Audiobook 2011.03.30 - Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser

Quite a sad story, really.

Mary Stuart, the only surviving legitimate child of King James V of Scotland, spent her childhood in France, and married the French dauphin Francis when she was 16 to become the Queen consort. Widowed in two years, she returned to Scotland to rule as its Queen. Things weren't easy for her - she didn't get along with her lords and the Protestant clergy. After four years, she married her first cousin Henry Stuart, the Lord Darnley. He was no good for her, and the marriage ended in tragedy. There was an explosion in the house in the middle of the night, and he was found strangled to death in the garden. She later married Bothwell, who was the chief suspect in Darnley's death. She had no choice for Bothwell abducted her and brought her to Dunbar Castle, where he allegedly raped her. Some uprising followed, and Mary was forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year old sone James VI. Meanwhile she fled to England to seek protection from Queen Elizabeth I. Seen as a threat to the English throne, Elizabeth had her arrested and imprisoned in various castles and manor houses. After 19 long years, she was tried and found guilty of treason for being party to the Babington plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. She was 44 when she was executed.

Language Change in Windows XP

After reinstalling my laptop with a fresh copy of Windows XP, I noticed that my language settings kept changing. I would start typing and in the middle of a sentence, the y key would become z, and vice versa. And my punctuation marks are all over the place. I turn on the Language Bar, and guess what? My language has changed to Bosnian. Sometimes it decides to go German. With the Language Bar activated, I can now see what language my OS has switched to and can easily switch it back to English.

To stop this problem once and for all, this is what you do. Go to then Control Panel, select Region and Language Options. Click on the Language tab, then click on Details. Under Key Settings, make sure all of the Key Sequences are set to None.

Movie 2011.03.26 - Resident Evil: Afterlife

As the movie is based on the videogame, I wasn't expecting a polished storyline or proper character development. The fight scenes are very slick though. Feels like they took the best cut scenes from the game and transported them to the big screen.

In a post-apocalyptic world, Alice and a few survivors take on the Umbrella Corporation, which has gone underground. The group busts out of the prison stronghold, which is being swarmed by zombies, and gets on the Arcadia ship, which is supposedly safe haven for uninfected humans. Turns out it's a trap. The good guys defeat the bad guys and releases the human prisoners. As the movie ends, we see Umbrella helicopters on their way to attack the Arcadia.

Eagerly anticipating the next movie.

Froyo 2.2.1

Took the plunge and upgraded from to Froyo 2.2.1. Nothing that I needed from the latest release. Just wanted to try out Doc and Stefunel's RomKitchen, so called because you use the web front-end to "cook" your custom ROM. Basically, you choose your base ROM, CSC, modem, and what apps, tweaks, themes, etc. you want to add, and click the Generate button. That's it.

Copy the custom ROM to the sdcard. Go into recovery mode (VolUp-Home-Power). Select factory reset, then install zip from sdcard. Reboot. It feels a little faster than before, but maybe because all of my apps and data have been wiped.

Movie 2011.03.10 - The King's Speech

No complicated plots here. The King's Speech is a movie about the stuttering King of England making his first war time speech to all his peoples.

The movie starts with the Duke of York (who shares my name and it is not Colin) delivering the closing speech of the Empire Exhibition at the old Wembley Stadium. He was tense, he was nervous, and he stuttered a lot. That didn't go down well. His gracious wife Elizabeth sought help from many speech therapists to no avail. Then they met Lionel Logue, who hails from Australia. Part speech therapist, part psychiatrist, he tries to understand why Bertie got his stutter in the first place. Slowly but surely, he guides and encourages Bertie to control his speech.

King George V later dies, and after six months, King Edward the VIII abdicates the throne to marry some American socialite, so now Bertie is pronounced King, much to his dismay. Worse, England joins the war against Hitler, and he has to make a 9-minute speech over radio. Lionel rushes to the palace to give him some last-minute speech lessons. During the speech, it's just the two of them in the room, and the King delivered.

Audiobook 2011.02.27 - A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

If anyone is in need for a "short" history of 14th century Europe, this should be it. From Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Barbara Tuchman, this book pretty much covers the notable events during the Middle Ages: the Black Plague, the Hundred Years' War, the papal schism, the civilian uprisings, the knights' crusades, etc. Narrative is centered around French noble Enguerrand de Coucy and his contemporaries.

That's 170 audio files of 10 minutes each. Almost thirty hours of Bluetooth audio driving to and from work. Beats listening to the pop stations on the FM radio.