Lol, trees an stuff

Year in the life

2008-10-30T13:15:00.001-07:00

Well, it's been a year to the day that I started lol-trees, and it's been an enjoyable ride. From the early days of regular posting and tiny stats, to a sudden rise of hits early in the year, to less and less regular posting in recent weeks, it's been fun, but I think now is as good a time as ever to call it a day.

Maybe on day I will return to the world of blogging, but until then I no longer feel the need or desire to keep this up.

So, to all those still reading, thanks, it's been fun.

Street Musicians

2008-10-29T13:16:00.000-07:00

Genuinely the best website I have found all year.

Blogotheque - The Take Away Show

Sessions of Bands and artists playing in obscure places across Paris; some playing whilst walking along a street, another in a lift, in the metro, on the back of a pick up truck... and the music selection is top notch; Arcade Fire to Yeasayer to Of Montreal to Andrew Bird.

#87.2 - YEASAYER - 2080
by lablogotheque

2008-10-13T16:09:00.001-07:00

Well, my ratings have taken quite a hit. Im down to 3 hits a day. Way back when I was on 30+, ahh. Probably because I update about once a month but never mind.

Anyway, this video is unbelieveably epic. Great film, great OST, great drumming.

Well what do you know

2008-09-23T09:50:00.000-07:00

Ironic I should do anothr post already. Anyways, I must be getting myspace withdrawl syndrome, Im doing one of those annoying quizzes people post as bulletins. So, Music quiz

1. Of all the bands/artists in your cd/record collection, which one do you own the most albums by?
I have 4 Pixies and 4 Radiohead on the download. Hard copies? Muse wins with 3, probably joint with a couple of others. Also I have 5 REM on old skool casette, plus 2 CDs.

2. What was the last song you listened to?
Soma - Smashing Pumpkins is playing atm

3. What’s in your record/cd player right now?
Crystal Castles

4. What song would you say sums you up?
Creep - Radiohead.
Hurhur. (That was a joke)

5. What’s your favorite local band?
Enter Shikari come from the next town over so I'll go with them.

6. What was the last show you attended?
Reading Festival? Actual gig - Reel Big Fish

7. What was the greatest show you’ve ever been to?
Rage at Reading were quite insane

8. What’s the worst band you’ve ever seen in concert?
I usually have problems with dull crowds rather than dull bands. CSS and Snow patrol both suffered.

9. What band do you love musically but hate the members of?
Id say Razorlight as Jonny Borrell's a wanker
But then they're shit anyways

11. What show are you looking forward to?
Nout, Im conserving money for various holidays at the moment

12. What is your favorite band shirt?
My Biffy Clyro one :D
Also Im quite partial to my REM one - good memories

13. What musician would you like to hang out with for a day?
Scroobius Pip sounds like a bit of a laugh. But probably Dev Hynes (Lightspeed champion, Test Icicles)

14. What musician would you like to be in love with for a day?
Lovefoxx

15. Metal question: Jeans and Leather vs. Cracker Jack clothes?
Lack of knowledge of the nature of these ‘Cracker Jack’ clothes prevents me from answering this question.
^^ What he said

16. Sabbath or solo Ozzy?
Neither appeal much

17. Commodores or solo Lionel Ritchie?
And again

18. Punk rock, hip hop or heavy metal?
Probably punk rock. Metal has it's moments though

19. Doesn’t Primus suck?
Probably

20. Name 4 flawless albums:
Doolittle - Pixies
In the Aeroplane over the sea - Neutral Milk Hotel
Silent Alarm - Bloc Party (Yes, problem?)
In Rainbows - Radiohead

21. Did you know that filling out this survey makes you a music geek?
I do and I am proud

22. What was the greatest decade for music?
It's all happening at the moment.

23. How many music-related videos/dvds do you own?
Not many. 5ish, I would guess.

24. Do you like Journey?
Can't say I do

25. Don’t try to pretend you don’t!
Ok I lied I haven't head of them

26. What is your favorite movie soundtrack?
Fight Club is pretty good for that (Dust Brothers + Pixies = Bliss)
And Juno is nice
Oh and American Beauty! Spacey singing along to American Beauty = genius

27. What was your last musical ‘phase’ before you wised up?
I had a massive Panic at the disco phase. Still top of my lastfm :/

28. What’s the crappiest CD/record/etc. you’ve ever bought?
I started pretty wank by buying Garath Gates when I was about 10

29. Do you prefer vinyl or CDs?
CDs. Vinyls are before my time.

Cool thing to do of the week

2008-09-22T12:03:00.000-07:00

Assuming you have Facebook,

Settings > Account Settings > Languages

Set as English (Pirate)

Amusing for about 5 minutes

Anyway as you might have noticed I'm giving this blog much less time than I used to. Partly due to having less free time (Read: Real life actually getting more interesting(There now I've jinxed it)), don't be surprised if I go weeks without posting.

Exeunt, Dan

Hmm. On second thoughts I should post summat random.
Old, and I've only watched a minute thus far but it looks amusing enough.

Ok this pretty cool

2008-09-04T12:12:00.000-07:00

http://wordle.net/

Id seen this site before but it just became infinitely more awesome with added blog support. Pretty much just had words from that mammoth Reading post I did but there we are.

2008-09-03T12:07:00.000-07:00

WOW how exciting!! That last post was my 100th. What a milestone. It was also quite random. Anyway, lesson of the day

- If you plan on using your computer and itunes as an alarm clock, don't forget to take out your headphones before you go to bed

Also, new best site ever

Food Porn Daily

Cat grows wings... hang on wtf!?

2008-08-29T06:49:00.000-07:00

Coolness

THE Reading Festival 2008 Review

2008-08-27T13:34:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year where the festivals are all ending, and we have to readjust to the horrors of everyday life. This being the first festival in which I'd actually camped over the whole weekend, I can safely say that I now realise camping is half of the fun of it all. A great, friendly atmosphere meant that hour long chats with random people were far from impossible, and many a friend were made.

The bands of the weekend

1 - Biffy Clyro - Blessed with one of the best crowds of the weekend, a topless trio blasted through a phenomenal set packed with energy from the openening Saturday Superhouse to the end. One of the few times where moshing was genuinely great fun and not just insanely painful cramped and pushy, the set became my highlight of Reading 08.

2 - Rage Against the Machine - Undoubtedly the most highly anticipated set of the festival, what with Bulls on Parade being blasted from sound systems of punters around the campsite, and chants of 'Fuck you I won't do what you tell me' whenever groups were ordered to put out their fires, it was pretty clear that the band weren't set to disappoint from the moment they appeared, dressed in Guantanamo Bay clothes, and bag's over their heads, and launching into a flawless performance of Bombtrack. The set was relentless and the energy didn't let up; Zach de la Rocha bouncing around the stage and Morello unleashing some awe inspiring guitar riffing, which climaxed in mass moshing and chanting to Killing in the Name Of. It was hard to see how Saturday and Sunday could live up to such a blinding first day.

3 - Does it Offend You, Yeah? - Playing a slot before Rage at the Festival Republic stage, the local band's electronic sounds got the crowd moving and the songs really came into their own live. Annoyingly we had to leave early to catch Rage but they warmed us up for the headliners nicely.

4 - Pendulum - Even before the band had begun, the NME stage was well and truly packed out; not helped by the cancellation of slipknot, who were due to play on the main stage at the same time. Scenes of mass jumping barrier jumping to escape the intensely packed crowd followed, but those who persevered were rewarded with a high octane set from the Aussie D'n'B / Rock band.

5 - Hadouken - Their charismatic frontman, along with with the fact that you could actually make out what he was saying and a great crowd meant that new life was breathed into tracks from what to me seemed like a pretty poor Music For an Accelerated Culture. Surprisingly good stuff.

Oh and I'm told by my friends that Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip and Babyshambles were both similarly great - though clashing with Rage I couldn't go see them...

Top Random Sights Spotted

• Man wearing a gasmask when he went to the toilet
• Random dudes doing a limbo chain using gaffa tape in the walkway (We then had a long ol' chat with them)
• Man dressed up in that Borat outifit
• People moving along a path inside their tent, rolling it along like some sort of freakish hamster wheel
• Lightsaber duelists
• A 'Stereo Battle' when two groups with portable stereos met in the path late at night

Other Bands of Note

1 - Lightspeed Champion - Good chillout band that seemed to spread happiness to the festival. It was hard not to raise a smile at the Star Wars theme being mixed into the epic Midnight Surprise, and Dev makes a great frontman.

2 - Killers - Despite it seeming like I'd heard the entire set the year before, watching the band headline Glastonbury, and despite tales of poor sound issues plaguing the performance from those stood further back, the Las Vegas band played a pretty good set and a couple of new songs.

3 - Yeasayer - Coming on late due to sound issues, the band eventually came on to play a shortened but enjoyable set that included 2080 and Sunrise

4 - Santogold - Enjoyable performance from the strange sounds of Santogold and her freaky dancers. Arguably Les Artists stands head and shoulders above her other tracks live though.

5 - Flogging Molly - Playing a packed out Lock Up tent, one of the few bands I saw who I knew nothing about turned out to be great fun, with their brand of Irish Punk Rock inspiring moshing as far back as outside the tent.

6 - Justice - Starting out with a couple of poorer album tracks, the band soon up-ed the game with crowd pleasers D.A.N.C.E and lastly their remix of Simian's We Are Your Friends. Only fails to be classed as a highlight because of some wanker in front of me who thought that it'd be really great to blow on her foghorn every few seconds. Didn't exactly make listening the most pleasurable experience.

Disappointments

1 - Justice running on late and causing me to miss nearly all of the Bloc Party set (Which apparently wasn't that good anyway)
2 - MGMT being far too packed to enjoy, shoving and pushing as opposed to dancing or moshing meant we decided to escape to outside after the opener, Electic Feel.
3 - Dirty Pretty Things having surely the worst crowd of the festival, refusing to join in even in a pretty-good rendition of Nirvana's In Bloom. Perhaps Carl could have helped by sticking in a Libertines track or two to get a singsong going?

Stuff I've heard of and wished I'd witnessed

• Insanely big piss take mosh pits & Wall of Death's at the worst-band-of-the-weekend The Plain White T's (See below)
• Gladiator style
• People slashing abandoned tents by the road, hiding in them, and jumping out of them to scare people.
• Everyone thinking the Foo Fighter's were doing a secret gig disguised as a band called the FF's, and a random crappy band turning up and getting booed off the stage.

All in all the festival was brilliant, and the urge to be back there right now is massive. With Glastonbury apparently on the way down, with poor ticket sales this year, and sound issues the last, it looks as if Reading and Leeds are becoming the festivals of the country, arguably of the world, and If I wasn't so broke from this years, my ticket for 2009 would already be purchased.

I'm Back! (Again)

2008-08-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

So, as once again I'd forgotten to say I was taking a brake from the blog, I was at Reading festival the last few days, and it was perhaps the best weekend of my life thus far. I'll blog it properly another day.

Meanwhile, try this thing
http://www.findyourtribe.co.uk/

From the looks of it, it appeared to be pretty good, but then the results are pretty wank.
Apparently I'm 'PC World' 'With Signs of being a Trendy'. I guess I answered too honestly. Just because I know how to use a computer, use facebook, and have this blog doesn't mean I don't value 'human interaction' and in fact haven't 'not left your room for a week or so'. Add to that I've never dated someone met online, very rarely buy things online, and only watch tv only cause our tv sucks and you're left with a big pile of fail.

Failblog

2008-08-14T16:43:00.000-07:00

Heh

Moar

Books what I read

2008-08-14T07:01:00.001-07:00

5 Books read over the course of my holiday. Brief reviews follow

Jay Mcinerney - Bright Lights, Big City

Often likened to the works of Bret Easton Ellis, and written in a curious second person narrative, Bright Lights, Big City centres around a, likely semi-autobiographical, nameless protagonist, whose life has recently gone downhill, with his wife having left him and his career as a 'fact-checker' for a magazine appearing to become increasingly dead-end.

The novel tells a constantly enjoyable, though never outstanding story of a man who must come to face up to the failures and reality of his life, and Mcinerney manages to work in an impressive amount of wit to the writing that keeps it an enjoyable read to the end.

