Don’t let the name fool you. Game Week is serious business. Sure, we get to play tons of cool games for hours on end, letting deadlines slip past, drying out our eyes, staying up late, killing the batteries on our iPhones. But still. Serious, serious business.   Besides, who ever said serious business couldn’t be fun at the same time? Some jerk, that’s who. So have a little bit of serious fun with the Mac|Life team – we might just let you go first on Mario Kart. Features: – The Mac Users Guide to Cool Things You Can Do With Steam – Okay, you know one of the biggest knocks on Macs is "no one’s making any real cool games for them." And we’ll admit it: some of the biggest and best games are PC only, but all of that is about to change. That’s right, Steam is coming to the Mac platform and it’s bringing all your favorite Valve titles with it.

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In Case You Missed It: Mar. 8 – Mar. 14 (aka GAME WEEK!)

Filed under: Apple , iPhone In the fight against theft it’s nice to know that the authorities are on your side — even if Apple and AT&T are not. Consumerist reader Alisa is learning the hard way that sometimes procedures are a hassle. Alisa recently had her iPhone stolen and even though the police did some on-sight detective work, she never went down to the precinct to file an official police report. Not having a police report has turned into being a bigger hassle for Alisa than if she had filed one originally. Alisa just found out that the thief is trying to get Apple to replace “their” (stolen) iPhone. Apparently the original owner’s email account is still linked to the serial number of the iPhone and as such she has been made aware of the situation. One would think this is great news and Alisa should be able to simply work with Apple to retrieve her original iPhone or, ideally, the replacement that is now apparently necessary. Unfortunately, due to the lack of a police report having been filed, neither Apple nor AT&T are willing to do anything to help her retrieve her iPhone. The whole situation seems, at first, mind boggling — why would Apple not help a loyal customer get their stolen property back? If you take a closer read at Alisa’s letter to Consumerist you can see why Apple may not be in a position to help her. Since Alisa did not file a police report, her story does not have the legs to stand on in the eyes of Apple. While it would be nice if this were an open-and-shut case, it seems that Apple is going to need something more substantial than a phone call to convince them to send Alisa an iPhone

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Apple refuses to return repaired iPhone

Section: Software + Apps , Miscellaneous , Third-Party , iPod + iTunes , iPod touch , iPhone , iPhone , iPhone SDK & Apps , Mac + Computers , Software Macintosh and iPhone/iPod updates and announcements for December 24, 2009: Macintosh Digital Rebellion LLC has announced FCP Versioner , a utility to automatically back up Final Cut Pro projects in XML format and generate changelogs to show modifications between revisions. FCP Versioner is an essential tool in managing Final Cut Pro projects, providing feedback to producers and ensuring that projects are safely backed up in case of disaster. Versioner also offers a wealth of options for managing backups to ensure they don’t consume too much disk space. Playrix Entertainment has made its first published title— Elementals: The Magic Key —available for the Apple Macintosh line of personal computers. In Elementals: The Magic Key, players plunge into the world of magic and mystery inhabited by elementals. Their mission is to help Albert, a young magician, restore the Key of Eiron and save the unique world of elementals by solving puzzles, hunting for hidden items and winning board battles. Opcoders has released GraphicDesignerToolbox 1.3.0 , a free update to their powerful Mac OS X graphics editor.

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Macintosh/iPhone software update roundup – Christmas weekend, 2009

