When time it went back

It must be officially winter, or at least autumn, because the clocks go back tonight and people are already setting off fireworks. I would say that time flies, but on the other hand 2014 seems like so long ago I can barely remember it, so I guess not. Still, can't we keep summer going a bit longer?

It's time to get Extreme again!

Dates have been set for next year's Extreme Memory Tournament, which now has a brand new and unbelievably extreme logo! Go and check it out!

I'm excited about it already, although perhaps I shouldn't be, since I'll have to qualify for it this time (unless they change the rules - nothing's really been set in stone yet) and that makes me a little nervous. In all my long experience of memory competitions, they've all either invited me specifically or else been open to everyone; qualification is a pretty new innovation in the memory world. Possibly I won't be very good at it.

An underappreciated Doctor Who villain

I've been re-watching the seminal Doctor Who adventure The War Games, an episode a night, for the last week. People say it's too long and dragged out, but I've always liked it a lot. And a main reason for that is the evil Time Lord, the War Chief. Quite brilliantly played by Edward Brayshaw, very much like Roger Delgado at his best, he's confident, intelligent, nasty, a great villain all round.

I do like the theory that he's an earlier incarnation of the Master, fannish though the idea is, and even though it clearly wasn't intended by the writers at the time (the War Chief is shot dead towards the end of his only adventure, and it was many years before it was decided that a violent death causes a Time Lord to regenerate into a different actor, rather than just to die) - but really, what's the point of being a Doctor Who fan if you can't make up your own back story for a favourite character?

Back To The Future Day

Actually, it's tomorrow. See, they arrive in the future at 4:29pm, California time, which is half past midnight tomorrow morning in Britain, so we can't celebrate yet. It's still not the future.

Here come the muppets tonight!

The new series of Muppets has finally arrived on Sky 1 - they've been hyping it for months, obviously seeing it as a big priority for them, with marketing including making sure it's talked about prominently on social media, which really sums up the whole 21st-century muppet experience: it's unapologetically modern. Which is a good thing; muppets are a timeless concept, they shouldn't be locked in the 1970s. The new show is actually quite a lot of fun, I was pleasantly surprised. The format might turn out to be a bit too restrictive, I can see it getting repetitive, and obviously the general tone is more American than previous series, but all in all it's really enjoyable and I recommend it to anyone, even if they're not muppetationally obsessive!

Good grief, more Peanuts

Ah, the 1980s. The decade when I was around the same age as the characters in Peanuts are supposed to be - although the idea that they're children has long since been abandoned by this point, of course. By 1980 the strip has settled on its central cast, and not many others get a look-in...

Shermy is gone and forgotten by this time, and it's become very rare to see Patty, Violet, Frieda, Roy or 5, but we get a bit of a resurgence for the ones who are still showing up in the animated cartoons - 1980 sees a storyline with Pig-Pen (he goes out with Peppermint Patty) and one for Schroeder (going to music camp in Snoopy's doghouse aeroplane). The biggest rise to prominence comes from Snoopy's brother Spike, though - the mid-80s is the time we see him most, still living alone in the desert. He basically takes over a share of the strips that was previously given to solo Snoopy stories, which has the interesting effect of reducing Snoopy's appearances down to just about exactly the same level as Charlie Brown's - from here on in, their lines stick close together at the top of the chart.

Eleven new named characters make their debuts in the 1980s, starting with Harriet, another of the Beagle Scouts. Although still indistinguishable from Woodstock and the others, she's female. Harriet and Bill get married in 1983 and apparently leave the scouts at that point; immediately after the wedding there are more strips with four scouts, but a year or so later their names are given as Woodstock, Conrad, Olivier and Wilson, so I'm taking the view that it's Wilson with them from the wedding until Bill and Harriet are namechecked again in 1986. It makes very little difference, I know, but Wilson never gets enough credit among birdwatcher Peanuts fans.

Joe Richkid is Snoopy's golf opponent in one story, "Bad Call" Benny is his tennis opponent in another. Marbles, meanwhile, is another of Snoopy's brothers - he never really catches on like some of the others, but his short visit produces some classic funny moments. After that, we move away from the period when everything revolves around Snoopy and start to meet some new characters who don't just exist as his supporting cast...

Harold Angel basically exists to be a punchline to a Sally storyline, but then we get the first human to become a regular recurring character for many years - Lydia, Linus's irritating and fascinating classmate. One of those who really deserve a cameo in the upcoming movie, but I guess she showed up too late in the day for that. Maynard, who briefly tutors Peppermint Patty, is more forgettable.

The great time-capsule moment of the decade comes in 1986, with Tapioca Pudding. Remember that brief period when Strawberry Shortcake merchandise was absolutely everywhere? It came and went pretty quickly, but it's immortalised in Tapioca Pudding for a few months. It's interesting, really - back in the fifties, things like the craze among kids for Davy Crockett got a reference or two in Peanuts, but contemporary fads of the eighties seem to have passed Schulz by. Not a single joke about the toy-commercial cartoon mania that gripped us youngsters back then, but we did get jokes about Tapioca Pudding...

Our last two new faces of the decade are animals again - Raymond joins the Beagle Scouts, and you can tell him apart from the others because he's shaded in with the same greyscale as used with Franklin's skin (hi-tech shading, not done by hand, is a new innovation in the eighties Peanuts strips; Raymond is probably more of a reaction to that than to any racial issues of the time - his different colour isn't mentioned at all, in any way). And finally we get Snoopy's brother Olaf, the ugly one. Unlike Marbles, he sticks around until the end of the strip, but his partnership with Andy doesn't come along until the nineties. Stay tuned for the last decade in this thrilling series of blogs!

That's a lot of ones and noughts

My super-longstanding 30-minute binary record is no more! Johannes Mallow beat it in Spain today, with 4356!

I'm really surprised it took anyone eight years, to be honest, but now onwards and upwards! Who'll be the next to beat it?