* * * * 4 Stars

After Dark - Haruki Murakami

After reading two works by Ryu Murakami, I thought Id give the surprisingly unrelated Haruki Murakami a try, and began with this short novella. Almost instantly Murakami's ability to create a startling atmosphere is evident - though I am always unsure how much of this is due to the translator - and before long a mysteriously surreal late night scene is created, with intriguing characters from the quirky Trombone player Takahashi to the 'sleeping beauty' Eri Asai. The novel progresses in a manor similar to that of a film, and, in fact, at times it almost seems as if Murakami was aiming to write a screenplay as opposed to a novella.

The end of the novella is frustratingly inconclusive, almost breaking off halfway through the story as nearly every loose thread of story is left, if not unresolved, then at least very much unexplained. It almost feels, however, as if this is not a problem, as the main draw of the book is arguably not the central mystery, but Murakami's beautiful prose, settings, characters and descriptions, and his themes of loneliness and isolation, that are the real attractions of his work.

* * * * 4 Stars

The Outsider - Albert Camus

Widely regarded as one of the all time literary greats, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, this tiny novella by Albert Camus tells the tale of a man who, in short, refuses to lie about or 'put on' his emotions. The plot follows him as he presents no signs of sadness and remorse at his mother's funeral, before, days later, committing a, to borrow a phrase, 'random act of violence' that results in his imprisonment.

Very well written (or, again, perhaps just very well translated), The Outsider acts as a very interesting character study, and indeed, a fascinating look at the of views of society on those who will not lie or enhance their feelings to appear more humane to those around them. Mersault is an interesting protagonist and drives the plot to it's thought provoking end.

* * * * * 5 Stars

The Rules of Attraction - Bret Easton Ellis

Written two years after the excellent Less than Zero, Easton Ellis' Rules of Attraction follows the lives and romances of three university students, who form a curious love triangle including a bisexual and a gay romance. Ellis employs a variety of unusual literary techniques; the novel begins and ends mid-sentence, possibly to suggest that 'life goes on', one section is written entirely in French, and the first person narration constantly switches between the various characters, providing humour in the varying reactions of the different characters to certain situations.

Another device which appealed to me were the cameos made by characters appearing in other Ellis novels. Sean's brother, Patrick Bateman (American Psycho) makes an appearance when Sean goes to Visit his father in hospital, and Clay's brief appearance as 'that guy from LA' brought a smile to my face; 'people are afraid to merge on the campus after dark'. But still this cannot quite save the novel from the fact that the central characters are simply somewhat unlikeable, and neither Sean, Paul nor Loren have the same appeal as Clay or Blaire from Less than Zero.

* * * 3 Stars

Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman

Having finished reading the four books I bought with me on holiday, and lacking the motivation to begin the epically lengthy Birdsong (Sebastian Faulks), I picked up this and began to read, remembering it as being one of the books which I had missed out on in my own youth. What I got was a surprisingly engrossing story set in a world where a racist black (or Cross) population rules over the whites (Noughts); an inversion of western society decades ago, presumably designed to force the largely white audience to be able to empathise with the characters to a stronger degree. Arguably this was not quite necessary and I, having begun the books thinking of the Noughts as Blacks, found it hard to rethink my mental images of each character.

The plot itself itself is a very clever one, with sections of the book mirroring real life happenings in the civil rights movement; most noticeable of these being the first day of school for the Nought teenagers into Cross school - a passage that draws largely from the events at Little Rock High school in 1957 (GCSE History, Pow!). Throughout the book Blackman is constantly daring, making plot turns that, given that Noughts and Crosses is widely regarded as a 'children's book', seem highly unpredictable and bold. I was all ready to put this book down for being too predictably child like, but Blackman never underestimates her audience and the novel ends on a devastatingly bleak note that stays with the reader long after finishing.

If I have one complaint it would be concerning the writing style, which often seems slightly immature, relying too heavily on the thoughts and constant rhetorical questioning in the heads of the two protagonists; 'Did he just say that? No, he can't of' which begins to grate fast. Aside from this, however, I was stunned. It seems strange but of the 5 books that I read in Sicily, it was in fact this,the only Children's book, that turned out to be the best. The central Romeo and Juliet-esque love story is one of the most complex and convincing I have come across in a novel, and I would be tempted to argue Noughts and Crosses the greatest piece of Young Adult literature ever written.

* * * * * 5 Stars

I'm back!!

2008-08-12T15:04:00.001-07:00

Been in Sicily the last two weeks. Forgot to post before I went to say so. So this blog is in fact still alive. Just.

*Licks Lips*

Bastards. Sky have picked up rights so I guess thats another 350mb a week of downloading to do...

I read 5 books on holiday aswell. Five!! Thats more than I've read the rest of this year. Might do another book reviewery post......

Just for the record,

2008-07-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

In that last post, the middle picture always appears as the viewers (yours) default facebook profile picture, assuming that you are logged on. So there was no offense intended.

Hopefully everyone figured that out mind.....

Ugly people on facebook

2008-07-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

Saw this on some forum, but its all a bit of fun. Its the 'Post ugly people you find on Facebook' game.

Post in comments the most ugly person and win.

Heres a few :

http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:...-ugly-face.jpg

http://www.facebook.com/badge.php?&i...ert&format=png

http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:...s/ugly14nk.jpg

Burn.

2008-07-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

Yeh well, I loled. Nintendo, wtf.

Less Than Zero Book Review

2008-07-15T11:16:00.000-07:00

So I said I'd do a couple of book reviews. Here's the first

Less Than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis

People are afraid to merge on the freeways in Los Angeles.
The opening line got my excited in the same manor that Palahnuik's Diary did with Just for the record, the weather today... - both are taken and used by bands for song lyrics, and, in Less Than Zero's case, Bloc Party dedicated an entire song to the book in the beginning of their 2007 album, Weekend in The City - Song for Clay (Disappear Here). Listening for the first time in a while it has a new meaning to me, and matches the tone of the book perfectly. Anyway this is a book review.

The novel, Ellis' début written at the age of 19, follows the protagonist Clay around LA during a Christmas break from his college, as he goes to various parties, doing drugs and having sex.

With a book such as this it is honestly hard to find meaningful compliments. The dialogue was sparse and rarely lead anywhere, none of the characters were particularly likeable and, crucially, there was nothing of a meaningful plot present in the entire story. I don't mean this in the way that nothing happened in Catcher in the Rye; a novel to which it is frequently compared - Catcher made up for it's lack of plot with the complex and confused feelings of the narrating Holden Caulfield which pervade the text. By contrast, Less than Zero's Clay is distanced from the reader and seems at times cold, emotionless. What is left is a nihilistic and at times shocking tale of a sex, money, and drug addled youth (One that I can't say I can relate too well to). But despite it's innumerable flaws, there is something curiously memorising, even hypnotic about the writing - the 'Disappear here' motif and the 'wonder is he's for sale?' foreshadowing - that really makes this novel stick in my mind.

I can see people really hating this, but it's well worth a try.

**** 4 Stars

This is too good...

2008-07-11T08:22:00.000-07:00

Aaahahahaha what a DICK

2008-07-09T14:45:00.000-07:00

Since this time last week I have:

- Finished one good book and one meh book. I think I'll do a book post next, once i finish my current one. Try and bring in the bookworms to this blog.

- Found out the (I think, now) final lineup of Reading 2008, as the last stage (new bands tent) was added. It's abit meh, considering that one of the only bands i'm interested in (Dan le Sac vs Scoobius Pip) clash with Rage Against the Machine AND Babyshambles. One of their songs below. It's fookin brilliant.

That said, Does it Offend You, Yeah? Have been added to the bill :D Which Im fuckin' psyched about.... they look mentally awesome live. Video below

- Decided that Jay Z actually isn't too bad, and was certainly the best headliner at a (pretty poor) Glastonbury festival. Not like I watched or anything, it was on TV.

- Finally buckled and started watching Skins from the start, season one.

- Had my first gay experience, which was interesting, but certainly not something id like to repeat.*

- Wasted alot of time on... ahh shit i've forgotten the name of the site. Fun games though. I'll edit this post when me friend reminds me of the address...

*I should point out at this point that it was to see two girls kiss, so it was worth it, probably.

Bonus Post 2.0

2008-07-03T14:30:00.001-07:00

Wow, that last post was really quite immature

Bonus Post

2008-07-03T14:24:00.000-07:00

Wow a blog post!!

2008-07-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

Im not too sure what to do with this blog these days. Myeah.
It's been so long since the last post I think I'll give all the stuff I've been / done / seen / played / listened to / ect ect, with 3 words describing each. Actually theres a tonne more that I can't remember at the moment.

Juno
Quite Fun. Wizard!
8 / 10

Beck Mongolian Chop Squad
Greatful Sound Ftw
10 / 10

GTA IV
The Radio Rocks
9.5 / 10

Iron Man
IMDB Top250 WTF?
4 / 10

Lost Season 4
Return to Form
9 / 10

The Prestige
T'was vair Clever
9 / 10

And speaking of which, 2 important things i have learned
1 - People who don't turn the volume up enough with music or more importantly films annoy the hell out of me
2 - Never let a girl wear any of your clothes because she WILL keep them

Tada

2008-06-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

I'm back, after a longer break than Id anticipated.
Basically I saw this and thought,

That pretty much sums it all up.

I'm not sure whether to both continuing on blogging, I probably will, but just with much more sporadic updates. So check back every now and then yeahse.

Strangely amusing for 30 seconds

Bonus Post

2008-05-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

Heh...

So, I'm halfway through exams, going alright so far. Thats about all I have to say...

Hiatus and more

2008-05-02T13:06:00.000-07:00

For my 3 regular readers, you might have noticed a distinct lack of blog posts of late; it's that time of year when exams are rearing their ugly heads. I, having done fuck all revision as of so far, have a lot of catching up to be doing and therefore am putting this blog on hiatus for the time being. Fear not, they'll be done and done this time next month, but until then, this meaty post will be all there is. So, lately...

- No I haven't played GTA IV, as im trying to cut down on distractions from studies. Seeings how the internet appears to be raping it, i suspect it won't be long before i buckle and buy it, though. Can't say I've ever been a huge fan of GTA, it always seemed liek a jack of all trades, master of none, but apparently this is sorted for this version. And the multplayer sounds incredible. I NEED to play Cops 'n Crooks.

- These jeans are perhaps the greatest Jeans i have ever seen in my life.

*Cue massive wave of masturbation, 'Joystick', and penis jokes*

Fave comment - 'Someone get that angry german kid a pair of these'

- Lost is back on top!! Brilliant episode last week centering around Ben. That said, this week's was shit. Shit. Sooner they realize that no one gives a fuck about Jack and Kate the better...

- The Departed is an astonishing film

- Boris Johnson is a buffoon of a man who in no way deserves to be mayor of London. (this is the first and only time i will mention politics on this blog)

- You'll be glad to hear that Ricky and Karl appear to have made up, and there may indeed be one last podcast to come. Too lazy to explain it so head over to pilkipedia if you need to know more.

- The Reading lineup god even more godly with the addition of Crystal Castles, Hadouken!, CSS, Alexisonfire, Be Your Own Pet and more.
In fact, shit, i just noticed The Whip are playing!! Sunday is shaping out to be perhaps the best day ^.^

- I continue to enjoy typography

- Beck appears to be a good anime and the Naruto Manga is far superior to the anime

- I guess I'll leave you with a lolcat...

Oh go on then, one more

Anyways, I'm off to watch the Derren Brown - Peep show double, for now.... ciao.

Ricky Steve and Karl - The End?

2008-04-21T08:29:00.000-07:00

Today marks what is, for some, the end of an era for comedy. For those of you who have been following Ricky Gervais' blog - originally created to convince karl to do another series of podcasts, you will already know - there will be no more podcasts from RSK.

For those out of the know, Ricky and Steve - two men who together created, wrote, shot and acted both The Office and Extras, had, until 2005, a radio show on London station XFMm produced by a little mac twat named 'Karl Pillockton'. These shows were shoddily produced but bursting at the seems with witty banter between the three. Ricky Gervais, Stephen 'S'Merch' Merchant, and Karl 'the K man' Pilkington. They were honestly a match made in heaven.

