General

And on this day...

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Honestly, nurse, I've no idea how it got there

Holy potatoes!

Forgive me for linking to the Sun newspaper's web site. It's not something I'd normally do, but I feel we're in need of some light relief as we wait on tenterhooks for Barack Obama to come and restore sanity to the US of A. Lyris linked me to this current affairs piece about a reverend in Sheffield who had to undergo surgery to remove a potato that had become lodged in his anus. How did it get there, you ask? The unfortunate clergyman had a perfectly believable explanation:

The clergyman told stunned casualty nurses he fell backwards on to his kitchen table while hanging curtains.

He happened to be nude at the time of the mishap.

But of course! Why didn't we think of that before? I personally frequently redecorate while in the nude, and I often leave vegetables lying about on the kitchen table when I do it. And who hasn't had the unfortunate experience of falling over and conveniently landing on an item of food? Well, given the other nonsense this fellow no doubt believes in, he probably thought this was a highly convincing yarn.

All aboard the common sense bus

Attention persons of religion who insist on shoving your "faith" down our throats: this is how sick we are of your shit. Recently, an initiative was launched to place adverts on the sides of buses in London proclaiming "There is probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." Of course, such a venture would require money - something to the tune of £11,000, to be precise. A donation page was established at JustGiving, the aim being to secure £5,500 from the general public, with The God Delusion author Richard Dawkins promising to match that out of his own pocket, bringing the total to the £11,000 target.

Within eighteen hours, more than £30,000 had been donated.

I take this as ample evidence that there is a silent but sizeable group of people in Britain that is fed up seeing religion getting an easy ride and of "faith" being seen as something that is automatically deserving of respect in and of itself. I do, of course, have no problem with people believing in whatever they wish - be it Kung-Fu Jesus, Flaming Mo(hammed) or dancing unicorns - but, as I've said in the past, I'm all too aware that there is a sizeable discrepancy between representations of religious and irreligious ideas in the public sphere. When I walk down Buchanan Street on a Saturday during my lunch break, I see ample evidence of the religious movement, be it banners proclaiming Jesus to be the only way (the only way of what?), the church at the corner, or that doddering old man who stands at the traffic lights every week without fail, spewing toxic hatred out of his overpowered amp. Unfortunately, all too often these displays of unpleasant nonsense go unchallenged, the notion being (I suspect) that it's far easier to get on your soapbox and claim that something exists than to claim it doesn't.

As of writing, nearly £90,000 has been raised. Result: the campaign has now been extended to cover the whole of the UK and will now be featured inside buses, on trains, billboards, etc. They say that he who shouts loudest gets the most attention; well, maybe it's time we atheists started doing a bit of hollering of our own.

Donate now! Hey, if we hit £100,000, maybe we'll get a common sense blimp or something.

How well do you know the world?

How geographically knowledgeable are you? Do you know your Tuvalu from your Vanuatu, or are you one of those people for whom the only place called Georgia is one of the 50 United States of America? Sporcle.com has a great little game in which you have 15 minutes to name the 195 countries of the world. Regrettably, I managed a rather pitiful 116, showing that my knowledge of Central America, parts of Africa, and the South Pacific islands is shockingly bad. (I also managed to overlook a bunches of places whose names I know as well as my own, such as Croatia, Thailand, Vietnam and Egypt. There's always at least one that you know you know but can't immediately call to mind.)

Take the quiz and see just how much (or how little) you know about the planet you inhabit!

New layout launched!

OMGLOLWTF???!!!11~ No, you haven't come to the wrong place, and no, there is no need to adjust your television set. Just a week shy of two years ago, I launched the ninth design of my web site. It was a design that I was pretty pleased with at the time, and returning to the Movable Type content management system was certainly a relief after bashing my head against the brick wall that is Blogger for so long, but, as time wore on, I began to tire of its rather drag, charmless colour palette, among other things. However, despite a couple of aborted attempts, I never did manage to come up with anything suitable to replace it. Until now.

The other day, when I should have been reading about popular European cinema, inspiration suddenly struck me, and I came up with the design you now see. In addition to the name change - the site is now called Land of Whimsy rather than Whiggles.com, although the old Whiggles.com URL will remain active for the time being - I've made a number of aesthetic changes. First and foremost, the main text column and sidebar are now both somewhat wider than they used to be, which will hopefully make things feel a bit less cramped. There are a number of other tweaks and alterations that you'll no doubt discover for yourselves as time goes on. I should probably point out that this layout requires a minimum resolution of 1024x768, and a reasonably recent browser (you can get Mozilla Firefox 3.0.1 here).

