Okay, there are two region 2 DVD sets I want — I have already ordered one, but will probably be able to resist the geeky siren song of the second’s deluxe features (though I will definitely buy the plain version).
Firstly, A Bit of Fry and Laurie is finally being released! Woo hoo! I actually signed an Internet petition asking the copyright holders to do this, so of course I had to buy the set as soon as it came out. There doesn’t seem to be a plan to release the disks in the States, so most of you lot are out of luck, which is really too bad: the two-episode VHS my parents got for me around, oh, 1995 was just great. The show honestly deserved way more air time in the U.S. than it ever got. (Stephen Fry masquerading as Michael Jackson, Hugh Laurie spoofing Bruce Springsteen . . . wonderful stuff.)
Secondly, just before I leave for Stockholm, the special edition of Doctor Who, second series, will be released, with lenticular postcard and — wait for it, wait for it — a Cyberman head in 3D on the box. I am positively atwitter with geekish glee. Probably won’t spend the extra £10 (hey! I figured out how to do GBP symbols on Errol!) for the head, because it complicates storage — the Tardis-shaped box for the Eccleston episodes is cool, but rather a nuisance to store — but it’s so cool anyway.
(Which reminds me: I haven’t yet blogged about the Tennant eps on SciFi. My gripe about too many commercials continues; Tennant himself is quite marvy, though, and a delight. I’ll have to pull together what mental scraps pass for my notes, and compose a proper entry on all the pros, cons, and occasional unfortunate FX on the eps so far. Is it “The Girl in the Fireplace” next? Must check on that. . . .)
Tonight’s semi-desperate attempt to improve my Swedish is the free download from Before You Know It. I shouldn’t complain too much over free software — but you know I will.
First, the good points: though the freeware is mostly flashcard-based, I actually kind of like it. It pronounces the words for you, and you can flip them over to see the translation. What I particularly appreciate is the different levels of drills: the tests allow you to practice supplying the English word from the Swedish, and, more importantly to me, the Swedish word from the English. I really like that, and I find myself getting competitive and trying to go through the cards more and more quickly without mistakes.
Drawbacks? Firstly, the obvious way to type special characters (using the Special Characters dialog box from the menu) is clunky and inconvenient. I haven’t yet gotten the hang of using ASCII codes on Errol — no clue, actually, so as long as I’m blogging on the Mac you’re just going to have to go without a-with-circley-bits and so on being typed properly — so that’s out, as well. I had to go to their Web site FAQ before I learned that you can just type a plain letter, highlight it, and use the arrow keys to toggle between the possible accented variations. Better than the dialog box, but very frustrating.
The most maddening thing, however, is that it sometimes gives you homonyms (well, the case in point is actually more of two different nuanced definitions), but with no clue about which one it means. After the zillionth time the stupid BYKI software revealed that, no, it didn’t mean stad (town), it meant stad (city), as any idiot would’ve known, I kind of lost it. There was much ranting, and a fair amount of swearing and stomping and arm-waving and such. I mean, it’s the same freakin’ word! If you’re going to count it wrong if I fail to guess which one you mean, at least give me a visual clue somewhere on the card, some sort of context: a skyline for city-stad, and a thatched roof for town-stad or something.
Oh yeah, it also doesn’t recognize synonyms when you provide the English translations (e.g., defining the Swedish glad as, well, “glad” instead of the “happy” the software insists it is), and woe betide anyone who forgets to punctuate exactly the way it’s been shown to you.
No software minions in this one. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad. I find myself kind of missing Mr. Blinky from the EuroTalk CD, in a weird sort of way.
Gah. I’m all annoyed now. Guess I’ll put a perfect cap on the evening and go finish watching “Das Boot,” to thoroughly depress myself and also help me further confuse my Swedish and German vocab. (It’s probably bad enough that, in addition to failing to guess whether the software means “city” or “town” when it says stad, I already keep pronouncing it “Stadt.”)
Hmm. My lemon gem cupcakes turned out somewhat saggy in the middle. My prime suspect is my oven — I noted that the thermometer said it was actually 360ºF instead of 350 when I put them in, so I turned down the heat a smidge, and probably screwed them up that way. I also think I probably overfilled the cupcake tins, which were supposed to be filled only 2/3 of the way up. (However, even with overfilling, I wound up with a shitload of cupcakes: the recipe was supposed to make 12, but I wound up with 18 in the end. Do I just have abnormally small muffin tins?) The finished cupcakes are supposed to be just about as high as the cupcake wrappers are, but mine obviously overspilled, and I think that the loss of support from the sides of the muffin tins helped create the saggy middles, too. It’s also possible that silicone baking tins offer less rigid support than metal or glass baking tins, and are thus more likely to lead to saggage; however, I’m willing to put up with droopy-drawers cupcakes on occasion, just because the silicone makes for easier cleanup, removal of cupcakes, and — particularly important in a somewhat dinky flat — easier storage when not currently muffining or cupcaking.
