The Inferno

What do you think?

On October 8^th, I saw the play Black Comedy. I’ve only seen a few plays before, so perhaps my review doesn’t carry the weight of some avuncular critic with a monocle and a cane, but here it is anyway.

The play was at the Stanley Theatre and was preceded by a shorter play, Chekhov’s “The Marriage Proposal”. This was entertaining by itself, with Sasa Brown and Jeff Meadows portraying the mad Russian peasants quite accurately.

Then came Black Comedy. It’s about a down-and-out artist who seeks to impress his fiancee’s father by stealing his neghbour’s furniture for the duration of the prospective father-in-law’s visit. This coincides with a visit of one of the richest men alive, a German named Bamberger who has taken a keen interest in the impoverished sculptor’s work. And of course, the lights go out a little before everyone gets there, leaving the hapless soon-to-be newlyweds fumbling in the dark.

The play is hysterically funny in parts, and will leave you rolling in the aisles at the end. The superb acting is both  helped along and dimmed by a heavy use of stereotypes: a crusty English colonel with a toothbrush moustache and monocle who promises to thrash the jilting suitor, a man who’s not openly gay but talks with a lisp and smacks the protagonist’s buttocks in the dark at every chance he gets, the secretly alcoholic old lady who thinks the upper classes are a breed apart, the ex-girlfriend who’s a sex bomb and so on.

The play is excellently choreographed, with movements that realistically simulate haphazard fumblings in the dark. The plot twists and turns just enough to not get stale and leaves you wanting more.

In conclusion, both the plays were very enjoyable, with superlative acting. I would definitely recommend seeing them. 4.5 stars out of 5.

I’ve been really busy with work and schoolwork and all that stuff, but I thought I’d post this, in case anyone else has similar issues.

I bought a new XFX Force Nvidia GTX 260 video card and everything was alright. A brand new Windows 7 install and everything looked dandy, until I launched my favourite game: Day of Defeat.

I saw rectangles of every colour, usually purple, on all the textures in the game. Most people I showed the screenshot to had never seen anything exactly like it.

Googling it turned up several probable causes, including:

1. Overclocking
2. Overheating
3. Wrong drivers
4. Windows 7 compatibility mode execution
5. Incorrect voltage levels from the power supply

I hadn’t overclocked my card, but to confirm that it hadn’t been overclocked from the factory, I downloaded Nvidia’s NTune utility and yep, no overclocking. I installed the Windows Xp 64 bit driver and the Windows Vista 64 bit driver, but to no avail. I turned the graphics settings in the Valve engine on low, even though the video card can handle almost any game out today. Not surprisingly, this didn’t fix it.

Then, I disconnected my second monitor, thinking that the dual monitor setup might be screwing with the game, but nope. Thinking it might be the Valve engine, I downloaded some other game demos, BF 2142 and COD 4, but they had the same problem.

Finally, having exhausted all my options, I took the card back to where I bought it: NCIX. They ran some tests on it for a day and then replaced it for me. The new card is fine, nary a texture glitch and everything looks peachy.