At the moment, only the main index page reflects the new design; all the others still point to the old Whiggles.com version 9 layout. As time goes on, I'll be making my way through them and updating them to conform to the new look, but for the time being I thought it best to get at least some of it up and running. If you have any comments on the new look, I'd love to hear them.

A little update...

Apologies for the lack of updates lately. I've been pretty busy lately with PhD stuff, but am approaching my (partially self-imposed) deadline of getting the second draft of my literature review in the can by the end of September.

In the meantime, I've also been devoting some time to putting together a new layout for this site, its first complete redesign in two years. I don't have an ETA yet, and there's no guarantee that the one I'm currently experimenting with will actually see the light of day, but I think it's high time for a change. At the very least, I want something with more interesting colours and a less cluttered layout.

What am I, a punching bag?

Permit me a moment to vent a little. As some of you will know, I work Wednesdays and Saturdays in a library. Broadly speaking, this is a reasonably pleasant job. It's not usually too taxing mentally, the work is varied enough to prevent me from becoming bored, and the staff are pleasant. 99.9% of the public are pleasant too, and even if not every single person coming through the door is smiles and sunbeams, they are a least civil to myself, my co-workers and each other.

Unfortunately, the other 0.1% are the subject of this post. It's extremely rare that we find ourselves faced with anyone who is genuinely difficult. Some members of the public can be a little petulant about things, but broadly speaking can be reasoned with. Very occasionally, however, we end up faced with someone who seems to have made it their mission in life to be as downright objectionable as is humanly possible.

First, however, a little scene-setting. One of the biggest draws of our library is its free Internet access. If you own a library card, you are entitled to up to two hours' free access per day, in one-hour blocks. Internet access begins at 10 AM (when the building is opened to the public) and ends at 4:45 PM (the building closes at 5 PM). Because this service is so popular, these rules are strictly applied. In fact, we have no control over the computers beyond 4:45 PM: when the time limit is reached, they automatically log off and are inaccessible until the next morning. In order to access the Internet, visitors are encouraged to queue at the computer desk, which is always manned by one person. This tends to be the busiest part of the library, because whoever is sitting at the desk also has to answer the phone, administer the faxing service, help people get to grips with the unnecessarily confusing photocopier and take general inquiries, because the desk is situated in such a location relative to the entrance that it is generally the first thing anyone coming into the building sees. As an added bonus, the line of sight between the computer desk and the main issue desk is blocked by bookshelves. Long story short, someone could pull a knife on you and your colleagues wouldn't know a thing about it. Mercifully, this has never happened, to the best of my knowledge, but I'm just saying.

Anyway, enter today, at approximately quarter past three, an individual in his mid-20s with a threatening demeanour and an imposing figure. For the sake of clarity, I'll refer to him Crazy Hakim (truth be told, I can't remember his real name). Anyway, Crazy Hakim approached the desk and demanded two hours of Internet access, claiming that he had to fill out a very important application form. I politely explained to him that the library's policy was to only give visitors one hour of access at a time, and, in any event, he wouldn't get two hours anyway, given that the computers would go off at 4:45 PM. This did not amuse Crazy Hakim at all, who announced that it was his legal right to be given two hours. I told him that, once his hour was up, he was welcome to join the queue again and request additional time, which only succeeded in infuriating him further. He then handed me his library card and demanded that I tell him what was "written about him" on his account. (Staff can attach comments to accounts, usually to mention that someone is a particularly difficult customer, has outstanding late fees to pay, etc.) I explained to him that such material was confidential and that I was under no obligation to show him it. Cue a lot of sighing, pouting and questions regarding why library staff are so difficult. (If it helps to add further colour to the picture, imagine this hulking great brute speaking with a slight but clearly identifiable lisp.)

Anyway, Crazy Hakim went off to use a computer, much to my considerable relief. He was soon back, however, ordering me to procure him a different pair of headphones (the ones attached to the computer didn't meet his standards), and then again to demand additional time. At this point I was, to my undying gratitude, relieved by one of my colleagues, who took over at the desk while I went for a 20 minute break. Before leaving, I quietly warned her about Crazy Hakim and his aggression. She said she would keep an eye on him.