These XFM shows - available for free download here - saw great success and continued to be hugely popular, until, after four series', they ended. Soon after this, Ricky Steve and Karl developed their success, exploring the new media of Podcasting in 2005 - 2006, reaching an expanded worldwide audience and gaining millions of listeners worldwide. Steve later noted that he felt the three 'singlehandedly began the podcasting revolution' - certainly a fair point. However, many argued that the podcasts were inferior to XFM. Karl seemed to sound increasingly grumpy, and many of the stories told on the podcasts were ones recycled from the days of XFM. After 3 Series of Podcasting, and 3 free bonus episodes - 'The Podfather Trilogy' - the three decided to call an indefinate end.

For months little was heard of Karl and co, but seemingly out of nowhere, a free full length podcast was released that seemed to see Karl at back to his best - discussing a maniac brain-swapping lesbian film that he had talked to producers about making. This podcast offered a glimpse of hope for fans that perhaps all was not over yet, and earlier this year Gervais staretd a blog - http://www.rickygervais.com/chimpanzee_karl.php - to convince Karl to make a new series of podcasts. Alls seemed well, and Karl even agreed, recently, to do a podcast - Podcast.....one final show possibly in June. - but earlier today the news was given via Ricky's blog that this was not to be.

'The End

I am sorry to say I have failed.

Karl has decided he doesn't want to do another show. Well he doesn't want to do it for free.

He says he has bills to pay. I offered to pay him myself but he wouldn't accept that either.

I think that made him feel a bit stupid. I shouldn't really have offered but I so wanted to do another one.

I then tried to get him to do it as a favour but then he said no altogether.

The whole thing annoyed him so much that he said he wouldn't enjoy doing it now. Maybe he's tired of playing the fool. I was surprised he wouldn't do this for me but it's up to him.

This will be the last blog entry. I will leave this up for a few days then remove it all together.

I suggest for Karl's sake you end the campaign too. I think you all did marvelously and I know you did so with nothing but affection and hope. You'll always have him the way he was on the old podcasts and I'm sure it's not the last you'll see of Karl (I don't know whether he'll talk to me again though)

Thank you all so much for listening over the past few years.

It has been my absolute pleasure.'

Many people see Rick as an cocky, arrogant and annoying comedian, and i must admit that for years, despite loving The Office, I thought the same. But these podcasts really were something brilliant, and this most sincere final post, that seems to suggest that Rick and KP have really had a fall out, almost brings a tear to the eye.

So long, you manc, orange headed gimp. You will be missed.

Steve Merchant's BBC6 Radio show remains on air, sundays 3pm-5pm

Wow... just... wow

2008-04-20T04:35:00.001-07:00

You know you're a geek when... Cubecraft

2008-04-18T11:51:00.000-07:00

- You laugh at chemistry jokes

- The best news of the week is that Ricky Gervais is appearing in GTA IV (!!! FUCK YES!!)

- You spend literally minutes constructing some like This

I made it thanks to a template from Cubecraft, who give a new template once a week. Naturally i had to make Zoidberg...

And all without any glue!! Very cool. And you may notice he lacks a left arm, as i cocked it up...

Actually scratch that...

2008-04-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

Much more cool,

Coolness :D

I can almost taste the joys of mixtapes...

http://www.mixwit.com/widgets/a53c3df9315770e700919124789bc535

Making use of the 'Music' Tag

2008-04-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

^^ Good albums

Another Anime Post groans - New season first impressions

2008-04-14T11:37:00.001-07:00

What with it being a new season of anime and all, there's a ton of stuff starting, and, as i've now finished Noein, i've watched the first episode of a couple of the new shows. Actually i ment to post this a week back but o forgot. So in some ways this post is now pointless, but meh.

Kurenai - Being done by Brains Base, who did the kick ass Baccano! Last year, i had high hopes for this. But alas i was disappointed; the characters seem flat, the music is repetitive (im all for piano but not all the damn time) and frankly it bored me. The only hint of something interesting was the kid's arm, which went all weird at various points though out the episode. Oh and WTF was up with that op??

Watch more? No, not unless the animeblogs suddenly jizz all over it

Soul Eater - Overhyped but still good stuff. About this girl and this guy who transforms into this badasss weapon. The storyline seems pretty shite / non existent but the animation is delicious enough to make up for it. Get it in HD, its worth it.

Watch More? Probably

And i also randomly went and watched some more old skool stuff. Well not old skool but just not new.

Samurai Champloo - Awesome, awesome, awesome :D Really good first episode, im liking the Hip Hop soundtrack. The question is whether or not it will have a more an overarching... story arc than Bebop did. I never had the motivation to watch Cowboy bebop cause of it's episode structures. Interesting to see how this develops

Watch more? Yes, definitely

Welcome to the NHK - Pretty dumb but immensely enjoyable; im glad it was recommended to me, as from screenshots and summaries i would no way have watched. It's about this guy, a geek, or otaku if you wanna get technical, who spends all his time in his room, doing squat. Then one day some girl comes and challenges him to change his lifestyle. Anyways, its good fun and I can see it becoming abit of a guilty pleasure of mine. And the music pwns aswell ;D

Watch more? Yeah go on then :P

As I said, I finished Noein. I was way too tired to take in the ending when i watched it though... fucked with my head. Ill watch the last episode again one day.

Aww now i feel like a proper animeblogger

Linkdump 3

2008-04-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

- http://www.black20.com/black20-trailer-park/tetris-movie - Tetris, The Movie. Id go see it

- http://uk.movies.ign.com/dor/articles/863515/legend-of-zelda-movie-trailer/videos/legendofzelda_filmtrailer_040108.html;jsessionid=l9wekbkwtir2 - Zelda, the Movie. I wouldn't go see it. Happily it doesn't exist.

- Typography = Awesome (See below)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charliebrooker - Read up on his column for the Guardian (British newspaper). He is most amusing, despite his apparent dislike for macs or my phone. That said, my phone - Samsung e900 if you're wodering - is pretty shit, with touch screen buttons that, to quote Brooker, 'either refuse to work, or leap into action if you breathe on them'

- http://www.piterwilson-toys.com/wcsmt/ - A nice, easy amusing way of making short stop motion animation, hosted as gifs. Id paste a couple of my efforts but i like to retain some sense of anonymity blogging.

- i ordered a friend to do some photoshopping for me, which i then colour adjusted a little with the mac preview thing. Anyway its a page for my sketchbook but i thought it looked pretty cool so im pasting it below.

- http://www.jmtb02.com/flash/compulse.htm - COMPULSE - Brilliant flash game. Good for chillaxing with its serene music. And it saves your progress for added cool points

- And did i mention already? Typography = awesome. Tenacious D - Inward singing.

YOU CREATE SOMETHING!
YOU FUCKING SIT IN YOUR FUCKING TOWER!

- Battlestar Galactica is pretty darned good

Ok im guna stop before i post about 20 of these

Reading Festival Lineup 2008

2008-04-03T14:43:00.000-07:00

Ahhh Reading... *has tickets*

Lineup^^
Doesn't it just look fucking... godly??
The only trouble is the RATM / Babyshambles clash
Babyshambles - One of my favorite bands, and has Pete Doherty for bonus points*
RATM - I would imagine, incredible live

Tricky decision.

*might not actually turn up

Podcast Reviews

2008-03-25T15:48:00.000-07:00

Well i thought of a novel idea whilst listening to Ricky Gervais the other day; i listen to podcasts so why have i never thought of reviewing them on here? Search for them on itunes to find them
Anyway lets go

Can of Nothing podcast
An extremely random podcast from the guys who did that pokemon paint video on youtube (shown below). Pretty amusing, but too much of it is them talking about their site (canofnothing.com) which is pretty dull
3 Stars

The Ricky Gervais Show
Got me into listening to podcasts. Pretty faultless... the Ricky / Steve Merchant / Karl combo is unbeatable and works to perfection. However, you do have to pay to download the main seasons - though it's worth it. Also Karl was probably more amusing back in the days of their XFM radio show.
4.5 Stars

GoNintendo Podcast
Not bad, especially when they have the soundboard up and running. The crew have amusing personalities, especially 'Lubesmash' Lube and Mombrain. However, it obviously focuses only on Nintendo news, and is far too long for a weekly podcast.
3 Stars

PlayDigital
Does this count? It's a video podcast so i dunno. Anyways, it's a videogame review show presented by the 'geekalicious' Kathrine Fletcher. Anyhoo, its pretty good, and bonus points are awarded for giving N+ a good review.
4 Stars

The N-Europe Show
Another video game podcast. Could potentially be quite good, but they record with shitty microphones on fucking Skype, which automatically renders it a pile of nigh unlistenable wank. Good hosts and i won a free virtual console game off it gets it...
2 stars

The Lost Initiative
Stemming from the channel 4 podcast, the Lost initiative is the official Lost podcast for the UK. It's extremely well produced, always a good and consistent length of 30 minutes, has great hosts (Iain Lee, 'Geeky Tom', and Pault Terry, 'editor of Lost magazine'), and interesting chat about the show. Especially good at the moment as the show is actually quite good currently. Perhaps better back in the channel 4 days when they had different guests each week but yeh,
5 Stars

Dan and Jon's Random Bonanza
Definitely 5 Stars

Discus
I've shown a couple videos on this blog already i think. Anyways, the host is amusing but abit cringeworthy, and the DVD reviews are pretty good. Also teh 'piggy piggy snack snacks' section (see what i mean, cringing) is an amusing extra.
3.5 Stars

Ninja Storm
Only one podcast, but it is pretty funny....
4 Stars

Ricky Gervais on XFM - Download here
'Prequel to the podcasts', these are the XFM radio shows in which Karl first met Ricky and Steve. They are brilliant, and it's great to see the progress of Karl; the episode where Ricky and Steve revealed Karl's GCSE results to him was a particular classic. And perhaps most importantly Karl seems to really ejoy himself here, laughing along an all.
5 Stars

The Official Lost Podcast
The US one this time then, made by excecutive producers Damon Lindleoff and Carlton Cuse. Quite amusing but not as much discussion, obviously because they make the show and hence cant really theorize about it. They answer fan questions every episode which is nice, and teh pair are quite humorous. Still, it's actually not as good as the UK one...
4 Stars

Linkdump 2

2008-03-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

Also known as: I steal things from Digg and Kotaku

Cowboy Bebop + Hot Fuzz = Win (thanks Meow)

More reasons to downlaod N+ here

Ricky Gervais, Karl Pilkington and Stephen Merchant still crack me up

And more fun error messages here

Win of the week:

2008-03-21T06:00:00.002-07:00

Discovering Megadownload

http://megadownload.net/

Searches megaupload for whatever. Extremeingly useful, as megaupload and rapidshare are both about 10x faster than torrents.

Game Impressions

2008-03-17T09:40:00.000-07:00

So i picked up No More Heroes and 2 DS games. First game i've got for either system for a while.

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker - Bought this cause i have fond childhood memories of the came boy colour games; Dragon Warrior Monsters 1 and 2. Seems pretty similar and it looks absolutely sweet for a DS game. Haven't played that much yet so i'll have to wait and see if the breeding system still holds up or whether its been dumbed down. Oh and also, teh lead character looks like an absolute prick.

No More Heroes - Initially a disappointment; looks pretty shit graphically - this coming from someone who couldnt normally give a toss about graphics - but seriously, i mean i was playing Burnout 1 for gc earlier and it looks way better. And the bike is a real load of suck / pain in the ass. But oh my jesus the bosses are where it's at!! Motion controls seem to be implemented very nicely, very satisfying to use. Generally the game oozes with style as well, though fuck them for leaving out blood. I mean seriously, this is England, why do the yanks get it and not us?

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin - First in the series that i've played since the original. Seems like not much has changed; perhaps for the best. Nice idea post-apocayptic premise, and already the story seems at least slightly of interest.

Cool Beans

2008-03-17T09:38:00.000-07:00

Tree of the Week. (yeah week thats right)

2008-03-16T07:38:00.001-07:00

Nomnomnom

Death note - Sorry, Dexter

2008-03-13T13:55:00.000-07:00

Having missed it on ITV the other week, i downloaded the first two episodes of Dexter (unfortunate name - it reminds me of that crap cartoon, Dexters laboratory) and watched them. Now while i am 100% loving it and am extremely impressed, i have one little gripe... i'm getting a serious case of Deja Vu.

