|
|
|
 |
|
|
14th January So I finally got my computer back from PC World. One day shy of eight sodding weeks after I took it in for what seemed like a simple repair. I might work the whole thing up into an amusing monograph or monologue so I'll skip the details - suffice it to say the whole thing could've been sorted out in days rather than weeks had I not been reliant upon an incompetent store (or hours rather than days if our ex-colleague were not back in his native southern hemisphere). I've spent the last nine hours installing and configuring and restoring and downloading and tweaking and whatnot, and now I'm pretty much back to normal (save the inevitable "Oh golly - where did I get that font from back in 2004???" high-jinks to come). It hasn't been the best couple of months since last we were sitting inappropriately close on the e-chaise-lounge. My car is in and out of various garages, the little ones were in Ireland for the whole of Christmas, I'm back on the pills and have a bunch of new scars to add to my collection. On the plus side I spent the whole festive season watching "House" so it was a gory week on screen too. Busy week and lots to do before it. But it is nice to be back.
20th December I'm not dead. I've not given up the site. I'm not doing anything more interesting. My PC died a month ago and the talented technicians at PC World have thus far failed to fix it. If this blog update (done in a ridiculously complicated way which won't work for anything else) works then I'll try to upload the fourth annual Brenty Four serial (currently available elsewhere just to prove I've done it) as a PDF. Laters.
16th November It is safe to say (and I have said it safely so it must be) that two of the best things to smash into our screens this year have been That Mitchell and Webb Look and the fifth season of Spooks. Two very different shows but, thanks to the directorial method chosen to demonstrate Adam's breakdown in this week's episode, two shows with one possible moment of overlap. This one (right click and "save as")
15th November Reading Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" is a fascinating affair. Aside from seeing Lalla Ward repeatedly mentioned in an academic tome, the book really makes you realise how paralysing stupid religious fundamentalists are. There probably isn't much that is groundbreaking as far as dismissing religious claims but putting them all together is extremely thought provoking. Even little things like the statement "But no one has ever proven God doesn't exist..." are refuted as absurd pieces of logic. It is basically impossible to prove something doesn't exist, only that there is no evidence that it does exist. The assumption that religious opinions should be treated as special is given equally short shrift. He is scathing about theology as a discipline (it is basically a mish mash of history and philosophy but without the critical thought each by definition incorporates). And, best of all thus far, he viciously tears apart anything and everything to do with creationism, "intelligent design" and all that other bottom chocolate. It isn't a book that will convert anyone - few religious people will think "I wish I wasn't religious - if only there was a collection of chapters refuting everything I currently believe in" - but it could sway the doubters and will certainly provide food for thought for anyone whose mind is not entirely closed on the subject. One thing he hasn't yet touched upon - and I suspect he won't - is the creation vs evolution thoughts of fundamentalist Muslims, Jews, Hindus etc. We know that fundamentalist Christians want creationism treated as serious science and believe evolution is a load of rubbish put about by Satanists, but what do the other main religions think? It isn't something people talk about. I suspect it is because they hold similarly laughable and unscientific views to the Christians and it is "racist" to mock any aspect of their faiths. So the problem is avoided by never mentioning them ever. Anyway, it is a damn good book and you should all rush out and buy it. Though you may come away feeling that religion doesn't so much disprove evolution as stunt it (cf America, Americans). But all that is mere popsy. Spooks having just finished I was curious to know why MI5 is called MI5. The twin answers are (a) it isn't and (b) it is just one of 19 MIs that have existed. The only two left are 5 and 6 (unless they're keeping something from us which I don't think they would - we're British, dammit, and if they can't trust us with their secrets...) but the full list of MI departments runs as follows - MI1 - Code breaking MI2 - Russian and Scandinavian intelligence MI3 - Eastern Europe MI4 - Maps MI7 - Propaganda and censorship MI8 - Radio transmissions MI9 - Aiding resistance fighters and helping Allied troops stuck behind enemy lines MI10 - Weapons analysis MI11 - Field intelligence MI12 - Military censorship MI14 - German intelligence MI15 - Aerial photography MI16 - Scientific intelligence MI17 - Admin for all the other MI departments MI19 - Prisoners of War (foreigners held by Britain) One can only assume MI13 was in charge of superstitious omissions and that MI18 was in responsible for creating seventeen cover organisations to mask its real work as the only genuine intelligence service in the land. So if anyone asks, MI18 is that movie where the 87 year old Tom Cruise battles foreign agents a quarter of his age and wins because he is the star and has to make up for the psychological inadequacies he has because he's only four feet tall.