20 minutes later, I returned, and was promptly taken aside by my colleague, who warned me that, while I'd been away, Crazy Hakim had been kicking up a stink, complaining about my attitude and accusing me of ratting him out. Quite what I was supposed to have ratted him out for doing wasn't clear, but later it emerged that my colleague had caught him downloading music from some dodgy web site or other, which is, unsurprisingly, a strict no-no. Crazy Hakim was convinced that I had tipped my colleague off as to this before I left. Anyway, the rest of the shift progressed without much in the way of further incident. I remained at the main issue desk, making sure to avoid crossing paths with Crazy Hakim.

Then, at 4:45, everything kicked off again. The computers went off and Crazy Hakim was raging, bellowing that, because the library didn't close 'til 5:00, he should be able to continue using the computer 'til then. Anyway, after ranting and raving at my colleague for god knows how long, he eventually came after me and, this time, accused me of spying on him, victimising him and spreading malicious lies about what he was doing on the Internet. I politely informed him that I had done no such thing, at which point he told me that, as a member of the public, he had a right to expect a level of courtesy from the staff, before turning on his heel and storming off.

This is where things turned nasty. I don't know how I come across on this site, but in real life I'm a pretty mild-mannered individual. I tend to get a little frustrated by people at times, but I'm pretty good at retaining a degree of self-control. On this occasion, however, I was fed up. I'd had a long and rather frustrating day, and wasn't about to be talked to like this by some fat twat who clearly thought the world owed him a living.

"Excuse me!" I called after him.

"I don't have the time!" he replied, waving his hand in the air without stopping.

"Fine, whatever," I said, heading off in the opposite direction.

"What did you say?" he bellowed. "You fucking prick!"

This time I chose to ignore him, heading off to the issue desk, where I thought I might be safe. Not so. A few moments later, he came after me again, and, despite supposedly not having "the time", proceeded to lay into me yet again, accusing me all manner of indiscretions, unacceptable rudeness, and so on. All this time, I hasten to add, he was leaning towards me, clenching his fists and generally behaving in quite a threatening manner. In retrospect, I suppose I should have been concerned for my safety, given that the building was, by this stage, almost empty and none of my co-workers were in the immediate vicinity. However, rather uncharacteristically for me, all I could feel at this stage was fury. I actually came very close to giving this obnoxious cunt a piece of my mind, but once again I was cut off by Mr. "I don't have the time", who, satisfied that he had had the last word, told me, using rather colourful phraseology, that I should fear for my physical well-being, and then finally left the building.

Needless to say, this is not the sort of dealing I expect to have with members of the public. Thankfully, such instances are rare. In the nearly 13 months that I've worked at the library, I can count the number of similar encounters on one hand. For some reason, though, the combination of this individual's arrogance, threatening behaviour and downright unpleasantness tipped me over the edge. I genuinely regret not giving him a piece of my mind, although I'm sorry to say I'm the sort of person who always comes up with the smart comebacks about half an hour too late.

So, does anyone else with experience dealing with unruly customers have any stories they would like to share? Group therapy can be a wonderful thing.

Daylight robbery

I was recently violated by the well-lubricated member of HM Thieves & Excise. As is commonly known, buying an item worth more than £18 from a non-European Union country and importing it into the UK incurs a fine quaintly described as a "customs charge". Generally I'm careful to avoid going over the limit, or if I am buying something with a value of more than £18 to order from a store with a means of slipping the package under the radar, so to speak.

Unfortunately, neither of these safety measures were worth a damn when, on Monday morning, I received a card through my door from Royal Mail informing me that they were holding on to an item of mine with a £11.36 charge on it. Knowing that I hadn't bought anything from outside the EU in the last few months that could possibly have such a charge, I was confused to say the least. Needless to say, I was even more confused when I handed over the cash at the sorting office only to be handed a copy of the Blu-ray release of Persepolis, ordered from DVD Pacific for the cost of £13.82.

You opportunistic little shits

Not only that, but, despite selecting the premium shipping option in order to ensure that the order reached me in time for my birthday, it failed to arrive in the UK until after it had passed - July 8th, according to the attached HM Thieves & Excise sticker. Of course, mail ordering is hardly an exact science, and there are an infinite number of variables that come into play when you have to send a package from one country to another. That doesn't explain why the item reached Customs on July 8th and I wasn't informed about it until July 14th.

So there you have it. Not only was I charged extortion money on a package that shouldn't have been eligible, either Thieves & Excise or Royal Mail then held on to it for a further week for the privilege. I shall of course be claiming the money back, but, given that the charge is split between £3.36 of VAT (paid to Thieves & Excise) and a ludicrous £8.00 "handling fee" paid to Royal Mail, I can see this going on forever. I first have to claim back my £3.36, which will no doubt take an eternity, and only once that has been accomplished can I then get on to the robber barons at Royal Mail to get the other £8 back.

