Be Excellent To Each Other

Well I've just finished the third Dexter book, and I'm hugely dissapointed. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Dexter books are shit and terribly written. The vast majority of characters have no depth, and the ones that are focused on for more than one sentence per chapter are incredibly annoying and repetitive. Dexter's sister is so utterly narrow and just says the same thing over and over. Meanwhile the author clearly has a thing for aliteration because he uses it every time he refers to Disasterously Dull Dexter and it otherwise reads like a book of needless metaphors. It's a slow and frustrating read, with a thin plot that ends in a very unsatisfying way and makes me regret wasting several hours churning through it.

To summarise, Dexter the TV show is awesome, the books are not. The books are shit.

Cooker is feexed! I am happy ^.^*

I have also pulled the muscles in my thighs from doing the splits in the bath whilst having a shower (looong story)

They've thought of the new-fangled multichanneltron thing - the speech was on the first three of the 5 terrestrial ones. I wouldn't be surprised if next year the i(tv)player interrupts whatever you're watching with the important announcement as well.

I went and did my "speaking to my family" duties instead, two birds one stone.

It's hard to pull apart the first book in such a way, given that the plor and even half the dialogue are stolen nigh on verbatim.

That said, they do diverge pretty significantly after that. I don't mind Lindsay's writing style, though he's clearly been on a few drugs for the third book.

And yes, the TV show is awesome. Dexter...

Just to clarify as I'm pissed on something or other I can't spell is this:

a) Colin Dexter
b) Dexter the cat
c) Dexter Fletcher
d) Get Dexter (the excellent CPC game)
e) Something else.

Thank you for your understanding.

Well... firstly, I've not read the third and I am aware of the seemingly highly idiotic twist it takes. So I'll exclude that, but I have read the first two. I didn't think they were classic books by any means but they were entertaining enough.

I wasn't initially impressed but I did warm to them by the second book, and I would probably enjoy the first one more if I reread it now. It didn't help that the first one is so very similar to the first series. You are right that the characters other than Dexter are much thinner than in the TV show, because the books are entirely monologue and really just a character study of Dexter himself; in the show, through necessity (for running time and to have some stuff that didn't rely on voiceover) they vastly expanded all the characters, for the better. And changed some -- note that Angel is a lab tech in the TV show pilot, as in the books, but a detective in all subsequent episodes. Vince is a more sinister character in the books, as is Doakes. Dr Danco is a great villain though!

More than anything else, the Dexter books reminded me of The Silence Of The Lambs, another (in my opinion) overrated series of books -- they were OK but they weren't great. They both rely on allowing the reader inside the head of a fascinating serial killer, but whereas Thomas Harris's great weakness is his urge to show off about 14th century Florentine marble statues for eleven pages, Lindsay is just a bit hackneyed most of the time. Anyway, I didn't hate them and I'm glad I read them, but they weren't a patch on the TV show.

I thought the illiteration fascination was actually Dexter's, rather than Lindsays, and was an effective part of the character's voice. I didn't mind that so much.

This is the TV show.

Did she say "Oh, oh, spaghettios!" as well?

I read the first Dexter book, I thought it was cliche ridden pap, and the ending was horrendous, I have not seen the tv show. That is all. I am still not near my Xbox.

I've got Mac OS X running on my Acer Aspire One! Woo!

It would appear I spoke too soon! Boo!

Dexter's Lab was top hole.

Certainly was. All of Tartakovsky's stuff was good but I believe Cartoon Network has moved on and none of it is shown any more

edit: holy crap, it finished 10 years ago. OLD.

I'd forgotten about this too:

I LOVED Dexters lab I want to be Dee Dee

I just smoked some salmon in my new hot smoker. It was very very tasty.

There was a marvellous Billy and Mandy the other day where everything went very odd (as usual, but EXTRA very odd) and it ended with them all waking up in a bed dressed as Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup, and being sent on a mission by the Professor.

No idea what Billy and Mandy is (a show?), but the Powerpuff girls are ACE

I am MOJO JOJO!!! I loves him

Right, I've got Mac OS X 10.5.5 working on the Acer Aspire One now, woo! (again)

Only thing that won't work is Wi-Fi, but everything else works fine.

Just downloading the iPhone SDK now (1.5GB!) - if that works OK then that saves me splashing out cash on a proper Mac.

Steve Jobs will haunt your dreams

Steve Jobs will eat your soul.

Yeah, he couldn't shut the fuck up either.
muahahahahahahaha

Oh, hope the wi-fi can be salvaged somehow.

Nice to hear those devices can be haxxored to run Mac OS X. Coincidentally when I saw the the small Acers in Asda last week, and I said to my girlfriend, if that ran Mac OS X, I'd have bought one already...

I've got a telegram from the Queen. Well, her Private Secretary, at least. And when I say me, I mean, my mum. Who got the telegram. And has now given it to me. And no, she's not 100 years old. My mum, that is. Not the Queen.

