Yes! Time to hear Marek swear like a sailor over wifi technology. Because it never works for him!

Seriously, right now, I'm doing a clean install of my laptop. All partitions formatted. Windows XP is reinstalling right now (second time today!) and I'll only be feeding it drivers from the original, Vista-prescribed driver CD (I hate you Fujitsu Siemens. My next laptop will be an HP). It won't touch any of my potentially-infected-with-something-that-blocks-wifi USB drives until I get a clean, fresh Spybot and antivirus from the Internet.

If I get the Internet to work, which is the point of this excercise. Bottom line: if the clean-slate no-way-its-virused lots-of-hyphens laptop cannot find the damn Livebox, I'm throwing in the towel and going back to Grapefruit, my old laptop. It's not like the new one is better in ANY conceivable way. Both have crappy graphics cards, the new one has more RAM (which I don't need) and Grapefruit has a bigger hard drive (which I always need).

Bottom line - I need to switch to abetter machine. And a better ISP. And never, ever try this wifi crap again.

[EDIT]

Fix'd! turns out there's something in the wifi here that blocks you from getting connections. The solution is to install SpyBot and enable TeaTimer (go to Advanced Mode, then the Tools tab and then select Residents. There you can toggle TeaTimer). The weird thing is I can't find anything on Google about such a trojan or virus. Anybody has any clues?

...and the score is... let me quote Faith from Buffy: "Five by five, B". Literally, two fives, as in two As, for the the thesis and for the defence.

I'm officialy a Bachelor of Arts now.

Yes, I know we are all expecting the next instalment of Project MAPLE. But give me a break - as per usual, I'm all cool on the outside when it comes to exams and finals, but underneath is an emotional turmoil of stress that maybe this time, this time my luck will run out (I consider myself something of a Karma Houdini and I'm always on the look out for the cosmic comeback that awaits me). So, instead of ranting on my current favourite topic ("Twilight"), let me rant just a bit on some unrelated stuff.

You know, therapeutically.

To start off, I found a new Sean Stewart book. I've only read two books from this author so far, those being the supernatural tearjerker "Ressurection Man" and the technofantasy mini-epic "Night Watch", but just those two books have earned this guy a spot on my "buy blind" list. Basically, if I'm out searching for a new book and I come across one written by someoneon that list, I buy it without looking at the blurb in the back.

It's a fantastic deal - the blurbs usually spoil the book a bit, by telling you what it's about. If you've read enough, you will instantly know what kind of tropes and cliches a book will incorporate. But when you buy a book blind and start reading before even looking at the back, you're in for a treat. You are literally dropped right into the story, while more careful readers just dip into it at first. Basically, buying blind is diving into a pool from the highest board and reading the blurb is just taking the ladder on the kiddy side.

The book is good. I've only read like 30 pages, but I can already tell I'm in for a treat... if I somehow turn off that part of the brain that points out and classifies every rookie mistake the translator makes.

Seriously, the translation is awful. It's just sloppy. If a pizza chef was this sloppy, you would get a vegetarian pizzas covered in salami. If an engineer was this sloppy, you would have stair steps of varying lenghts. If Odysseus was this sloppy, he would still be on that one frickin' Island eating bacon and wondering where the Hades has his crew gone.

You know that adage that "a life unexamined is not worth living"? Well, same goes for translations! I don't think the guy ever went back and read what he wrote, because if he did, he would've realised he's sending off a rough draft of a translation and not a complete work. I know translators are subject to draconic time constraints, but if I found time to correct my translations while pushing dangerously close to deadlines, there is no excuse.

What's more, the book is filled with such stupid mistakes, that the editors themselves set out to fix. Like, oh, I dunno... giving all temperatures in degrees Fahrenheit?

Yes. The guy couldn't even be assed to do a simple conversion of Fahrenheit to Celsius. Come on man, that stuff is ten seconds tops - you don't even need to know the formula, you just need to type the thing into Google! It's that easy!

So the editors are forced to put in little footnotes, like conversions and cultural notes, that the translator failed to incorporate into the translation. I mean, every Pole knows what the Houston Astrodrome is, right?

Maybe you're thinking "hey, maybe the guy did incorporate it and the footnotes are a joint effort on his and the editor's part". No. They aren't. The guy has his own footnotes, in which he, for example, notes which Bible passages some people are quoting. And even this he can't get right: all he writes is Revelation 3:17, or something, never noting which of the twenty Polish translations he's using. I'm afraid he's actually translating them himself.

And the style, oh God... the story is told from a first person perspective, the perspecive of our hero, Will "TK" Kennedy. TK is kind of a loser, yet the translator opts for formal equivalence, translating the text almost word-for-word, like there is something hidden and mystical in the very word order TK is using. Uh, hello, rookie! TK is a high-school dropout, he will be using slang, short sentences, simple words and not your overblown, bloated style. You don't need "animated shorts featuring Popeye as the herp" - "Popeye cartoons" will suffice!