In his latest article for the Chicago Sun Times, Mac-afficianado and supergeek Andy Ihnatko discusses LongBox , an iTunes-like comic book online store and screen reader. If you’re into graphic novels, you’ll likely want to know more about this service, which promises to bring order and unity to the chaotic digital world of comic books. What caught my eye, however, was Ihnatko’s belief that LongBox is deep in discussion with Apple over bringing its app to the iTunes Store and making, in due course, the mythical Tablet the perfect e-reader for their graphical content. Ihnatko describes how LongBox CEO Rant Hoseley dropped a very juicy hint at a recent convention: Rantz spoke at the Long Beach Comic-Con last weekend, as part of an industry panel on the future of digital distribution. Referring to a future strategic partnership with an unnamed company, Rantz said “It seems like everything is going to go through as planned.” He identified the company only as one that “all of a sudden leaves us with a multinational launch with literally millions of installed users.” That sounds a hell of a lot like access to the iTunes Store, either in the form of software in the App Store or readable content in a hypothetical “iTunes Newsstand.” Ihnatko spoke with Rantz for an hour, relentlessly questioning him and expecting him to “stumble” over common issues that have kept the comic book industry from so far settling on a unified online sales and distribution platform. Apparently, Rantz didn’t stumble, but provided further tantalizing clues that something is afoot with our friends in Cupertino. I’m pretty sure that Apple is entering into a formal alliance with LongBox. When I asked Hoseley about what kind of partnerships the company is forming, he spoke vaguely of what was taking up most of his time at the moment: a lengthy and complicated agreement with a seriously large company operating in the media space.

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Apple’s Mythical Tablet Perfect for Comic Books

Section: Software + Apps , Miscellaneous , Third-Party , iPod + iTunes , iPod touch , iPhone , iPhone , iPhone SDK & Apps , Mac + Computers , Software Macintosh and iPhone/iPod updates and announcements for October 15, 2009: Macintosh AquaFold, Inc. has released Aqua Data Studio 8.0 , a major upgrade to its universal database administration software. Aqua Data Studio makes it simple to visualize and manipulate multiple relational databases from within a single interface. Version 8.0 of Aqua Data Studio extends native support for the leading data warehousing and high-performance relational databases, including: Teradata, DB2 for z/OS, Sybase IQ 15 and nCluster from Aster Data Systems. InfoLogic today announced MathMagic Personal Edition 6.8 , their award-winning multi-purpose equation editor for Mac OS X. With a focus on the equation quality and ease-of-use, MathMagic Personal Edition is a standalone equation editor for mathematical equations and symbols. MathMagic reads and writes various industry standard mathematical expressions including LaTeX and MathML. Version 6.8 adds support for Google Docs and Zoho Writer, MathType, OmniOutliner, and other enhanced features. Disk Doctor Labs, Inc. has released Disk Doctors Photo Recovery , an upgrade to its photo recovery software for Mac OS X.

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Macintosh/iPhone software update roundup – October 15th, 2009

Security video from Friday’s violent armed robbery at the Apple Store in Arlington, Virginia, has been posted to YouTube. The Arlington police are cleverly using YouTube to broadcast crime videos with appeals for help from the public. The latest video is from Friday’s robbery at the Apple Store Clarendon in Arlington , in which a female employee was shot in the shoulder and wounded. The 26-year woman is in hospital in serious but stable condition, police said. In the security video, the employee is seen opening the back door to the store after the suspect rang the bell at about 10.15 AM. She is led back into the store at gunpoint, and was shot soon afterward. The suspect fled on foot. Police describe the suspect as a thin black male, aged 35-45, wearing a dark baseball cap and light-colored shirt and pants

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Cops Release Security Video of Arlington Apple Store Shooting Suspect

Your character, Petra, is Oz’s greatest detective. read more

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Emerald City Confidential

Police in Allentown, Pennsylvania don’t mess around with iPod thieves. When a woman had an iPod stolen after meeting a potential buyer for it from craigslist, they sent an undercover agent to bust two teen theives. Police contacted the same 17-year old through craigslist and set up a meeting for him to buy an iPod. He showed up with the same friend about 6:30 p.m. and met with the female detective. The teen snatched the iPod from the detective and he and his accomplice tried to run. Both were charged with robbery, theft, receiving stolen property, conspiracy, resisting arrest and criminal use of a communication device. (This last charge, it seems, has to do with illegal activity on craigslist. ) Via The Morning Call Via The Morning Call Photo of anti-iPod theft poster in London used with a CC  license, thanks weegeebored . This article is copyright Cultomedia Corp .

