TV

As Seen on TV
1x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Outnumbered
2x02 Episode 2 [2nd watch]
I stumbled across this repeat tonight just a few minutes in and couldn't help but watch the rest -- it's brilliant.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Alice in Wonderland Trailer
Tim Burton directing Alice in Wonderland? It is, as they say, a "no brainer", and looks pretty much exactly as you'd expect it to... but in a good way.

Articles

First:

WWI veteran Patch dies aged 111
(from BBC News)
"The last British survivor of the World War I trenches, Harry Patch, has died at the age of 111."
Appropriately, the main story across BBC News today.

Now, on to more trivial matters...

A Night With Peter Jackson by Nick de Semlyen
(from Amazing Tales from Comic Con! at Empire)
In which the director reveals all a little about the many, many projects he has in development.

Panel Report: Avatar by James Dyer
(from Amazing Tales from Comic Con! at Empire)
It's amazing, blah blah blah. I can only assume it looked a lot better than it actually sounds.

Spies like them by Gordon Corera
(from BBC News Magazine)
"What do real life spooks make of fictional spies?"
A simple but incredibly interesting concept for an article, which is moderately well-served here. It would be more interesting to know what spies thought of purportedly realistic series like Spooks (well, in its early series) or the too-forgotten Sandbaggers, rather than the obviously-fictional world of James Bond. Perhaps the three-part radio series it's promoting will shed more light on the matter.

Blogger Search

Is it just me, or has Blogger's search function turned into a load of old rubbish?

Try searching this blog for Spooks, for just one example. I've seen all of Spooks, in order, so that includes all of season six and season seven... but when you search for it, the top result is the TV post from 24th October 2008, when I watched episode four and five (of ten) of Spooks 6. Well, that's clearly not right.

Scroll further, and you see that Blogger hasn't forgotten all posts since then for some bizarre reason. The next post showing on the search results is from 25th August 2008 -- season five, episode five! It's lost a whole series in between too!

Or so it seems, for while the third post displayed is from June 2008, the fourth then jumps back to July, and the sixth finally makes it into 2009... for an episode of The Sandbaggers where I mention Spooks.

I presume search is now based on some 'relevance' order rather than the old chronological system, which is a huge annoyance for a blog like this. (Also, how it determines relevance is entirely unclear. While some of the top results do mention Spooks by name several times, others only say it once, yet are still out of order.)

It would be nice if there were some kind of setting to change how search results were displayed -- especially by default, but even at all would be nice -- but it seems no one's thought to include this. Not even the supposedly swish new Search Box gadget helps (I know, I've tried adding it -- look there on the right).

This has rather annoyed me, as you may be able to tell. So what have I done about it?

Well, um, I've moaned about it on my blog, of course...

Edit: This issue is, of course, widespread. After a lot of moaning that went unanswered, someone from Google finally responded (scroll down that thread)... with a "we're working on it" claim. Well, we'll see...