Bluelemur.org.uk

My brother has just been kind enough to point out a cartoon currently broadcast on the Disney Channel, of which I was blissfully unaware. Famous 5: On the Case is a modern updated version of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books, which I loved when I was growing up. In the new cartoon, the characters are the children of the original Famous Five, who use modern technology like laptops and mobile phones.
My reaction when I saw the Wikipedia article? “No no no no no no no no no! No!” But the trailer on Youtube confirms it:
Famous 5: On the Case trailer.

That’s just horrible and wrong and shouldn’t be allowed. It was bad enough when they remade Thunderbirds as a bunch of kids, and I wasn’t too impressed when they did a modern version of Doctor Dolittle, but this is clearly going too far. Are none of my favourite childhood stories safe?

If they make a crappy Don Camillo film, people will die…

My favourite author, Neil Gaiman, is doing a talk in Manchester on 29th October, at 7pm. However, my favourite musician, Jonathan Coulton, is also in Manchester playing a gig on the same night at 7:30pm. Nooooooo!

I’ve already bought tickets for the JoCo concert, so I’ll probably go to that, but it would have been good to be able to do both.

Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites have just unveiled WhiteKnightTwo, the mothership that will launch SpaceShipTwo, the first commercial sub-orbital tourism spacecraft. It looks pretty cool:

Current price for a flight is expected to be $200,000, although that’ll come down in time. Like Richard Branson pointed out, all new forms of transport start off fairly expensive. Early passenger air travel was out of reach to all but the very wealthy, and likewise cruise ships. I can imagine this being really popular amongst those rich enough to afford it, and that’ll eventually bring the price down for the rest of us. I’d better start saving now.

More information on the Virgin Galactic website.