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Police Go Undercover to Nab iPod Thieves

Toronto police have posted a security cam video of a $20,000 iPhone heist on YouTube in hopes of identifying the criminals. Two armed robbers made a mid-morning visit to a cell phone store on November 1 2008, forcing staff to fill garbage bags with iPhones. The first suspect is described as male, black, about 25 years old, around five foot nine with a slim build and wearing a dark green cloth jacket with some fur trim around the hood. The second suspect is about the same age, height and sex, with a medium build. He was wearing dark clothing and had a white cloth covering his face. In the YouTube video narrated by the investigating detective, you can sort of make out the iPhone boxes at one point when one of the staffers drops them on the floor as a gun is pressed into his back. Anyone with information is asked to call the hold-up squad at 416-808-7350, or Crime Stoppers at 416-222-TIPS (8477) or use the website 222tips.com . Via Toronto Star

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Police Turn to YouTube to Find iPhone Thieves

Douglas Adam’s book is somewhat a homage to the computer it was written on, with numerous Mac keywords dropped about the masterpiece. If some one would ever to use the book as is on a web page, the google results would be magnifique!

Here’s some info, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is a novel by Douglas Adams. It is described on its cover as a “thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic”. Like many of Adams’ stories, its plot defies easy encapsulation.

The book was followed by a sequel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, although the only recurring major characters are Gently himself, Janice Pearce and Sergeant Gilks. Adams began writing The Salmon of Doubt with the intention of it being the third book in the series.

A BBC Radio adaptation starring Harry Enfield was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesdays from 18.30 to 19.00, starting 3 October 2007 and finishing 7 November 2007. A second series based on the sequel began broadcasting at 11.00pm on 2 October 2008.

Dirk bills himself as a “holistic detective” who makes use of “the fundamental interconnectedness of all things” to solve the whole crime, and find the whole person. This involves running up large expense accounts and then claiming that every item (such as needing to go to a tropical beach in the Bahamas for three weeks) was, due to the “fundamental interconnectedness of all things”, actually a vital part of the investigation. Challenged on this point in the first novel, he claims that he cannot in fairness be considered to have ripped anybody off, because none of his clients have paid him yet. He maintains an office at 33a Peckender St. N1 London, with telephone number 01-354 9112 (407-2882 in the advertising campaign for the book).

Once a student at St. Cedd’s College, Cambridge, he left in disgrace when on one occasion, attempted to acquire money by selling exam papers for the upcoming tests. His fellow students were convinced that he had produced the papers under hypnosis — in reality, he had simply studied previous papers and determined potential patterns in the questions. However when his papers turned out to be exactly the same as the real papers, to the very comma, he was arrested and sent to prison. This is but one example of Gently’s odd facility for accurate assumptions: every wild guess and flippant answer he makes turns out to be absolutely true.

Dirk Gently (real name Svlad Cjelli, also known as Dirk Cjelli) is a fictional character created by Douglas Adams and featured in the books Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. He is portrayed as an overweight man who normally wears a heavy old light brown suit, red checked shirt with a green striped tie, long leather coat, red hat and thick metal-rimmed spectacles.

“Dirk Gently” is not the character’s real name; it is noted early on in the first book that it is a pseudonym for “Svlad Cjelli”. Dirk himself states that the name has a “Scottish dagger feel” to it.

Dirk Gently‘s plot is highly non-linear due to the use of time travel and other story elements, and is related here for continuity.

Four billion years ago, nine dozen multi-tentacled creatures called Salaxalans, discontent with their own world, leave and attempt to populate Earth. They leave their mothership in orbit, but, due to the laziness of the engineer and faulty advice from their Electric Monk, an automaton designed to believe things so its owners don’t have to, their landing craft explodes on Earth, triggering a spark that creates amino acids and the start of life on earth. The Salaxalan engineer, having thus failed to complete a task during his life, is forced to wander the Earth as a ghost. He watches as terrestrial life develops. In the early 1800s, the ghost learns of a time machine owned by Professor Reg Chronotis at St Cedd’s, but is unable to use it. The ghost finds he can influence humans, and possesses Samuel Taylor Coleridge to write a second verse to his “Kubla Khan” poem that includes instructions on fixing the damaged lander, as well as additional references in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner“. The ghost then continues to look for a way to influence Reg to use the time machine to “correct” the past.

