Adams' Dirk Gently Serialized on BBC Radio

happy monday writes "Douglas Adams' 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' is being serialised by BBC Radio, starring Harry Enfield. The first episode can be listened to on Radio 4's website now." The Times has a fairly glowing review of the program, and (for US folks like myself) some incomprehensible British-isms to boot.

Comments

Britishisms?

[toby]

Being British myself, and having modified my own communications to fit North American cultural scopes, I decided to scan the review for these claimed "Britishisms". A North American may be forgiven for not knowing who Kenny Everett is - although he certainly was broadcast as far afield as the former British colony Australia (now a military and cultural outpost of the USA) - but apart from that, what are the other impenetrable Britishisms?

Can't be bidet - a strictly Continental idea; "serendipitous" is surely common usage by now, though coined of course by a Brit; Chris Moyles - well who cares - one can assume he's the UK's Michael Richards - ditto; Boswell and Dr Johnson are simply subjects of general knowledge; Ravel is no Pom and his Boléro no English hymn; ah, Jeremy Clarkson, there you may have a point, laddie. Cholmondeley-Warner is just a television character, innit. Anything else?

Re:Britishisms?

[Anonymous Coward]

Australia is a military and cultural outpost of the USA? Wow, nice troll.

Re:Britishisms?

[fsmunoz]

Australia is a military and cultural outpost of the USA? Wow, nice troll.

I don't think it was a troll, just an exageration to convey an image, an hyperbole if you will. I'm sure that the parent poster would say something along the same lines about the UK, just as I will happily (or not) say somthing about my own country in the same vein. Consider it a tongue in cheeck remark about the almost inevitable influence the US has all over.

Re:Britishisms?

[Barny]

Consider it a tongue in cheek remark about the almost inevitable influence the US has all over.

Or maybe it is in reference to how our media and our government seem intent to worm their way up Americas arse hole...

-signed, An Aussie still proud to use the word 'arse'

Re:Britishisms?

[Bartab]

That's just because our culture, society, and gov't are better than yours.

YEAH, DO IT! I'VE GOT KARMA TO SPARE.

Re:Britishisms?

[OBeardedOne]

I say, jolly good old fellow!

Re:Britishisms?

[gEvil (beta)]

I think it might have been the word 'answerphone' that threw Zonk off. I can't seem to find any mentions of 'rogering the loo' or 'fanny full of spotted dick' or anything else that could easily have confused him...

Re:Britishisms?

[Karma Sucks]

Frankly I stopped reading the article after the first few sentences. It hardly made any sense at all.

Re:Britishisms?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the fact that the CIA infiltrated our government in the Whitlam era, but hey, we host the Echelon network at Pine Gap for our own good I'm sure they told me.

Re:Britishisms?

[Anonymous Coward]

Zonk, the language is called English for a reason. The term 'Britishisms' is nonsense, either you understand English or you don't. If you don't, then you probably shouldn't be working as an editor.

Re:Britishisms?

[TheRaven64]

Car boot near the start, maybe? Lorry is another one. Mind you, any American who can't manage that kind of translation is incredibly ignorant.

Re:Britishisms?

[vague disclaimer]

You sensitive clod!

Re:Britishisms?

[david.given]

Or maybe it is in reference to how our media and our government seem intent to worm their way up Americas arse hole...

I've heard it said that John Howard's head is so far up Bush's arse that he can nearly see Tony Blair's feet.

Yes, I'm British. No, I didn't vote for him. How could you tell?

Re:Britishisms?

[Peter Cooper]

I think Jeremy Clarkson may be more recognized in the US than you think, at least amongst netheads, especially with the popularity of Top Gear. Even if they don't know him by name, they'll know the face.

And Chris Moyles as the British Michael Richards? Nah, he's more Howard Stern :)

Re:Britishisms?

[TheRaven64]

Can't be bidet - a strictly Continental idea Actually, it might be. In the context it is used, it is a pun playing on the fact the word is pronounced in the same way as an abbreviation for birthday. This only really works in English, where the French pronunciation of the word is used; in American English (an oxymoron if ever one was), the pronunciation is quite different and the joke does not work.

Re:Britishisms?

[Scrameustache]

maybe? Lorry is another one. Mind you, any American who can't manage that kind of translation is incredibly ignorant. When I read the book, it took me ages to figure out what the hell a lorry is. Ok, I could have researched the word to find out it's a damn truck, but man, a truck sounds right, it's a macho word full of consonants. Perfect to describe a big dangerous thing that does heavy lifting. "Lorry" sounds like a girl's name, I kept trying to picture something girly. I think the narration had to describe normal truck operations (delivering heavy things, endangering the lives of pedestrians, changing gears and making loud noises) before I figured it out.