12th November "Cyberwoman" was the sort of episode an American
series would put on during sweeps week. It had a headline grabbing
gimmick, there was the betrayal of a previously loyal member of the team
and there was a bunch of pan-sexual snogging. The drawbacks were that
this was episode four and it made it an average of one loyal team member
betraying his colleagues every two episodes and, much more importantly,
it reminded me of my single biggest problem with The New Series. There
are a lot of things I don't like about The New Series but that is a
diatribe for another day. Possibly never. But the bastardisation of the
Cybermen is the worst of the lot. Instead of being half man, half
machine. The grotesque evolution of science in a doomed civilisation.
Instead of being the nightmarish result of humans playing god. Instead
of being an ethical question about when a person stops being a person
and starts being a machine. Instead of being interesting they were
reduced to human brains in entirely mechanical bodies. Grey cabbages
(which, thanks to the QI book, I now know should actually be pink
cabbages due to All of which rendered the story Torchwood wanted to tell an impossibility. So, in the words of Terrance Dicks, they covered it with a line. The Cybermen were in a hurry so they changed their conversion process from brains in jars to full half-and-half augmentation. That doesn't make any sense at all but if it gets The New Series away from that which they so foolishly created in Rise of the Cybermen then it is all for the greater good. Equally silly was that the Cybermen, pushed for time during the battle with the Daleks, also designed a costume for female Cybs which had flattering boobs, showed off their arses quite well and had heels. And it was completely ridiculous that Cap'n Jack - who lives in the Torchwood HQ - didn't know that there was this whole Cyber chamber complete with Cyberwoman, cyber-conversion unit and all the associated bumph. There are times when Torchwood seem to be a completely amateurish outfit not that far removed from Fred, Daphne, Velma, Scooby and Shaggy. But, niggles aside, it was quite a good episode. Not enough to make me want to see next week's (this week's I guess) as it looks dreadful. It's written by PJ Hammond so there is a curiosity there but the trailer made it look so awful I'm glad there is a UFC show tonight so I don't have to watch it. And, with RTD behind it, a small child at the centre of it and a "normal" family involved, what is the betting the story will involve either domestic or sexual abuse? Maybe I'm down on Torchwood because I'm generally not interested in television at the moment. Aside from Spooks (which ends this week after a fifth season which was as good as any previous seasons and gives great hope for the sixth season next year) there isn't anything which is a must-see. I had really started getting into QI but reading the book was a huge mistake as I now know the answers to half the questions. HIGNFY is too variable, Robin Hood was fine for the first week but I've not got round to watching any of it since, Lead Balloon was ok but has now ended and the fourth season of Ultimate Fighter was so god-shakingly boring that I gave up on it after two weeks. I guess I'll stick with my hunter-gatherer approach of recording and buying far too much stuff in the expectation that a stockpile of stuff will serve me well during the cold winter months. Or something. I'll leave you with a thought provoking question from Ian Levine's forum.
And an equally thought provoking answer.
9th November Over the past couple of years we've learned almost nothing about ITguy. Ask him if he had a good weekend or a pleasant few days off and you'll usually get a "Hm. Yes." After a fortnight in France he might be a bit more forthcoming but only in a vague sort of way. We heard him talking to his ITfriends about getting a new TV and it struck us we have no idea what sort of things he would watch. I can't see him being into sport, real people just annoy him and I get the feeling he wouldn't see the point in drama because it isn't real. Then someone told us he was originally from the North East. Huh? With his generic middle class, middle England accent he couldn't be a Geordie could he? We had no way of finding out - it wasn't as if we could just, you know, ask him or anything. Then, on Tuesday, he seemed in a very jocular mood. I think he'd just been in a squabbly meeting and was on an endorphin high or something. "Is it true you're a Geordie?" we asked. What do you think our straight-laced mentor said next? No points if you guessed "Hm. Yes." He actually said "Why eye man" in exactly the same way any of us would if we were accused of being Geordies. "I thought you were from down south somewhere." "Yah din nee what ya takkin' aboot" he replied. This wasn't surreal. This was sursureal. Or sursursureal. Or any number of factors of beyond reality. That he continued the conversation by telling us he'd recently bought an accordion and was teaching himself to play it because it is more portable than a piano (even though he's got an 88-key portable piano which folds up and fits in a suitcase). Sadly, that was the peak of the week. An equally unexpected noise came on the way to work yesterday. Everything seemed a bit louder than usual but I put that down to the not-quite-a-cold thing which has bunged my ears up for the past couple of weeks. Then there was a sort of "thunk" and everything got a shitsight louder. It was as if my little car had run mad. That it coincided with a sudden downpour which rendered the road all but invisible didn't help. It sounded like all the demons of hell were bellowing around me (roughly speaking) and I was convinced that everything would blow up and/or die at any moment. I somehow made it to work (and then home again at the end of the day) despite the exhaust being somewhere it shouldn't be. I panicked my way through the whole affair and have been utterly bailed out