Its finally happened.

Posted on April 25, 2008
Filed Under Games, Rants

I have become disillusioned with videogames. I can hear the gasps now.

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Soul Calibur Trailer Has Soul…

Posted on April 21, 2008
Filed Under General

Until the last few seconds at least, when the Soul Calibur crest appears and cheesy trailer man says “Soul Calibur 4!” Destroying any of the good feeling which the trailer has inspired since it started. As a fan of the old Masters of Teras Kasai on the PS1 I want to play this game. “Your powers are weak, old man…”

Hit the jump for the trailer. Just ignore the last seconds. Read more

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God, I feel rotten.

Posted on April 16, 2008
Filed Under General

No I haven’t suddenly developed a belief in a deity, nor Is this a prayer informing said deity of my current state of health. This is just how I feel at the moment.  The God bit is merely an exclamation. Read more

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CGI Has Made Comic Book Movies Deeper

Posted on April 15, 2008
Filed Under Creativity, Movies

Comic Books have had a hard life. From the 20’s where they started as entertainment for everyone on a par with the Saturday morning serials shown at the cinemas, through hard times in the late 20th century they’ve had quite a rough ride. Being seen as a corrupting influence, communist propaganda, and kids stuff in turn. More recently a generation of artists and writers who grew up reading comic books have returned to the art form which sustained their imaginations through childhood and breathed new life into a medium which was beginning to stagger under the weight of its own, sometimes extremely convoluted storylines. Read more

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ISPs are not your friends

Posted on April 14, 2008
Filed Under Fun on the Web, Rants, Techie stuff

Internet Service Providers are great, or so you might think. Piping all the wonders of the web into your home for you to peruse at your leisure, allowing you to interact with friends and family all around the world. I’ve just found out (from my wife who has spent the morning researching these things for a customer) that Tiscali are blocking peer to peer software and Virgin are blocking Skype.

Now blocking filesharing is nothing new, most ISPs throttle the ports which software like BitTorrent uses simply because the infrastructure can’t handle the volume of traffic which filesharing generates, but Virgin blocking Skype is alot more sinister and smacks of anti-competitive behaviour. Added to this the fact that an unwanted side effect of these practices is that online games also get blocked (currently EVE, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Call of Duty 4, and World of Warcraft on Tiscali and Virgin) and you’ve got a situation which will see alot of unhappy internet users.

Skype is a VoIP service which allows users to make phone calls through their computer at a fraction of the cost of using the phone. Virgin obviously feels that this is cutting into their profits as they offer a phone service as well as cable TV and broadband. Basically Virgin would rather you paid to use their phone line to talk to your mates than spoke to them for free (If they’ve got Skype) or paid Skype (If you’re calling a normal phone line). Virgin have decided that they can’t beat Skype in a fair fight and so have done the equivalent of kneecapping the other competitor.

Now I’m the last person to be saying that the government should get involved in what is basically a business arrangement between the ISPs and their customers but we keep being told that the government wants everyone online (their motives for this aside), if this is the case then they need to give the ISPs a slap and make sure that internet access is available for all to use as they want. I’m of the opinion that unless its kiddie porn or some other unsavoury nastiness, then its none of the ISPs business what I use my internet connection for.

I’ll be updating this post with links to relevant info as I get it (I’ve got my trusty researcher on the case as we speak, collating information and such.) Though if you guys have any useful links feel free to post them in the comments.

Keep the Net Free (not as in beer, that would be unreasonable)

Out

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A Decision Made.

Posted on April 10, 2008
Filed Under General, Journey to Journalism

First off I’d like to apologise for the lack of posts recently, I got sucked in to World of Warcraft for a bit there but the novelty is beginning to wear off. It does tend to get very samey after a while. My subscription lapses next Tuesday and I don’t know if I’ll be continuing it (read: probably not). Its not that its a bad game but I’ve found that MMO’s can only hold my attention for so long before I move on to something else. Read more

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Gamer Lays It Down

Posted on March 7, 2008
Filed Under Games, Rants, links

With industry luminaries bemoaning the state of the PC games market and prophets of doom proclaiming the death of PC gaming around the web, its nice to see someone who cares enough to tell the devs and publishers how it should be. I’m not going to add anymore to this, Mark says it all.

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Wordpress 2.5 Should Improve Embed Handling

Posted on March 6, 2008
Filed Under WP stuff

This peice of news comes as a relief to me; as of next week, once WP2.5  is released, the problems with the layout of this post should be a thing of the past. An excerpt from the Blog Herald’s WordPress Wednesday post detailing some of the improvements follows the jump. Read more

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BBC Talks To EVE’s Economist

Posted on March 6, 2008
Filed Under Games

The BBC has an article up on its website about the role of Dr Eyjo Gudmundsson, CCP’s pet economist, and how the game could be used to model real world economics. As usual with the BBC coverage of gaming, they don’t really go into that much depth with the article but at least it is highlighting the role that virtual economies may play in studying how real economies behave. Peronally I think that the political aspects of EVE and the upcoming elections for the Council of Stellar Management are alot more intriguing.

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New NIN Album Released Online

Posted on March 6, 2008
Filed Under Creativity, Music, Web 2.0 stuff, links

I apologise for the lateness of this news (it won’t be news to people who were paying attention) but this one completely passed me by, too much time spent in WoW methinks.

(Note: clicking on the ‘read more’ link will lead you to what looks like a broken page, this is due to the embedded music player, everything still works as it should its just the layout thats screwy. Wordpress can’t handle the <object> and <embed> tags. If anyone has any suggestions for fixing this feel free to let me know in the comments)

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