And I'm not even a USAmerican, eh!

And no, I don't know why I *had* to figure it out from context, I just did :-\

Re:Britishisms?

[moosesocks]

This site provides a pretty good list of colloquialisms present in British English that are absent in America. If you take a visit to the UK, I'd advise skimming through it as to not seem completely ignorant, and to avoid a certain degree of confusion. If you're visiting Edinburgh, and don't want to stick out like a sore thumb, I'd also recommend learning how to pronounce the name of the city -- I'm always amazed by how many people get that one wrong....

On the other hand, if they start using cockney rhyming slang, just give up.

That said, the article wasn't really loaded with British colloquialisms that you couldn't figure out on your own.

Re:Britishisms?

[RadioElectric]

You've also time-travelled to here from over two months ago, apparently.

Re:Britishisms?

[david.given]

Imagine how far up he was if after two months of climbing, he still hasn't gotten out yet...

Re:Britishisms?

[RadioElectric]

Good point. We're really stuffed when election-time comes rolling around. We can choose between Labour, with their recent history and now with Gordon Brown abusing the anti-terror laws to detain journalists that were trying to interview him, or Conservatives, with David Cameron bargaining OUR rights away to the record companies in return for censorship and that whole "I ride my bike to work but all my stuff is chauffered in my flashy car" fiasco. The only other option is Lib Dem, but I can't help but feel that the only reason I have nothing to hate them for is that they haven't had enough of a chance.

Re:Britishisms?

[david.given]

I think the Lib Dems have two main things going for them: firstly, given half a chance they're going to push for electoral reform, which this country urgently needs; and secondly, they're really good at winding up the other two parties and pointing out the things they'd rather people not notice. So despite the fact that they're unlikely ever to gain power, and probably would do really badly if they ever did make it, I still think they're really useful.

It would still be nice to have a real government, though.

Re:Britishisms?

[Angostura]

I suspect someone's brain probably struggled attempting to parse "Archers Omnibus". As a Brit and a professional writer, I have to say I found the opening few paragraphs needlessly circumlocutory and irksome to read too.

Re:Britishisms?

[Anonymous Coward]

My UKian boss claims he nearly got done by the US cops when they kept telling him to put his hands on the "hood", and he put his hands on his (hooded) jacket instead of the bonnet of the car. And then his mate (who was driving ahead of him and later got stopped by the same cops) did the same thing :-)

I am surprised because I thought most English people could speak American, even though most Americans can't speak English.

After all, it is common knowledge about hood/bonnet, trunk/boot, truck/lorry, fall/autumn, mobile/cellphone, ranch house/bungalow, flat/condo, communist/left-wing, liberal/moderate-right wing, centre-ground/sane fascist, conservative/insane fascist with a microphone, English measurement/US customary units, bum/tramp, fanny/bum, v****a/fanny, trash/rubbish, bollocks (two meanings).

Although while typing this I got an amusing email from an American who didn't realise that "willy" has a double meaning here :-) ouch...

Re:Britishisms?

[vondo]

Yeah, not exactly Britishisms, but the Inquirer, a British tech journal, is written the same way. All tongue in cheek, inside jokes and puns to the point where it can be really difficult to figure out what the heck they are talking about if you don't read it regularly. They must think this style of writing is clever.

Re:Britishisms?

[mink]

So like The REgister?
Do they have a asshat like Andrew Orlowski on editorial staff as well?

Re:Britishisms?

[vondo]

I believe the Inquirer was a "fork" of the Register. Don't know anything about the personalities.

Oh good, RealPlayer

[svunt]

National broadcasters using these formats..tsk tsk - I'm an Aussie, and hate having wmv or mp4 only for video download from the ABC, but RealPlayer? Yuk! Poor Brits.

Re:Oh good, RealPlayer

[resequenced]

VLC plays the stream just fine. There's even a handy "Listen using stand-alone Real Player" link; you don't have to muck through HTML or anything. Real Audio wouldn't be my first choice, but the quality is pretty good, all things considered.

Re:Oh good, RealPlayer

[Anonymous Coward]

Real Alternative version 1.52 for windows users. Streams perfectly. And no "Real Player" spam.

Re:Oh good, RealPlayer

[piper-noiter]

I use Real Alternative. I also re-record it analog-style, save it as an mp3 and play it in the car to and from work once all the episodes of a radio program are out. I'm odd like that.