To quickly explain the basic premise of dexter, it's about a man who appears to lack real human emotion, who, unknown to his friends and family, is a serial killer who goes around killing criminals and other such bad dudes. meanwhile, his day job sees him on the 'other side'; working as a forensics guy who looks into blood splatters. So no doubt he'll end up doing the whole 'chasing himself' charade at some point in the series. Add to this the fact that his father (and sister) are on the police force, that he is extremely clever, annoyingly good looking and is seemingly a bit of a ladies man, and if you are a fan of anime, you will most likely be raising an eyebrow around now... Basically, this is Death Note, only without the Deathnote.

The similarities to Death Note, the geniusly gripping japanese manga and animation which ended it's 36 episode run late year are painstakingly huge. Not like this is a bad thing in any way; Death Note completely fucking rocked, and so does Dexter.

So download it, ITV it, just watch it. If you loved death note you'll be right at home. And if your loving Dexter, seriously, check out death note on the web sometime. If only to see what the Dexter writers watch in their spare time.

Edit: Oh and if you do, make sure you watched subbed not dubbed. Because a quick look on youtube has shown me that they made Ryuk have a ridiculous voice.

Here we go again...

2008-03-08T15:45:00.000-08:00

Weekly summary time

- Very nearly seen all of the Coen's films. The Man Who Wasn't there was superb, one of the best films i've seen in a long time. 10 / 10

- I still haven't seen Juno and or There Will Be Blood...

- I sorted out my labels sytem on this blog, so now it all works out nicely and you can use them properly >>
Was it worth the half hour it took to change them all? Probably not, no.

- Fairly screwed up some early A levels, but meh, no biggy. High C's, could be worse considering i started revising about 3 days before...

- Dennou Coil is a good anime

- Lost sucked ass

- I finally succumbed to watching skins, having downloaded the Sid episode that was, admittedly, pretty good, and rather moving.

- That's really about it... boring week i guess

Oh crap yeh Reel Big Fish!! Never did write about that...

And speaking of such things...

2008-03-08T03:49:00.000-08:00

Wouldn't it be great for Rock Band to work irl?

Ye..yes....

I summarize the week... again...

2008-02-29T15:27:00.000-08:00

...'cause it's easier than doing proper entrys

What i have learnt this week

- N+ is good, nay, even better than i thought it was. Its also fucking frustrating but there we go. Coop and Online coop are brilliance, if only cause you don't have to play with wanker 11 year old kids. They're all too busy playing Halo and COD4 and Halo. Anyway i've been spending about all my free time on it and i suggest you do too.

- The Big Lebowski is still within my top 5 films, having been on tv recently.
This guy seems to agree

Can't figure out if he's a cringing cock or an amusing review man.

- Charlie Brooker is a God (his articles in G2 are most amusing)

- Devonte Hynes is also some kind of god, having listened to his album 'Falling off the Lavender Bridge' and then the various songs i have downloaded from his earlier band Test Icicles (Harhar) for about all of this week

- Thats apart from when i've been listening to the Juno OST, which is FANTASTIC. I havn't even seen the godamn film yet but the soundtrack is just so.... so good that i've listened at least 20 times in the last week... Kimya Dawson is some kind of Goddess

- Lost really is a phenomenal program, with an episode this week which was without a doubt the greatest episode of anything, ever™. Ingenious storyline - if somewhat pointless in the grand scheme of things - all very exciting, and happily not starring boring characters like kate, or kate.

Unrelated to this weeks episode, here are two ways i can see the flashforwards panning out
1 - They pull a heroes, except worse, and at the last minute jack does something differntly on island which mean that the flashforwards never happen, and we've wasted hours watching them
2 - The whole time fluxuation-thing will mean that at the end of the flashforwards, jack and co will go back to the island, but for the islanders, barely any time will have passed.
3 - A third, more clever option that i haven't thought of.

Lets hope for the later.

Also, it's 24th december - could mean the tsunami's gunna hit in 2 days.... o.O Kewlness

Oh and, nearly forgot this,

I summarize the week

2008-02-22T15:20:00.000-08:00

- N+ (aka xbla version on N game (make sure you download it for free by the way)) is truely as fun as ever. The online is kick ass, and the levels are addictive as ever. Then there's high scores, a level editor.... I've spent more time this year on just the live arcade than i have on my wii... way more

- Noein continues to be awesome

- Lost, on the other hand, does not, with a slightly dull episode about kate and her baby-stealing antics. Not enough of the god that is Daniel Faraday. Except he has memory problems, or something.

- The Brits were shits, and i should never watch them ever again. Though i only really tuned in for the last ten minutes, in which i saw Paul McCartney cruise onto the stage for getting his retard award for being a retard, much to the pleasure of the Ozbournes and Kylie minogue*. At this point i practically threw up.... sorry, but im allergic to sell outs. Good on the arctic moneys though... dressed as farmers and insulting the awards ceremony - kick ass

- Music theory can fuck right off

- Leonardo Dicaprioo is making a live action remake of Akira... o.O Yeaahh.... might not have been too bad if it wasn't for the fact that he's doing it. Oh and it's now in 'New Manhattan'. Fuck out.

- Xbox live can fuck right off aswell, as my friends crackdown won't connect, thus rendering the reason i bought my copy useless. I did get a good game with some geek american kid though; were quite fun. And N doesnt seem to want to let me online anymore. By anymore i mean that i got a day of play in before it wanked itself up.

- Facebook doesn't suck so much ass now that i've discovered that you can play Risk on it

*She's not as bad as 'macca' or 'ozzy' mind

2008-02-15T18:01:00.000-08:00

^^Go Robot Go!!

^^This retard continues to crack me up every time... oh dear

Annoying game

2008-02-15T17:14:00.000-08:00

Probably the most annoying game ever made

I got bored / annoyed of it within about 5 minutes

And at long last i beat the game...

2008-02-13T07:09:00.001-08:00

Wow, who would have thought that at the end of it all, it would be the story, that seemed so non-existent for the first 9 hours, that was perhaps the greatest triumph of Shadow of the Colossus?

Almost a full 2 years after it's UK release and i have finally defeated the final colossus; a huge towering fortress of a beast set against a stormy sky and a suitably epic soundtrack. It's not like i took particularly long to beat it, clocking in at just over 10 hours total playtime, but for some reason i kept stopping and coming back months later. This week then, i made it my goal to finish, and i am so very glad i did.

The colossus are interesting and varied, with some superb highlights such as the 10th, a sort of Sand Snake whose eye you must pierce with an arrow, whilst speeding away from it, horseback, or the 13th, a huge snake-like creature (pictured below) that flies through the air, onto which you must leap from your horse, indiana Jones style, and crawl to it's weakspot, hundreds of meters in the air; a fight that has become perhaps my favorite videogame moment in recent memory.

Of course, simply traversing the huge landmass to reach each of the creatures is a joy in itself, and often you must overcome obsticles and cliffaces that stand it your path. At first i was dubious that the art-like nature of the landscape that has been so often talked about could be achieved, but by the end i honestly found myself exploring the land, in awe of the incredible views, the geysers, waterfalls, and rock formations, all created with a drag colourset, which only went to support the feeling of isolation and loneliness that is presented to the player. It has been said before, but along with Rez and Okami, this game really shows that videogames can be genuine forms of art; better ones, I would say, than alot of the crap you see these days

Suffice to say, the game is far from perfect, even, at times, being extremely frustrating; for a great deal of the fights i wished i was in control of Altier rather than Wander, as he struggled to dive out of harms way for me, or annoyingly jumped the wrong way, often plummeting to the ground below rather than grabbing the beast's fur. As well as this, hardly anything was explained in the game, and it was only from browsing the internet that i figured out there was a 'reminiscence' mode; in which you could go back and replay beaten colossus, or that you could be badass and standup on your horse to then shoot arrows. Similarly it was down to fluke that i figure out the easier way to jump on your horse (jump and then hold r1 near), and i have read alot of reviews in which people apparently failed to find this feature, and noted how much of a hassle it was to get n the horse. Oh and did i mention the camera? Which, while often very nicely employed, I frequently had to wrestle with to have any use whatsoever.

But by the end my frustrations had been forgotten, as the ending few colossus, and the final set of cutscenes, were simply beautiful. The death of one of the characters in particular was probably the most moving scene in any game which i have played; which may seem odd to you if you know who i am refering to, and the ending of the game was suitibly stunning, if ambiguos and confusing, and the final playable sections were genuinely tragic. By the end of this wonderful exerience i am left wondering wether Shadow of the Colossus was not just the best game i never completed, but, quite simply, the best videogame i have ever played.

Lego kewlness and a complete retard

2008-02-10T11:34:00.000-08:00

Kid has problems...

Fucking Blogger and stuff

2008-02-08T16:59:00.000-08:00

*is still pissed off about the fucking password restrictions*

Anyway heres a fun game i found on the internet

The Never Ending Level game

See how far you can get. I got to lv29, where i had to stop, as macs lack the # sign which i need to pass the level. I checked, it ain't like im just doing the wrong thing. So i feel slightly pissed off. Anyway give it a go. Kinda like Not Pr0n, expect alot less complicated, and easier.

Also,

- Finished Bioshock; man that was good, overtook Galaxy as GOTY for me. Shame for the sodding fetch-quests in the second half though. 9 .5/ 10
- Downloaded Rez - and played the hell outta it. Missed out on ps2 version, so than god again for xbla. Killer game, area four in particular was brilliant. Strangely weird and a rare instance of me actually listning to game music rather than just putting on itunes and muting the volume...
- Lost season 4 is fucking incredible so far!! Best it's been since the first season. Hopefully it'll keep this up. Can't be much worse than the first few s3 episodes anyways... So many questions from the first two episodes!! And it looks like they're gunna be answered, which is nice... The flashbacks in particular have worked well so far, especially in the 2nd epsiode; 'Confirmed Dead', being short, consise, and, cruicially, not disrupting the flow of the episode. Good to see more of theatAbingdon (sp?) bloke,, very intriguing character.
Oh but they need to get rid of the annoying english woman. We do not sound like that.

And now i have a week off working, aahhhh relaxation.......

Warning this blog is rated R and WHA THE FUCK!!!??

2008-01-28T14:29:00.000-08:00

Lol, good site.

Also, i have...
45% chance surviving a zombie apocalypse
I can name 36 countrys in 5 minutes
26 Colours in 5 minutes
I'm 62% Geek
There are 2,157,120 germs on me keyboard right now
I'm 58% addicted to apple
and i 'barely passed' the 2007 internet test wif 62%. yaaay.
http://www.justsayhi.com/bb - click for them

And lost...
'So it begins...'

Seriously.... WHAT THE FUCK!!?! o.O!!!
3 more days... I CANNOT WAIT!!

I review more things...

2008-01-28T13:55:00.000-08:00

Seeing as reviews are nice and easy 'n all, here are some more...

Superbad

Wasn't all keen on it from the first time i saw the trailer; seemed to me just like another lame teen movie, but over time i saw good reviews and more good reviews, and i wound up watching it witha group of friends on saturday. By jove, it surpassed my expectations over and over; seriously, and particularly if you're a teenager, DO NOT MISS THIS movie. The jokes keep are consistently hilarious, with nice cult references, (my favorite - 'I'm sorry your porn isn't directed by the Coen Brothers!'). The characters are brilliant, everything is brilliant, the plot is highly amusing (mainly following the story of 3 geeks trying to get their hands on some alcohol for a party and get laid), and is the McLovin joke doesn't make you laugh then you ARE dead inside. Man, writing about this i really wanna just watch it again... or go to a party... either will do.

10 / 10

Noein

Yea so i was guna not bother with doing animu reviews anymore cause my plan of them getting me traffic seems to have failed, and the people how read this evidently aren't huge fans. But after the last couple of episodes i simply couldn't NOT blog this. Supurb series so far, with paralell dimensions and the like; the last episode was largey set in a distopian post-apocalyptic world, which looked just amazing. The quality of the animation is incredible (though how many times are they guna show off their frickin 3d house model; it doesn't look that great alright!?) though things are slightly marred by the somewhat lame character designs, which sorta remind me of Yugio (This is a very, very bad thing). Luckily the main 2 kids look alright. Anyway i'll be keen to see if the quality remains this high throughout the rest of the series (and if i can keep track of what the hell's going on)

9.5 / 10

Devil May Cry 4 - Demo

Didn't really know what to expect, having never played a DMC game before, but i figured id give it a go. I'm glad i did aswell, as this game is, to put it simply, badass. Simple hack and slash stuff, but it's certainly enjoyable, and well worth the 0.7gb of my 20gb monthly allowance. The 360 continues to impress, as the demo system works great. Makes me lose faith in Nintendo even more, really.