The moral of the story? Even when you're on the side of the law, you still get buggered by the authorities. So, if you happen to dodge the odd customs charge or fiddle the system in some other way, I see no reason for you to feel bad about it.

Gaming in living colour

Well, the decidedly neutered 2008 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is under way, and, as Lyris reports, Microsoft are set to shovel yet another selection of derivative and/or colour-sucked titles out on to the Xbox 360, along with some big news in the form of their ensnaring of the previously Playstation 3-exclusive Final Fantasy XIII. For me, the only upcoming games that have any pulling power whatsoever are Diablo III, Starcraft II and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 (in roughly that order), only the latter of which is being shown at the expo, so none of this really matters from my perspective.

And yes, Anephric, you were right, Gears of War 2 is considerably more colourful than its predecessor. How strange that this paragon of brown and grey now looks comparatively saturated among the current Xbox 360 line-up.

Right now on the gaming front, I'm keeping track of the ongoing developments (or lack thereof) regarding the closure of Flagship Studios and what this will mean for their two games, Hellgate: London and Mythos. In spite of the hyperbolic and at times downright unpleasant statements from various commenters (yes, I'm sure you spending $50 on a disappointing game justifies personal attacks on the people who made it and jubilation over them losing their jobs - not), Flagshipped.com is providing by far the most comprehensive rundown of the situation. (For a slightly less vitriolic version, try Voodoo Extreme.) With the developers seemingly in hiding, unwilling to make any public statements on the matter, there's no real way of knowing what's going to happen in the near future. At least the game servers are still up at the moment, although it's anyone's guess how long that will remain the case.

On a brighter note, I received the retail version of the PC port of Capcom's Devil May Cry 4 (or, as I'm apparently supposed to call it, going by the entry created in my games control panel, DEVIL MAY CRY 4) today. So far, it's pretty good fun, but I remain unconvinced that gamepad-style gaming is for me. To be honest, I find the process of mashing buttons on a crudely shaped lump of plastic clunky and unwieldy, and would be far more at home with a traditional keyboard and mouse combo. I suppose I'm just a died-in-the-wool PC gamer who can't change his ways after all these years, but I still wish Capcom had offered the option for PC gamers to play the game with the keyboard and mouse. I can't imagine it offering any problems, and I'm sure it would have been quite straightforward to use the mouse for camera movement and the W-A-S-D keys for character movement.

Oh, and, while I was out shopping today, I picked up a couple of World of Warcraft figures at HMV - a steal for a fiver each, particularly given that the two that I was able to find, Valeera Sanguinar and Thargas Anvilmar, are both out of print. (Personally I'd rather have had a Warlock, but they didn't have any left.) The pair of them look rather fetching perched on top of my (extremely dusty) audio decoder.

Birthday bash

Thank you to all of you who wished me a happy birthday yesterday.

A couple of you wanted to know what sort of swag I managed to bag, and the answer is that, on the actual day, I didn't get many presents. This is because my parents had already given me some money towards the new computer I put together at the end of May, so in effect I already had my main present. Still, I did pick out a couple of smaller goodies, including the Kane's Wrath expansion set to Command & Conquer 3 and the Eye of the North expansion set to Guild Wars, both for PC. I also snagged an Xbox 360 controller, given that I've come to the conclusion that playing combo-based action games like Devil May Cry 4 with a keyboard isn't the best idea.

Finally, the Blu-ray release of Gangs of New York arrived the day before my birthday, so I decided to throw it into the present pile just for the heck of it. Ultimately, I'm glad it wasn't a "proper" birthday present, because the transfer really is absolutely horrible - every bit as Robert A. Harris and Xylon have said.

Many happy returns

As of 12:50 PM today, I'm officially a quarter of a century old. That's actually slightly scary, if I stop to think about it hard enough.

A well-earned break

As of 5 PM tomorrow, I'm on holiday. My birthday is on Friday, July 4th, and I've decided to take a week's break to coincide. I have the Wednesday and Saturday of the week off work, and I'm stuffing my PhD work into a dark cupboard. I haven't had a real break from either of my two forms of work since Christmas, so it'll be nice to put my feet up for a while.

Pointless study wastes money; common sense loses out

Gamespot reports that a team of scientists have conducted a study of the PC game Unreal Tournament 2004 and have come to the conclusion that, in team games, players who end up in the Red team are more likely to win than those on the Blue team.

