Spriggsblog Goes To The Movies

Rick Cook: "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."

OK, so here are the other films i've watched recently..... I think my favourite of the four was "Frankie & Johnny," i love Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer and together they're magic.

Spriggsblog Goes To The Movies

Actually, to the DVD player. And watched this.

Oh, my. It's amazing. It begins very slowly, and, unaccustomed as i am to the South African accent, i had to turn on the subtitles in order to understand what they were talking about.

In fact, for the first while it was boring. I said (to myself) "waste of money."

I'm not sure what the pivotal moment was, possibly when Wikus is exposed to the alien fuel. Whatever. Doesn't matter. Who cares. My jaw fell open and my eyes were glued to the screen for the rest of the film.

Absolutely tremendous!

I'm Back (Bet You're Excited)

Right, well, here we are again.

I've been having horrendous computer problems ever since i installed my new DVD burner.

Actually, that's not entirely accurate. The problems began when i installed the software that came with it.

OK, long story. This computer has a DVD drive, but not a burner, and the DVD drive hasn't worked since the warranty ran out anyway. (Typical!) But this wasn't a major problem, as i rarely watched DVDs on the computer -- i prefer to watch them on the TV, feet on the coffee table.

But i had downloaded a few movies and videos, and wanted to be able to watch them, feet in fuzzy slippers and back against the cushions of the sofa. So i bought a DVD burner, installed it, and then installed the software that accompanied it: Nero 8.

Nero 8 hates me. No, really.

After the installation, the simplest tasks would cause Windows to crash, i was having to re-boot constantly and getting error messages i'd never seen before.... I Googled the error message(s) and, oh, guess what, found myself at some Nero forums where loads of people were having the same problems. Ahem!

Some solutions were offered on these forums, but none seemed to work for me, and so ... i tried to uninstall Nero 8 and it wouldn't let me. Grr. So i had to run System Restore :o(

A time consuming pain in the arse but hey, it worked! All is finally back to normal.

And i downloaded some free DVD burning software ("Burn4Free") which works very well.

So, thanks, Nero, thank you for ruining my week

Credit Where Credit's Due

Quote of the day: Anthony Powell: "Women may show some discrimination about whom they sleep with, but they'll marry anybody."

Regular readers of this blog -- do i have any regular readers? Probably not! -- will know that i loathe, hate and detest the record industry. The music industry seems intent on killing music, shooting itself in the foot.

Music is alive and well and flourishing, of course, it's the major labels who have lost the plot. Hardly anything i want is ever released here (in Canada) for example, and i have gone from buying 100 CDs a year to maybe 30. I'm sick of buying CDs that have only one decent song on them, plus, as i said, i can't get most of the albums i want anyway.

That said, i bought "Billy Talent III" yesterday. I'd only ever heard two songs from it and was reluctant, but i wasn't able to find it as a free download anywhere and so took the chance.

It is a fantastic album!

Music Has Power

Maybe not my all-time favourite Runrig song -- although pretty close!

Happy 2010, Part The Second

And here's the list of every film i watched this year (with date) (yeah, i keep track of stuff like this):

January 7: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
January 8: Gallipoli

Feb. 5: Burn After Reading
Feb. 13: Kingdom Of Heaven
Feb. 15: Europa
Feb. 17: The Dark Knight
Feb. 18: Music And Lyrics
Feb. 19: Wall-E

Mar. 1: Thunderball
Mar. 3: Body Of Lies
Mar. 4: Blade Runner
Mar. 15: The Fellowship Of The Ring
Mar. 17: Dr. No
Mar. 18: Medicine Man
Mar. 19: Burn After Reading
Mar. 29: The Two Towers
Mar 31: A Quantum Of Solace

Apr. 1: The Perfect Storm
Apr. 2: Seven
Apr. 5: Live Free Or Die Hard
Apr. 12: The Warriors
Apr. 13: My Cousin Vinny
Apr. 14: The Good German
Apr. 15: A Quantum Of Solace
Apr. 16: Sea Of Love

May 7: World Trade Center
May 8: The Bourne Identity
May 9: No Country For Old Men
May 10: Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban
May 11: Elizabeth
May 12: Analyze This
May 13: Analyze That
May 14: The Bourne Supremacy
May 18: Angel Heart
May 27: A History Of Violence
May 28: The Bourne Ultimatum
May 31: Eastern Promises

