Dirk Gently

[Sysman]

Someone else (I forget who) made some writing contributions which Adams then removed from subsequent versions.

That rings a bell.

Meanwhile next Thursday's episode has appeared on my digital box programme guide. It's the first of a series apparently, but it doesn't say how many episodes there are.

It's preceded by The Beauty of Diagrams:

DNA - The significance of Odile Crick's Double Helix drawing, which was included in a Nature article in 1953 by Francis Crick and James Watson, explaining the structure of DNA. Part of the Tools od Science season.

and that is preceded by Come Clog Dancing. I might skip that

[Sysman]

Thanks Xogg.

I'm sticking to what I know.

Dos 3.3.

I think I was just discovering VAX/VMS when the first Dirk Gently book came out,

My first home computer was one of those Amstrad word processy things. I took the first one back because the contrast knob contacts were loose. The replacement didn't work either (different knob had dropped off in transit); they delivered the replacement for that one.

CP/M I tell Ya! I got a C compiler for it and that came with vi*. The combination was definitely the work of the devil and it was many years before I tackled them again.

It was actually not a bad word processor, having a <sic> button to mark words as not to be spell checked; something I've never seen in a WP package since, and quite useful.

I got a surprisingly good price for the beasty a few years later.

* remember the slogan "Shareware - one day you will buy all your software this way" ?

[VectraMan]

Someone else (I forget who) made some writing contributions which Adams then removed from subsequent versions.

I've never heard that before. Somewhere I've got "Don't Panic", the book about the book/radio/TV/film/game/towel.

It probably depends what you experienced first, but it was the TV series I saw first so I tend to think of that but then read all the books. When I first heard the radio series I hated it, especially the bloke playing Ford as in my mind he'll always be David Dixon from the TV series.

[VectraMan]

I quite enjoyed it. A bit of a shame it's a one off.

I'll have to read the book again to see how much they used. I'm sure Gordon Way was the ghost.

[Spacecadet]

I read the books and liked the movie.

Ditto

Although I liked the book more than the film version, I still thought the film was good enough to stand on it's own two feet.

[Bluespider]

Bit of mixed feelings on this one, it certainly wasn't as good as the book, chopped the story up somewhat and the only reference tot he electric monk was on a whiteboard that was painted over!

Still, good to see this character on the screen and the fundamentally conectedness of all things was handled quite well in the end.