Category: Uncategorized

Stuff that doesn’t go anywhere else – the weird.

I’ll never insult the German people again

~ Inquisitor

I just downloaded the full install of XP SP2 at 4.7MB/second. MB, not Mb. MB. It actually took IE longer to do its stupid “copying from C:\temp to D:\” thing than it did to download the file. I didn’t think you could get an Internet connection that fast in the real world… Firefox took seconds to download, too.

Yes, I’m in Germany. Not for the World Cup (that would have been a disincentive normally), but on a student exchange programme that Shall Not Be Named. I’ve been going around the country for a while and haven’t had an Internet connection, but now I’ve settled down and registered for in-room Internet, and the connection is fast, fast, fast. So expect Deutsche-Blogging from now onwards for a few months.

I’m in the East in a small, pretty (apart from where the DDR got a hold of it) university town. The weather is hot and bright, and yet not too disincentivising. It’s a beautiful country, too. And electronics prices here are surprisingly low – I just bought a 512MB SD card for €16.99 (£11.76) from the German equivalent of Comet, K&B, which as far as I can see only eBuyer type places can beat in the UK. And wouldn’t you rather buy from a shop than eBuyer? I know I would.

It’s going to be an interesting few months, that’s for sure. In the meantime, however, I’m going to go off to my local large screen, drink beer (obviously, this is Germany) and watch Germany-Italy with my fellow trainees. Speak to you later.

A new acquisition

~ Inquisitor

I've just bought a second-hand Xbox.

I've never actually been able to justify a console before – I have a high spec PC with a high spec video card. Game consoles really lend themselves to a more social gaming experience; I play strategy games and single-player storyline FPSes.

So what am I doing buying an Xbox? Well, the clue's in the category title – modding the thing is the cheapest possible way to build a media centre in my front room without putting a full-size PC in there. I'm not modding so I can run pirate Xbox games, so no-one need worry about that; I buy few games, but I buy legit (albeit second hand). I'm modding so that I can run XBMC and stream MP3s and Xvids off the large hard drives in the other room, pure and simple.

My trials in modding the thing will be posted on this blog as a warning to all that follow… 

Thank you WordPress!

~ Inquisitor

New themes – and one of them’s actually stylish. I have now switched to Emire 1.0 for, hopefully, the forseeable future (unless they add K2 or a K2 clone.)

Adaptations

~ Inquisitor

Some sad news that I've only just discovered: Jay Presson Allen, the screenwriter of many fine adaptations, including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Cabaret, died on the 1st of May.

Cabaret in particular is a masterpiece of adaptation: it changes quite a lot of the original musical whilst keeping very much to its theme (and the best of the songs), and thus becoming a lot less stagey and quite tremendously watchable. The adaptation by Jay Presson Allen is defintely one of the reasons why this works; it puts forth the correct, disturbing mood for the material. It's the benchmark for how to adapt a musical to film, a genre that's never quite been done correctly; only the best writers, like Allen and the late, great Ernest Lehman, working with the best directors really got it.

I'll leave this with Sally Bowles…

Does it really matter as long as you're having fun?

I guess it’s my one month blogiversary

~ Inquisitor

So, once again, I've got to say how much I like wordpress.com – it really is exactly what I've always wanted from a blogging service, apart from the styling.

To all the people who've seen this blog: thank you. More articles hopefully on the way; just takes time to write them. 

RIP Muriel Spark

~ Inquisitor

It's really very sad. I like The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie an awful lot – it manages to pull off the trick of combining comic and tragic writing, something which far too many writers fall down on. A loss we should all feel, imho.

[This is the second in my blog series of celebrity obituaries that mean something to me; the first, on the old blog, was for Linda Smith. This series will hopefully not recur too soon.]