Yes, really.

Stop looking at me like that. Just because I swear like a sailor, haven’t read up anything on web design in yoinks, and spend more of my time knitting and listening to pirate music (as in “ahoy mateys yarrrr!” rather than “we’re a Swedish political party now!”), that doesn’t mean I can’t talk geek.

Hell, I think it makes me eminently qualified.

I’ll be reviewing the results of the A List Apart 2008 Survey, focusing on British women and the web. What kind of jobs do we have? What sort of demographics are we? How do we feel about our jobs? And how do we compare with our male counterparts, our American sisters, and the results of the survey overall?

So I have three weeks to bury myself in statistics, making charts, building a presentation, and trying to figure out what colour my hair should be.

Yes, I am panicking, thank you.

But if you are a girl (or know a girl who wants to come along), live in or near Nottingham, and are free on the evening of Monday, 3rd August, grab a ticket and come see me talk.

I promise to not swear (that much), not knit (at least while presenting), and not talk like a pirate (but I will be drinking rum).

Also, on a semi-unrelated note, but still involving Nottingham…

If you live in Nottingham, and want to buy some awesome hand-knitted items tomorrow, head to the Netherfield Gala at the Netherfield Primary School on Chandos Street, and come say hi to me.

I’ll be selling knitted things (especially iPhone cosies for all you hipsters) and various other crafty home-created things. Come to buy, come to laugh, or just show up and say hi.

• I’m more obsessed with my garden than with web design. Either that’s sign of my encroaching domestication, or proof that being swamped with work means you never want to look at it outside of the office.

I hate you, snow. I hate you so much.

Movies

Underworld: The Rise of the Lycans

As only-slightly-related sequels go (e.g. The Scorpion King), this wasn’t half bad. Yes, it was incredibly stupid. Yes, it was a thin plot scraped over special effects. And, yes, it was utterly ludicrous. But it was enjoyable if you went in not expecting anything. The set design is interesting, all large stone pillars and thick wooden posts, which must’ve been a requirement, as Bill Nighy spends most of the movie chewing on the scenery.

I wouldn’t spend too much money on it, but it’d make for a nice matinee or discount DVD.

Milk

I normally don’t like Gus van Sant movies — too focused on style with too thin a plot. But, in this case, he was so focused on making sure this story was told, that he didn’t get to spend a lot of time on style. And it worked. It worked really well. Sean Penn occasionally gets a bit over-the-top, but Josh Brolin as Dan White is amazing, and James Franco and Emile Hirsch are also quite excellent in it.

It’s a bittersweet movie to watch, though. Here we have the first openly gay elected official in the United States, the only one in the entire country, and he’s just someone on a board in San Francisco, fighting against a major anti-gay proposition, and they win. And now, with scores of gay and lesbian officials and celebrities and people, all out and proud and fighting for their rights, we can’t even win the marriage proposition in California.

It really should be required viewing for any US history class in California. I grew up only slightly knowing about it (mostly in regards to the Twinkie Defense ), and I only knew a small amount about San Franciscan gay activism in the 70s by reading Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City books (which I’m now utterly disappointed with because there is no gay activism in them until they reach the mid-80s), and I’m just amazed by how little I actually knew. This is astounding history, and should be remembered.

DVDs

Doctor Who: The Invasion

A lovely piece of late-60s’ swingin’ London Cyberman mayhem, with an evil industrial magnate trying to take over the world. Amusingly, he’s the owner of International Electromatics, which is regularly shortened to IE. Yes, IE is trying to take over the world.

What made this particularly enjoyable was the fact that two of the episodes were missing. Audio versions (usually created by teenage boys putting tape recorders up to the TV speaker) were found, and the missing visual aspect was animated, based on the script and the audio tapes. It’s a lovely thing to see, and I do hope that they consider it for other missing storylines as well.

I think the Second Doctor is definitely one of my favourites, especially when he’s touring space and time with Jamie and Zoe. Their adventures are just delightful.

Doctor Who: The Brain Of Morbius

If The Invasion was late-60s’ swingin’ London, then this is pure mid-70s’ mayhem. Mixing together Frankenstein with covens of witches and a hint of The Wicker Man paganism, it’s a beautiful mess of campy horror that works rather well.

Tom Baker still frightens me a little (it’s the eyes and that grin), but I’m growing to enjoy them. Plus, Sarah Jane Smith has really become one of my favourite heroes, so I’m always happy to see her.

