The film of the game of the TV show of the book of the radio series

At the weekend, Kevin and I went to see the Hitchhiker's movie (small spoilers abound).

In truth, I was a bit disappointed overall. I'm quite a purist when it comes to things like Hitchhiker's, and although it was okay I wanted it to be special. I don't care that the story's been altered (though if they'd mangled the beginning — the only part that's really consistent between versions of Hitchhiker's — I'd have been put out), since Hitchhiker's was never really about the story anyway. For me, the delight always lay in the verbal exchanges, the carefully-chosen wording, the absurdity of the micro-episodes that occurred. As it is, an awful lot of the verbal humour seems to have been excised.

I realise that film is a far more visual medium than, say, books or radio, and the time constraints of the format meant they couldn't fit everything in, but it's a shame that so much of the iconic stuff (eg. "Beware of the leopard"), and also the funny stuff, was cut. They managed to retain "Zaphod's just zis guy, you know?", but included the Guide entry on Vogons without the punchline?

I think the main problem was that what humour remained mostly wasn't as intelligent as typical Hitchhiker's fare, and so much of the film didn't feel like Hitchhiker's to me. They also completely defied the whole point and motivation of Arthur's character with their ending, which rankled a bit. Oh, and if Trillian really is "the One" for Arthur, that seems to preclude the possibility of Fenchurch in future films, which seems a shame.

Okay, I'll stop moaning. On to the good stuff.

I really liked the very opening, even though there was no reference to digital watches or green bits of paper. The visuals throughout the whole film, as befitted the medium, were superb, and Magrathea's "factory floor" was awe-inspiring. Martin Freeman is wonderful as Arthur Dent, and Mos Def is shockingly good as Ford Prefect. I'd never have visualised him like that, but he really worked in the role. And Bill Bailey's whale was the best thing in the whole film :-)

Bill Nighy fitted the role of Slartibartfast brilliantly, though his "Late, as in the late Dentarthurdent" seemed to fall a bit flat. And, of course, Alan Rickman was nearly perfect for Marvin, though I still maintain I'd like to have seen Rowan Atkinson have a go at that.

As an overall judgement, I'd tell you to go and see it (if you haven't already), but if you're too much of a Hitchhiker's fan already you possibly shouldn't get your hopes up. One final thought — if there is a "Restaurant At The End Of The Universe" movie, and it doesn't contain the line "I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis", I'm going to be irked.

Memeified

So just when I was bemoaning the fact that another week's gone by without a blog, Aquarion passes on a memeified baton... It's a good thing he didn't pass it on yesterday really, what with all the procrastination I was attempting in order to avoid preparing my presentation ("The innocent have nothing to fear in a world where all the databases are linked. Discuss") for this morning :-)

Total volume of music files on my computer

Not a huge amount — 5.09GB, which translates to 1370 songs and about 3 days, 18 hours' playing time. On the plus side though, it does mean I'm very familiar with all my music, which can be a good thing when you're inclined to distractedly sing along without even noticing which song is playing...

The last CD I bought was

Oh, heavens, I've no idea. The last CD purchased on my behalf would have been Christmas 2003, a trio of Let It Be... Naked, Suzanne Vega's Tried And True, and Silence Is Easy by Starsailor. The last album I bought, though, was Tidal by Fiona Apple, from the iTunes Music Store.

Oh, I've just remembered — I bought Vienna Teng's Waking Hour for my dad for Christmas. And something or other for my brother too. Does that count?

Song playing right now

It's changed a couple of times since I started writing this, but right now it's Ani DiFranco covering The Hurricane. Earlier it was Please Please Please from Fiona Apple's third (not-gonna-be-released) album, and before that it was a Shannon Campbell song, though I can't remember which one.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me

I'd start examining my play count in iTunes, but all my hard drive shenanigans resulted in reinstalling many things, and so my play count has been erased. I'm scouring through my songs instead — I thought this would be difficult, but I have at least a dozen to choose from. Nevertheless:

1. Silverman – Eleven Eleven
2. Beatles – I Should Have Known Better
3. Ani DiFranco – You Had Time
4. Moxy Früvous – My Baby Loves A Bunch Of Authors
5. Oasis – Don't Look Back In Anger

The five people I'm passing the baton onto

Curse Kevin for having done this already!

