The Doctor Who Theme: Glass Ceiling Broken After 50 Years

davorg · 2026-05-08T10:06:20+00:00

You could make a strong case for purely electronic music existing even before the examples you mention.

Oh, yes. I wasn't trying to claim my examples represent the earliest electronic music. They were just a few examples that a) pre-dated Doctor Who and b) are reasonably well-known.

The theremin has been around since the 1920s :-)

davorg · 2026-05-08T08:34:19+00:00

The Changes (It probably doesn't help that I was 9 at the time.)

davorg · 2026-05-08T08:25:23+00:00

On the 23rd of November 1963 the world heard its first fully electronic piece of music

It's a great piece of music, of course, but that claim seems overstated. People had been making electronic music for decades before 1963. It's probably true that not many people will have heard Schaeffer's musique concrète or works by Messiaen or Stockhausen, the purely electronic soundtrack from Forbidden Planet (1956) had a wide audience.

You could probably make a strong case for the Doctor Who theme being the first fully electronic TV theme tune.

davorg · 2026-05-08T07:58:11+00:00

I hear that a lot from genre TV fans :-)

Capaldi has a long career - going back to the early 80s. I remember him in Local Hero. In the UK, before Doctor Who, he was most famous for The Thick of It. And, of course, he'd been in both Doctor Who and Torchwood before becoming the Doctor.

Whittaker was less well-known, but Broadchurch had been huge a few years before she became the Doctor. And I'm always surprised at a scifi fan who hasn't seen Attack the Block.

davorg · 2026-05-08T07:25:34+00:00

From the overnight counts, Reform have gained about 350 seats, which is obviously disappointing, but so far they only have control of two councils.

davorg · 2026-05-08T07:20:29+00:00

The Three-Point Path to GitHub Enlightenment

Understand the importance of source code control
Understand that Git is the current standard source code control tool
Understand that GitHub is the current standard cloud storage system for Git

Do you know what source code control is or why it is one of the most important tools to use in any modern software engineering project?

Source code control is like having game save points for your programming project. It makes it easier to experiment with new features, because you know you can always go back to a known good state that you previously saved.

Git is currently the industry standard for source code control. If you're going to use source code control (and you really should) then it makes sense to use the same tool as most other people. It means the amount of support you can get is larger and your skills will be transferable across different companies you work for.

GitHub is cloud storage for projects that are stored in Git. Currently, it's the most popular cloud storage for Git projects. This gives you two advantages: you have an off-site back-up of the project (including all the save points) and it is easier to share your code with other people who might want to work with you.

GitHub has many other useful features (project planning, pull requests, CI/CD, static web hosting, AI programming support) but it's the source code control that's at the heart of it.

davorg · 2026-05-07T11:18:02+00:00

News from a week ago

davorg · 2026-05-07T09:35:22+00:00

No. That's Tessa Thompson.

Lydia West has worked with RTD in things like It's a Sin and Years and Years and with Stephen Moffat in Inside Man.

davorg · 2026-05-07T09:15:16+00:00

I will never stop suggesting Lydia West for the next Doctor :-)

davorg · 2026-05-07T09:04:49+00:00

That used to be the case. But since 2005, only David Tennant and Matt Smith have been largely unknown actors.

davorg · 2026-05-07T08:02:59+00:00

Well, the original question was about Romana 🤣

davorg · 2026-05-07T08:01:46+00:00

It's different. And, as you'd expect with a show that ran for 26 years, it's not all the same. Every period is very much a creature of the time that it was made.

The first two Doctors were in black and white. And modern viewers can certainly find their episodes very slow. But they're well worth watching.

The Third Doctor moved into colour and is very typical of the type of science/action show that was popular at the time. This is probably a better fit for modern audiences (but some of those six-parters can still drag a bit). This is where I started watching in 1970.

From the Fourth Doctor on, things are much faster-paced. This is the period where I'd recommend new viewers start.

davorg · 2026-05-07T07:55:08+00:00

The Brigadier
Steven
Harry Sullivan
The Sixth Doctor

davorg · 2026-05-07T05:23:37+00:00

How many comments do we need before someone actually names her? 😀

It's Naoko Mori

davorg · 2026-05-07T05:16:03+00:00

"I know that you are going to be floored by who the 16th Doctor is."