Re:Oh good, RealPlayer

[dfgchgfxrjtdhgh.jjhv]

or you could just use vlc & save the stream directly

Re:Oh good, RealPlayer

[martin-boundary]

The Realplayer format is actually pretty decent compression wise. Of course, you should never use the standard realplayer viewing software for this. The best method I know uses MPlayer:

1) Open a terminal and type the following:
mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile dirk.ra rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/comedy/wed1830.ra

2) Wait about 30 seconds, then open another terminal and play the file dirk.ra from disk while it's still downloading:
mplayer dirk.ra

This has two benefits: you can put the stream in your collection (maybe convert to ogg later etc), and you won't get the annoying buffering pauses.

This method also works with realvideo files, and wmv urls (mms://) if you want to save those types of movies. Finally, note that MPlayer lets you skip around an audio or video file, even if the file says you can't fast forward in other GUI oriented video players.

Re:Oh good, RealPlayer

[glavenoid]

Absolutely brilliant, man!

I've been trying to use the win32 version of vlc to save this (and other streams) to no avail. Somehow I forgot all about mplayer.

Works beautifully!

Re:Oh good, RealPlayer

[Peet42]

If you're on Windows, and using the BBC site, follow their "Get Realplayer" links.

Before the BBC standardised on RealPlayer for their video and audio streams (which may not continue much longer as the new DRM-encumbered BBCiPlayer rolls out) they got an agreement from RealNetworks to provide an ad-free version of RealPlayer. It's freely available to all, but only if you go through the BBC site to get it and, crucially, do not install the "full" RealPlayer first.

The BBC version has been effectively neutered; it doesn't fire up the browser unless you ask it to, and doesn't look for ads in the background. Without those annoyances it is my favourite Windows media player. :-)

Re:Oh good, RealPlayer

[Ma8thew]

Using RealPlayer is totally fair. It's terrible on every platform.

Re:Oh good, RealPlayer

[johnw]

VLC plays the stream just fine. How? I've been searching for ages for an alternative to Real's crappy and bug-ridden Linux client and I keep seeing references to alternatives but I've never got any of them to work. (At least Real's client does work sometimes with the wind behind it.)

As an example, how exactly do you get VLC to play the Dirk Gently stream? The best I can manage ends up with:

[00000330] live555 demuxer: real codec detected, using real-RTSP instead
[00000330] live555 demuxer error: Nothing to play for rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/bbc7/0830_thu.ra?BBC-UID=0416d2c32b390e24e4639a106050dee5e4b2a9ee7090c0f3fbda4f3d5dcf6be9&SSO2-UID=
[00000329] main input error: no suitable access module for `rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/bbc7/0830_thu.ra?BBC-UID=0416d2c32b390e24e4639a106050dee5e4b2a9ee7090c0f3fbda4f3d5dcf6be9&SSO2-UID='
[00000279] main playlist: nothing to play
[00000279] main playlist: stopping playback

TIA,
John

Re:Oh good, RealPlayer

[Purple Screws]

MPlayer works fine for me. It doesn't seem to understand the .ram file, so I had to do "mplayer `cat dirkgently.ram`" instead. You can save the stream to disk using e.g. "mplayer -dumpstram `cat dirkgently.ram` -dumpfile dg1.rm".

Re:Oh good, RealPlayer

[Anonymous Coward]

A problem with the codecs that your copy of VLC can see, perhaps?

For me, "listen in standalone realplayer", "save to disk" and open with VLC works just fine.

Thanks for the warning

[Nymz]

Not that I would bother, as it's stream only, and RealPlayer only.

Re:Thanks for the warning

[garbletext]

Once again, the pirate community says "you're welcome"

Re:Thanks for the warning

[dfgchgfxrjtdhgh.jjhv]

alternatively, its still on the bbc website - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/dirkgently/

Re:Thanks for the warning

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless, that is, if you live in Canada.

Re:Thanks for the warning

[Anonymous Coward]

Then connect through a non-Canadian Proxy? The QuickProxy Firefox extension makes it even more convenient.

Re:Thanks for the warning

[the_fat_kid]

oh, snap!

Re:Thanks for the warning

[jweatherley]

Works fine in India.

Poor guy!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I misread: Adams' Dirk Gently Sterilized on BBC Radio. I wouldn't like to have my dirk sterilized anytime soon, not even "gently"!

Re:Poor guy!!!

[Larry Lightbulb]

If you're going to stab someone it's best to have your dirk sterilized.

Re:Poor guy!!!