1. Missiedith
2. Clair
3. David
4. Simon
5. Iona

Inter­relatedness

Last week — well, it was last week when I started this entry; more like ten days ago now — I installed Apache, MySQL and PHP on my computer. (I then spent half the afternoon trying to get PHP and MySQL to talk to each other before realising I had the wrong PHP extensions installed, but that's by the by.)

The eventual aim was twofold: firstly as a learning experience — my PHP and database experience was, at that time, approximately nil — and secondly to produce a database containing all the information about my books that was formerly captured in static HTML and updated manually. Scoff ye not; I've actually been vaguely thinking about this for well over a year. It's only now that I'm trying to avoid exam revision that I've actually been motivated enough to give it a go.

The end result is that my books page, now generated dynamically, looks exactly the same as it did before. Except that the "in queue" and "on wishlist" books are now displayed in alphabetical order. Whahey! The other benefit is that the five books selected from my queue and my wishlist, displayed in my Reading sidebar, are now selected randomly as opposed to my only ever updating them when I happen to read a book from that list. But now, (no-o-o-o-w *drumroll*), refreshing the page brings up a new random selection of five books from each. (Can I say "Whahey!" again?)

I realise that, to half my audience, this must seem incredibly trivial. But for me it's kind of fun, especially since I went from zip PHP/database experience to an up-and-running populated database and "application" in a week. Trying to figure out how to have a book written by more than one author in my normalised database was a bit of a struggle. Well, before I had the sense to Google the issue, that is :-)

And another upside to having done this? It paves the way for... The Project. Hang around another 18 months for me to be sufficiently motivated again, and you might even get to see a trace of it...

A-house-huntin' we go

Pretty soon after you get to university, as has been my experience, you're encouraged to start thinking about where to live next year when we're no longer living in halls of residence. Apparently enquiries from first-year students arrive at the accommodation office earlier and earlier each year, as The Fear is struck into them.

Finding a property through Warwick's accommodation office seems to be a fairly undaunting and smooth process, and has the added benefit that they get a lot of people sorted by January or February. It's very easy to know what's going on, since all their currently-rented houses are rented by students, and they know exactly when the properties will be available (generally vacant between July and September), so they can comfortably arrange for people to move in in seven or eight months' time.

Not so for Kevin and me, unfortunately — Kevin's non-student status meant that Warwick Accommodation wouldn't deal with us. Off to the private landlords then. The problem with having to use private letting agents when you're looking to move in September, however, is that properties generally aren't advertised more than about 4-6 weeks before they become available. We'd obviously like to get this sorted by the end of this term (24th June) while I'm still living up here and Kevin's still visiting every weekend, otherwise we'll be a bit stuck when trying to view houses, what with being 2-3 hours' drive away.

This has led to my scouring many dozens of property websites (and discarding all but the, oh, three and a half that were actually useful) in the past few weeks, and sifting through literally hundreds of properties in the specified area/price range, and guess what? The vast, vast majority of properties have been "available now" or in May, occasionally June. I think I even saw one "late June". Goshwow. (There was also a vast majority of properties that were too far away for me to get to uni by bus, even within my fairly narrow area search, but let's leave that aside for the moment.) June? End of May? We want to move in September! Well, August would be okay, I guess. Okay, July at a push, if we really have to. I suppose.

Still, even with these restrictions we've managed to request viewings for no less than five properties in the last week. Of these, one got back to us four days later saying that the property had been let; one got back to us by email six days later saying that he'd phone us on Saturday to arrange a time; one we're waiting to hear if we can get an appointment; one we made an appointment for and were then told the next day that it had been let; and the last one we actually do have an appointment to view on Saturday. Right after my first exam :-)

I do seem to be drawing the annoying conclusion that if you want to get anywhere, particularly if you want to get anywhere quickly, you need to do things by phone rather than by email. I guess this means I'm going to have to get better at talking to people over the phone, then. Alas, I am cursed to live in a world that prefers talking to typing...