Oh, but the translator does try for slang. And fails miserably. And I'm pretty sure he never even heard of the term "equivalence". How the Hell is a Polish reader supposed to know what "show and tell" means?

It pains to see such a grat writer receive such awful treatment. The book was published by this newcomer publisher "Redhorse", which seems to think that if you stick a book in an "artistic" cover with glossy highlights, you will duplicate the success of "Fabryka Słów".

Yes, I just compared them to "Fabryka Słów". Unfavourably. In my mind, they are now worse than that bombastic, exploitative pulp machine.

I hate all these newcomers to the publishing market. I know competition is the motivation for improvement in a free market, but you guys don't even deserve to be called "also-rans". You are completely off the mark when trying to anticipate a reader's needs - a glossy cover is no substitute for a decent translation. Hell, you want to know how to compete with "Fabryka Słów"? Just put out a decently edited book. Seriously, the main accusation leveled against "Fabryka Słów" is the abysmal level of the very language of their books. They like to call it "transparency", while it's just blandness. And it's not even transparent - the short production cycle they impose on their writers makes them sometimes put gibberish in their books.

If you can put out a fantasy book that you can read without stopping every five sentences, trying to work out what the author meant, you're already better than the biggest modern Polish fantasy publisher. Hell, if you get somebody to do a foreword, you'll be playing in the big leagues, competing with Znak and others.

So, yeah. Bad translations - one of my biggest pet peeves since vampires started sparkling. To which point in the book I am slowly nearing. God help me.

So, it turns out one of my teachers actually reads this LJ. Wow. I need to up my game. Don't worry, miss, I will try to keep the swearing... at a reasonable level.

And seeing I'm halfway done with the next projectMAPLE phase, the reasonable level is still pretty high. But then again, in the next one I tangle with one of the things that particularly grates me with the book: how it can take such a simple, yet exciting concept (vampires trying to pass off as humans in Smallville) and screw it royally up two times before Sunday mass on a rainy day. With a rusty rake. Sideways.

But hey, all's well that ends well, so let's end this post on a positive note, with a quotation from "The Deluge".

One of the most recognisable characters of the book, nay, the whole series is Pan Zagloba, Polish wit, cunning, lechery, hypocrisy, earnestness, cowardice, courage and faith all rolled into one paradoxical, but wonderful and likeable cur. Zagloba is recognised for his self-contradicting life stories and numerous bon mots.

Here is one of his friendly insults directed at everybodies favourite diminutive soldier, Pan Volodyoski:

Original: "(...) sklepu z rozumem nie założysz, bo go na sprzedanie nie posiadasz, (...)"

Curtin: "You will not fill a vault with your mind, since you have no wit for sale;"

And with that, I bid you adieu, you crabmongers (I'll explain this joke later).

So, the date is set: on the 29th, I'm going in and defending my thesis. To celebrate this, I will post some of my favourite "Deluge" (the book I based my thesis around) quotes, in the original and English.

Here's what I think is the most powerful metaphor in book I:

( You know somebody's a fantastic writer when he can write stuff like this. Though the quasi-KJV English does not do it justice. )

THIS is effing WIN!

It's a collection of classic Disney comic books (including my beloved Don Rosa's Scrooge McDuck stories) that are just waiting for you to read them. Go. Now. Before Disney's legal department catches wind of it and takes it down.

So, my promoter told me that if I make the final corrections to the thesis by Monday, I can defend it on June 29. Which is awesome, but also means that I have to get all my paperwork in order by that time too. And get some photos. And learn how to make an automatic TOC in OpenOffice.

No, seriously, WTF?



Japan...

I'm pretty sure I can get this thesis thing done by the end of the week, which is super special extra awesome. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

So one of my favourite artists, Gisele Lagace, seems to have left "Penny and Aggie". It's cool, I'm kind of surprised she didn't jump boat earlier - Campbell's stories slide in and out of pretentiousness all the time (then again, so does teen life, so who knows).

Still, I am very fond of Penny and Aggie and return to it from time to time and I'm dissapointed by the new artist. Jason Waltrip isn't bad, I loved and love his Fans! stuff, but he just isn't cutting it for the comic. He tries to imitate Gisele instead of going his own way and that's commendable, but while he does a good job of doing the characters, his backgrounds are awful. Like, Jeph Jacques awful. Jeph Jacques knows this and this is why most of his comics focus on his characters and dialogue, the things he's good at. But Penny and Aggie always liked to show us the characters in different perspectives, in wide view and such.