Um, excuse me? People actually sanction the funding of "studies" like this? I could have saved them a whole lot of time and money by pointing out to them that, in the Unreal Tournament series, in multiplayer games with an even number of players, new players who join mid-game will default to the Red team, thereby weighting the game in its favour. That's why Red is more likely to win than Blue. Not because

the reason behind this was that the colour red acts as a "psychological distractor" to men.

Good grief!

Vroom!

This is my first post from my new and improved computer. I ended up picking up the components I previously discussed a little earlier than I had originally expected, which means that I've effectively treated myself to an early birthday present (my birthday is at the beginning of July, and my parents have said they'll give me some money towards this venture). The bits and pieces arrived yesterday, and setting them up went surprisingly smoothly, particularly considering that, in the past, I've always relied on more tech-savvy parents and siblings to assist me when putting together a computer. I'd estimate that building it from the ground up took a little under two hours, at which point I was free to put my feet up and watch as various installers grumbled and ground.

Given that I ported my old hard drives over to the new machine, I was rather hoping I could get away without reinstalling Windows, but this, alas, was not an option. Windows XP actually started up, which surprised me no end as Vista failed to boot as all, but it was in a more or less unusable state as every single component had been changed and the poor thing simply didn't know what to make of all this new hardware. (The fact that I had no USB functionality was a pretty major problem as it meant I was without keyboard or mouse, hardly the best position in which to find yourself, as I'm sure you'll agree.)

I'm running Vista currently, and my plan is to stick with it unless I come across any significant problems. As a backup plan, I installed XP on a secondary partition, but my plan is to leave it alone unless I absolutely have to use it. I'd much rather have a single operating system, and Vista's DirectX 10 compliance provides a fairly significant incentive for gamers to use it. (Of course, you'll have to wait 'til I've had a chance to install a DirectX 10 game like Hellgate: London before I can actually provide some thoughts on it.)

No doubt I'll run into the usual teething problems associated with a complete system overhaul (I'm still ironing out the kinks with my new sound card, for instance), but so far, I have to say that things have been a lot more painless than I had any reason to expect.

The power of Allah compels you!

Well, yesterday was rather interesting. After conversing with him online for several years, I was finally able to put a face to a name as I met Baron Scarpia in person for the first time. And what better way to celebrate such a meeting than with a dreadful movie? Yes, after lunch, we boarded the HMS Whimsy to watch a title from the Baron's own private collection. The film in question was Seytan, a 1974 Turkish production directed by a fellow named Metin Erksan, which bears more than a passing resemblance to William Friedkin's The Exorcist.

Something of a background primer is required on Turkish cinema before we can progress any further. Although responsible for a number of critically lauded films (none of which I could name at present, as my knowledge of the country's output is fairly limited), I suspect that most cult film fanatics will be more familiar with the industry's habit of ripping off Hollywood productions with its own distinctive takes on the likes of ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, Star Wars and even Superman.

Now, lest anyone get the wrong impression, we are not talking "loosely inspired" here. We are talking shot-for-shot remakes, the only significant differences being the minuscule budgets, dreadful production values and complete lack of talent on either side of the camera. Yes, those are the "only" significant differences. Oh, and they all appear to take place in Turkey.

Anyway, Seytan (pronounced "SHAY-tan", by the way) introduces us to 12-year-old Gül and her mother, Uma Thurman (I'm calling her this because the actress playing her looks like a significantly less talented version of her, and because the character's name is not provided by IMDB). Gül is a precocious child who has an invisible friend called Captain Lersen (eh?). She also has other, slightly more disturbing tendencies, such as an ability to urinate dark green liquid on cue, spew what looks like orange paint from her mouth, bitch-slap members of the medical profession and rotate her head 180 degrees. Rejecting the rational in favour of the supernatural, Uma calls in the appropriately named Tugrul Bilge, author of a book on demons. I'll be calling him Alan Partridge, though, because the actor playing him vaguely resembles Steve Coogan. (Besides, the image of Alan Partridge performing an exorcism is in itself deeply amusing.) In turn, Alan Partridge concludes that the only viable solution is to perform an exorcism on poor possessed Gül. Enter an exorcist, whose name I once again can't remember (IMDB is no help here), and the most sinister-looking moustachioed policeman you'll ever see on screen, who has a habit of blowing cigarette smoke directly in people's faces when they are talking to him. I have christened him Inspector Clouzot. Oh, and is that Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells that keeps drowning out the dialogue?