They taste phenomenal, though — and I’m not a lemon maniac. Even with a wonky oven and reckless disregard for instructions, it’s hard to really cock up an Isa recipe completely. I didn’t even bother to make the icing, because the cupcakes themselves are so good straight. I’ll sack up the last six, which turned out rather closer to the flat-topped ideal, and bring those into work tomorrow to share. (If nothing else, I do not need to eat 18 cupcakes all by myself.
Obligatory Swedish vocab note: apparently there is no distinction between muffins and cupcakes (or fairy cakes, or queen cakes) in Swedish: they’re both called muffins, or if you wish to be more exotic, liten mjuk kaka (literally, as far as I can tell, “little nice soft round loaves”). (Source for all this is, as usual, here.)
Isa’s new cupcakes cookbook is out, so I thought I’d drop by the bookshop on my way home today[1] and pick up a copy. Nothing. Ten gazillion Food Network books, one single copy of VwaV (come on! did they just sell the other nine they should have in stock?), but no Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I looked under vegetarian cookbooks, under baking, under desserts . . . I finally deigned to check their computer, which is tantamount to asking for help, something with which I’ve always had just the tiniest amount of difficulty. Their database said it wasn’t in stock, and “usually ships within seven days.”
Rat bastards.[2] I’d really wanted to get my copy today. And to make things even more annoying, I then managed somehow to slam the car door on my finger; I don’t think I broke it, but the entire fingertip is kind of numb and is a bit pre-bruised and splotchy. Makes it rather hard to type properly. Let this serve as a warning: among the many ecological, financial, and health hazards of driving, we should include the fact that operating car doors while frustrated can lead to squished fingers and rather a lot of swearing.
Still, I suppose I could still make cupcakes, because the mood is still on me. Maybe once I get feeling back in my left middle finger (yeah, it would be the middle finger, wouldn’t it?), I can make the lemon gem cupcakes from VwaV. I’ve got the lemon wedges left over after the committee meeting, and, not being a huge fan of lemonade, I have no idea what else to do with them. Might as well, I suppose.
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[1] The committee in charge of the book I help edit met today, so I went in to help out and learn more about what undercurrents (undertows?) are swirling around. It’s good to be involved, though looking back on that sentence I just typed made me realize that it does tend to lead to somewhat convoluted sentences — how many more prepositions could I cram into one sentence?
[2] Conveniently, it appears that bastard is also the same in Swedish, though I’m not sure whether it’s used in the literal or figurative sense. Probably djävel is more accurate as a nonliteral pejorative. (Hey, these things are important to know. If nothing else, it means I’d better watch my language when muttering to myself while in Stockholm.)
Errol has pretty decent speech recognition! I can tell him (by name) to open an application — particularly cool that he recognized Firefox by name, tell me what time it is, give me clues about what voice commands I can give, or even tell me a joke. The jokes are really, really bad, but I appear to be endlessly tickled by them anyway. How cool is this? (It’s probably not all that useful in public, when you’re working in a cafe or something, but at home it’s just highly entertaining. Well, if you’re as easily entertained as I am.)
Now if I could just switch his voice to sound like Alan Rickman’s when he’s playing Snape. . . . There should be a plugin for that, there really should.
In my world, at least, one purchase often leads to another, and though at the time they all seem quite necessary and reasonable, before you know it you’ve wasted most of a week and quite a fair amount of money. Still, occasionally, it’s worth it in the end.
The case in point is the WiFi network I’ve been trying to set up so I can surf using Errol the Mac without having to unplug Nyman the PC. It didn’t help that my first router purchase turned out to be wired, not wireless (silly me), and then Nyman turned out to be somewhat handicapped in the wireless arena, necessitating another purchase. Add to that the fact that the software CDs that came with router and card inexplicably refused to run in anyone’s drives, the PC-only security software agreed to be downloaded over WiFi but refused point-blank to set itself up over anything but Ethernet (and Nyman has no spare PCI slots, so it’s either Ethernet or WiFi but not both), and a slight detour during my attempts to encrypt the network by hiding its name (including, as it turned out, from myself and my computers), and it’s been a bit, um, entertaining. Well, for a given value of “entertaining.”
Still, it seems to be working now, as far as I can tell. I’ll work on making the security stronger over time, but at least now I can sit on the futon with Nigel curled up next to me, typing away while I watch old episodes of “A Fine Romance” and try to figure out why Firefox won’t seem to install variations on the JapanBlack theme. (The DVDs were actually from Deep Discount DVD, which charged about $20 less than Amazon, but the complete set seems to have disappeared from their Web site so I can’t link to it. Perhaps I got the last one in stock at the moment?)
All this started, of course, because I wanted to have Errol set up and ready for mobile blogging while I’m in Stockholm next month; I didn’t want to try to figure out both strange networks and an unfamiliar setup while I was abroad. Thus the purchase of router and card, which really have nothing at all to do with the trip but are its direct result anyway.
At least it makes Errol much more usable, and Nigel seems happier, as well — and it’s all about making your dog happy, of course. :)