In the present, the Salaxalan ghost manages to weakly influence Reg to use the time machine, disguised as his chambers at St. Cedd’s, to travel to a distant planet, taking possession of another Electric Monk wandering it. However, this particular Monk had developed a malfunction and practises all sorts of random religions, each for only a few minutes at a time. Finding the Monk unreliable, the ghost leaves it to wander on Earth, and through a series of additional influences, finds itself able to possess that of Michael Wenton-Weakes, a writer recently fired as editor of a magazine. The ghost urges Michael to kill the magazine’s new editor, Albert Ross, and then has him read Coleridge’s works, preparing him to confront Reg to use the time machine in order to prevent the lander’s explosion in the past.

Meanwhile, the Electric Monk is told by a porter to “shoot off”, and so “shoots off” at Gordon Way, president of Way Forward Technologies II, during a call to his sister Susan’s answering machine. The Monk goes on to suffer several other misadventures. Gordon’s ghost, having not yet finished his phone call, witnesses Ross’ murder, and manages to relay this to Susan over the phone before fading away. Richard MacDuff, an employee of Gordon’s working on a program to convert data into music, currently dating Susan, and a friend of Reg’s, finds himself as a possible suspect in Gordon’s death, and attempts to remove evidence from Susan’s machine that would implicate him. Dirk Gently, Richard’s friend and sole detective in his “Holistic Detective Agency”, catches Richard in the act, and persuades him to tell him what happened. After hearing the events from Richard and consulting with a child, Dirk works out that Richard’s, among others, actions have been under the influence of a ghost, and that the only thing that could explain the events would be a time machine. When Dirk and Richard question Reg he admits to having a time machine, but they are confronted by Michael, still possessed by the Salaxalan ghost. The ghost convinces Reg to use the time machine to go back to just before the lander exploded so he can fix it. As the three see the possessed Michael off, Richard learns from Susan about Michael’s murder of Ross, and the three realize that the lander’s exploding is what creates life on earth. Using Reg’s time machine, they travel to visit Coleridge, so that Dirk (”the man from Porlock“) can distract him and thus alter “Kubla Khan” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” so that the Salaxalan ghost will not have the proper instructions to stop the lander’s explosion. They then destroy the Salaxalan mothership.

Dirk, Richard, and Reg return to the present to find things much as they were before, though Reg’s time machine no longer works. Reg “rescued” a small proportion of the the wondrous music heard by Richard on board the Salaxalan satellite, explained as the oeuvre of J. S. Bach (although Reg brought back many times more music than one man could write in a single lifetime). One of Dirk’s old cases no longer needs to be solved, and he sends a revised bill to the client, “For saving humankind – no charge.”

• Dirk Gently (also known by a number of other names, including Svlad Cjelli), the operator of the eponymous detective agency that operates based on the “fundamental interconnectedness of all things.” He specializes in missing cats and messy divorces. At university, Dirk, seemingly deliberately, created rumours about having clairvoyant abilities by vigorously denying that he had any. He concocted a “get-rich scheme” offering a university exam preparation service and was eventually sent to prison when, by sheer coincidence, he accurately duplicated the exam papers for that year without having seen them.
• Richard MacDuff, a young software engineer working for WayForward Technologies II, owned by Gordon Way. His Anthem software, which is designed as a spreadsheet, but also has a unique feature to convert corporate accounts into music, was extremely popular, but he is falling behind in his deadlines to create an updated version.
• Reg (Professor Urban Chronotis, the Regius Professor of Chronology), Richard’s old college tutor, a fellow of St. Cedd’s College, Cambridge with no apparent duties, who is “on the older side of completely indeterminate”. He has a predisposition for childish conjuring tricks and an extremely bad memory.
• Gordon Way, the owner of WayForward, who is pressuring Richard to complete his behind-schedule software project, and ends up getting shot for no immediately obvious reason a few chapters into the book.
• Susan Way, sister of Gordon Way and professional cellist, and the “specific girl that Richard is not married to”.
• An Electric Monk from a planet very far from the Earth. Electric monks are coincidentally humanoid robots designed to practise religion in their owners’ stead. This particular monk had accidentally been connected to a video recorder and, in attempting to believe everything on the TV, had malfunctioned and begun to believe “all kinds of things, more or less at random”, including things like tables being hermaphrodites and God wanting a lot of money sent to a certain address. Since it was cheaper to replace the Monk than to repair it, the Monk was cast out in the wilderness to believe whatever it liked. The Monk also owns a somewhat cynical horse, which he was allowed to keep because “horses were so cheap to make”. Upon his arrival on Earth, the Monk has several humorous misadventures.
• Michael Wenton-Weakes, the spoiled son of wealthy parents, known pejoratively as “Michael Wednesday-Week,” which is when he promises to have the next issue of his poorly managed magazine Fathom ready. His mother sold Fathom to Gordon Way after his father’s accidental death when the latter was changing an electric plug. While Michael seems largely apathetic and yielding to others, the loss of Fathom bothers him much more deeply than anyone realises.
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, writer and laudanum user. For the sake of the novel, he is made to have attended St. Cedd’s College. His poems Kubla Khan and Rime of the Ancient Mariner figure prominently in the plot, but their significance is not explained entirely until the book’s end.

