The computer counts as one of the seven

I don't know what made me suddenly feel like googling Blake's 7 on Friday, but I'm very glad I did. It turns out every episode is available on YouTube, albeit peppered with adverts every couple of minutes, I've watched the first four already and I think it's just awesome! I'll get the DVDs when I have the time and money.

Meanwhile, qualification for the XMT continues apace - the deadline for submitting your images qualification attempt is midnight tonight, and nearly everyone has done it already, so we can see who's in those coveted top 16 places, and who's nipping at their heels.

The standard time for images turned out to be hugely wrong, so the scores are a bit distorted and weighted in favour of that discipline; maybe the XMT bosses could change it from 30 seconds to 20 to bring it more in line with the other four disciplines, or maybe that would create a storm of outrage from the qualifiers? Actually, I can't really give a disinterested opinion on that, because while changing the standard would move Simon further ahead of me, it would catch me up with Boris - the three of us are only competing for fun, but wanting to win is all part of the fun...

As for the people who are actually trying to qualify, we've currently got this lineup:
1 Johannes Zhou
2 Yanjindulam Altansuh
3 Enhkjin Tumur
4 Johann Randall Abrina
5 Tsogbadrakh Saikhanbayar
6 Marwin Wallonius
7 Annalena Fischer
8 Tuuruul Myagmarsuren
9 Anne Reulke
10 Enkhmunkh Erdenebatkhaan
11 Marlo Knight
12 Alexander Mullen
13 Purevjav Erdenesaikhan
14 Konstantin Skudler
15 Juliane Fischer
16 Tsetsegzul Zorigtbaatar

A whole lot of those young Mongolians in there - Enkhjin Tumur leads the way with a particularly fast images time. We also have Johann, Marwin and Annalena who all competed last year, didn't do spectacularly well, but will probably be much harder to beat in 2015 now they've got that experience. Yay for Marlo too, and Katie and Clay aren't far outside the top 16 either, so maybe after next week we'll have a big Team Britain in there!

Next week - Names. I got 16 in a practice session yesterday, and that's entirely respectable.