galaxy where a single week saw the loss of some sixty billion lives.

It took me roughly five hours to read the book from cover to cover, and it was time well spent. For the more inquiring reader, there are plenty of references to episodes, other books, and in fact Stargate (McKay University, and the alias Kom Traya, there are probably a few more I missed). To be fair, a weakness of this book is that you do need to have read some other books - most notable the Destiny trilogy, Articles of the Federation and some of the IKS Gorkon books - this isn't a book you can come into without any background knowledge. But then, if you are buying it, then it's unlikely that description would fit you anyway. One of my favourite lines in the book was a character idly wondering why someone would read books based on a long-since ended drama. In the end, if you don't like Star Trek a lot, you wouldn't be buying this book, but if you do then it's well worth a read.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Apparently Nottingham City Council want to use the above photo on some bus stops. Sweet. Admittedly, they want to do it for free, which isn't quite so good, but then I took the photo with a crappy compact camera, and have made no attempt to edit it in any way, so it's not exactly worth anything. Besides, it's published under a Creative Commons licence anyway.

Still, sweet.

The Honda F1 team's future is safe. After much scepticism and doom-saying (including my own), Ross Brawn this evening announced that he is taking over ownership, that the team will use Mercedes engines, be driven by Button and Barrichello, and be called Brawn GP.

First off, good for you Ross, I'm glad to have Rubens still racing in F1, and I'm glad the Honda team is still intact. That being said, I don't think much of the name, but then I guess no one thought much of the names "Williams", "McLaren" or "Ferrari" back when they first started. Maybe it will have a similarly illustrious career - considering Brawn's track record, I'm not sure I'd want to bet against him winning a championship somewhere down the line.

The real question though is what chance do Brawn GP have this year. They looked well placed back on the 8th of December, before Honda pulled out, but the three months since then have put them behind the curve. Even Force India have got their car out before Brawn. This is a big problem as the lack of in-season testing (a good idea cost-wise, but bad for development) means that the team that starts behind is likely to stay behind. But then, they did have a good head start on most of the grid with the design of their car, so maybe that won't be an issue.

Quite who Honda will be behind looks interesting. Currently the teams on top appear to be Red Bull, Ferrari and Toyota, probably in that order. But pre-season testing leaves a lot to be desired as an indicator, and it won't really be until qualifying in Australia that we know who's where. I think that the McLaren is a good looking car, but not currently looking good - that Hamilton crashed due to a gust of wind, and running the last test with the '08 rear wing are not usually signs of impending success. Red Bull should do well, as Adrian Newey is still about the best designer in the business, but his designs also tend to be fragile. Maybe Geoff Willis's efforts will have reduced that tendency, but it's questionable, and no Newey car has won a championship for a long time.

The Ugliness award goes to Renault without doubt - the nose section is frankly hideous. I'm glad Piquet got the callback for this season, as I think he got a raw deal last year - left to suffer in a car which even Alonso couldn't make work, and with a boss who loves Alonso and is hardly someone you can expect help from. However, he's going to have to prove himself quickly, or he'll likely be gone by mid-season. Bruno Senna was a rumoured shoe-in for the Brawn drive, but since he's not going there, and he's not going back to GP2, he may well try for the seat beside Alonso.

Another person I'm glad to see get a second chance is Sebastien Bourdais. He seems to be my sort of guy, and I felt sorry that the STR3 wasn't suited to his driving style, as he certainly has talent - his CART championships prove that. That and paired up with a teammate who people are calling "the next Schumacher", and it's easy to see how things could go bad.

But most of all, I'm glad to see Rubens Barrichello back on the grid. He may have done 250-odd races, but I've always quite liked him, even when he was Schumacher's number two. He has the experience, and a good relationship with Ross Brawn. I remember when he won his first race at Hockenheim. Yes it was a Ferrari driver on the podium, with me a McLaren fan, but he was just so happy to have won, I couldn't help but feel my heart go out to him. I've never seen someone so happy to have won before. I'd like to see him win this year - I don't rate Button very highly. He's a good driver, but nothing special to my mind, and somewhat of a primadonna. In the uncompetetive car of '08, Barrichello blew him away. Sure, Rubens will never be champion, but he has proved he can match the greatest driver of the generation, and to count him out is asking for trouble.