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Fight Club – The Novel
Awhile ago, I read the original novel of Fight Club.
I surprised myself by reading the entire book in two days. Granted, it’s a short novel, but normally I’m not that engrossed.
This was due to the novel’s differences from the film. Turns out, the film is an excellent adaptation of the novel, but many speeches and conversations in the novel are re-arranged to condense the story. The book focuses tightly on the narrator, and the tale wanders as the narrator’s mind wanders. A film can’t do that. So, for example, Tyler Durden’s “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake” speech is composed of observations and bits of dialogue from Tyler scattered throughout the novel.
The novel ends in a completely different way than the film. I think I like the film’s ending better, though that’s personal preference for the ending’s style and content. The novel ends on a darker note than the film, though it’s a very Black Comedy sort of dark note.
I’m glad I read it. If I adapt something in the future, I’d learn a lot from a deep study of the differences between the book and the film.
Posted in Miscellaneous |
By Brent on 23 May 2008
Awhile ago, I read the original novel of Fight Club.
I surprised myself by reading the entire book in two days. Granted, it’s a short novel, but normally I’m not that engrossed.
This was due to the novel’s differences from the film. Turns out, the film is an excellent adaptation of the novel, but many speeches and conversations in the novel are re-arranged to condense the story. The book focuses tightly on the narrator, and the tale wanders as the narrator’s mind wanders. A film can’t do that. So, for example, Tyler Durden’s “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake” speech is composed of observations and bits of dialogue from Tyler scattered throughout the novel.
The novel ends in a completely different way than the film. I think I like the film’s ending better, though that’s personal preference for the ending’s style and content. The novel ends on a darker note than the film, though it’s a very Black Comedy sort of dark note.
I’m glad I read it. If I adapt something in the future, I’d learn a lot from a deep study of the differences between the book and the film.
Posted in Reviews |
By Brent on 22 May 2008
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After Mystery Science Theater 3000 ended, I wondered if anyone else would pick up the mantle. They stumbled upon the formula of recording voice-over riffs of bad pop culture movies, and surely someone else would continue. The technology’s easy enough.
Someone’s done it: RomeoRhino.
RomeoRhino is a YouTube user who takes public domain instructional videos (and a few movies), records himself riffing on them, marries the two, and uploads them to YouTube.
He’s learned from MST3K: he doesn’t talk over the dialogue too much, he jokes as much as possible, he knows not to get too dark or sarcastic, and he keeps the jokes coming steadily throughout the entire video.
He posts a new video about once a week, and he’s been doing it for a year, so there’s plenty of material. Some of my favorites:
Posted in Miscellaneous |
By Brent on 22 May 2008
After Mystery Science Theater 3000 ended, I wondered if anyone else would pick up the mantle. They stumbled upon the formula of recording voice-over riffs of bad pop culture movies, and surely someone else would continue. The technology’s easy enough.
Someone’s done it: RomeoRhino.
RomeoRhino is a YouTube user who takes public domain instructional videos (and a few movies), records himself riffing on them, marries the two, and uploads them to YouTube.
He’s learned from MST3K: he doesn’t talk over the dialogue too much, he jokes as much as possible, he knows not to get too dark or sarcastic, and he keeps the jokes coming steadily throughout the entire video.
He posts a new video about once a week, and he’s been doing it for a year, so there’s plenty of material. Some of my favorites:
Posted in Reviews |
By Brent on 21 May 2008
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Accepting PayPal Payments
As I prepare to bring my teaching website, Your Online Life, online, I’ve been fiddling with PayPal. I plan to use it to accept credit card payments, and I got lost within their documentation. But I managed to pull together what I need, and here’s what I found.
First, log in to PayPal, then click on the link to your Profile, then click on Website Payment Preferences. Type in a Return URL—this is the page on your site that PayPal will send the user back to after they’ve paid. Turn on Payment Data Transfer and save. The page will refresh with an Identity Token.
Now for some HTML. On the page where the user will pay for the item, enter something like this:
<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr"method="post"><input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick"><input type="hidden" name="business" value="YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS"><input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="ITEM_NAME"><input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="1"><input type="hidden" name="amount" value="5.00"><input type="hidden" name="shipping" value="0.00"><input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="0"><input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1"><input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"><input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US"><input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-BuyNowBF"><input type="image"src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_paynowCC_LG.gif"border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal"><img alt="" border="0"src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif"width="1" height="1"></form>
Obviously, change YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS and ITEM_NAME to your PayPal email address, and the name of the item your client will be buying. This will display a big “Buy Now!” PayPal button.
Now, go to the return page, the one that PayPal will redirect to. PayPal will send a transaction ID to this page, as an HTTP GET variable, named “tx”. Grab “tx”. Then post the following back to PayPal:
<form method=post
action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr"><input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_notify-synch"><input type="hidden" name="tx" value="TRANSACTION_ID"><input type="hidden" name="at" value="IDENTITY_TOKEN"><input type="submit" value="PDT"></form>
Plug in the value for “tx” in TRANSACTION_ID, and hardcode your identity token in the “at” field.
You should get back something like this:
SUCCESSfirst_name=Jane+Doelast_name=Smithpayment_status=Completedpayer_email=janedoesmith%40hotmail.compayment_gross=5.00mc_currency=USDcustom=Purchasing+cool+poster
A bit complicated, but it works.
Posted in Miscellaneous |
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