Unless you've been living under a rock since some time prior to the end of 1973, all of this might sound vaguely familiar. Remakes such as the recent versions of Halloween (well, the second half at least) and The Omen have been justly criticised for been slavish copies of the original films, but, until you've seen what the Turks got up to in the 70s and 80s, you really have no idea what outright plagiarism looks like. To clarify, The Exorcist is less of a sacred cow for me than say, Suspiria or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but I appreciate its importance in cinema history and would argue that no other horror film produced by a major studio achieves anything quite like it. Still, it's hard to be annoyed at Metin Erksan and his cronies for what they have done here because, unlike, say, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, there is no danger of this remake overshadowing the original (seriously, the number of people that don't realise Marcus Nispel's 2003 hack job is an update of an earlier film of the same name is quite disturbing). Seytan is so hilariously awful on every level that hating it is not an option: you either get it or you don't.

Luckily, I got it. Seytan is such a mess in every imaginable way that it makes Garth Marenghi's Darkplace look like the highly polished work of a cinematic genius. Before anyone asks, yes, I am aware that Darkplace was a spoof. Seytan, however, is not, as hard as that may be to believe at times, particularly when Gül's bed is bouncing about like a bouncy castle and Uma Thurman thinks that the best way to stop it is to get on the bed and join in. More gales of laughter greet every single instance of Tubular Bells starting up and then stopping as abruptly as it began when the sound technician yanks the needle off his record. Come to think of it, this piece of music is repeated so many times that I'm genuinely amazed that, when Erksan tries (and fails) to recreate the iconic image of Father Merrin arriving at the house, surrounded by fog, Mike Oldfield is nowhere to be heard.

(Mr. Erksan, by the way, is nothing if not a varied director. While most filmmakers would be content to simply zoom in or out, Erksan zooms both in and out, often multiple times within the confines of a single shot. And bear in mind that every scene in the film features at least one zoom. Lucio Fulci and Jess Franco would be red-cheeked with embarrassment.)

And I haven't even mentioned the climactic exorcism yet, which goes on for an absolutely absurd length of time and concludes, after Alan Partridge and his exorcist friend have yelled "Allah's grace be upon you!" more times than I care to remember, with poor old Mr. Partridge fulfilling his fate (and ensuring that Seytan doesn't diverge too far from The Exorcist's plot) by leaping out of the window and rolling down the longest flight of steps in Turkey. Actually, I'm fairly sure that this scene is performed by the actor himself rather than a stuntman, so it's actually quite impressive that he was still alive at the end of it all.

I really can't thank the Baron enough for giving me the opportunity to experience Seytan. It's actually somewhat embarrassing to admit that this was my introduction to Turkish cinema, so I suspect I should really follow up the experience by watching one of the country's better films. It's a bit like making Giallo a Venezia your first port of call when embarking on a voyage through Italian cinema, only several stages worse.

We interrupt this programme for a special report

Sorry about the lack of updates lately. I'm currently knee-deep in putting together a paper for the departmental Postgraduate Symposium, which takes place over Monday and Tuesday next week. My presentation is on Monday afternoon, and, while I'm nearing the home stretch as far as my paper is concerned, I want to take the time to make it as good as possible, so I've been spending pretty much all the time I have available on it.

Still, I've also taken the time to hammer out some plans for my new computer. Having weighed up the possibilities, I think I'm going to go with the following:

Case and PSU: Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Mid Tower Case - With 500W EarthWatts PSU

Motherboard: ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP AiLifestyle Series P35 Socket 775 Socket eSATA 8 channel Audio ATX

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3GHz (1333MHz) Socket 775 6MB L2 Cache OEM

CPU cooler: Scythe Mine Rev-B

RAM: Corsair 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered

Video card: Gecube HD 3870 512MB GDDR3 OC edition Dual DVI TV Out PCI-E

Sound card: Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1

I already have my optical drive (an LG GGC-H20L Blu-ray/HD DVD combo) ready and waiting. Plus, I'll retain my current monitor, audio system, keyboard, mouse and hard drives.

I feel pretty comfortable with the motherboard and RAM, since my brother bought exactly the same models for his machine and both are serving him very well. Plus, I'm an ASUS loyalist through and through and have bought motherboards from them (barring my current Shuttle) since 2002. I decided to go with a fast dual-core CPU rather than spending more money on a quad-core with a lower clock speed. I'm well aware of the benefits of a quad-core system when it comes to video encoding and other CPU-crunching activities, but, when it comes to gaming performance, which will probably be my primary concern, I suspect I'm better off squeezing as many megahertz as possible out of a dual-core system, given how few games take advantage of more than two cores.