by parents who know what to do when things go wrong. So I drove mother's Ka today - not as scary as I thought it would be, even though I knew that the slightest hint of anything amiss would be on my record for the rest of my life and would be wheeled out every time anything ever happened anywhere ever again. All of which goes to prove my earlier assertion that this car is cursed and things will be forever going wrong with it. In the plus column you have that the CD player now works, while in the minus column you have that the CD player broke almost immediately, the gear box has jammed a couple of times, it's had to go in to have an oil leak repaired, the tape player has never worked, the heated rear window take about half an hour to heat the rear window, the engine makes a funny noise while the car is stopped in traffic and now the exhaust has fallen off. Who would've thought that buying a car because it had a CD changer and was a nice colour would come back to bite me on the ass? On a more happy note, I realised by episode three of Jack Dee's "Lead Balloon" that not only was this a much better programme than early indications suggested, but that the actress playing his wife was gorgeous. Apart from a name that is awkward to fancy - "Raquel" is too Only Fools and Horses - she ranks extremely highly amongst the wines and spirits (to use a Bertie Woosterism). I IMDb-ed her and that took me to "The Worst Week of My Life" which has now taken me to "Teachers". I bought the boxed set about a year ago when it was foolishly cheap but had never bothered to even consider possibly trying to watch a bit of it. Now I had reason and it is a damn fine series.
A damn fine reason I think you'll agree. Other than that the only thing worth mentioning (aside from this bargain which will appeal to anyone who wants Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Stingray on DVD and still have change from forty pounds) is an offer I received for a free DVD from Play.com. I think I put some codes from a message board into a special page one morning because it promised free stuff. Anyway, an email come through today which, when clicked on, took me to the page captured below. Either there has been a mad rush during today's brief flicker of daylight or my definition of a "fantastic choice" doesn't tally with that of the modern liberal-thinking press.
Still, never mind, Raquel Cassidy is still edible.
Postscript - ShirtGuy pointed us in the direction of a South African eBay clone called "Bid or Buy" which decided to illustrate their positive feedback with a green and white cross and their negative feedback with a BLACK FACE~!
You don't need a punchline.
5th November Frustration abounds. Someone on a forum helpfully point out this bargain - the complete collection of colour episodes of "The Saint" for under thirty pounds. Whichever way you slice it, thirty pounds for 47 episodes is a good deal. It only needed me to try an episode of The Saint to see if I liked it. I did - it was campy but fun. Roger Moore at his finest. He was offered the role of Bond in the sixties and had to turn it down - I doubt there would be much debate over the best Bond had the Roger Moore of the sixties been given the Bond scripts of the sixties to work with. Anyhoozle, back to my frustration. I registered with the site and the PAF validation brought back an incorrect address. It missed out the town which left only a village and a county and that isn't right. So I had to enter a different delivery address (because "My Account" doesn't work and I couldn't amend my home address). Then I reached the big "Confirm order" button and clicked it. The page merely reloaded. I had - and still have - no way of knowing whether the order went through. I mentioned it on the same forum and others have had the same experience with DDHE's rubbish website. One said his orders have always gone through even when merely presented with a reloaded page. Others said their order confirmation emails have often arrived after the goods have been delivered. I sent DD an email asking whether it worked or not but it sounds like I'm unlikely to get a reply before the special offer closes. I guess it is now in the fanciful realms of "if it is meant to be". I'm not massively bothered either way but I prefer to leave areas of doubt and uncertainty to Vroomfondle and Magic Thighs. I can't be bothered to look up the correct spelling of either philosopher's name. Not that this is the only source of comptuer frustration. Leaving aside my Vista concerns and the general slugishness of my PC (I haven't done a complete rebuild for over a year now and it shows). I had a strange episode on Friday night. Suddenly, and without warning, my computer went mad. To detour for a moment, occasionally we get phone calls from people at work saying their computers have run mad. I'll toddle round and see someone utterly confused because this error message keeps appearing apparently at random. They show me and sure enough there is a "This action has been disabled by your administrator" pop up. I've seen it often enough to know what it is but just to be sure I'll ask them what they were doing. "Typing" they'll typically say. "What were you typing?" I'll ask. "An address" they'll typically reply. Here is where I get the funny looks. "What word were you typing?" Funny look. Then they say something like "road" or "Mrs" and I'll give a knowing nod of the head. "Ahh" I add, just in case they miss the knowing nod of my head. The terminals have lots of absurd restrictions in place because the guys who administer them are rather full of themselves and enjoy having the power to inconvenience people. So they disable lots of actions which are harmless because disabling specific (potentially harmful) things would take longer and be less satisfying to their crazed egos. Try this - hold down the Windows key and press M or R. Something happens doesn't it? Exactly. They have disabled any Windows+ actions because the Run command