Sad news yesterday, as it emerged that Peter Falk, of Columbo fame, has died. He was 83 and had apparently been battling dementia for some years, and was under constant care. It was reported that he’d forgotten about his scruffy police detective character due to the mental illness. He is survived by his wife and 3 daughters. Rest in peace.

A large number of the Google searches that this site picks up are for Tweety Pie, the little yellow bird cartoon character normally seen fending off attempts by Sylvester the cat. Of course, this site has very little to do with Tweety Pie at all, asides from a brief appearance as cheap plastic stuff – Tweety cast in resin. So I thought I’d maybe list a few facts (or probably fiction, since I’ve not checked them well..) about Tweety, to keep those searchers happy -

Tweety first appeared in A Tale of Two Kitties in 1942.
Tweety was created by Bob Clampett
Tweety is one of the most popular cartoon characters of its type, due to its cute appearance.
Tweety is also known as Tweety Pie and Tweety Bird.
Tweety appeared in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”.
Tweety has been in public service announcements.
Tweety has been voiced by Joe Alaskey, who also has appeared in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Tweety was originally pink. The colour was changed for the 1947 film Tweetie Pie because censors thought that Tweety looked naked. To be fair, he does.

You can see more of Tweety on the official Tweety page.

Lately we’ve caught up on some of the films that we’ve not watched over the last year – oddly our film watching went down when baby arrived, not sure why or how – so here’s my brief summary of the last few.

District 9 was entertaining. If it had higher messages in it that I was meant to take away and reflect on, then I didn’t really get them. I was satisified with the ending of the film, and pretty much everything tied itself up nicely, although the reason why the fuel had the effect that it did I think was a tad overlooked. Also as the film reached its climax I found it getting steadily more and more fantastical. I mean, it was never 100% believable but I did feel that I was working harder to suspend disbelief at the end than the start. Something like 7/10 for this.

Iron Man was an amusing jaunt. I’m not familiar with the comic character so I have no idea how “true” an adapation it was, or anything like that, but I found it moved along at a good pace, and I liked the light moments of comedy and the character interaction. The downside with this film was that it was entirely predictable from start to finish. Also 7/10 for this one I think.

Lastly for now, we had Cloverfield. A very short film this one, I thought, though that’s probably for the best as if it had been longer I suspect that parts of it would have dragged, whereas at it’s current length the pace is good, and the story is moving forward quickly enough to maintain the sense of panic and disorder felt by the characters. I enjoyed the perspective, and the humour of the characterisation. Of course due to the way the story is presented we sort-of already knew the ending at the start, but the journey was entertaining and pulled me in nicely. I’d say 8/10 for this.

Hidden Empire was written by Kevin J Anderson and is part of a reasonably lengthy set of seven novels. This book and the saga as a whole have received mixed reviews on Amazon, with complaints ranging from the criticality of the science through to the length of the chapters. So, what did I make of book one?
The chapter length suited me. The book does have short chapters (typically around 8 pages each), which leads to a lot of chapters in a book of this length, but I found that that suited me, because sometimes I cannot make time for a long reading session, so this was actually very flexible. (And meant that I didn’t have to force a break like I have in other books recently). The chapters move between the characters in the novel, so if you’re not a fan of switching perspective this may not be for you.
The science? Well, the finer detail is, for sure, a bit lacking. You might want to look elsewhere if you’re a sci-fi reader who enjoys the technical specifics. We don’t really (at least in this book) have any detailed exploration of the technologies that come up. Hydrogen mining and the associated use for a high-speed space fuel is fairly key to the story, but it’s not really explained, it’s just “there”.
Character development is average. Some characters are focused on more than others. Some characters are made up only to blip out of existance, which is interesting, but a bit frustrating.
So reading all of that you might think that I hated the book. Well, no. I actually quite enjoyed it in the end. I found that the character development improved in the latter stages of the book, and as the threads pulled together the meandering storyline achieved a certain cohesion. It takes a certain effort to get to the last half of the book, but on the whole it’s worth it.
The grand reveal of the powerful enemy race in this space opera also comes fairly near to the end of the novel. I would have liked to have seen them introduced properly a bit earlier, so that we could see more development, but I think it was done this way to lead in to book two.
I think I would give this book a 6 out of 10. There are definite areas where things could have been better, but on balance it is a good yarn, with some humour thrown in to keep you going.

I missed these earlier… Various reports suggest that Matt Smith is planing to leave the Dr Who role after the next season, to move into Hollywood.

The rumours have been dismissed by co-star Karen Gillan, who reckons that Smith is not going anywhere.

I hope that the rumours are unfounded, as I’ve enjoyed the partnership of Smith and Gillan in the last series and I think there is a lot left in them, too. It would be another short-lived Doctor, too, from that side of things.