andrewducker

Urgh, Stardust is a terrible film! It ruined one of the key (and for me, most satisfying) twists in the plot.

LA Confidential is a pretty good book, but an even better film.

I agree with you about Stardust. I vastly preferred the book.

I don't remember the twist. Care to post the specifics using ROT13?

Er... I'm not sure I entirely remember.

It's one of the baddies who is scuppered towards the end by her own (evil) actions much earlier.

Oh yes, I remember: she casts a spell on someone else, 'you won't see the star', which has consequences later. (I think that's reasonably un-spoilery.)

Gur znva jvgpu rapbhagref gur zvabe jvgpu, jub vf nyfb nsgre gur fgne, naq phefrf ure gb or hanoyr gb frr vg (naq orarsvg sebz vg, naq fb ba, nyy snapl, yvxr).

Zhpu yngre, Gevfgna vf pnhtug naq ghearq vagb n oveq (be zbhfr?) ol gur zvabe jvgpu, ohg vtaberf Linvar. Linvar ernyvfrf gung gur zvabe jvgpu pna'g frr ure, naq fb whfg evqrf nybat va gur jvgpu'f pnenina nf fur'f tbvat gb Jnyy.

Gur zvabe jvgpu rapbhagref Ovt Jvgpu ba gur ebnq, Ovt Jvgpu orvat abj engure unttneq, ohg cbjreshy rabhtu gb sbepr zvabe jvgpu gb gryy gur gehgu nobhg jung'f va ure pnenina... juvpu vf gur gehgu nf fur xabjf vg (whfg n obl V'ir rapunagrq, naq nyfb Han jub'f n oveq, fb znlor Gevfgena vf fbzrguvat ryfr), naq pbzcyrgryl bzvgf Linvar, bs pbhefr.

Fb gur vavgvny fcryy gur Ovt Jvgpu pnfgf raqf hc fperjvat ure bire naq fnivat Gevfgena naq Linvar. UHeenu!

Oh yes, that was genius!

Uh... I 've never read the book, and I remember that happening. Which means that *was* in the movie.

Hmm... some excellent bit of plotting was definitely cut from the film, if not that.

I loved the film of Stardust but still adored the book more.

My classic example of a film being vastly superior to the book is 'Interview with a vampire' but that may be because Anne Rice's writing style drives me up the wall and I never did manage to finish the book!

Which did you see first?

I saw the film first and loved it, and read the book after, and like the woman in the article, found it dull in comparison. But I know a lot of people love the book.

I think with a lot of adaptations people tend to prefer the one they saw first.

Yes ditto - I saw the film first, and loved it - enjoyed the book, but (2 years later) couldn't tell you a thing about it.

I read the book first, and love it much more than the film.

Did you read the illustrated version? I'm wondering if that makes a difference in this case. I read the beautiful hardcover Charles Vess version before I saw the film and for me, the illustrations are part of the magic of the book.

Some bits of Stardust I enjoyed, but it doesn't touch the book.

Also, sounds like Starship Troopers the book is pretty dreadful.

In what sense? It won the Hugo for best novel in 1960, has been translated into 11 languages, and sold well for a few decades. So it can't be _that_ bad. Well, it could be. But I certainly enjoyed it a lot when I last read it 20 years ago.

It's definitely dated, and a lot of people disagree with its morality. But I wouldn't say it was badly written, by the measure of its time.

I liked Who Framed Roger Rabbit? a lot more than Who Censored Roger Rabbit?.

I've not read the book but I doubt any book could top that film!

I'd say the book was noir/drab, but I'm not fond of noir.

I don't understand your link about long links and misspelled words.

I do know, however, that when we split test Google AdWords ads, we often get a better response rate with words that are spelled wrong.

For example "warant check" gets more clicks than "warrant check" and "need laywer" gets more clicks than "need lawyer."

Also, not surprisingly, "durnk driving laywer" gets more clicks than "drunk driving lawyer."

Dammit, that was test data from yesterday that I meant to remove! Ignore it.

Ok.

That link appears to link to your github repos?

Ok - explanation time!