[lord_sarpedon]

Its blade length and style varied, but it was generally 7-14 inches. However, the blades of Irish versions often were as much as 21 inches in length. From Wiki. Emphasis mine :)

RealAudio

[emj]

Sigh I can only find it in RealAudio.. Can't they just use flash mp3 players or something similar..

Re:RealAudio

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that is for copyright (or licensing) reasons. Since the BBC don't own the copyright to all the stuff they broadcast, they can't just let people download it, they only have the right to make it available for 7 days after broadcast, and with RealAudio you are only supposed to be able to listen to it as a stream thus limiting the availability. In reality however, you can save the streams using mplayer or VLC and then convert it to MP3 if that is what you want. Given that I can download it and convert it to MP3 myself, I'm not complaining.

Excellent book

[amaupin]

This was an excellent book, and based on a Doctor Who script or not, I always thought it was much better than any of the Hitchhiker's novels. (However I still put the original Hitchhiker's radio series at the top of Adams' oeuvre, mostly due to the brilliance of Mark Wing-Davey.)

Can't wait to listen to this new show.

Re:Excellent book

[Spacejock]

I read the Dirk Gently books for the first time this year, and they reminded me of Tom Holt's 'Expecting Someone Taller' - probably the Norse Gods and suburban England. Now I'm curious .. wonder which was written first?

(Preferred Hitchhikers Guide to the Gently books, BTW.)

Re:Excellent book

[Grey_14]

Just so you know you're not alone, I preferred the Dirk Gently books to HHG2G as well,

Re:Excellent book

[Martin Blank]

For whatever reason, I simply couldn't latch onto anything in the book, even though I read through the first four books of the H2G2 trilogy in one weekend. It took me six tries to get through the book, and I was frustrated at the end that I'd spent the time to read it, especially after all the adulation poured on it by my friends. (Then again, some of them think Red Dwarf is the pinnacle of comedy, and one of them even thinks AbFab is a great show, too.)

I sometimes think I should give it another try, since it's been the better part of a decade since I last read it. I just can't bring myself to even look for the book, though.

Re:Excellent book

[residieu]

I'm not quite sure where I'd rank them in comparison with HHGttG and Restaurant, but both Dirk Gentlys were far superior to the later Hitchhiker books.

Re:Excellent book

[Anonymous Coward]

and one of them even thinks AbFab is a great show, too

It probably hasn't aged well, since many sitcoms don't, but AbFab was a great show during its time. And gave us one of the best futurama title gags ever...

Re:Excellent book

[Anonymous Coward]

but red dwarf is the pinacle of comedy!

RealAudio IT actually works

[emj]

Ha! I installed RealPlayer and it actually seems to behave nicely. Best quote of the day (from the show): "It's like trying to doing calculus with someone kicking your head"

Re:RealAudio IT actually works

[SnoopJeDi]

"It's like trying to doing calculus with someone kicking your head"

Sounds like trying to keep up with my calc professor.

For those who want MP3s...

[tajmorton]

Use mplayer to decode it and lame to encode it:

$ mkfifo inandout
$ lame inandout --tt "Episode 1" --ta "BBC Radio 4" --tl "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" --ty 2007 --tn 1 --tg "Speech" Episode1.mp3 &
$ mplayer -prefer-ipv4 rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/comedy/wed1830.ra -ao pcm:file=inandout pcm:fast -vc dummy -vo null

Or, if you want a script that cron can run: http://www.wildgardenseed.com/Taj/record-dirk-gently.txt

Re:For those who want MP3s...

[RiffRafff]

Huh. Look at that. Very cool.

Thanks!

Re:For those who want MP3s...

[stevenvi]

Excellent. Thanks. :)

To anyone else interested in using this script, the radio programme is weekly on Wednesdays at 18:30, so schedule your crons appropriately. (That said, I'm not sure when the download is made available...)

Re:For those who want MP3s...

[OriginalArlen]

Or use this handy script.

Called up my girl

[Henry V .009]

I called up my girlfriend to tell her about this. I hope she's having better luck listening to it on her Mac than I am on Vista -- the free Realplayer seems to think it's being installed as a restricted user even when it's not. Good testing, Real.

Maybe I'll download all the gray codecs and listen to this on one of my Linux boxes. Or I'll look around for Real Alternative, if it's still being hacked on.

Re:Called up my girl

[Heavy Machinery]

Yup, it works just fine with Real Aternative... http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm/

Re:Called up my girl

[ScrewMaster]

I dunno how well this works on Vista, but the Mega Codec Pack works great on XP: haven't yet found anything I can't play using it. Includes Real Alternative too, I believe.

What?? (was Re:Britishisms?)

[dj42]

What the hell did you just say? "Ravel is no Pom and his Bolero no English hymn" I can't even type that little fancy e.