In the novel, a sofa is irreversibly stuck on the staircase to Richard’s apartment; according to his simulations, not only is it impossible to remove it, but there is no way for it to have got into that position in the first place. This is probably based on an incident that occurred while Douglas Adams attended St John’s College of Cambridge University. Furniture was placed in the rooms overlooking the river in Third Court while the staircases were being refurbished. When the staircases were completed, it was discovered that the sofas could no longer be removed from the rooms, and the sofas remained in those rooms for several decades.

The South Bank Show revealed that Adams based Chronotis’ rooms on the rooms he occupied in his third year at university. Likewise, Richard’s room – filled with Macintosh computers and synthesisers – was based on Adams’ own flat (visited and photographed by Hi-Fi Choice Magazine).

The story borrows elements from two Doctor Who serials written by Adams:

• In City of Death an alien (Scaroth the Jagaroth) tries to change history by using time travel to avert a disastrous spaceship launch in the primeval past, at the cost of erasing humanity from existence. The Jagaroth are replaced by the Salaxalans in Dirk Gently. Scaroth is splintered throughout time, whereas the Salaxalan Ghost lives through all the billions of years.

• In Shada, a professor called Chronotis is hundreds of years old. He has been living and working at a Cambridge college for centuries, without anyone noticing. He possesses an eccentric time machine. In Shada, Chronotis’s longevity is due to him being a Time Lord, and his time machine is an early model TARDIS. These copyright elements from Doctor Who were removed by Adams for Dirk Gently. Shada, which never aired due to a production strike terminating its filming, was later released on VHS with Tom Baker narrating the unfilmed segments. Shada was completed as a webcast with slight alterations to the script, with Paul McGann as the Doctor and John Leeson as K9. The webcast is available at The Official Doctor Who Website and released on CD by Big Finish productions.

This novel caused Adams to become acquainted with the well-known scientist Richard Dawkins. As Dawkins explains, “As soon as I finished it, I turned back to page one and read it straight through again – the only time I have ever done that, and I wrote to tell him so. He replied that he was a fan of my books, and he invited me to his house in London.” Adams would later introduce Dawkins to the woman who was to become his third wife, the actress Lalla Ward, best known for playing the character Romana in Doctor Who. One of her early serials on the programme was City of Death.

Adaptations

On January 5th, 1992, Dirk Gently, Richard MacDuff, Dirk’s secretary, and the Electric Monk all appeared in the Douglas Adams episode of the British arts documentary series The South Bank Show. Michael Bywater played Dirk, while Paul Shearer played both Richard and the Monk. Several characters from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy were also featured, played by the original television series actors.

The book has been adapted for stage performance as Dirk.

In 2005, some fans of Douglas Adams decided to produce a fan radio series based on the first book. Their efforts began and were coordinated on the Douglas Adams Continuum website. So far, three episodes have been completed.