could be used malevolently (though it never would be as most of our staff struggle with a mouse let alone entering a Run command). All of which takes us back to "road" or "Mrs" or whatever else they were typing. The terminals are not terribly reliable and occasionally they believe the Windows key is being pressed. So when someone tries to type "road" they are blocked from going any further than the R. Pressing the Windows key a few times generally clears this confusion and they can get back to their work. So my computer went mad - it was while I was searching for the new Hulk Hogan Anthology DVD set at HMV's website. I know - it's four discs of Hulk Hogan and no one should have to sit through that but occasionally I get nostalgic for a time when promoters were smart enough to let a guy who actually drew money be on top and destroy everyone one by one rather than letting a guy who doesn't draw money be on top and destroy everyone six at a fucking time. H was typed without issue. U on the other hand opened a whole bunch of weird stuff I've never seen before. There were offers of magnification, offers to read what was on the screen and all manner of other functions for the disabled Windows user. The only thing was that my Windows key wasn't depressed. It was just a bit down in the dumps and there is a difference. No no - but seriously - it was pressed a few times and the weirdness kept happening. I changed the batteries (it is a wireless keyboard - two years with the same batteries - way better than a wireless mouse which lasts about an hour, the worthless piece of crap) but it wasn't the batteries. I rebooted and it did nothing. Eventually I figured it out and it was mildly embarrassing. I have two keyboards - one wireless and one traditional one. The trad one lives behind my TFT and is connected to the PC for those times when you can't load the wireless keyboard drivers because you're in something other than full Windows (safe mode, partition magic, Ghost etc). This old and rather dusty keyboard had slipped slightly and the Windows key was now ever so slightly pressed upon. I felt like a bit of a fool. I moved it and all was well. It wasn't a virus, a gremlin, a worn out pair of batteries, a cosmic spirit bent on retribution for my knowing nods of the head or a sign than I needed a new keyboard. It was just a cable pressing on a dirty Windows key. There's nothing to see here, move along. Though I was right to fear something was amiss. I got home on Friday night with a strong sense of dread. There was something biting my mind but I couldn't see what it was. I still don't know what it is that is worrying me but I can still feel it there. Like one of those afternoons where you can just feel that a thunderstorm is about to happen. I generally have a mild feeling akin to this but it is worse than usual. All perfectly irrational of course but that doesn't help. Stephen Fry's QI brought up the subject of depression recently - I don't know which episode it was as I watched three yesterday - and Fry made a couple of interesting remarks. The first was recommending a book which I'd tried to buy a few months ago from Play.com but my order was eventually cancelled when they couldn't get any stock. I've now reordered it and hopefully will have more luck this time. The second was to say something I've long been too afraid to say. He said that manic depressives are in some ways the lucky ones because they get upswings while the rest of us merely languish in the same despondent heap year after damned year. Different people will obviously feel differently about that idea but for a well known sufferer like Sir Stephen to say it was a comfort - at least I'm not being selfishly insensitive when I occasionally envy the upswing of the bipolar genius. Some of course don't need brain chemical shifts to find happiness. Take TheArtist - he's decided that his life will be immeasurably better if he starts smoking a pipe. To that end he researched pipes online, went to a tobacconist's in Manchester and finally bought himself a pipe and a pouch of shag. Shag jokes are, of course, my favourite part of the whole affair. Being a Holmes fan I've long had a fascination for the pipe - his sitting with a pipe full of his favourite exotic shag (snigger) and mulling over a case is curiously appealing. I like the idea of experimenting with different kinds of shag (chuckle), mixing and matching your own personal shag (guffaw) and then sitting back in a quiet, cosy room and having a good ponder as you enjoy your shag (chortle). Not that I would ever actually get round to doing anything about it though. Maybe one day I'll have a taste of TheArtist's latest shag (titter) but that's about all. Although there is the possibility that he tried it, threw up violently, and has already burned his pipe in horror. If it is hard to imagine TheArtist puffng away on a relaxing shag (giggle) then it is equally hard to imagine animating missing Doctor Who episodes (that was a segue and not a very good one). The Invasion arrived yesterday - in a wrecked box but I've replaced it with the one from Star Trek V Special Edition - and I had to say the animation in episode one is excellent. It takes a few moments to get into it but after that it feels unnaturally natural (if such a phrase can be allowed under the table). Certainly a whole story animated in this way would be brilliant news. It is one of those rare occasions where something works out pretty much perfectly. There isn't a "it was good but..." - Ian Levine was not exagerating in the slightest when he said this was the next best thing to actually having the episodes themselves. Better than recons, better than audio narration, better even than Nicholas Courtney giving us a two line précis of the previous twenty five minutes. The only "but..." I can see looming on the horizon is "but it didn't sell enough copies so we can't afford to animate any more episodes". Which would be a shame as there are only 106 left to do.