Doctor Who: The E Space Trilogy: Full Circle

As much as I like Romana, I really can’t stand Adric. So, obviously, the storyline in which Adric comes in is painful. God, what a little swot of annoyingness. But despite that, there were more than enough elements to keep me interested. The ancient spaceship regularly repaired and monitored, despite no one knowing how to fly it. The marshchild imprinting on the Doctor, and its tragic end.

I hope the other storylines in the E-Space Trilogy are more interesting to me. Right now, I’m being more impressed by the extra features (documentaries on physics and evolution!) than the actual episodes.

Beasts

This was mentioned by Mark Gatiss at an event I went to, along with a clip of “Baby”, the first episode on the DVD. It’s a series of single one-hour dramas, loosely tied together with an “beast” theme. So you get things like “Baby”, an utterly creepy episode about a couple finding something ancient in their wall, and you get things like “Buddyboy”, about a former dolphinarium haunted by the ghost of one of the smarter dolphins.

No, really. Ghost dolphins. It’s spookier than it sounds.

They’re from 1976, and aside from the occasional cringe-worthy moment (for example, in “Buddyboy”, they want to turn the dolphinarium into a high-class porn theatre – two phrases you never thought could go together), they’re astoundingly eerie and very well-done, which is what you expect from Nigel Kneale, the genius who wrote the Quatermass serials. I’d hate for them to remake any now, because you just know it’d be complicated special effects. Instead of the strangely distorted dolphin squeak, there’d be a floating semi-transparent dolphin coming to attack people.

I keep on focusing on “Buddyboy”, because it amuses the hell out of me, but the creepiest was “During Barty’s Party”, about a couple who have rats completely take over their house, and the only people they can think to call is a local radio station. The scratching and chittering make this episode, especially in later scenes. Nowadays, they’d want to show the swarm, and it’d just ruin it completely.

I really do recommend this DVD, if you’re looking for good British horror.

Quincy M.E.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. And yet, I’d kill anyone who tried to take my Quincy away from me. Not only is this L.A. County Coroner a bastion of early mornings on ITV3 and days off sick, he was crucial to my university years. He got morally outraged years before Horatio Caine was even a twinkle in the CSI franchise universe. He was figuring out obscure illness long before Hugh Laurie moved to Los Angeles. Hell, he was fighting crime before Dick van Dyke started diagnosing murder! Quincy is the father of all these clichés, and we must pay homage to him!

I love Quincy. From the houseboat, to the fainting policemen, to the episode where punk rock music is killing kids (unfortunately not in this set!), it’s wonderful.

Books

Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow

I wish to God this book had been around when I was a teenager. Although, really, what I wish was that I knew a teenager I could give this book to and go “Read this. It’s awesome.”

It’s a nicely done thriller on privacy, terrorism, and computer systems, all told from the point-of-view of a Bay Area teenager who gets caught up in something bigger than anything he knows. And although it does occasionally suffer from too much explanations and Doctorow’s usual Internet-related high horses, it’s still a great read and a rather enjoyable book.

I highly recommend it, not just for teenagers, but for everyone who’s wondered about RFID, tracking systems, facial and audio recognition programs, and, above all else, every time the government says “we have to take away some liberties to protect you”.

The Mesmerist, by Barbara Ewing

I just randomly picked this up because it dealt with Victorian mesmerism and other such pseudoscience, and I found myself charmed by it.

It’s about an independent Victorian middle-aged actress who reinvents herself as a “phreno-mesmerist”, and it trundles along, bringing in a murder and old secrets along with it, and while it’s not particularly big or clever, it is, at least, quite entertaining.

The Power of Darkness: Tales of Terror, by Edith Nesbit

She’s best known nowadays for The Railway children, but Nesbit also wrote a number of horror stories, which are collected here. And they’re brilliant little horror stories. She focuses a lot on waxworks or statues that seem to come to life, or things like that, but they’re positively wonderful at bringing the chills on the cold winter nights.

In my dream world, rather than regularly showing The Railway Children over Christmas, they film these and show them instead. It would be wonderful.

This PDF of a chart that covers all the UK government spending shouldn’t turn me on as much as it does.

But oh…it’s a chart! With spokes! And money! And I can point at things and say to people “No, you’re WRONG.”

And that’s what good design should be about. The ability to prove people utterly wrong.