Saturday 28 December 2013

Theory > Facts #2154

Just started reading Hard to Swallow: Hard-Core Pornography on Screen, edited by Gail Dines and Darren Kerr.

 The introductory chapter includes this howler, about Paul Schrader’s Hardcore:

"In this film, starring Rod Steiger, a morally upright evangelical preacher pursues his daughter when she runs away to the decadent west coast of the US, only to turn up in a porn movie. The plot takes us on a journey through the LA porn industry, in which all those he encounters are either damaged, or despicable, and wholly deserving of the beatings Steiger’s character dishes out."
 
But it's not Steiger, rather George C. Scott.

How can film academics get away with such basic factual errors?

Wednesday 31 March 2010

Job application

Sent off a job application today. Doubt it will come to anything anyway - suspect I'm over-qualified in some areas and under-qualified in others.

Otherwise mixture of success and frustration with computers. Mostly a network card that Windows did not pick up and which it's not at all clear what the driver for should be. Love the way Windows asks if it can go online to look for a suitable driver in ignorance of the absence of any working network connection. Going to try refurbished card taken from other machines - at least there is a make / model to work with there.

Tuesday 30 March 2010

Frustrating day

Today the weather was horrible. I had, however, arranged three appointments, so went out anyway.

At stop #1 I was asked about a printer, an Epson S20. It was refusing the recognise the ink cartridges and indicating they were not proper Epson ones. A bit of Googling suggested this was a common problem - http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B001CDDC4K - and that a 'lemon' had been purchased.

At stop #2 I initially puzzled over why a laptop was recognising some disks and not others, before being surprised to learn it only had a CD and not a DVD drive. Copying the relevant files off the DVD on another computer, writing a CD and using that worked.

At stop #3 I picked up two refurbished PCs. Back home I set about replacing the installed OS's, but was having problems with the second PC, because it was refusing to boot from either the CD or DVD drives. Removing the CD drive cable caused the DVD to start working, so I presume the jumper settings or similar were wrong. I can't see anyone really using the CD much anyway.

Next question is whether it's worth finding soundcard drivers for two office PCs in an office where the person in charge doesn't like the staff listening to music...

Monday 29 March 2010

My personal blog

This is the blog for my own stuff rather than film related matters.