September 3: Revenge of September

So yeah, I'm writing this on like the 22nd October (would I try and scam you lovely people? Noooo!) and am thus REDICULOUSLY behind on blogs. But anyways, today's blog is about:

GUITAR HERO!

There are several types of gamer. There is the hardcore FPS player. The puzzle game addict. The guy who plays RPGs or Horror games for rediculously long hours in the middle of the night. (This list is not complete :P)

But as well as these there is the casual gamer who only really dives into the electronic world of consoles at social gatherings, and more and more developers are hooking into this party ethos and producing multiplayer games that cater to this type of gamer.

Sure, there have always been multiplayer games. I remember many MANY hours over summers long gone playing Goldeneye on the N64, split screen, with 3 friends. We still regard Goldeneye as the best splitscreen multiplayer of all time, because it was fun, had great graphics for the time, and hell, you got to be your favourite characters from the Bond films. What's not to like.

These days, with such a focus on music and celebrities, games like Rock Band, Dance Dance Revolution (and its many clones), and the aforementioned Guitar Hero are all the rage. The premise is simple. Push buttons in time to little coloured dots on the screen which are themselves in synch to your favourite tunes.

The biggest holdup of this genre is, I believe, the initial outlay. You see, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, DDR... all these kind of games... tend to come with special controllers. What's the point in pretending to play electric guitar holding the awkward 360 controller, for example.

So yeah, they all have fairly expensive mini guitars, drumkits, etc etc. While these make for engaging methods of control, prices are indeed a bit steep. I believe Rock Band was currently going at £120 with its full set of drums, guitar and microphone. Ouch.

ANYWAY, Guitar Hero 2 & 3. These are the two GH games that I own, and I will be supplementing them with Guitar Hero: World Tour when it comes out.

I'm not great at these games. I have plenty of rhythm, and I have fairly long fingers and control, but I'm not exactly a god of rock, as I believe I have mentioned in previous blogs.

However, I have recently upgraded my game. Having beaten both games on Medium Difficulty, I've upped my ante somewhat and am now slogging my way through the Hard mode.

Surprisingly, I have made a little progress. The addition of an extra note further up the guitar to hit means that you HAVE to move your left hand up and down the frets to hit them all, and this is difficult. (Obviously. Wouldn't be HARD MODE otherwise).

When I first tried this level of difficulty I was basically aghast. No way was I ever gonna be able to hit any of these notes. No way was I ever gonna finish a song. I was doomed to Medium difficulty forever.

Turns out I was wrong. Sure, I'm probably never gonna be able to complete the game on Hard. By about the third bracket of songs it starts to get really tough, but practise makes perfect as people keep telling me. I'll get better as I go along. I hope.

But what I really wanted to write a bit about was the songs themselves. BOY is there some rubbish on these games. I know getting the licenses for real artists and their well-known tracks is expensive business for companies, but seriously, while I'm definitely no rock officianando, I've literally never heard of some of these bands.

This isn't always a bad thing, mind you. There are some really quite catchy tunes from some less well-known or even obscure bands on here. There's an awesome arrangement of the Top Gun theme, for example, or a rock remix of We Three Kings, and the Halo theme. There's also a version of ETC70's "I Am Murloc" for all you World of Warcraft players.

But I guess my favourite has to be Freezpop's "Less Talk More Rokk". It's barely a rock song, really, but it has an awesome catchy beat to it. Do a search for it on Youtube and give it a listen/watch. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I don't LIKE tea so to be honest that's all good.

I'll continue to update with GH progress as filler blogs at regular intervals.

... what, did I just admit this was a filler blog TO EVERYONE...?!?!? DAMN!!!!!

September Part Deux

Welcome back to my rundown of TV to watch this season.

We had Monday last time, so we'll leap straight into Tuesday!


TUESDAY

There's only one TV show worth watching on a Tuesday night, and that's HOUSE M.D. starring the ever-awesome Hugh Laurie. Its probably one of my all-time favourite TV shows. A great blend of humour, interesting stories, and attractive female doctors. What's not to like?!