1st November I'm troubled. I'm troubled about Vista, Microsoft's new operating system which will be visiting our e-shores early in the new year. I'm troubled because, beneath the gloss and the widgets, there lies an operating system build to uphold DRM as tightly and aggressively as it possibly can. DRM is a catch-all term for content protection systems - ranging from the Macrovision put on DVDs to stop you copying them to the viruses that Sony put on CDs so your computer would be fucked if you dared try to play your music on it. DRM is at the heart of the corporate version of the new media future. It seeks to control everything you can do with your purchases. Indeed, it wants to subtly change that purchase from an outright sale to a sort of leasing or licensing of the content. You buy a DVD but you mustn't be allowed to own anything - you must only be allowed to play certain things in certain ways, sometimes only a certain number of times. The idea that we might actually be able to freely enjoy that which we buy is a horrific thought for the accountants and lawyers at the heart of DRM. The worst part about it is that if I can't copy DVDs onto my computer I can't then watch my own DVDs on my own iPod. I can do it at the moment but I'm breaking the law. Naughty me. I'll be driving my own car at this rate. What if Vista stops me doing this? What if it recognises that the disc has encryption on it and refuses to let my software copy it? Have Microsoft or the DVD company gained anything from this? Have they prevented an act of piracy? Have they bollocks. They've just inconvenienced me and pissed me off. The reality - which they won't want to accept - is that people like me technically break the law but it does no harm at all. They want to stop us doing this because they believe that enough of us will say "oh sod it" and buy two copies of everything - a physical one and one for our portable players. Meanwhile, the pirates who sell hundreds or thousands of copies of the latest releases will be totally unaffected because they have the resources to get round any form of protection. The people behind DRM are ultimately impotent - they know they can't fix the real problem so they're going to try and make up the difference by squeezing ordinary, honest people instead. And you can see where this is going - more people buy black market stuff because it is cheaper and a hell of a lot less hassle. Ten quid for a CD you can't put on your iPod or three quid for one you can? It isn't hard to answer that one. There is even talk that Vista will try and route out what it considers to be pirated software. Aside from the hellish possibility of thousands of legitimate users locked out of their applications because Microsoft have fucked up their code, they are again attacking home users who pose them no commercial threat. Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop - two hugely expensive packages and two of the most copied as well - have achieved their market dominance precisely because so many people know someone who can get them a dodgy disc. Five hundred pound software does not end up on home PCs because it is the best in its field. Millions of children have grown up knowing no other office suite or graphics package. Microsoft and Adobe have, thanks to the swapping of discs and the like, been handed a generation which has grown up with their software and who will, if put in a position to acquire software for their businesses, go with what they know. If the big companies eradicate hooky discs they are harming themselves in the long run. If the next generation reach adulthood having grown up with Open Office and the GIMP then human nature is to go with what you know. Obviously, Microsoft, Adobe and co can't endorse piracy but focusing their energies away from the home user is worth more than they could ever spend on advertising. So Vista may turn out to be a booby trapped tool of corporate oppression. How depressing. It looked so good for so long. Elsewhere, TheArtist reminded me of a wonderful moment that happened a few months ago. There is a very posh lady who works in front of us. She had a temp under her at the time and he asked "Can you get Hotmail on these PCs?" She looked astonished, blushed and said "I hardly think you can get that sort of thing on here, no". It transpired that she mistook Hotmail for some kind of gay porn site featuring hot males and was deeply alarmed. It put the fear of god into her Daily Mail reading soul. |
 
|