Any thoughts on this system? Any suggestions?

Popcorn strictly optional

Whimsy Cinemas™ is finally ready to open its doors! Yesterday evening, Lyris assembled his projection screen and attached it to the wall, ready for its first gala presentation. What will it be? Inside Man on HD DVD was the first title to be screened on our previous movie-watching solution, the crazy bed sheet of multiple creases, so it only makes sense that we follow it up with something that boasts equally stellar image quality. So far, we've taken a brief look at the Blu-ray releases of Ratatouille, Resident Evil: Extinction and Across the Universe, all of which looked suitably incredible, not to mention the most recent pass of La Femme Publique, which looked better than a standard definition DVD has any right to.

Finally, we have something that vaguely resembles being at the movies, only without the spotty-faced youths heckling (if any heckling's to be done, we'll do it, thank you very much) the movie and playing with their mobile phones. Sometimes, we even get the films before they're released theatrically in this country, and in any event, in many cases, the Blu-ray discs we're watching look somewhat better than the prints being trotted round the local cinemas.

Amazing, just amazing

Actual conversation I had at work today:

Woman: I need you to help me find a book.

Me: Sure. Have you got the title?

Woman: No.

Me: Okay, well, do you know the author?

Woman: No.

Me: Right, well, okay, what's the subject matter?

Woman: Oh, it was something about religion.

Me: Well, is it fiction or non-fiction?

Woman: I don't know.

Me: You're not giving me very much to go on here. Is there anything you can tell me about this book?

[Pregnant pause.]

Woman: I think it's got a pink cover.

Me: Well, without more information, I'm not sure I can be of much help. I can only suggest you go through there to the religion section and see if there are any pink books.

Woman: You're not much use, are you? I thought you were supposed to be a librarian.

Me: Actually, I'm not.

On the up and up

This morning, I had a meeting with my two supervisors to discuss my PhD progress. Primarily, we were discussing a written piece that I had submitted, as well as my aims for the next six months. I came away feeling both more positive and more negative than I had beforehand, mainly because it became clear to me that I had, until now, essentially been working without a plan, doing a bit of reading here and a bit of writing there without any concrete goals. This was pretty much spelled out to me when my supervisor asked me to define my thesis' unique selling point, and my response was more or less "Um... er... well, my aim is to... er... sorry, let me just think... um... how should I explain this...?"

So, as a result, I'm a bit down right now because it feels as if the work I've done so far hasn't been of a great deal of use, and I now see myself with a lot of work ahead of me as I get up to speed again. On the other hand, the meeting was extremely useful not only in terms of revealing to me what I was doing wrong, but also in terms of showing me what I should do to put things right. I now have a definite plan of action for the next four weeks:

- Week 1: read up on film noir literature and watch a couple of key films. One of my supervisors suggested film noir as being a useful point of reference due to the similarities he perceived between it and the giallo movement (not necessarily in terms of its themes but more as a body of films born out of a literary movement that can't be classified in traditional genre terms), so that will be my first port of call. I know next to nothing about film noir barring what little I've read so far, so this should prove to be interesting.

- Week 2: check out some of the dissertations that have been written by other PhD candidates in the department. It occurs to me that I have little, if any, idea of what one of these actually looks at, and with that in mind it's not entirely surprising that I've been flailing about like a blindfolded chimp with a pencil in his teeth, to quote The Simpsons.

- Week 3: get my hands on a copy of Dimitris Eleftheriotis' book Popular Cinemas of Europe: Texts, Contexts and Frameworks. He was the course convenor when I did my MLitt and I remember this book, from what little I read of it, being very clear and well-written. I also aim to spend Week 3 (and, if necessary, the beginning of Week 4) deciding on an actual title for my dissertation, setting down my key research questions, putting together an initial outline (with a preliminary timeline to take me through to 2010) and a brief bibliography of key texts.

- Week 4: meet with my supervisor again to discuss my progress and set the next deadline.

On balance, I feel considerably better about this project than I did this time yesterday, if only because I now feel I have some idea of what I'm doing and have agreed a plan of action with my supervisors, to the extent that the three of us seem to be on the same wavelength. It's disheartening to discover that a lot of what you've been doing hasn't been much use, but I suppose that's the way things go sometimes. If nothing else, the 11,000 or so words that I've churned out since October have got me back into the frame of mind required for academic writing, something that had been a little rusty after taking a year out.