Season 4 ended with a brilliant double-parter involving House, his best friend Wilson, and Wilson's girlfriend Amber. Season 5 opens up with the repurcussions of these events, and how life has changed for all because of them. As far as I'm concerned, it is essential weekly viewing. If I could only watch 1 programme a week, it would be an awkward toss-up between House and Chuck.


WEDNESDAY

As I've explained in previous blogs, I am a big fan of crap TV, and also of the "Bad is Good" phenomenon, where something is so unbelievably bad it actually holds your interest to see if it can ever actually get any worse. One of Wednesday's programmes holds my interest because of this. If someone had asked me last year, which one 80s-90s classic TV show would I remake and update for a modern audience, I'd have probably gone into some kind of spasm and said "None of them! Don't you dare do it! Don't you dare spoil my childhood memories!" I mean, can you imagine what a modern day TV exec would do to something like the A-Team?! Update it for the war in Iraq or something? No! Just NO!

But sadly I'm not the boss of TV, and thus this year we've seen a remake of Knight Rider hitting the screens. Now, everyone knows which two things made the orginal Knight Rider a success: a super-cool car with lots of gadgets and special effects; and of course the Hoff!

Now I watched the pilot for the remake, and I was kinda intrigued. I mean, it was poorly paced,but the special fx were kinda cool, and it at least had a cameo from the Hoff in it. It ventured dangerously close to the absurd a lot of the time though, and since my general weekly line up doesn't really have any shows that fit the Bad is Good category, I figured I'd make it my mission to watch Knight Rider and see how long it takes before they cancel it for being pap.

Only good thing about it so far is that the female lead is very pretty. Not sure how long she will be able to distract me from the actual content of the episodes, but since they got her in her undies in episode 1, and in a bikini in episode 2, they're doing well so far!

The other show to hit the screens on wednesday night is the Tim Burton-esque "Pushing Daisies".

Its funny, it has cool dialogue, an interesting premise, and soooo many bright colours and interesting characters you feel that some of them could easily hog the show if it wasn't so well-balanced. Its a difficult show to explain, but the basic premise is that Ned, the main character, can touch dead things and bring them back to life for sixty seconds. If he does not touch them again within that time, something else has to die to balance everything out. If he touches them again, they go back to being dead. Of course, his childhood sweetheart dies and he brings her back to life, but while they are in love with each other, they can never actually touch. This provides all manner of awkwardness and hilarity.


THURSDAY

I constantly argue with people about "Smallville". I'm still unsure if it should go into the "Bad is Good" box. Certainly there have been a lot of bad episodes, but I still watch it, and this is one of the Bad is Good criteria. The latest season has seen 2 of the main cast leave (Lex Luthor and Lana Lang) but as I think I mentioned in a previous blog, I thought that might not be too bad a thing. Seems I was right. Season 8 has started strong, with interesting pace, some cool, well-rounded characters, and a fair bit of action. The last episode which was essentially an origin episode for the Green Arrow was a bit weak, but hopefully the season won't slide down into rubbish now that they've shaken the dynamic up so well by having Clark Kent finally move to Metropolis and become a reporter!


FRIDAY

Disappointingly, there's nothing on Fridays that I could see. Gives me a day to catch up anyways :P


SATURDAY

Nothing on American TV on Saturdays either, so I've had to scrape the barrel a bit and watch BBC1's latest attempt to fill the Doctor Who-shaped hole, "Merlin". Now, I studied myths and legends as part of my degree. I also studied them as a hobby before that. I like Arthurian myth a lot. But I'm not above people changing classical myth and legend to create an entertaining TV show. It kinda worked with the BBC's "Robin Hood" and its kinda working with "Merlin" too.

Sure the 'established' timeline of the legend is all out of kilter, the characters are kinda different, etc etc, but over all: its reasonably entertaining, it has Anthony "Giles from Buffy" Head in it, and the girl that plays Morgana is really quite fit. Obviously for a more discerning television viewer, this might not be enough, but for me this does quite amicably.


So that's my TV week. Hopefully there won't be any other cool programmes coming out soon, as I don't really have any more time to watch stuff now ><

~Jon

September Part #1

I realise I’m behind on blogs, but in keeping with the spirit of my new year’s resolution I’m going to write 3 and backdate them to the appropriate date. This is blog #1 of 3.