So, I was trying to find a way of making IFTTT feed the full link to Buffer to post to Twitter _without_ shortening the URL, now that Twitter auto-shortens URLs.

Which meant finding a long URL (and some long text) to do the test run. And I figured that a GitHub repo with some long path/file names in it should do the job.

Turns out there's no way to have IFTTT assume that a URL is only going to count as 21 characters of your Tweet, so it auto-truncates the text as if the URL is full length. So, basically, I'm stuck with the situation I have, of having bit.ly shortened links.

Ah... that makes sense.

Actually, the mispelling of ads is fascinating!

I wonder if it means that people who are bad at typing/spelling are more likely to be the kinds of people who click on ads.

Could be.

It could also be that when someone misspells a word in a search they get fewer Google ads to chose from - because most companies want their ads spelled correctly, so that someone Googling "drunk driving need lawyer" might get a dozen Google ads to chose from, but someone googling "durnk drivvving laywer" might only get one ad to chose from and therefore be more likely to click on it.

AdWords query: Do you subsequently optimise the landing page for misspelt but high-performing keywords? Or the ad text? If you're getting a better CTR from the misspelt ads, does that feed through to high quality scores on the misspelt keywords?

All the ads go to the same landing page. We have to use the misspelled word in the google ad itself, because otherwise it wouldn't pop up when people googled it.

We found this out accidentally when I had to create 750 google ads in a day and Rome Girl was swamped and couldn't proofread and the seven ads that I had accidental misspellings in generated tons and tons of traffic so we kept experimenting with it.

Interesting...

It is fascinating.

I know you used to be able to get cheaper deals on ebay by searching for a misspelling of the thing you want, because someone listing it under that spelling won't have had many bidders find it; but they've probably improved their search now.

Not sure if the AdWords thing is similar or not.

With adwords there are two advantages we've found to intentional misspellings.

1. It's a shit ton cheaper to pay per click for the keyword "laywer" than for the keyword "lawyer."

2. When you use the keyword "laywer" your ad is the only one that comes up. When you use the keyword "lawyer" you have tons of other competing ads pop up.

"Also, not surprisingly, "durnk driving laywer" gets more clicks than "drunk driving lawyer.""

That's two days running that you've provided the funniest thing I've seen all day. Well done!

Thanks!

It's true. We've split tested it!

I think it’s way too early to tell if marriage has collapsed and society has been destroyed.

I was watching detective programmes with MLW last night and you know, I felt we could survive it, could hang on in there. For the kids.

Now to be fair, it's not clear whether marriage should collapse now, after the close line-by-line third reading or after it goes through the upper house. I'm staying single to be safe.

I agree. I think we’re likely to see a staged decline in the quality of marriages as the bill goes through Parliament leading to a steady but inexorable decline in society. It won’t happen over night but sometime in the near future we’ll be driving souped up Holdens, totting shotguns full of used condoms and eating dead dog testicles just to stay alive.

I think staying single if you can is the best plan.

I wish I’d known, on that drunken, sunny early autumn day nearly 8 years ago when I proposed to My Lovely Wife that this nightmare was coming.

I think I might move to France. They know about the sanctity of marriage there.

Less than you might think.

And that's before mentioning e.g. François Mitterrand, twice elected President, who had a daughter out of wedlock during his terms in office.

The world has gone mad, mad I say, mad.

If you can’t rely on the French, who can you rely on?

The Russians.

Oh yes. You can count on the Russians.

Heh... or Utah perhaps... those Mormons are very keen on the man woman aspect of marriage -- so much so they parallelise the processing.

Utah here I come.

I feel that comparing RED The Movie to Red the book is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. It has different characters; it has a different; it has a completely different tone. I like them both, but to say one is better is a matter of personal preference in genre.

(See also The Losers, which at least keeps the main cast and some important character moments in translation.)

One more suggestion for film > book:

Life of Pi. Liked (but not loved) the book, but the film is better simply because it is so beautifully shot.

Loved the book... was present in cinema for duration of film.

children of men is a muuuch better film

I did enjoy the film, even if I felt it was a bit incoherent. Not read the original.