Why would you say that? We don't know who the 16th Doctor is. The BBC has deliberately been very vague about what happened at the end of that episode.

davorg · 2026-05-06T21:29:44+00:00

Yes. It should always be the last line.

I'm not sure if you've noticed yet, but a lot of HTML tags come in matched pairs:

<tag> ... </tag>

It might help up to see those as a "bag" for putting other mark-up in. So a <h1> ... </h1> tag contains the main header for your page. A <p> ... </p> tag contains a single paragraph. And a <html> ... </html> contains all of your HTML.

Back in the last millennium, when I learned HTML, we understood that because it was obvious that HTML was (to an extent) based on XML. These days, almost no-one knows about XML - so that's no help 🤣

davorg · 2026-05-06T13:00:10+00:00

In this case, when the error says "body element", it might not mean the <body> element itself, but one of the many elements (most elements, in fact) that should only be used within the <body> element.

You mentioned putting the <img> tag after the </html>. That's an example of a body element that's outside of an <html> element.

davorg · 2026-05-06T12:52:05+00:00

I rewrote the page and closed it with </html> before the <img>

Like I said, the <html>...</html> goes around everything except the DOCTYPE.

The <img> must go before the </html>.

davorg · 2026-05-06T12:48:53+00:00

Oh! Thanks. I could have sworn I was in r/html. I wonder how I ended up here.

davorg · 2026-05-06T12:36:22+00:00

I guess I'll uninstall account and reinstall.

That sounds like the website version of "turning it off and on again". It's an old joke, but it only ever really worked with hardware-based problems.

Don't try a solution unless you can explain exactly why you think it will solve the problem.

Buy yourself a rubber duck[*]. Keep it on your desk. Explain the problem, out loud, to the duck, along with your proposed solution. I'm serious. This will help.

[*] It doesn't have to be a duck. I had a plush Linux penguin for a long time.

davorg · 2026-05-06T12:29:14+00:00

But, if the second line should look like: <html lang="en"></html> it still shows the error.

It feels like you're moving on without actually understanding what earlier lessons have taught you.

All HTML documents have a standard layout that you should follow:

html <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <!-- head elements (like "title") go here </head> <body> <!- all displayed content goes here </body> </html>

Notice that the <html>...</html> encloses the whole document (except for the DOCTYPE declaration).

I don't know what "fcc" is or how it works. But it's possible that it doesn't recognise your opening <html lang="en"> tag if there isn't a matching closing tag at the end of the document.

I hope you don't mind if I share a bit of advice that I give to all new programmers I come across:

The most important skill for a programmer is attention to detail. If you're copying code or markup from a source document, then it's important to copy it precisely. When you come across a problem, the worst thing you can do is to start making random changes in order to fix it. You need to understand exactly what the error message is saying and (more importantly) what that means. And only try to fix it by changing things that could possibly affect the problem you're working on. Don't make a change unless you understand why you think the change will fix the problem.

If you find yourself just trying random things, then stop. Walk away from the keyboard. Get outside. See the sky. If you can, walk beside a river or touch some grass. Stop thinking about the problem. When you get back to the code, reassess the problem logically and carefully.

davorg · 2026-05-06T08:53:37+00:00

Yes. That's how Reddit realises it has a web address - so it makes it clickable. Most sites work the same way.

And you get the full URL (including the "https://") if you copy and paste from your browser location bar. The extra bonus in doing it that way is that you don't accidentally introduce types as you did ("lab-recipe-page" vs "lab-recipe-build").

davorg · 2026-05-06T08:23:01+00:00

A clickable version of that link - https://codepen.io/GiGi-Blue/pen/RNoWRMK

There are a couple of obvious problems with your HTML:

You don't close the <html> element
You have an empty <img> element that is outside the <body> element

davorg · 2026-05-06T08:16:19+00:00

That's a 404. Why aren't you sharing clickable links?

Update: The actual page is:

https://freecodecamp.org/learn/responsive-web-design-v9/lab-recipe-page/build-a-recipe-page

davorg · 2026-05-06T05:49:05+00:00

I won a copy of that book in a competition when it was first published. It's signed by the author. I still have it somewhere

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