Re:What?? (was Re:Britishisms?)

[Anonymous Coward]

I read Pom and Porn. That makes even less sense.

Re:What?? (was Re:Britishisms?)

[Faylone]

A simple search of the page's HTML shows that it's é Ex: Boléro

Real player

[Neon Aardvark]

I hate real player too, but installed it a while ago to listen to BBC radio programs (some of which are worth it).

In case anyone cares, this is apparently why they persist in using this abomination: http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/broadband_faq.shtml#latelyFAQ8

Re:Real player

[fsmunoz]

Thanks for the link, this part I found interesting:

We have ensured that versions of RealPlayer are available as free downloads for virtually all types of hardware and operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux and more), so that everyone can have access to our content regardless of the equipment that they choose to use. Like or dislike RP it is at least available on multiple platforms, and many others aren't (copying Windows DLLs doesn't count as supporting). Their reasoning does make sense in terms of universal availability of their content.

Re:Real player

[geekoid]

I assume someone has told them that if they just make it available as mp3 or mp4 they don't have to support ANY applications..and this includes real player?

I'm glad that this was serialized...

[Smerity]

I'm glad that this is being serialized, Douglas Adams' work lives well in an audio form, and I'm sure the BBC will do it justice as they have his works in the past. I read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency some time ago and it held up to all the expectations I had from Douglas Adams. If you've enjoyed any of his past works, or enjoy the kind of humour found in Terry Pratchett you'd find this fun.

This is honestly quite tailored to the scientific individual - the story focuses around a computer programmer (Richard MacDuff), an ongoing dilemma of Dirk Gently's great difficulty trying to track down a missing cat (Schrödinger's cat), an issue with the moving sofa problem (and how it was impossible for the sofa to actually become stuck in the first place) and for those who know of Coleridge's poetry (specifically The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan) you'll be in for quite a few twisting and entertaining surprises. There's also a time machine in there for kicks =]

Honestly, if the concept of a "thumping good detective-ghost-horror-whodunnit-time-travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic" interests you in any way, do yourself a favour and either listen in or buy the book - you won't be disappointed =] PS. I'm Australian (but with a strong grounding in American culture) and I didn't find too many 'Britishisms' in Dirk Gently... Maybe you're looking too hard? ^_^

Re:I'm glad that this was serialized...

[Spacejock]

The Gently books certainly mixed a few genres ;-) And as for Aussies, we've seen enough Goodies, Doctor Who, Minder and other UK shows to pick up the gist of things. Maybe it's because we don't remake shows like Fawlty Towers to suit 'our' market, and have learnt to appreciate and enjoy the originals.

Re:I'm glad that this was serialized...

[Anonymous Coward]

"...There's also a time machine in there for kicks =] "

And monk. Don't forget the electric monk.

Re:I'm glad that this was serialized...

[Tim Browse]

There's also a time machine in there for kicks =]

Any other spoilers you want to chuck in there while you're at it? Muppet.

Re:I'm glad that this was serialized...

[hendersj]

and I'm sure the BBC will do it justice as they have his works in the past

The BBC didn't do this series, neither did they do the tertiary, quandry, or quintessential phases of H2G2 - it was Above the Title Productions who did it for BBC4.

That said, yes, it is well done. :-)

Before reading/listening to Dirk Gently...

[Ecuador]

...make sure you at least read Wikipedia's entry for Samuel Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan". There are art, science etc references throught, but knowing a specific detail on the writting of that poem will help you appreciate more the conclusion of the amazing book.

Re:Before reading/listening to Dirk Gently...

[Anonymous Coward]

Writting is guud.

ever been there?

[toby]

I only lived there for 35 years, you'd think I would know of what I speak.

Re:ever been there?

[timmarhy]

Well, thinking australia is a military outpost for america is common misconception even among australian's, so i can hardly blame forgieners for having no clue.

the fact is, we are no more an outpost for america then they are for us or any other allies.

as far as culture goes, it's hardly suprising we take a lot of it in, we are an english nation surrounded by asian's, and their culture is so alien to us it's hard to even comphrend a lot of it, so it's hardly a suprise we don't embrace it as much.

Re:ever been there?

[timmarhy]

i just added you to the list of people i'm smarter than.

Re:ever been there?

[GaryPatterson]

No, you're forgetting Pine Gap. It's a crucial military outpost for the US, as it ties into their surveillance programs and early warning systems. We don't have a similar base anywhere outside our borders, so clearly we're more an outpost for the US than they are for us. If you're in doubt as to how critical it is, ask your local MP about removing it. No matter who your MP is, they'll reject the idea outright. It's unthinkable to them.