A publishing company has been seeking the rights to produce a graphic novel adaptation, though art has been removed for legal reasons.

BBC Radio adaptation

Announced on 26 January 2007, BBC Radio 4 commissioned Above the Title Productions to make eighteen 30-minute adaptations of Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently books (including The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and the unfinished The Salmon of Doubt,) running in three series of six episodes.

The first series began on 3 October 2007 and features Harry Enfield as Dirk, Billy Boyd as Richard, Olivia Colman as Janice, Jim Carter as Gilks, Andrew Sachs as Reg, Felicity Montagu as Susan, Robert Duncan as Gordon, Toby Longworth as the Monk, Michael Fenton Stevens as Michael, Andrew Secombe, Jon Glover, Jeffrey Holland, Wayne Forester and Tamsin Heatley.^[8][9][10]

The script is by Dirk Maggs, who also directs, and John Langdon. The show is produced by Maggs and Jo Wheeler. As with the previous Hitchhiker’s series, the cd version features greatly expanded episodes. The official websites are at bbc.co.uk/radio4/dirkgently and www.abovethetitle.com/hda_home.php.

The trailer for the second series, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, is now online here bbc.co.uk/radio4/dirkgently/rams/dirkgently.ram

Difference between BBC Radio version and the novel

There are a number of structural and detail differences between the radio adaptation and the book, mostly to aid the comprehension of the story when split into six half-hour episodes; this adaptation is a considered step away from the original Shada story structure. (Also, in the book Dirk Gently doesn’t appear for the first 90 pages: If the radio adaptation had followed the book in structure the main character would not have appeared until episode three!)

In particular, the main characters have a closer relationship than in the novel. Dirk Gently is being employed by Gordon Way to monitor Richard McDuff’s working hours, Michael Wenton-Weeks also went to St Cedd’s College with Dirk and Richard. It was Michael (not Al Ross) who printed Richard’s musical-fractals article in the magazine, and Michael’s mother has just sold the magazine, rather than several months previously. There is a much closer relationship between Janice Pierce and Dirk, as she accompanies Dirk rather than being wholly absent.

There are a number of new details, such as the actual music played by the Anthem II Software. playing the UK’s Balance of Payments, the dock-leaf soup (”is it fresh?”/”Yes, sir, it says so on the tin”). Some other characters have been expanded, in particular the worker at the motorway service station.

Other structural changes include the use of a public telephone for a conversation between Richard and Susan outside the Greek restaurant (with the addition of a 42 reference), Janice being present at Richard’s hypnosis, a much expanded Electric Monk part, and some minor details such as the actual location of the brick Wordsworth was sick on.

Minor changes in the story’s alternative time-line include the BBC’s political editor being Davis Evans (rather than Evan Davis) and Kubla Khan being “the longest poem in English literature”  as well as references to the coronation of Edward VIII (who was never crowned), and Jeremy Clarkson being the BBC’s environment correspondent (rather than a motoring journalist).

Dirk is possessed by the Ghost of Gordon Way to discover what happened to Gordon after his death, when he visits the murder scenes (as a “crime tourist”) in Oxfordshire with Richard and Janice, which does not happen in the book.

The Radio version makes occasional references to the song “Hot Potato”, a plot element from the second Dirk Gently novel The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, which puts Richard a performer whose work is released as Pugilism and the Third Autistic Cuckoo.

Wenton Weeks murders his mother in the radio version (making, momentarily, a third ghost), not Al Ross who is edited out. The devotional interview between the Electric Monk and Gilks is not contained in the book, but the encounter on the train to Cambridge between the wedding party and Weeks (mirroring Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner) has been removed (but is reinstated in the extended CD version), as has his fingertapping taxi-ride.

At the end of the radio serial Dirk, Reg and Richard prevent the sofa from being stuck on the stairs, rather than create the situation whereby it gets stuck there – and Reg ‘returns’ the characters to the day before they left where they stay, rather than travelling to three weeks before and then returning to the actual day they left.

Audiobook adaptation

Apart from the radio broadcasts, Douglas Adams recorded both unabridged and abridged readings of the first novel for the audiobook market.