Archive for September, 2008

Felix Coniunctio!

Published
by
dan
on September 30, 2008
in music
. 0 Comments

I’ve just found a fantastic verse translation of the Carmina Burana which I’ve never seen before. The translator, David Parlett, has this to say about his endeavour:

“The following translation of the songs selected by Orff are not intended to be word-for-word renderings. My object was to produce a version that would both reproduce the same metres and rhyme-schemes as the originals, which necessarily entails a degree of versifier’s licence, and be singable to Orff’s eminently singable tunes, which entails the avoidance of such complications as awkward consonant clusters and closed vowels on high notes.”

I’ve only ever seen literal translations before, which lack the extra emotional charge which the rhythm gives them – especially since such a large amount of the songs, let’s be honest, are about sex and boozing!

Discretion? Vodka? What?

Published
by
dan
on September 26, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

This is a postcard stuck to my fridge. I must have seen it dozens of times every day for months, maybe years, and I still can’t figure out what the hell it means. I just can’t understand! Discretion is the best part of vodka. Discretion… is the best part of vodka. I’m no Shakespeare scholar – the only reason I know it’s Shakespeare is because I looked it up on Wikipedia (you just can’t turn Wikipedia into a verb, can you? You can Google something but you just can’t Wikipedia it. Too many syllables, ends in a vowel, feels wrong.) and I know that the proper quote is “better” not “best”. Turns out it’s said by Falstaff in Henry IV part one.

Falstaff: ‘The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life.’

So it means doing nothing is often better than doing something and fucking things up. Okay. But what does that mean in the context of this god-damn postcard? I can’t fathom it. Is it a cautionary sign saying drink vodka in moderation? That seems to go against its nudge-nudge “comical T-shirt from the market featuring overuse of MS Comic Sans” vibe. And why is the sign shaped like a beer-tap label?

The nearest I can figure it, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a well-known saying where someone has swapped one of the words with the word “vodka”. Boy, that really steams me up.

Pain in the Aspire

Published
by
dan
on September 24, 2008
in computing, downloads, gadgets, gripes, linux and tips
. 0 Comments

I’ve just had an afternoon of delving into the guts of my new lovely Acer Aspire One A150 (sapphire blue) because of the confluence of the following circumstances:

A: The electrics have gone haywire in my house (specifically in my room) and I can’t use my desktop PC

B: I bought the laptop (kneetop?) because working in the house is making me stir crazy anyway. I forked out for the XP version because of Flash and Final Draft, both of which have issues working under WINE. I figured i’d easily be able to dual-boot Linux on the machine anyway (a miscalculation, it turns out)

C: Dvorak-layout is a bit easier to use on the netbook’s surprisingly big, but still little, keyboard.

D: I went to a coffee shop to work this morning, and-

E: I was a bit self-conscious and ordered a second large coffee to justify my taking up space there. So-

F: I was hopped up on caffeine, which made me slightly paranoid about leaving my laptop lying around. So I set an Administrator password… which I promptly forgot.

So I found myself back at the house trying desperately to log into the tiny and now implacable machine.

It occurred to me that I may have typed the password in Dvorak, meaning I had to try to back-translate the password as I was remembering it, as was typing it. Then I cottoned on to the idea of setting up my desktop PC in my living room (risking plugging it into the very sockets that caused the electricity problem in the first place), switching to Dvorak layout, typing what I thought was the password in Qwerty and getting the Dvorak output, then typing that into the laptop.

it didn’t work. So I tried to search online for a method of bypassing or changing the password. After having to shut down the  PC and moving it closer to the router in order to get a strong enough signal to access the internet, I found a method of creating a bootable USB drive (no CD drive in the Acer Aspire) which would then dig into and change the registry. I have no idea whether this process was illegal, and frankly I don’t care. But it worked.

American Prankster

Published
by
dan
on September 22, 2008
in america, miscellaneous, oddities and tips
. 0 Comments

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to make a stunning riposte to an American over matters of language or pronunciation or other cultural shibboleths (for example, you have been ridiculed for using the word “Aluminium” or “Jam”), simply ask them to repeat the sentence “Merry Mary married hairy Harry”. The resulting vowel sounds should be remarkably and hilariously uniform, coming out something like “Merry merry merried herry Herry”. You can have a good laugh at that as you flee behind something bullet-proof.

I should add here that I’m half-American, so I’m not just being nasty for the sake of it. How you use this information is your own affair.

A Scary Story

Published
by
dan
on September 3, 2008
in friends and oddities
. 0 Comments

I don’t believe in ghosts, unless it’s dark or I’m on my own in the house, but I thought this creepy tale deserved a retelling. A friend of a friend told me his mum owned a restaurant/hotel in a converted windmill somewhere in Yorkshire, which was widely held to be haunted. Skeptical but intrigued I asked if he knew of any paranormal sightings or incidents, and he told me this story.

“The chef came in one day from the kitchen, white as a sheet, and said ‘I can’t explain what I’ve just seen’…

and he couldn’t.”