Jun. 7: Kill Bill Vol. 1
Jun. 11: Kill Bill Vol. 2
Jun. 18: Mad Max II
Jun. 21: Apocalypto

Jul. 4: Live Free Or Die Hard
Jul. 14: Grosse Pointe Blank
Jul.21: Pushing Tin
Jul. 22: Deconstructing Harry
Jul. 23: The Libertine

Aug. 1: Love And Death
Aug. 2: The Gift
Aug. 5: I’m Not There
Aug. 6: Run Lola Run
Aug. 11: The Limey
Aug. 15: Bullets Over Broadway
Aug. 16: The Bourne Identity
Aug. 17: Singles
Aug. 18: The Bourne Supremacy
Aug. 19: The Bourne Ultimatum
Aug. 20: Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix

Sept. 2: Reality Bites
Sept. 3: Blow
Sept. 11: Babel
Sept. 13: Casino
Sept. 14: Zulu
Sept. 15: Die Hard
Sept. 17: Creep
Sept. 28: Ronin
Sept. 29: Die Hard 2: Die Harder
Sept. 30: Flightplan

Oct. 1: Rising Sun
Oct. 8: Quantum Of Solace
Oct. 16: American Gangster
Oct. 19: Gimme Some Truth
Oct. 22: From Hell
Oct. 29: Sweeney Todd

Nov. 9: Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3
Nov. 10: Broken Arrow
Nov. 11: Frankie And Johnny
Nov. 12: Burn After Reading
Nov. 21: Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire
Nov. 24: Apocalypto
Nov. 26: Gangs Of New York

Dec. 7: Chinatown
Dec. 8: The Hound Of The Baskervilles
Dec. 21: Threads
Dec. 31: When Harry Met Sally…

Happy 2010!

Gadzooks, this has been bad. My attempts at a year-end wrap-up have been hampered by the fact that i came down with a nasty cold right after Boxing Day. Ahh-CHOOO, etc. It was the oddest cold i've ever had: whilst never actually laying me flat out, it seemed to yomp through my system, affecting different parts of me every couple of hours.

It started with the congestion, and that remained a constant throughout, but then it went from my stomach to my sinuses, travelled down to my back muscles, then it went behind my eyes, then my kidneys ... it was like a cyber-hacker, probing a system for vulnerabilities. Anyway, the upshot was that i wound up going to bed early every night and sleeping in every morning and i think it's finally stopped attacking. Just a few residual sniffles, now.

Anyway, in case you're interested, here's what i've read this year (with the date i finished reading it):

Jan. 22 George MacDonald Fraser – Flashman On The March

Feb. 15 Ian Rankin – Exit Music

Mar. 25 J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows

Apr. 1 Nick Hornby – Shakespeare Wrote For Money
Apr. 26 Jessica Grant – Come, Thou Tortoise

May 19 Nicolas Freeling – Castang’s City

Jun. 2 Nicolas Freeling – The Seacoast Of Bohemia
Jun. 14 Nicolas Freeling – Gadget

Jul. 2 Nicolas Freeling – A City Solitary
Jul. 15 Nicolas Freeling – This Is The Castle
Jul. 27 Nicolas Freeling – The Dresden Green

Aug. 7 Nicolas Freeling – Tsing-Boom
Aug. 19 Nicolas Freeling – Double Barrel
Aug. 27 Evelyn Waugh – Vile Bodies

Sept. 8 Douglas Adams – Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
Sept. 18 Lyanda Lynn Haupt – Crow Planet

Oct. 3 Anthony Powell – A Question Of Upbringing
Oct. 23 Anthony Powell – A Buyer’s Market
Oct. 27 Astrid Brunner – My Aschi, My Pericles!

Nov. 12 Robertson Davies – Tempest-Tost
Nov. 24 Nicolas Freeling – Gun Before Butter

Dec. 10 Anthony Powell – The Acceptance World

Before i bought my first computer (it ran Windows 95) i would read one or two books a week. Now i read one or two a month (if that). But as they say, the Internet is TV for people who read LOL