8 / 10 as of the demo

Bioshock

Nearly forgot i bought this. Only an hour in so far so it's hard to say if the stunning set pieces (is that the term?) continue. I'll be amazed if they do, as everything so far has been phenomial. I have seen a man get thrown against a wall, and his stomache exploding in gore as a huge drill is pressed into him. I have seen lights flicker out of life and leave me to fend for myself in the dark. I have seen a mad surgeon hang bodies up on teh wall and scream at them. That's all within the first couple of hours. Stunning atmosphere.

9.5 / 10 if it carries on like this

(note to self: do a review of summat crap soon, theres too many 9's being handed out here)
And in other news, my 360 nearly broke today. Well it didn't but i got the red light, which made me panic alot, before i realized that it was 4 red lights not 3, and i just needed to clean the cable.
Speaking of panic, P!ATD have lost their excallmation mark!! Why?? Fools. Now it's just Panic at the Disco

Mini Reviews for Mini Games

2008-01-25T16:21:00.000-08:00

Firstly, blogger is wank, mainly because i have to set a new password every time i sign on. This is because i always forget the new password, due to the bloody length minimum. Why cant a fucking password have just 7 letters?? It's not like anybody's gunna be hacking this blog.

That out the way then, i recently got myself a hardrive (Woop, i now have moreorless a premium console) and some points, and downloaded 3 xbox live arcade titles, which i have here mini-reviewed...

Geometry Wars

I'm sure everyone knows all about this title, and if you haven't, come on out from beneath your rock. It's a simple arcade-like title first released as a minigame / easter egg in pgr2, where you pilot a small ship, and weave in and out of and tear down increasingly insane amounts of enemies. They spawn from the corners, from the sides, in circles around you, and one touch from them and you'll lose a life. It is all just so unbelievably fluid and well presented, with almost beautiful swarms of colours and ripples that in some ways the graphics themselves are among the best i have ever seen. The game in itself is more or less faultless; from the brilliantly simple dual analogue control to the damn value for money it offers; 400 points for a game that YOU WILL spend hours on.

10 / 10
(and my high score is currently sitting at just over 500,000 if you're interested)

Sensible Soccer

I never actually played the original, but as everyone always hails it as the 'greatest football game ever', i figured i'd give it a try. Of the three downloads, this is probably the one i had the least time with, but from the time i've put in in it seems pretty fun; kinda reminds me of Marcel Desailly's Soccer on my trusty Nokia 3410, or an old snes game that me and a friend used to spend hours on. This is probably because both of those games completely rip Sensi off, so it's been cool to see where it all came from. However, without the nostalgia the game seems fairly annoying at times. The menus are seemingly unchanged from the original, and confusing, and the game evidently has a fairly steep learning curve, with annoying niggles that you won't be used to at first; you can't change direction 180 degrees as you will lose control of the ball, for instance.
Nonetheless it's good fun, and with only one button and an analogue stick (i refuse to use the crap d - pad), it's a refreshing change from the 10+ button affairs of pes and the like.

7 / 10

Alien Hominid

This is what the arcade was invented for. Nice update of the quirky handrawn-feeling newgrounds flash game, with a ton of levels, multiplayer stuff and minigames that'll give you good playtime for your points. Kinda tough; i really sucked ass for the first few minutes, but soon enough i was chomping off fbi agent's heads and chucking tens of grenades at the nail-tough bosses as they gradually wore down my supply of lives. Also did i mention that you unlock hats as you play? I currently have a wizard's hat on. Fun game.

8.5 / 10

Next up will be Omega 5 and Rez HD (Woop!)
And in other news i have tickets ordered to Reel Big Fish, Astoria, March. S'gunna be fookin good

Futurama DVD Review - Bender's Big Score

2008-01-12T16:33:00.000-08:00

It's finally here (well, it was a couple months back), years after the Fox (Box) network cancelled it, futurama is back in the form of the first of four feature length DVDs, Bender's big score.

It is around about the length of 4 episodes at 80 minutes, and the main plot follows planet express getting 'scammed' by a bunch of scamming ultra nerd aliens, with side amusements such as Hermes temporarily being confined to being a head in a jar. Really up until the end, it just seems like a great big episode of the Futurama that we've all come to love and miss. The ending is different from the normal comedy fare and is rather sentimental, but it's actually really well done - maybe i'm just a sucker for that kinda ending.

'You know, it's funny' 'what?' 'Your weiner' heh heh

I don't really know how suited it would be to a non-futurama fan though. It's rammed full of in-jokes and brief re-appearances of hundreds of old classic futurama characters; the robot mafia, Scruffy the janitor, robot santa and an all too brief appearance from Zapp and Kif.... oh and the hypnotoad is back, did i mention that? Awesome. In fact on the dvd there's menna be a full length episode of 'everyone loves the hypnotoad' with adverts, which just sounds plain kick ass. Sadly I haven't been able to check it out yet due to the dvd not being out here yet. Back to the point though, non-fans might miss out on the in-jokes, and references to past episodes - the pilot in particular is referenced multiple times.

Anyways it's definately worth a watch, and if you're are or ever were a futurama fan its unmissable. Hell, the cameo from Al Gore makes it worth a watch in itself... 'finally! I get to save the planet with deadly laser blasts instead of slideshows!'
Great DVD, i very much look forward to the second, whenever the hell it's released...

Did i mention that Bender goes back in time to kill Fry, ala the Terminator. You NEED to watch this film.
+ Classic futurama
+ Killer in jokes, old characters
+ Cute ending
- The bloody songs...
- Confusing time travel ;)
9 / 10

Last.fm

2008-01-12T16:13:00.000-08:00

Probably the best site since i found youtube.

Late jumping on the bandwagon i know...

But it's just fantastic. And it will no doubt eat up my bandwidth...

http://www.last.fm/

(too lazy to say exactly why it's so good)

WOW I FINISHED SOME GAMES!!

2008-01-09T10:39:00.000-08:00

Biology AS in the morning, went alright. Then i went home and finished 2 games!! Bit like buses, ain't finished one for ages then do two in an afternoon.

Assassin's creed

Got home and finished assassin's creed at long last. Kinda coool ending, kinda fucking anticlimatic but never mind. Really repetitive game espiecially toward the end, but still largely fun. Took the idea of a 'cliffhanger' abit to far. Interesting nonetheless... I spose i'll buy the inevitable (especially considering the enormous sales) sequel...

Resident Evil 4

I then moved on to this, and yes, nearly 3 fucking years after it's release, i finished it!! (note: i didn't actually have it until way after release) Anyway, i can confidently say that it is one of the best fucking games i have ever played. Even ashley wasn't annoying as most 'escort characters' are. Ending boss was slightly easy, but the ending was awesome (oh sneaky Ada), and the battletoady jetski escape.

Anyway, if you havn't played this game, BUY IT NOW (preferably on the wii (so you can tell me if it's any good)

And the addition of 'the mercenaries' game at the end was a rather pleasent surprise...
Now i'm toying with the idea of playing through again. I never do that. That's how kick ass this game is.

I can has loltrees

2008-01-06T07:01:00.000-08:00

heh yus

Achivement Points...

2008-01-02T12:27:00.000-08:00

And why they are both the greatest thing since sliced bread and the biggest load of shite i've seen.

Well i now have xbox live, and despite only having played halo, i can confidently say that it is fantastic fun. Apart from when some twelve year old kid tells me what i should be doing but i can't understand him due to his accent. ANYWAY, i have now become aware of my gamerscore (is that the term?) and how bloody low it is; especially when compared to a couple of friends.

There are obviously advantages and disadvantages to this; i guess there are bragging rights for if you're good enough - and i'm not - but more importantly it really gives you motivation to actually finish games. I have a nasty habit of giving up on games halfway though, and i probably would have stopped assassin's creed before finishing it if it weren't for the prospect of getting some more achievement points. It would seem that they will be the things to really start me properly playing games again. If only nintendo could get it in gear and set up a system like this.

On the other hand though, the ease of unlocking them seems to vary way too much. 50 or summat for finishing simple levels of halo, 10 or summat for say, getting a killing frenzy online. Then there are games which partly seem to hand them out for doing squat; avatar, ea games and the like. People seem to buy games just for the points... the day i do that is the day i smash my 360 to pieces. And lastly its annoying cause sometimes theres just no time to be playing games; a gamerscore pretty much correlates with how long you play games for, rather than actually how good you are. Partly cos they're so random; yesterday i got on from dead rising for knocking over summat like 30 zombies with a parasol.

And heres another classic bit of yahtzee... Galaxy review at last. I still ain't finished it. I expect i would if i got achievements...

And also i have wireless, and im typing this from macbook on my bed. w00t its great!

Happy new year to my 3 readers, have a good 2008

2007....... THE LOL-TREES AWARDS!!!

2007-12-30T16:36:00.000-08:00

It's what you've all been waiting for. Seeing as every website (mainly videogame related) is doing awards, i thought id jump on the bandwagon...

Best Episode of TV
Lost Season Finale - Many YEAH NICE! moments, and a killer ending that reminded us why, despite all the filler, slow pacing and crap flashbacks, we still watch lost.

Runners up - Heroes: 5 years gone - Aahh this was awesome. Pointless, yet awesome; incredibly well made for a tv show - Greys Anatomy -That one with the Bazooka shell... - The episode that made this show go from a fun little hospital show to a real good drama

Worst Episode of the Year
Doctor Who - Christmas Special - jesus, why would anyone voluntarily watch this bullcrap?? Awful in every way, and, as ive been forced to watch them before, even worse than previous years.

Runners Up - lost - That one with Jack and the tatoos... - Any Episode of Big Brother this Year; it was even worse than normal...

Game Of the Year (GOTY YAY!)
Super Mario Galaxy - In the words of Reggie, 'the true successor to Super Mario 64'. Textbook platforming at its finest, imaginative worlds, bosses, and the best music and graphics seen on the wii... its just awesome fun!! Still, i havn't actually finished it yet...- Then again, i haven't actually played a whole load of the games in this 'golden year of gaming' - Bioshock, COD4, Orange box, i all need to be buying...
Runners up - Okami - great painty-wolfy-Zelda released early in the year - Assassin's Creed - Come on admit it, it was good fun

Pre-2007 GOTY
Resident Evil 4 - Thought id add this catagory as i spend half the year playing old GC and PS2 games. Anyways i just got to the final boss of this today, and by god its so damn good!! Kicking Zombies heads off, kneecapping and cutting at their heads, and the kick ass 'WOTCHA BUYING.... STRANGER' Dude

Runners up - Pokemon Yellow, Shadow of the Colossus

Album of the YearKlaxons - Myths of the Near Future - Well it shouldn't have beaten Bat for Lashes for the mercury prize, but this was a good exciting album with some pretty cracking tunes. And wow good keyboards in rock music!!

Runners up - Arctic Monkeys - Favorite Worst Nightware - Good 'tricky second album' - Enter Shikari - Take to the Skies - Bloc party - Weekend in the City

Anime of the Year
Death Note - Probably the easiest choice of all these awards, Death Note a brillaint twisty turny plot, well thought out, intricate and clever from beginning to end, and with some of the most memorable characters - ok mainly L - which i have ever seen.

Runners Up - Baccano!, Nice Pulp Fiction-esque mafia story, kinda confusing - Darker than Black - Stupidly erratic in quality, that nonetheless had some of the best episodes i have ever seen; episodes 13 - 14, aswell as a fantastic ending and beautiful soundtrack.

Virtual Console Game
Gunstar Heroes - Now my friend was very much unimpressed by this in co-op, but really he's mental; the game is crazy, a kick ass run and gun shooter with some crazy weapons that you can merge together. Pretty hard aswell and and awesome board gameish final level.

Runners up - Lylat Wars, Pokemon Snap

Art Exhibition
Andy Goldsworthy in the Yorkshire Sculpture park- Don't really feel like writing about this since writing 10 pages on it for an art thesus, but trust me he makes some incredibly interacate natural sculptures, out of raw materials; sticks and stones.

Runner Up - Millais at tate Britain

Best Surprisingly good thing
Mario Strikers Charged - Just fun gameplay and great 2 player per console online made for surpising amounts of fun and swearing on the wii earlier this year.