PS. Can anyone recommend me a couple of good film noirs? (Or is that films noirs, or films noir?)

How ya doin'?

Apologies for the relative lack of posts recently. I've been quite busy of late, finishing up a piece of written work for my supervisor (who is now back from maternity leave) and also filling out a six-monthly progress review report. I'm going in to university tomorrow to discuss this, among other things, but I just thought I'd swing by to fill you in on the latest.

First and foremost, the reason for the garish logo attached to this post is that I am currently typing this from inside Windows Vista. Yes, I decided to give it another go, primarily because (I kid you not) I want to be able to play the snazzy new versions of Solitaire and Spider Solitaire. Well, okay, the fact that the whole operating system looks really nice did sway things in its favour too. In any event, before long I'll probably be picking up a DirectX 10-based video card in order to enjoy supported games, and I'm sure that, within the next year or so, the Windows-based port of Halo 2 will no longer be (pretty much) the only game to require Vista. More importantly, Vista-compatible drivers and software are now available for my USB TV stick, which, back in May, was one of my main reasons for opting for XP. In any event, I've been using Vista on my laptop since I got it back in October, so I figured I might as well standardise my computing experience™.

I have, however, kept open the option of switching back to XP if I feel the need: back when I set this machine up last May, I wisely prepared for a rainy day by only formatting 40 GB of my 80 GB primary hard drive. Tonight, I formatted the remaining 40 GB as a new partition and installed Vista on to that, retaining my install of XP on the already existing partition. It must be pointed out that I'm a complete luddite when it comes to operating systems: it took me ages to finally let go of Windows 3.11, for instance. In fact, I'm pretty sure I still had it installed on my computer as a dual boot with Windows 98 at one point. That said, I've got a good feeling about things this time round. Vista is slick and smooth and pretty stable, and driver support does appear to have matured somewhat in the last 10-12 months.

That said, I'd be lying if I said everything was plain sailing. That old bugbear, Creative Labs' shoddy sound card driver support, reared its ugly head. To briefly explain, Creative's support for their legacy products in Vista is notoriously slipshod, and my ageing Audigy (that's the original Audigy, from 2001) is about as legacy as they come. Anyway, fed up with this sorry state of affairs, a fellow named Daniel Kawakami began creating his own Vista drivers, reinstating features that Creative hadn't bothered to port over from their XP drivers. All well and good, and you'd think that Creative would have been pleased that someone was doing their work for them, and for no charge. At the very least, they could have bought him a tankard of foaming nut-brown ale. But oh no - instead, they slapped him with a "cease and desist" demand, deleted all his posts from their forum, and as a result suffered an unenviable backlash from a fan community already monumentally pissed off at them for their third-rate support.

To cut a long story short, Creative finally realised that what they were doing wasn't making them the most popular people in the business (their plummeting stock was probably the final nail in the coffin), and they relented, reinstating Daniel's posts and telling him he was free to continue distributing his drivers, barring the ones that were infringing on other companies' intellectual property.

Anyway, finally getting to the point of this diatribe, aware of the shortcomings of Creative's official drivers, it was Daniel_K's drivers that I initially downloaded and installed. Everything was working fine until I attempted to play a DVD in PowerDVD. For those who don't know, I use SPDIF audio output for my DVD playback, bypassing the sound card and letting my external receiver decode Dolby Digital and DTS streams. The only problem was that, as soon as I attempted to play a DVD, I got an instant Blue Screen of Death - the first BSoD I've ever had on this PC incidentally, which really didn't get my Vista experience off to a great start. I eventually gave up trying to fix the problem and simply uninstalled Daniel_K's drivers, putting the official Creative ones in their place. Now, I know these drivers are crippled in many ways, but I'd rather live with their shortcomings than not be able to watch my DVDs the way I want to, so I'm just going to live with them. When all said and done, though, I hope the Daniel_K debacle and the public backlash will convince Creative to get off their flabby backsides and write some decent, fully functioning drivers for Vista. As it is, they are currently the only thorn in my side when it comes to my usage of Vista. (Of course, I'm sure I'll discover some additional niggles as soon as I post this.)

Anyway, until tomorrow, folks, when hopefully I'll be able to get back to posting news on a more regular basis. There have been some interesting developments recently which really need to be posted about, including an impending increase in the European import limit to a whopping €150, which is sure to please anyone who enjoys value for money. The times they are a-changin'.