Watching successive governments bend over forwards for the US' slightest whim (none so bad as the current team, but since Holt's quip of 'all the way with LBJ' it's been clear) certainly gives the idea of a one-sided relationship a fair bit of support.

Lastly, it's true that we are an English-speaking nation surrounded by Asian nations, but they're not alien to us in any way. The differences are minor when you get right down to it. My wife and I honeymooned in Vietnam, and their English newspaper had the same sort of content that you get here (although a bit more siding with the government, being a state-run 'paper). Add a strong immigration component from Asian countries and you've got an Australia that's closer to Asia in many ways than the US.

Re:ever been there?

[jaseparlo]

spoken like a true redneck australian..."We're surrounded by asians, we must protect our borders from their culture, yellow peril, arrgh"

Re:ever been there?

[Anonymous Coward]

*bleep* you and the horse......er...I mean...kangaroo you bounced in on!

Podcasting

[treyTTU]

I think Radio4 uses some sort of random algorithm for choosing what they will podcast. I've listened to many of their programs both on iTunes and streaming, and I can honestly say the programs they choose to podcast have just as much value (monetarily) as the programs they choose not to. Also I've found that it is fairly arbitrary whether I'll be able to find the program that I'm looking for on iTunes. Going through the steps of capturing it to MP3 to play on the iPod doesn't have enough value for the time spent doing it in my opinion. Some day a media company will get it right... oh wait, that's probably not true.

Re:Podcasting

[Larry Lightbulb]

The problem is that the BBC doesn't own most of the 'entertainment' programmes and have to negotiate which can be podcasted or sold on CD.

Re:Podcasting

[OriginalArlen]

Actually he major problem is incidental music. It's easy to license someone else's copyright work for broadcast, (read: streaming) but a downloadable file that you can save and play back many times counts as distribution. (Yes, the law in the UK has not caught up to the fact that broadcasts can be recorded. My Dad has some old reel-to-reel tapes of 1950s Goon Shows he made at the time, so it's not terribly new idea...)

Re:Podcasting

[Xiaran]

Goon shows? On reel-to-reel? Does he have anything pre around 1954? If so can you encourage him to digitize them... not for distribution mind you... its just that before then most of the goon shows were lost. If he has anything from around 51-52 then Id strongly encourage him to get in touch with the BBC or a goon show fan site... there are very few episodes from that period.

Re:Podcasting

[pla]

Going through the steps of capturing it to MP3 to play on the iPod doesn't have enough value for the time spent doing it in my opinion.

For most things, I would agree. A new DNA radio show, though?

Most Slashdotters, I think, if we had to hold a microphone in front of the speaker to capture this one - We would spend the time. Fortunately, we have MPlayer (though it annoyingly appears to only capture BBC streams in realtime), so we can fire it off and go make coffee.

Re:Podcasting

[OriginalArlen]

Sadly, no - circa 56-58 I think. I've been meaning to get round to thinking about how to get them digitised for some time, now. Actually it was about 1993 when I first sat down to calculate the disk space needed to digitise all my non-replaceable cassette tapes and a couple of vinyl LPs that aren't available on CD, digitise a few thousand photographic prints and possibly even old home videos as well.

Re:Podcasting

[Larry Lightbulb]

First of all check my page for The Goon Show, http://www.radiolistings.co.uk/programmes/goon_show__the.html, which will give you a good idea of what still exists, then if you have any missing ones contact the BBC about them, via their treasure Hunt page, http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/treasurehunt/, or http://www.missing-episodes.com/ to see if copies are known to exist which the BBC doesn't want.

Re:Podcasting

[OriginalArlen]

Will do. Thanks!

good stuff!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why the BBC rules.
And you don't have to pay the license fee if you don't have a television.

Radio 1,2,3,4 and the internet is enough for me.

Re:good stuff!

[wizzdude]

To be honest, I think the licence fee is worth every penny for Radio 2, 4, 5 Live, 6 Music and the website alone. I'm very happy to pay it for everything.

Re:good stuff!

[EricTheRed]

Agreed.

I gave up on television some 16 months ago as all that was on when I was home was those crappy con^H^H^Hgame shows.

BBC Radio is worth the cost of a license fee, but (as they abolished the radio license decades ago), I'm not going to pay for a TV license just for radio.

All I have to put up with is the regular "Your are watching TV illegally" letters that TV Licensing keep sending me.

Re:good stuff!

[bvimo]

I second that.