Whenever there's a wide view, we get something like this: http://www.pennyandaggie.com/index.php?p=854. It's like the characters and backgrounds were drawn by two different people. And don't get me started on the gradients. Gisele had these beautiful things that looked like they were taken out of a shoujo manga and used them sparingly, while Jason uses your regular gradient fill. He uses it with thought to lightsource, so it doesn't completely break the scene, but it still contrasts heavily with the three-to-five tone characters.

I really hope he grows into it. Until then, I have no idea where to get my Lagace fix. And no, I won't read Menage a 3. The story makes me want to do horrible things to people.

Some people (and one famous cat) hate Mondays. I love them!

Mondays are the calendar's way of saying "hey? You want a second chance? Here's one!". You don't need a specific date to start something anew, but having something remind you every seven days that nothing has to be the same all the time is still a good thing.

So stop the hatin' and get crackin'. You got 7 days to try something new. Maybe start a new book, one you sually wouldn't read. Or try to do your job in a different way. Check out a new program. Go to a new restaurant. Follow somebody outrageous on Twitter. Write a list on your LJ. Whatever comes to mind.

Me? Oh, I'll be cracking down on my thesis this week. It's the home stretch people, God help us all.

Sorry guys, I will be too busy today to post a new phase.

They are making one. And they're doing what Avatar is (white-washing the cast, mostly), what the Dragonabll movie did (everybody's in high-school) and also ripping off Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (dimension travel story).

So this is how fan dissapointment feels.

This is Phase 5 of Project M.A.P.L.E. To catch the previous phases, click here.

Is it Phase 5 already? Wow, I'm booking this week. Seeing as the last phase was a small character study of Bella, why don't we delve today into the character of her beastly boring beau,

Edward "Dazzler" "Chuckles" Cullen - the man with a thousand faces

( Phase 5, y'all )

I'll have another phase ready next Friday, on the 29th. Until then, goodbye and eat your vegetables, because I do love you guys. But not in a controlling way, so if you don't want to eat them, don't. But do. They're good for you.

We all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other. (That's RIGHT) So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away. Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know.

Ganked from siel_black

This is the fourth instalment of Project M.A.P.L.E., Minstrel's on-again-off-again struggle to make sense of Twilight. You can catch the previous phases by clicking here.

( Continue to Phase 4 )

Welcome to the Project M.A.P.L.E. table of content. From here you can choose any phase to read or just save yourself the pain and google "ducklings".

Phase 1: Target Briefing
Phase 2: First Approach
Phase Update: Enemy Leader Intelligence
Phase 3: Expeditory Retreat
Phase 4: Speedy Return
Phase 5: Secondary Objective Acquired

I'm currently combing through my analysis subject, which is over 800 pages long, gathering all available examples and placing them in a database (okay, spreadsheet - I have no idea how to make databases). It goes slowly, but surely and I'm getting better at it, so I expect to have everything ready by the end of the week.

I also need to finish my apprenticeships, because I turns out I am issing a week of practical education. Of course, the career office is being a bitch. As usual. Sigh...

Anyway, just needed to vent a bit. I'm going to bed now. Today was stuffy and wet and I feel like I'm living on the equator or something.

I finally met with my promoter today and we exchanged words. Actually, she said words, I stood dumbstruck. Me? Emotionally blackmail you? Bitch, if I was smart enough to blackmail you like that, I would be smart enough to fix my own goddamn problems!

Oh, and I supposedly lied? Twice? You know what - fine. Call me that. Maybe that's what I need - somebody to remind me that I only succeeded in life not because I believed in myself, but because I wanted to spite the haters. I tried to fix it, but it's not really working, so we're back to square one, the thing that allowed me to pass the Advanced German exams. We're using the anger to kick me out of self-pity and into academic revenge.

I'm out of the rut. Discomfort levels are and all that psycho-babble. It boils down to stopping blaming myself and drowning in despair and into blaming others and doing the right for all the wrong reasons.

Maybe one day I'll get enough self-esteem to let go of anger as a motivational tool, but right here, right now: it's on.

New personal deadline: 8 June - final drafts of theory and analysis chapters.

Meetcha on the dark side.

As a forgetful and easily distracted person, I need to constantly write stuff down to remember it. I had pocket calendars, small notebooks of various kinds and even a cheap moleskin knock-off. Ultimately there was one problem with them - I would eventually lose them or forget to take them with me.

So I found a solution: one post it note, glued to my library card and stuffed in my wallet. Father taught me never to leave the house without my wallet or keys, so now I never forget my list.

Best thing about this? No need for additional space. I couldn't take my oleskin with me all the time, because I only had two pockets: one for my cell and keys and one for my wallet. Any more and the pockets would bulge unsightly. Now I can take my list even when I have to dash out of the house without a backpack or jacket.