Runner up - Extras Christmas Special - Not only was this 10000x better than fucking Dr Who, but it was all very moving in the ending - nearly made me cry - and was actually close to Office quality

Nicest thing i ate
Fish in San Fransisco - Aahh it was so good. Went to the same resturant twice in a row cause most the rest were always full. the waiter remembered our drinks and everything. Anyways the meal was gawjus

Runner up - Clam Chowder in Monterey

Oh yeh, and i'm annoyed; nearly got 1000 (unique) hits on this blog, but nearly all of them have come from a measly 3 line post moaning about fireworks. Maybe i should just not bother doing good posts anymore...

Woo lets steal some links!!!

2007-12-28T16:36:00.001-08:00

Stolen from other blogs... (Im far to lazy to find stuff myself)

the Excellent Thule Trail

http://www.thuleroadtrip.com/thule_trail/thuleTrail.html

Basically a road trip simulator, which is way more fun than it sounds. Use names of people you know for extra amusement. I got 2495 final score...
(thanks to www.screwyouhippy.com for finding that)

And a Brilliant survey - How many Five year olds could you take in a fight?

http://www.howmanyfiveyearoldscouldyoutakeinafight.com/

This short survey will tell you approximately how many five year old children you could fight at once. Results are based on physical prowess, training, swarm-combatting experience, and the flexibility of your moral compass. Here are the ground rules:

You are in an enclosed area roughly the size of a basketball court
There are no weapons or foreign objects
Everyone is wearing a cup (so no kicks to the groin)
The children are merciless and will show no fear
If a child is knocked unconscious, he is "out." The same goes for you.

I can apparently take only 19. I think i could take way more than that.... gee...

Which leads me to talk about the excellent Dead Rising, which is practically Dawn of the Dead: the game. I picked it up cheap today, as part of the huge backcatalogue of 360 games i need to get, and from the moment i picked up a bench and tore through hundreds of zombies, i knew it was brilliant. Plantpots, Kitchen knives, coat hangers and teddy bears can all be used for comic amusement to make this a great game.

Aaahhh yeaah

Christmas and other such awesomes. And some shit.

2007-12-27T16:40:00.000-08:00

The Awesome

- Pulp fiction, Kill Bill, and (surprisingly) Love Actually
- The ending of extras - surprisingly close to office quality.
- Macbook rules the roost in every way
- Gift vouchers and the like to buy Bioshock and Dead rising in the sales
- A cardigan, heh
- Classic stocking... Chocolate and satsumas alike.
- Heima - Sigur Ros Dvd

The Shit

- Forgetting your fucking passwords. Can't use the same godamn one every time cause differnt things have different rules about password lengths. 7 characters is enough alright!!
- My fucking cousin. He has a wii, an elite 360, a ps3, a psp, and a ds. Oh and a laptop. Did i mention he's about 12?
- Msn on leopard
- Having to transfer everything over from pc to mac. Errggh...
- Being forced to watch Dr Who with family... man that program is shit!!

Also, this amused me about the Safari browser...

'When private browsing is turned on, webpages are not added to the history, items are automatically removed from the Downloads window, information isn't saved for AutoFill (including names and passwords), and searches are not added to the pop-up menu in the Google search box. Until you close the window, you can still click the Back and Forward buttons to return to webpages you have opened.'

They may aswell call it 'porn browsing'

Oh yeh and...

2007-12-22T11:17:00.000-08:00

Promo for lost season 4...

Looks fucking MENTAL!!

There was some people who didn't like the ending of season 4(cough screwyouhippy cough) But i myself thought it was about the best 2 hours of TV i seen for years. Roll on 31st of January, it's going to be immense. So long as it's better than the first few episodes of season 3 anyway...

And unrelated, i'm playing resi 4 again now, god it's good...

Futurama and other thoughts

2007-12-22T11:01:00.000-08:00

Bender's big score is out?? Since when?
Oh wait, thats right, it's not in UK cause we never get anything on time.
Still, it looks good, i expect i'll watch on veoh within the next few days...

Also i now have pokemon snap on the virtual console. it's awesome :D

Also, someone needs to invent a website which lists average playtimes of games. Cause i can't be bothered with long games these days, and also i wanna see how long left i have in the numerous games i need to finish see below

And since yesterday, i have a new favorite film in Fight Club. It' so fucking awesome, if you havn't seen it yet go buy the dvd. I'd always thought it was just about two blokes who form, well, fight club. It's so much more...

Ain't a huge amount i can say without divulging the mega-twist, but believe me it's amazing. And The Pixies' Where Is My Mind fits the ending perfectly.

Meanwhile, theres a hell lot of good films on TV this xmas. Motorcycle diaries, Amelie, Pan's Labyrinth, the Big Lebowski, Pulp Fiction, all among the goodness. Oh and theres the Extra's Christmas special, which hopefully will be alright. Not a patch on the office though, obviously.

Top 10 games i never finished playing

2007-12-12T09:57:00.000-08:00

Looking though my fairly large libary of games yesterday, i realised just how many of them id never got round to finishing; a bad habit mainly due to getting bored of them.
So heres my favorite games-which-i-never-beat. Maybe this'll convince me to get round to finishing soma them off...

(not counting games i have recently bought)

10 - Jak 3 - This first one wasn't so muych my fault, as my ps2 decided to cock up and die halfway through playing it. I kept the game but gave my memory card to a friend, to get it back a year later, when i bought a new system. But i'd lost all my saves for all my games and didn't much fancy playing through it all again
9 - Dark chronicle - Sequel to the awesome Zelda clone Dark cloud, this was a pretty good game that was for much of the time essentially a dungeon crawler; something i got bored of before the end. Nonethless, fish racing was pretty sweet.
8 - Link to the past - Just kinda forgot what i was supposed to be doing and gave up.... QUITTER!
7 - Final Fantasy X - The only Final Fantasy i have owned (apart from tactics), and as i bought it a for a tenner a couple years after it was released, i just couldn't be bothered with seeing the 50 and whatever game through... Looked good though, from the tenish hours i put in.
6 - Zelda Majora's mask - I'm now waiting for this on VC. I was fairly youngish when i got this, and not the fully fledged gamer that you needed to be to beat this, the hardest Zelda evaarr
5 - Lost in Blue - I actually really enjoyed this game, and got so close to escaping before i gave up. Think it's cause i couldn't be bothered to trek all the way across the island and back, and prepare food and ect. And all with that slow blind girl aswell... (sexism in videogames!!)
4 - Legend of Zelda - Wind Waker - Hey wow another Zelda! Thats right, i couldn't be bothered with the shitty, crappy, bollocks triforce hunt...
3 - Resident Evil 4 - Yeh, thats right, i never finished this. In fact, again, i bought it on the cheap years after it's release, and was damn glad i did. But somewhere on the 4th chapter i got meself a 360, and got distracted by that instead. I'll finish one day though...
2 - Tales of Symphonia - Ok this game was f***ing awesome; if ida finished it woudld proably be one of my top 5 games of all time. The combat system was real fun for an rgp, great cel shaded graphics, and the characters where great (if cliched). But it was another game that i bought years after it's released, and i relaised that i'd probably never have time to finish it when i remembered that, after 30ish hours in, i was still only on the first disk...
1 - Shadow of the Colossus - Regarded by many as the ps2's best game, GOTY and so on, whilst others are completely oblivious to it. For those who don't know, its a game where the only aim you have is to track down and defeat 16 enormous beasts, of 'colossus', in a bid to rescue your girl - and i got stuck on the sonofabitch 11th. No towns, no mundane quests, no sidequests, just killing em. Now this is another which i really, really need to go back and finish playing through, as it again is potentially one of the best games i have ever played, epic and beautiful in every way. It also has apparently one of the best endings ever in a game, though i have been partly spoiled...

Fuck yeh

Heroes season 2 roundup

2007-12-12T09:47:00.000-08:00

As you might have noticed, i didn't bother with reviewing the last heroes of season 2, mainly because to be frank i was a little disapointed. Not to say it was bad, but after a friend kept describing it to me as if it were the second coming of jesus, it was abit of a letdown.

In fact, it made the ending of s1, which was shown last week on bbc, seem pretty good, and i remember thinking it rubbish. Still corny though... 'all you need is love'...

Yeh i know, irrelevant image.... but it's cool.

They tied up the Adam storyline nicely, but not very interestingly, and, again, too predictiably. His plotline was pretty sucky anyway. And i still think he'll be able to dig out of that grave, i mean what else is he gunna be doing in there? Expect him back mid season 4 (hopefully not)

They've given us some nice stuff to theorise about aswell; was Noah the killer? Why did he suddenly become 86% less of a badass? And yeh, sylar's baacckk...

Anyway, season 2 was average to poor in comparison to the first, but im still looking forward to volume 3, whenever it will be coming out...

Baccano! - Impressions

2007-12-04T13:31:00.000-08:00

Well as you might but probably don't know, i been looking for a decent anime to watch ever since i finished Death Note, but nothing has come close to being as good as it, and i kept giving up on shows after the first episode. But the other day i remembered about this one that id been meaning to watch; Baccano! (yes, the ! really is part of the name)

Anyways its freakin awesome, i mean how can it not be, its an anime about the fucking mafia!!

It has great animation and character design, fitting Bebop-like jazzy music, and decent action scenes, with not shortage of blood and gore. Most cruicially, though, it has an interesting and dynamic plot.

There is a huge ensemble of characters; especially for such a short show of 13 episodes, as you can see from the OP below. The plot cuts between them frequently, as they cross paths and shiz.

So then, Bacanno! seems to, unlike many certain other animes i have watched, have a plot that every episode seems to be contributing to; rather than just a bunch of mini arcs; it almost seems more like live action drama shows like 24 or the sopranos at times than your average anime.
It revolves around this bunch of dudes who have the power to regenerate, this giving some awesome scenes as people are literally ripped apart with miniguns, only to get up, unphased, just a few minutes later.

I shall have to see if this greatness can be retained through the rest of the show... i shall most probably finish by sometime later this week... (!)

Why Opera > your internet browser - Review of sorts

2007-12-04T11:44:00.000-08:00

Opera is pretty much the one thing that keeps me from picking up my computer and chucking it accros the room on a regular basis. Heres a screenshot of me running it and a list of 5 awesome features it has.

1 - Tabbed browising - Actaully works, brilliantly, unlike ie, which dies once you have more than about 3 tabs open. Also it had it before ie and hence they copied it...

2 - Mouse gestures - (not seen) Just hold right click, move the mouse to the left, and let go, and voila, you go back a page!! So much easier and quicker than pressing back, or backspace. Also you can clone pages to a new tab just as easily.
This feature warrants the download in itself; saves so much time, becomes invauable.

3 - You can customise EVERYTHING - I made mine red with this nice theme. You can have it looking like ie / firefox if you prefer, or download whatever theme you liek on the site.

4 - Speedial - main page shown - opens when you click a new tab. Practically like having 9 homepages

5 - Add shortcuts to sites on the toolbar; incase opening a new tab wasn't quick enough

Of course there are many more great things; saving sessions, widgets, much more, and it just seems generally faster, and in every way better than internet explorer. Do yourself a favour, ownload it, NOW

Ha, wikipedia

2007-12-01T04:51:00.000-08:00

This website shows the top 100 most viewed articles on wikipedia in november

Here are my favorites
8 - Deaths in 2007 (Why are so many people searching that?
17 - List of sex positions
18 - Sex (evidently many people are unsure what this is and need to read up on it
29 - Masturbation
32 - Sexual intercourse
43 - Anal sex
68 - Pornography
75 - Penis (again, people need to find out what this is?)
98 - Vagina

Bear in mind that these all got at least 2 million hits
Basically the internet is full of a bunch of freaks

New Banner ^.^

2007-11-30T17:55:00.000-08:00

As you can see, i have a new banner, made by reader Jonny using frames from my old (crud) comics blog.

I then preceeded to mess it up
It didn't fit the required dimensions, and so i had to do some shoddy ms paint editing to make it fit the blog header. And while i was at it i added some spots and spike things round the edge of the light orange. Basically ruined it then.

Anyways why am i still up, i need sleep.

Urban dictionary

2007-11-30T15:27:00.000-08:00

Here are just 4 of the many defintitions from urban dictonary

Emo

Like a Goth, only much less dark and much more Harry Potter.
My life sucks, I want to cry.