Back at work, bored already. Had most bizarre and ever-so-slightly emotional day yesterday shopping for pushchairs and car seats with preggers-ex. I am now officially very much looking forward to being a Dad in May! She also bought me a babygrow for our nipper-to-be for Christmas, it's white with the words 'My fingers may be small, but I can still wrap Daddy around them'. I genuinely fear what she'll be teaching the kid when I'm not around.

Has anyone done the joke about giving all his money to [INSERT POSTER NAME HERE], yet?

I came into some money the other day. I've always had a thing for the Queen.

I got an external hard drive for Christmas, so I'm sitting here in work backing up my files. Hooray!

Swear filter is ON! Gotta go entertain some kids in a bit...um....better get ready then

I couldn't get it to work when I tried. What 'flavour' of Mac OS X are you using?

Though to be honest, Steve Jobs mindwarping hypno-rays appear to be losing their effect on me - 18 months of having no Macs to play with and just my fairly nippy self-built PC instead has made me kinda lose interest in the Mac experience. And yet I used to evangelise it over the evil Windows.

I'm using the Kalyway 10.5.2 disc, which I then update to 10.5.3 using a Kalyway updater. This then allows you to update to 10.5.4 and then 10.5.5 using the official Apple updates.

Info and instructions here..

iPhone SDK appears to work great too, so I've now got possibly the world's cheapest Intel-based Mac OS X laptop

You bugger, I'd just managed to convince myself to buy a proper mac laptop and you've given me a solution that probably involves a great deal of faffing about, uncertainty and inferior mac experience, but costs a grand less so I'll have to do it

Is the point of the Mac the fact that you dont have to fanny around to make it work? I was thinking about trying to upgrade my media center to OS X, but then I thought... why do I want to upgrade it? It's because on my Mac, everything works[b][/b] like it's supposed to. On my Windows Media Center, everything is cobbled together (in a software sense) and it never quite works 100%.

The main reason why everything works on a Mac, is because they only write software (and test) for a limited set of hardware. Which makes it a better "user experience" (i.e. everything works the way it should). I really don't understand why people are desperate to get a Mac "look and feel" with the shitty "user experience" of Windows by trying to cobble it together to work on the wrong h/w.

It would be like saying "I've bought this shit 'whoflungdung' mp3 player from Aldi, but I want it to run the iPod OS on it, because then it will be an iPod". Or buying a similarly shit iPhone ripoff from Samsung/LG/whoflungdung and trying to get the iPhone O/S crowbarred onto it.

Oh I know!

Watched this the other night:

http://twitchfilm.net/site/view/its-fiv ... e-trailer/

only it was in Japanese with no subtitles, didn't seem to much matter though, awesome film. Proper belly LOLs aplenty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3kWU6HtEkI

Billy & Mandy is fun, if a little sick and over the top in some places. I always loved Billy's Dad in the show, he was hilarious. Almost as hilarious as Timmy's Dad in Fairly Oddparents. He was superb.

I miss a lot of the older shows from Cartoon Network:

Powerpuff Girls, Cow + Chicken, Dexter's Lab, I M Weasel, Fat Dog Mendoza, Johnny Bravo, Samurai Jack, Courage the Cowardly Dog.

I'm about to go and spend several hundred quid on a pair of diamond earrings to cheer up Mrs C. I am inexplicably nervous about it.

Overheard a manager in Game earlier rejecting a Xbox 360 game on trade-in because the disc was scored in the usual circular pattern. So far, so normal, except he patiently explained that this happens because "the console was moved while it was spinning, and the disc got too close to the laser, burning it". Hmmm :|

I wish I felt old, I still act and feel like I'm 16 sometimes (though without the sassy mouth and rebelliousness which seems to accompany anyone of that age nowadays.)

i've just bought a cheap HP laptop for my uni work on the strength of it's better than usual onboard GFX, the Mobility Radeon HD 3200. Any experience amongst bezzies with this?

Oh I remember them, though I never felt quite at home with Scooby Doo or the Hare Bear Bunch so didn't watch them all that often. I guess I came from the 80s kids cartoon era, Transformers, Cities of Gold, Ulysses 31, Dogtanian, Belle and Sebastian, Danger Mouse, Dungeons and Dragons, Duck Tales, TMNT, Thundercats, etc.

I just never grew up and continued to watch cartoons I suppose.

I am best a 10 year old at Wii Sports!

Round 1: My eldest son beat me 160 - 148 in bowling
Round 2: I beat him -1 to +13 in golf
Round 3: I beat hime 3-1 in tennis (after losing the first game to love when I was serving)
Round 4: He beat me 3-2 in baseball (after I went 2-1 in the first innings, and he got a further home run in each other innings)
Round 5: I beat him in the 2nd round (I have rarely played boxing and have a ranlking of 77, whilst my son's is more like 600) and was just randomly swinging my hands around in the air.

So, I won 3-2 at Wii sports! go me! woo woo etc

Malc

Shit, I meant to record that! I mean Sky+ it

Malc

I miss Cartoon Network!! I loved all those cartoons you listed Skutter 2 stupid dogs was funny aswell

Just got in, so tired but need to go on bomberman, had a great night over at GJs