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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.
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?
you had me at #!
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.
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.
Sounds like trying to keep up with my calc professor.
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
Tell the truth and you won't have so much to remember.
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
Azural - instrumentals
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? ^_^
Once again, the pirate community says "you're welcome"
...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.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
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.
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...)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Wait. What's your problem with MP4? Isn't it pretty much universally supported at this point?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
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.
Mod me down now and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
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.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
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 :-) )
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
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.
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.
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/
And why is he being gently serialized?
spoken like a true redneck australian..."We're surrounded by asians, we must protect our borders from their culture, yellow peril, arrgh"
All available data suggest that regardless of any of this, the sun will still come up tomorrow.