Geek

Not to be confused with Nerd. A geek does not have to be smart, a Geek is someone who is generaly not athletic, and enjoys Video Games; Comic Books; being on the internet, and etc.
Only a geek would waste their time on the internet, defining geek on urbandictionary.com

Trees

A word for pot, parent friendly
Mom: where are u off to
Kid: to get some trees
Mom: o thats nice

Myspace

Why myspace sucks and so do you

1) Cool New People - No. These schmucks are not "Cool." The fact that they are the first thing you see when you log on is a fucking travesty. Why anyone would label these folks "Cool" is beyond our comprehension. At this point we wanted to turn back, but we forged on through the terror in the name of science.

2) Your Goddamn Pictures - "Hay guyz i hav this gr8 idea i think i shud take a pikkchur of myself in da mirrur holding teh camerah at a weiurd angle isnt that original guyz? Am i rite?" Believe it or not, we've caught on to your little tricks. We know that you are fat, ugly, have one eye, and shitty skin, and the crappy emo picture isn't fooling anybody. If you have the inclination to be really artsy, alternative, and original, and if you feel that taking a photo of yourself in the bathroom mirror is the way to do it, at least have the decency to wipe your dried jizz off the mirror. Oh but wait, there in the "View more pics" section you have those cute pictures of you and your buddies with beer in your hand. OMG GUYZ ITS BEER AND WE'RE LIKE 2TALLY UNDERAGE HOW BADASS ARE WE. Grow the fuck up, no one cares. And then you selfish bastards crop your friends out of the pictures so we all know who the attention whore is. We can clearly see their shoulder floating next to you.

3) About Me - Chances are no one comes to your MySpace to learn about how you "dont hav much 2 say" about yourself. These over-glorified AIM profiles contain some of the most useless crap ever to bombard our eyes. If you feel it is appropriate to contribute any information to this section, you're wrong. Save everyone the trouble of reading about your generic, pointless life and do something more productive. Like getting hit by a bus.

ect ect

Thats right, i copyed and pasted a loada stuff so you all thought id done a proper entry, ha. Bitch.

On a completely unrelated note,

Dunno how they're selling so good, i've had one for a couple years, and iv only bought about 5 games for it...

And lastly some dude said he'd make me a banner this weekend. How sweet will that be!?! Not very.

RSS Hugger

2007-11-29T12:13:00.000-08:00

So apparently this is going to help me get some views for my blog. Hey, i need to get more than the 3 / 4 regular readers that my stats would suggest i have.

Anyway i need to tell you all to go here http://www.rsshugger.com/ and rave about how great it is. And to be fair it looks like a good site, neatly laid out and slick lookin'. Remains to be seen whetehr it will actually help atall but we shall see...

Heroes and more.

2007-11-28T12:53:00.000-08:00

So there was new internet heroes the other day, 2nd last one before the strike. I can't be bothered to write anything up proper, or find a pic, so...

I was less than impressed, especially after last weeks megaton

Hopefully it will end good-ly though.

Meanwhile i have a new aim fo rthe end of the year; finish 4 games.

Cause i always get games and give up / get bored halfway through.
So i shall aim to finish...
- Super mario galaxy
- Assasin's Creed
- Resident evil 4 (thas right, still aint finished it)
- Sin and punishment

Wish me luck. ... ...

IM MR T AND IM A NIGHT ELF MOWHAWK

2007-11-22T17:04:00.000-08:00

WHATS YOUR GAME?

Heroes 2x09 - Also known as INSANITY

2007-11-22T10:12:00.000-08:00

Well im writing this a full 2 days after watching, so i won't bother saying much, but basically, just watch it, watch it NOW.

Its absoloutly brilliant. Mr Bennet gets more and more awesome, and even West is pretty cool (exception: *feeble voice*'mr butler, what are you doing??') The whole episode was twisty and turny like all good tv should be, especially including the mega twist at the end, which i won't say in case someone hasn't watched... but phew!!

Badass

The whole episode is generally edited really well; elle's electric coming out being awesome, as with Hiro finding the identity of his father's killer. And its all silenced anyone (me included) who had thought that season 2 was starting to go abit downhill.... (heh yeh, that includes me)
Anyways, point is that it was almost the best heroes ever, coming second too...

... Five years gone, which was on BBC last night. Hopefully not too many people missed it due to the football, 'cause its the best damn episode in the world. I have it recorded to watch tonight (having seen it on tvlinks a few months back)

Fuuucck

2007-11-21T14:22:00.000-08:00

Cocking hell.

Knocked outta the euro 2008... before we even got there...

At least the keeper redeemed himself (very, very slightly)

SHITE

2007-11-21T12:12:00.000-08:00

Our goalkeeper SUCKS!!
SUCKS!!!

DAMNIT we better start playing better!!!!!

Im off to watch proper'

Tissues at the ready

2007-11-21T12:07:00.000-08:00

Well i saw this at Gonintendo the other day, and it honestly nearly reduced me to tears, so i thought id share it.

http://gonintendo.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/1195228363024wj2.jpg

Ghost Hound first 4 episodes - Impressions

2007-11-21T11:42:00.000-08:00

Well i was trying to hold up on writing about Ghost Hound until i'd got some sort of grasp about whats going on in it. However, it soon became apparent that that wasn't going to happen any time soon.

For those of you who don't know, (read: everyone), Ghost hound is an anime (yeh, sorry) that started last month, and will be running for 22 episodes. It has been hailed already as the 'gem of the fall season' so i tought id try it out.

The plot focuses on the paranormal, following Toro, a kid who, after being abducted with his sister 11 years ago, has had OBE's in his sleep (outter-body experiences) that he trys to make sense of. The whole him and his sister storyline seems to be the main one throughout the show.

The characters range from great to fairly generic; the feeblish underdog in Toro, Makoto as the cool grumpy kid, the mysterious Miyako, and the brilliantly camp Masayuki; who is later revealed to having a very interesting dark past...
All the characters, like like Toro, experience OBEs throught the show, achieved by a variety of means; Makato, for example, getting them through use of his guitar.

Sound is a key part of the anime, all setting an extremely atmospheric tone that fits the genre well. Speaking of sound, check out the op, its one of the best i've seen^^

Anyways, Ghost hound is an anime with alot of potential, and i havn't quite decided if its extremely boring or extremely interesting. Time will tell....

Galaxy & Creed

2007-11-17T17:23:00.000-08:00

So i went and bought both games earleir today, and have so far had about an hour and a bit on each. GOD THEY'RE BRILLIANT

Assassin's Creed - Prince of Persia meets Hitman meets GTA meets Shadow of the Collosus (sorta) Doesn't get much better. The whole freerunning stuff works a treat and is fantastic fun to do. Even the story seems somewhat interesting, with the whole duel-timelines thing; reminds me of 'Spies' abit; book im reading atm. Apparently the game gets pretty repetitive after a while but we shall see...

Super Mario Galaxy - Eek and squeak it looks great so far. The whole mini worlds is just awesome Best looking wii game so far. In fact best wii game in general it might seem. Probably why its currently holidng the top gamerankings average score ever then.

Anyways id love to stay and write some more, but to be honest id prefer to go back to playing them. Or more likely, getting some sleep... o_o zz

2007-11-17T04:22:00.000-08:00

What a Game!!

Just incase anyone hasn't wasted at LEAST 15 minutes on this game, here we go.

Slimeathlete are a bunch of rubbish-looking flash games that actually really kick ass. Theres football & volleyball, rubbish ones like cricket & rugby,
and crazy ones like power slime. They are generally awesome and 2 player which is even greater. Go play.

Slime Soccer - Happily far better than it looks

http://www.slimeathlete.com/show.php?page=index

NARUTO: Shippuuden ep. 34

2007-11-17T04:08:00.000-08:00

Okay so im banking on the fact that pretty much everyone who has somehow stumbled accross this blog and read it couldn't give less of a flying fuck about anime. But you know what? Screw you okay?

Because lately Naruto Shippuden (or should i say shit-uden, ahahaha... no) has been wasting hours of my life and i want them back. Particularly evident with the last episode; 20 minutes of absoloutely nothing happenening. Fucking waste.

For a little background on naruto, it began with a series that ran for an original 220 episodes, which up until 130 were, on the whole, seriously good. Then there were about 20 years oif filler, or 90 episodes, half of which i didn't bother watching. This ment that litterally nothing happened to advance the plot in any way. Then, earlier this year, a new series begins called Naruto Shippuden, set 3 yearsish after the original series.

So everyone has been looking forward to it, but so far it's been laregly a load of spun out fucking drivel, exceptions of a couple of good episodes.

This guy was looking to be a good new character, but then in the last episode, he started wearing this extremely mind-scarring-disguisting-tank-top type thing. WHY?!?!

Meanwhile, after seeing the original series being completely ruined, destroyed, murdered by the horrendous cartoon network dub while i was in the US, i feel even more like a loser for watching it.
/rant

Anyways i should be picking up Super Mario Galaxy and Assassin's Creed laters so maybe i'll do some impressions....

Heroes Episode Review

2007-11-13T13:44:00.000-08:00

Four Months Ago - Episode 8 - Season 2

Well i must say i'm slightly let down. Heres the good and bad

- Good - Peter's story continues to be pretty watchable, and Adam has gone from an annoying character to a potentially awesome one in just one short episode!!

- Bad - Nikki's story - Largely unnessasary. Id have prefered fro DL to have died after Linderman shot him an all.

- Bad - Maya and Alejandro - pretty much a complete waste of time. We already guessed how it more or less started. Not even very exciting.

Meanwhile, that new woman is pretty hot. & extremely annoying but then that's the point.

Also, Zachary Quinto was in 24????

I will have to watch that season again...

Hand mangeling

2007-11-13T13:32:00.000-08:00

I thought ID had a bad weekend. I...
- Cut real deep into my thumb when i was trying to open a sachet of stir fry sauce with a knife
- Cut it with sharp lino cutting tools whilst cutting for a lino print
- Cut it on a big ass thorn in the garden

This is a friends after paintballing.
Good times.
Sucker.

ARG FU** £)^&£%)^*£"%

2007-11-10T19:17:00.000-08:00

CUNTS.

Pretty much the sole FUCKING reason that i got Tom clancy goes to Vegas (yes thats what im calling it) was for the 4 player co-op. You know, the one thats only available on fucking system link and live?! CUNTS.

And it says 4 p splitscreen on the box; i CHECKED IT in the shop before i bought it. Then the otherday, couple friends round and we set it up.... oh, 2 player maximum. So we all got annoyed and we played the botless, offline, but at least fucking 3 player halo instead (360 really needs some good offline multiplayer)

Lies!! the Boxart Lies!!!

and so i check on the internet. Search a forum to find;

Originally Posted by muddy_rope (sorry, who calls themselves muddy rope anyway?)
on the back of the boxs it says 4 player split
--
Correct!!

But it's a mis-print!! I couldnt do it so asked ubisoft and they told me it is wrong!!

FUCKING HELL. What a complete WASTE of money. Well okay, sngle player's good, and the 2p co-op is admittedly fun, but they cant be getting away with this!!

To repeat my point, CUNTS.

Tree of the Week

2007-11-10T18:38:00.000-08:00

Don't go thinking i've forgotten about this feature, no sirey, no was jóse. Here we go for tree of the week #2

TREEBEARD

To quote wikipedia
"Treebeard Fangorn is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. He is the oldest of the Ents, tree-like beings who are the "shepherds of trees". Very tall and stiff-limbed, with bark-like skin and leafy hair, he befriends Merry and Pippin after they escape from orcs. Under their influence, he causes the downfall and imprisonment of Saruman, the head of the Istari. He lives in the Forest of Fangorn, which is named after him, or he after it."

Treebeard was sad to hear that nobody bothered reading far enough to know about him

I can't pretend that i'm a Lord of the Rings geek; having started reading the trilogy only to give up during the Two Towers (god they were so boring!!) But i can remember Treebeard and his mates being COMPLETE BADASSES in the film, and being mates with Merry and Pippin... which in itself puts him on the Tree of the Week list.

Also, with a name like 'Treebeard', how could you not love him? Treebeard. For fucks sake....