I don't have a TV , but I pay the license fee for Radio 3, Radio 4, web based News 24 and Parliament.

Money well spent.

Re:good stuff!

[TheRaven64]

I gave up on broadcast television a while ago, but felt I got value for the license fee from the news RSS feeds. I stopped paying it last month, however, in protest over the iPlayer debacle. I don't want any of my money going to help Microsoft get a monopoly in the media format market.

Re:good stuff!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do so many people lately use the word "as" as a replacement for the word "because"?

Re:good stuff!

[heinousjay]

It's probably as they want to piss you off.

Shada (was: Excellent book)

[Larry Lightbulb]

Elements of it were taken from "Shada", a Dr Who series which was never made for the TV due to industrial action, but many years later an audio version was made, available from Big Finish, and often broadcast on BBC7 - my page at http://www.radiolistings.co.uk/programmes/shada.html gives the dates when it was last on.

Re:Shada (was: Excellent book)

[mrbooze]

Elements of Dirk Gently are also fairly similar to plot elements in City of Death.

Re:Shada (was: Excellent book)

[Anonymous Coward]

Elements of it were taken from "Shada", a Dr Who series which was never made for the TV due to industrial action, but many years later an audio version was made, available from Big Finish

There is an animated webcast version of it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/webcasts/shada/

Re:Shada (was: Excellent book)

[captain_dope_pants]

There's an animated version of "Shada" here Shada
I've watched it and it's not bad.

Misread

[RobDollar]

Did anyone else read Dirk gently sterilized on the BBC?

Original Readings

[EaglemanBSA]

I still recommend the original readings by Douglas Adams himself. They are hilarious.

Re:Original Readings

[Peet42]

Yup, I concur. I used to have the talking book read by Adams, and it was superb! I've heard one episode of this series so far and it's mediocre at best.

And when I saw this

[K.os023]

There were 42 comments to this story

Re:And when I saw this

[K.os023]

42

MP4?

[Valdrax]

Wait. What's your problem with MP4? Isn't it pretty much universally supported at this point?

Re:MP4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. mp4 is exactly what you want.

some incomprehensible British-isms to boot

[Anonymous Coward]

What are all these incomprehensible British-isms doing in the trunk of my car?

Teatime?

[skuzzlebutt]

I read this book about 18 years ago (in between loading people onto a stagecoach in Tucson...long story) and loved it; as a pre-teen and teenager, reading Adams was a mind-expanding experience, for which I am very grateful...too bad he kicked it so young (and too bad the HHGTTG movie sucked).

I have never gotten around to reading Long Dark Teatime of the Soul...is it any good, in relation to Holistic Detective Agency?

Re:Teatime?

[K.os023]

I have never gotten around to reading Long Dark Teatime of the Soul...is it any good, in relation to Holistic Detective Agency?

I haven't read HDA yet, but read Long Dark Teatime of The Soul years ago and loved it. It includes Thor lugging around a Coke machine, Odin lusting after fresh, crisp linen, Tsuliwaensis attempting suicide at every opportunity and Dirk Gently getting his hands one a hell of a hot potato.

Re:Teatime?

[mad zambian]

Absolutely worth it.
It may not be as mind-expanding as the original experience, but it will complement it. Dirk Gently rides again.
Go hit Amazon, your brain will thank you.

Pine Gap

[Chuck Chunder]

we are no more an outpost for america then they are for us or any other allies

What other allies have station here?

Re:Pine Gap

[thrillseeker]

What other allies have station here?

Only the true allies ...

Zaphod Plays it Safe!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a video version of Zaphod Plays it Safe? Which I think is his best work other than the original trilogy.

Don't get too excited.

[Peet42]

I'm a huge fan of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I used to own the superb talking book of "Dirk Gently" read by Adams himself, so I had high hopes for this series.

So far I've only heard the first episode, but already I'm bitterly disappointed. If I miss the second episode I won't greatly care.

Re:Don't get too excited.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, as soon as I read that Harry Enfield was in it (let alone playing the titular role!) I knew I'd be giving this a miss.

I just can't imagine forever hearing that annoying twat's voice in my head when I read the books again in future.

Subjective answer

[pjt33]

I think it's better.

I absolutely "Adore" the Dirk Gently series.

[gbutler69]

Can't wait to hear these episodes.

Also, in case anyone thinks "Bolero" is a Britishism, recall that it was used as the theme for "10" starring Dudley Moore and Bo Derek.

This movie was further immortalized in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" in the famous swimming pool scene which was a homage to a similar scene in "10" with Bo Derek.

Slashdotted

[johnw]

Lay off you lot! Here I am trying to listen to the last week of BBC7 and their server's been slashdotted.

