ABC's media release: 'The Stranger' was Australia's first locally-produced science fiction television show and one of the first Australian series to be sold overseas. (Ignore the references to 'Doctor Who'; the only connection they have is that they were both science fiction shows made in the mid-1960s. I suspect that show is name-dropped just to get people's interest.)

I've been watching this show. I'm 5 episodes in, which means I'm up to the last episode of the 1st season, with another 6 episodes in the 2nd season (only 12 eps in total).

It's bad but also good (not in the "so bad it's good" way). The production isn't great: the special effects are low-grade, the sets are ordinary, the acting ranges from hammy to wooden, and the writing is clunky. However, despite all that, I find myself hooked. I want to know what's going to happen next. It's an interesting premise: the remnants of an alien species eking out an existence inside a rocket-equipped moon, having left their home planet after an unspecified ecological disaster, to seek out a new home. The plot is good enough to drag me along with it. It also has historical curiosity value.

I doubt it's available outside of Australia, but here's the streaming link. Be warned: it's very slow-paced to start with. The first episode doesn't even mention aliens, and the second episode only has hints.

A while ago I mentioned I was going to attempt making a knife for the first time. Well, I did.

Apologies in advance for there not being many photos of the process - steel is really messy to work with so I mostly kept my phone safely out of the way. I'll try to get more pictures next time, although there are plenty of videos and picture tutorials around if people are super interested in the process. I shall endeavour to describe what I did in text, however.

I started out with a bar of 01 tool steel (wiki) which I cut into a rough knife blank. This I then hit with a ball hammer a load of times to get some texture. Then I used a belt grinder to put a bevel on the edge side, although only enough to thin the knife down to roughly the right shape, not actually sharp. Once that and a few other minor shaping tasks were done, it was time to heat treat it.

Heat treating changes the structure of the metal to make it harder. Hard steel will hold an edge longer, but it does make it much more difficult to work, hence doing most of the shaping before heat treating. To harden steel you need to heat it to a particular temperature, which depends on the exact alloy being used but 'bright orange' is close enough. Fun fact - when steel gets to it's 'critical' temperature, it stops being magnetic, so that's another way you can test it. The steel is then quenched, this one in oil, which makes it hard.

Hardened steel is very brittle so it's usually tempered after hardening. For 01 steel that means putting it in an oven at 160-200C for a couple of hours. You lose some hardness but you gain back some toughness and flexibility.

After tempering, cleaning, polishing, polishing and so much polishing. Steel is so dirty and difficult to work with compared to the silver, gold and copper I'm more used to. But eventually, and after glueing and bolting a sycamore wood handle on, then giving it a final sharpen on my wetstone, I had a knife.

It is a Japanese-style Nakiri knife. Usually used for cutting vegetables, it's really nice to use. Lightweight and agile, the balance is nice and it's comfortable in my hand. It's not perfect and there are a few things I'd do differently but I can see myself using this on a daily basis. More pictures

I have already laid out and started shaping my next knife, which will be a slightly more complicated bunka knife

Any questions, please just ask and I'll do my best to answer.

My wife and I enjoy playing mystery walking simulators together and have been looking for more-- Steam's recommendation engine is pretty terrible in finding others or lesser-known titles, so I thought I'd ask around for what others play! They don't have to be full-on walking simulators, just games where dying is rare/not a big component of the experience (looking at you, Visage!), and the rest of the game is all about solving a mystery/thriller of some sort. Preferably first-person games with realistic-enough graphics.

Ones we've played so far and have loved are:

• Dead Secret
• Gone Home (loose fit)
• The Painscreek Killings (really loved this one)
• The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

Ones I've got in my queue:

• Anna
• Bohemian Killing
• Dead Secret 2
• Return of Obra Dinn

I've also played What Remains of Edith Finch, Dear Esther, Firewatch, and some others-- but those didn't really have a big enough mystery component to them (to be clear I liked them, they just didn’t have a dark/thriller vibe to em).

Any other suggestions?

February's Humble Choice (the new version of Humble Monthly) is now available, with 12 choices for games again this month:

1. Frostpunk + The Rifts DLC
2. Pathfinder: Kingmaker
3. Book of Demons
4. Cryofall
5. Okami HD
6. Eliza
7. Shenzhen I/O
8. Project Warlock
9. The Hex
10. Warstone TD
11. Underhero
12. Night Call

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I don't watch T.V very often, but do - when I'm up (which is infrequent given I'm outside the U.S) - watch the NBA. Recently I've had a little time so have watched a few games live. Doing so, I was quite taken aback at how commonplace humour and meta advertising are nowadays. Is this just a U.S thing?

Is there any research out there on when and why advertisers started doing this? Seems like every other ad shoots for either humour or "we know you know this is an ad, you're clearly smart enough to realise that, so smart in fact you might want to buy into our brand". Whatever the case, as ever, grateful for resources/discussion from those more in the know than I.

EDIT: A good example that is equal parts humour/meta is LeBron James' Super Bowl Sprite Ad.

Looking at the Activity page right now, there are 2 different pointers to 2 different articles about turning off auto-play on Netflix. I totally get why people are excited about this!

My question is, do we care about duplicates? Some forums ask people to notify a mod and they combine the threads. Others just let them be. Is there an official stance on this here?

In a time of ancient legends, Androcles was a runaway slave.

He took shelter in a cave where a wounded Lion lived.

By removing a thorn from his paw Androcles cured the beast; The Lion was very pleased.

And then The Lion ate Androcles because he was a fucking lion.