'Nintendo turned me Noob'

2007-11-08T12:54:00.000-08:00

I recently got a 360, and with it halo 3, and now oblivion, perfect dark (avoid, its shit) & most recently Tom Clancy blah blah Vegas. It became clear whilst playing the later that over the past couple of years i've lost my knack for being, ya know, good, at video games.

And i blame it all on fucking Nintendo.
With their lack of any properly decent games for Wii and last years of the gamecube, i've become out of practice, and as a result, been getting my ass handed to me by Vegas. Lets have a look at the good proper wii games out in Europe. Theres Zelda, aka ocarina 1.5, the relitavly lackluster Red Steel, and - Hang on, thats about it. No wonder i've been slipping.

The good news is that finally some good wii games seem to be coming, (Galaxy, Brawl, No more heroes) but after a 3 - 4 year drought of barely buying anything, im suddenly overloaded with choice, especially considering the mammoth catalogue of good 360 games that i should be getting.

& then hopefully i'll have some serious practice for by the time i get round to bothering to buy a live subscription (fucking microsoft, why isn't it free??)

Meanwhile in the world...

- Life drawing, aka naked people drawing, is be the most awkward thing in the world.

- I really need to get proper handwriting

- I really need a new fucking computer. This one has 256mb ram. For the non-geeks, thats absoloute shit.

- Thanks to the bloke at screwyouhippy.com for the link to me.... yeh.

Zero Punctuation - Phantom Hourglass

2007-11-07T15:30:00.000-08:00

Gotta love abit of Yahtzee

Hope everyone gets the Okami reference at the end an all

Make sure you check out his halo 3 review aswell.

Heroes, episode 7, season 2

2007-11-06T11:10:00.000-08:00

OUT OF TIME

Well this episode was just AWESOME. Heroes is just AWESOME. If you've never seen it, GO WATCH it, and don't come back 'till you have.

A happy moment came in this episode in the form of the end of Hiro's rubbish going-into-the-past story arc, and they even made it vaguely useful to the rest of the story at the end, as we met the mysterious Adam. A pretty obvious twist (and obvious end to the plotline altogether), but it was all very well excecuted.

This is Masi Oka on hearing the news that his character's rubbish storyline has finished and he can go back to being awesome.

Elsewhere, Peter went into the future, which perhaps wasn't quite as good as i was hoping it to be (considering the amazing good-ness of '5 years later' in season 1) But it was still interesting in setting the theme for the rest of the season.

Even West didn't get on my nerves as much as he usually does this time, and Claire standing up to 'Noah' was pretty cool to see.

I'll be looking forward, as usual, to the next episode (and no, i havn't seen the promo, must stop watching them...)

Episode rating - 9 / 10

Tv-links hath shutdown - alternatives

2007-11-04T08:24:00.000-08:00

As im sure you know, the popular neat and generally kick ass tv-links.co.uk was shut down a couple weeks back. To people like me, who had been watching stuff like heroes and lost via it, this came as some fucking annoying news. But here we go with a list of alternative site to replace tv links. God im too kind to you invisible readers.

1 - Alluc.org - I was actually using this beforetv-links and its very good. Not quite as clearly laid out and not as regularly updated, but a good 2nd best.

2 - http://flickpeek.com/ - Adverty cluttered and messy but still does it's job

3 - http://powerflv.com/ - Has like tons and tons of stuff, seems pretty sweet.

and not forgetting the sites the they all link to; dilymotion.com , divx at stage6 (Sweet quality), and the best, VEOH.com
Veoh is awesome, but sadly their now making people download their web player thing to watch videos. Which is shit. But, it works well so it's not too bad.

Point is, with all them sites, your streaming needs should be covered. Sweet.

YES its a linkdump

2007-11-04T08:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.screwyouhippy.com/ - This dude practically inspired me to start a blog. Only differnece between our is his is better and people actually read it.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=m7Jh1BV1EOc - Canon rock 2 'cause this guy is fucking awesome

http://www.harveycartel.org/metanet/n.html - Like best game ever. Your like a crazy ninja who runs around and stuff. I'll do a proper post on it later.

http://projectrockstar.com/index.asp - cos its 'teh shit'

http://comicsfromthemoon.blogspot.com/ - Blog i did with a friend a while ago. Actually don't bother its balls

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_FXJGirhDtE - This is the only successful internet thing i've ever done. An yeh, its bullshit, i actually feel sick when i watch it. Well that was the point, but there we go...

Cybertwin = DUDE! WIN!

2007-11-04T08:05:00.000-08:00

So this thing, it's actually properly awesome. It's like one those robot personalities that you, once in your life, probably wasted 5 minutes on.

But yeh, you can like, set your personality to it an stuff, which is great. And then you put it on your myspace or whatever and it records the conversations people have with it.

Sweet.

EDIT: Shit, the embedding won't work. What a loada cock. Try this http://mycybertwin.com/chat/dan%20lol%20trees You might need an account. Totally worth it an stuff though.

Why th fuck do i bother with this

2007-11-04T07:58:00.000-08:00

Well there are 3 reasons why your average blogger bothers to blog (and im talking about the shit variety like me, who have never had any traffic) Cause obviously people who do traffic can actually, liek, make money. Shock shock.

1 - ANGER RELEASE. Despite not yet havn't a good swear-filled post
2 - If you donb't have stats you can trick yourself into thinking that you're actually real popular
3 - ...Ah shit, i cant tink of one.

The annoying part of blogspot is that, despite it being a good site an all, there are so many fucking accounts that nobody will ever find lol-trees amongst them. I mean what kind of cunt is gunna search for lol-trees?

I'd be happy is i just had one dude sitting at his computer and reading this shit. That would be awesome. Not gunna happen though

Jazz Punk = awesome

2007-11-03T17:38:00.000-07:00

Anyone see Later... last night?
Just me?
Oh right, thats cause im talking to meself.

Well anyways there was this band, Soil and "Pimp" Sessions were playing. They were the best thing on the program byt far, and it was amusing to hear their cheer after hard fi's much smaller clap.

Heres the music video with Avalanche

Killer.

Not really sure where people have got Jazz / Punk from though. I see no punk.

Fireworks...

2007-11-03T17:24:00.000-07:00

... are always a humungous letdown.

I been looking forward to the fireworks all week, which is real sad. Then they arrived and were a big failure.....

Like this but nothing like as good

Bah (humbug)

Artpad at Art.Com

2007-11-01T16:12:00.000-07:00

So i rediscovered the best site ever the other day

ARTPAD

http://artpad.art.com/gallery/?jqunf3lwhsw

Basically its a site where you draw whatever, then get its saved and once you click the link it plays it back to you, kinda like a timelapsey thing. The site is nice and easy to use, especially once you got the hang on the whole opacacy whatnot.

That link up there goes to one by me. It's Nyu from the anime Elfen Lied. Im pretty chuffedish. yeh....

Tree of the Week

2007-10-31T13:13:00.000-07:00

So, to make the blog address and name slightly less random and pointless, heres first of a weekly feature, tree of the week. Lets start with one of the all time videogame greats

The Great Deku Tree

Basically this dude is the biggest & most badass tree you'll likely meet. Not only does he rule over this freakish race known as the Kokiri, but he has an entire first dungeon inside of him!!

And monsters, and lets not forget that freakish Spiderthing boss at the end of the level. Ya know, the one that was completely ripped of in Twighlight Princess? Queen Gohma. Excelleeennntt.

He sure has 'great' in his title for a reason.

Heh

2007-10-31T12:58:00.000-07:00

Nice Boat!

Epic. James May, Jeeremy Clarkson, and Richard Hammond (of top gear) cross the British Channel in amphibious cars... youtube it

Review - Babyshambles - Shotter's nation

2007-10-30T15:22:00.000-07:00

Well, i say i'll do some reviews on here, so why not start with something i really love?

Babyshambles - Shotters Nation

First things first, there are pretty much two people in the world; the type who think Pete Doherty is the idiot junkie ex - boyfriend of kate moss, who gives cocaine to his cat (see here - http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/showbiz/a73182/dohertys-pet-cat-took-cocaine.html ) , and the other, more musically knowledgeable ones, who recognise him for his incredible music, in both the Libertines and now the Babyshambles

Suffice to say, i fall into the later group.

The first Babyshambles album, albion, is widely regarded as being an 'unlistenable mess', but i have to say, i quite liked it,and after a few listens, songs like 'La Belle Et La Bete' 'What Katie did next' and 'Albion' being well up there in my favorite songs.

The new Babyshambles effort is certainly alot less sloppy in terms of production, and has as a result become more critically successful. The first single from the album; Delivery, a great heavily Kinks-esque song, sets the album as being a far tighter effort than any of the band's previous work. My initial worry was that this was going to make tha album somehwat generic, dull, boring. After a few listens i was very much reasurred.

The album draws influence from all sorts of bands, if its the Cure on the brilliant 'There She Goes', or hints of britpop in 'Deft Left Hand', giving a varied sound not disimilar to their debut with Albion.

Pete's lyrics are, as standard (if a little egocentric... Don't always have to write about yourself, ya know?') with lines like 'She's far too good looking / to do the cooking' in Baddies Boogie

So, seems Pete's done it again, and this time, the Babyshambles have pleased not only me, but the critics and fans aswell.

9 / 10

Download

- Side of the Road - Baddie's Boogie
- There she goes
& don't forget the very Ska influenced 'I Wish' (Blinding B-side)

Random t'internet's game of the week

2007-10-30T15:03:00.000-07:00

Lets get things kicked off with a serious awsome internet flash game, from candystand

VECTOIDS

Basically the aim of the game is to stop these crazy vectoid things from going through this tunnel thing and out the exit. You do this by putting these canon weapon gun things, called towers, on prime locations on their path, and watch as your guns (fail to) blast them apart.

It starts off fairly easy, but by about half an hour in (yeh, it can last for ages), you'll be putting special slowing towers in, to give your red rockets more time to kick their asses, and sweating it ouyt about where to put your extra power bonus.

The sound and stuff is pretty lame but then who listens to the sound on flash games? Not i. And it pretty much defines repetition. But there we go, its SERIOUS FUN, so give it a go eh.

Lol, trees an stuff

Year in the life

Street Musicians

Well what do you know

Cool thing to do of the week

Ok this pretty cool

Cat grows wings... hang on wtf!?

THE Reading Festival 2008 Review

I'm Back! (Again)

Failblog

Books what I read

I'm back!!

Just for the record,

Ugly people on facebook

Less Than Zero Book Review

This is too good...

Bonus Post 2.0

Bonus Post

Wow a blog post!!

Tada

Bonus Post

Hiatus and more

Ricky Steve and Karl - The End?

Wow... just... wow

You know you're a geek when... Cubecraft

Actually scratch that...

Making use of the 'Music' Tag

Another Anime Post *groans* - New season first impressions

Linkdump 3

Reading Festival Lineup 2008

Podcast Reviews

Linkdump 2

Win of the week:

Game Impressions

Cool Beans

Tree of the Week. (yeah week thats right)

Death note - Sorry, Dexter

Here we go again...

And speaking of such things...

Top 5 - Videogame Elements I Wish Were Real

I summarize the week... again...

I summarize the week

Annoying game

And at long last i beat the game...

Lego kewlness and a complete retard

Fucking Blogger and stuff

Warning this blog is rated R and WHA THE FUCK!!!??

I review more things...

Mini Reviews for Mini Games

Futurama DVD Review - Bender's Big Score

Last.fm

WOW I FINISHED SOME GAMES!!

I can has loltrees

Achivement Points...

2007....... THE LOL-TREES AWARDS!!!

Woo lets steal some links!!!

Christmas and other such awesomes. And some shit.

Oh yeh and...

Futurama and other thoughts

Top 10 games i never finished playing

Heroes season 2 roundup

Baccano! - Impressions

Why Opera > your internet browser - Review of sorts

Ha, wikipedia

New Banner ^.^

Urban dictionary

RSS Hugger

Heroes and more.

IM MR T AND IM A NIGHT ELF MOWHAWK

Heroes 2x09 - Also known as INSANITY

Fuuucck

SHITE

Tissues at the ready

Ghost Hound first 4 episodes - Impressions

Galaxy & Creed

NARUTO: Shippuuden ep. 34

Heroes Episode Review

Hand mangeling

ARG FU** £)^&£%)^*£"%

Tree of the Week

Another Anime Post groans - New season first impressions