Sunday 29 July 2012

The Jesus Chronicles Audiobook - Chapter 4: Cracking Good Times


Chapter 4 - Cracking Good Times


Cast
Narration: Angel Robinson
Jesus: Gavin Drury
Waitress: Terry Drosdak



Sunday 22 July 2012

The Jesus Chronicles Audiobook - Chapter 3: Massage In A Bottle


Chapter 3 - Massage In A Bottle


Wednesday 4 July 2012

Doctor Who Companion Chronicles 6.04: The Many Deaths Of Jo Grant



Jo Grant & Third Doctor



Cast:


Jo Grant - Katy Manning
Rowe - Nicholas Asbury

Writer: Cavan Scott & Mark Wright
Director: Lisa Bowerman
Produced By: Big Finish
Released: October 2011

Synopsis:


""I wasn’t going to let this happen. After all we’d been through, the Doctor wasn’t going to die like this, on his knees, in the mud."

When Jo Grant was very young, her grandmother told her that there was a time for everything. A time to laugh and a time to cry. A time to live and a time to die.

Since meeting the Doctor, Jo has laughed till she thought she might burst. She has also shed a few tears along the way, but has lived more than she ever thought possible.


But now, as a strange spaceship materialises over UNIT HQ and a heavily injured Doctor returns to Earth, it is Jo's time to die. Again, and again, and again…

Review:


I like how this starts, very quickly gets into the action leading to a great scene where Jo Grant dies, and as the title implies, the first of many deaths. This first death however, the musical arrangement and sound effects added to the emotional impact of it. It was beautifully done. The subsequent deaths, whether it's because the impact of her death has lessened but to her repeadedly dying or just not quite as good stories, I'm not too sure, but they were entertaining enough. The revelations and reasons behind the deaths were also handled well, but to bre honest, I was expecting something more from Cavan Scott and Mark Wright. Sure, I enjoyed it and it was entertaining, but I expected more of an emotional impact from them considering the title. Still, worth a listen.


Score:

0/7 - Non-existent
1/7 - As bad as you can get
2/7 - Poor
3/7 - Quite poor / too many poor points / didn't like it
3.5/7 - Neither good nor bad / undecided
4/7 - Quite good / plenty of good points / liked it
5/7 - Good
6/7 - As good as you can get
7/7 - Impossible perfection

English Gav Explains... The Higgs Boson


A proton-proton collision event in the CMS experiment producing two high-energy photons (red towers). This is what we would expect to see from the decay of a Higgs boson but it is also consistent with background Standard Model physics processes. © CERN 2012

Not quite ignorance this one, but you could put it in the weird category. Earlier today, at a CERN press conference, they announced the discovery of a new particle, which may very well be the Higgs Boson I'm sure you've all heard about. Here, I attempt to explain simply what exactly the Higgs Boson is.


Download mp3 here

If you want to know more about particle physics and the standard model, I can recommend this website which does a very good j-b of explaining things pretty simply. The Particle Adventure.


Transcript:

All we know of how the universe w--ks if underpinned by what we call the Standard Model of particle physics consisting of the fundamental particles and forces that make up everything we know, fundamental being the smallest particle everything else can be divided into. An atom will divide into electrons, neutrons, and protons. Protons and neutrons will divide into quarks, of which there are six varieties. Up, down, top, bottom, strange, and charm. There's the four forces too, strong nuclear force, nuclear weak force, electromagnetic, and the weakest of the four - gravity. There are other particles than those I've mentioned too. Unfortunately, this by itself indicates that everything will fly around at the speed of light and not interact with each other. It was theorised that a field exists throughout all the universe, what we call the higgs field, that slows them all down and creates mass. The way it works is like a pool of water, larger objects experience more resistance when moving through, which slows them down. In the same way, different particles experience more resistance than others moving through the higgs field, this resistance determining the particle's mass. In accordance with the conservation of energy, as the particles experience resistance, energy is converted and a higgs boson is released from the higgs field which immediately decays into other particles. The detectors at CERN are looking for these telltale decays, which is what they've found. A new particle that appears to behave as the Higgs particle is expected to. Further experiments are required to verify if it actually is a Higgs boson or something similar