I wonder whether they've thought of using bitstream to avoid this sort of thing.

Re:Slashdotted

[Larry Lightbulb]

Not /.ed, there's been problems with the Listen Again streams and the process for creating them over the past few months. Currently a lot of programmes are in mono, or a very whooshy 22kHZ sample rate rather than their usual 44kHz.

3rd Book

[transami]

The biggest literary disappointment of my life was that the 3rd book in this series was never finished. I hope there is a Heaven just so I can ask Mr. Adams for a copy.

I couldn't agree more

[gbutler69]

It would've been wonderful to have had more of the D.G. series. It was, in typical Britishism, "Brilliant"!

Exercises de style

[weierstrass]

There is in fact no accent on the 'e' in the Spanish word "Bolero".

Re:Exercises de style

[Lars T.]

There is in fact no accent on the 'e' in the Spanish word "Bolero". But there is in fact one in the title of Ravels piece - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bol%C3%A9ro

Re:A question here...

[node159]

No, but you will have all of those niceties done to you on your departure and arrival in the land of the free.

Enjoy

Ewwww!!

[75th Trombone]

TMI! TMI! I don't want to know who gently serialized Adams' Dirk! Not from Slashdot, anyway!

Re:It requires RealPlayer to listen..

[Lord Bitman]

so, yes.

Tricky for radio...

[itsdapead]

I always thought it was much better than any of the Hitchhiker's novels.

Well, Hitchhiker's - at least the original radio show and the first two books based on it - was basically a series of sketches with a rather loose linking plot (which varied considerably between the Radio, book and TV show). As such it worked well on radio.

The two Dirk Gently books, however, have really, really clever plots in which lots of bizarre, random events get pulled together at the end using some wonderful fantasy logic. I'm not sure that will work so well on radio - having heard the first episode I think its going to be hard to follow if you haven't read the book.

The later novel-based Hitchhiker stories tried the same sort of trick, but didn't pull it off quite as well.

I particularly love Adams' debunking of the Sherlock Holmes axiom "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth" in the second book...

(Basically, "Impossible" could just mean that there is something in the universe that you don't understand, and there are plenty of those, "Improbable" suggests something that you do understand and know to be very, very unlikely. It makes sense in the context of the book, although I hope the creationists don't latch on to it :-) )

Re:Tricky for radio...

[VJ42]

(Basically, "Impossible" could just mean that there is something in the universe that you don't understand, and there are plenty of those, "Improbable" suggests something that you do understand and know to be very, very unlikely. It makes sense in the context of the book, although I hope the creationists don't latch on to it :-) ) It'd funnier if the creationists managed to convince themselves that they had proved the existence of god, as you could then prove he doesn't a la the babel fish...;-)

Dirk Gently == The Roaming Gnome

[dkh]

I can't decide if this is somehow cosmically appropriate or just distracting.

Version for the lazy

[henni16]

Since I used to dump BBC shows once in a while and got tired of extracting the .ra URLs myself:

save.sh:
#!/bin/sh
mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile "$1" `wget -O - "$2"`


=> "save.sh filename.rm http://bbclistenonyourstandalonerealplayerlink/"

Assume you've read chapter(s) in Salmon of Doubt?

[michaeldot]

Just in case you weren't aware, there was some excerpts from the draft of the 3rd book in the posthumously published 'Salmon of Doubt.'

Such as how, on a whim, Dirk trailed someone from London to some remote part of the USA and met a leopard. Or something.

On CD November 8th

[Larry Lightbulb]

The full series of 6x30 minute episodes will be released on CD November 8th. Many of the recent BBC releases have had additional material, or slightly longer scenes, so still worth getting if you enjoyed the broadcast. My page about the programme - http://www.radiolistings.co.uk/programmes/dirk_gently_s_detective_agency.html will soon have better cast lists, and links on it.

Stream 'Ripping'

[MMHere]

One could use "Audio Hijack Pro" (OS X) to capture this
stream-only programme to a file, then write to CD, or move
to iPod for portable listening...

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/

Who is this Adam's Dirk?

[koafc]

And why is he being gently serialized?

Original Doctor Who Redux

[MrCopilot]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/webcasts/shada/

Enjoyed this adaptation as well. Wouldn't exactly call it animated but loved it anyway.

Am I the only one...

[uhlume]

...who had difficulty in parsing this headline at first? Despite my familiarity with the character and series in question, I spent several passes trying to puzzle out what "Gently Serialized" might possibly mean, and deciding there was a good likelihood I didn't really want to know...