This blog is about September, the month thereof. This particular month means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but to a good percentage of the British populace this means Back to School.

Back to School is a fairly important part of the British calendar. Stationary stores and clothing stores tend to have special sales on; and teachers, children and parents alike prepare for the end of the summer holiday and the start of the new term. Some teachers look forwards to it (especially the supply teachers who don’t get paid over the summer holidays), others do not. A lot of parents look forwards to having their children out of their hair for most of the daytime. And even some kids look forwards to it because it means they can see their friends more, and their parents are out of *their* hair. Works both ways that. Instead everyone gets to be a headache for the teacher. Sigh.

September also sees the degradation of the already piss-poor British weather. Yes it rains most of the summer, but at least it’s usually warmish rain. September things get chilly fast, rain turns cold, and if you’re unfortunately enough to have a job outside like my Father does, then the Weather Gods play an important role in daily life and must be appeased with ritual sacrifices and offerings of beer. Or maybe that’s just an excuse to go to the pub on an evening...?!

But neither of these things are particularly relevant to my actual topic for this blog, for today I wish to state my love of September for one thing and one thing only. While I will never say “god bless America” in any kind of unsarcastic tone, I will state “god bless the US television season”.
Yes, September sees the start of the latest season of all the US TV shows. After a summer of reruns and quirky programming (some of which is actually quite good), the US networks bring the big hitters out to draw in maximum ratings/viewers for the winter months.

Now, I’ve often stated that I don’t really watch TV. This is, or at least was, true to a point. Most of my TV watching while I was in Lancaster consisted of series I bought on DVD well after their air date in Britain, let alone the US. But as the internet has evolved, and I’ve begun sweeping my creative nets far and wide for sources of inspiration, I’ve gradually come to realise that I *do* watch television. I just don’t watch British television (apart from Doctor Who and other oddities). That means no soaps, no sports channels, no quiz shows (though I occasionally watch something that another family member is watching).

There was a time when I would catch maybe one or two American TV shows per week, but *now* times have changed. This season I’ve had to make a frackin’ *LIST* of what is on on what night.

So here’s a rundown of my televisual week.

Sunday (Yes, the week starts on Sunday. Don’t argue with me, I’m a teacher.)

Only one programme (so far) worth watching on a Sunday, and that is True Blood starring Anna Paquin and some other people I’ve never heard of. It’s about vampires and a psychic girl set in the Louisiana (I think) swamps. It’s a late night, post-watershed show. There’s a lot of blood, a lot of swearing, and considerably more nudity and sex than I would ever have expected. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s an awesome show, but it’s intriguing to see where they’re going with it, and the chemistry between the male and female leads is very good. I shall keep on watching.

Monday

Monday is the heavy-hitter of a season of heavy hitters.

Firstly season 3 of Heroes is on. Season 2 was a step backwards from the awesomeness of season 1. It was a bit slow-paced, and it was cut short by the writer’s strike and not really allowed to reach any kind of decent conclusion. Hopefully season 3 (Villains) will change all this. Having seen the first couple of episodes, I have to say they seem to be on the right track, even if the actual formula isn’t all that different from previous seasons.

Secondly we have Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Yes, I hate the name too, just like everyone else, but I have to admit I was expecting the first season to bomb and yet was pleasantly surprised. The acting was strong, the special effects were very good for a small screen venture, the tension was there, and while there wasn’t as much gunfire and action as the Arnie movies – no surprise really, that wouldn’t exactly translate well to small screen – there was nevertheless the Terminator feel about it. Again s1 was cut short due to the writer’s strike, but it certainly ended on a cool cliffhanger, and s2 started up seconds after s1 concluded so there was no continuity jump or suspension of disbelief needed...if you can even use the term suspension of disbelief in a TV show about robots from the future being sent back in time to terminate the future leader of the resistance.

Thirdly, and probably the biggest draw of any programme of the week for me, is Chuck, now into its second season. It’s a romantic comedy espionage action drama series that pretty much defies any real convention. The premise is simple enough. Supernerd Chuck Bartowski has an entire supercomputer worth of government secrets downloaded into his brain, and now when he sees someone or something with possible shady background, he tends to get flashes, images of stuff in his brain. In a sense, he IS the computer now, and while he can’t control these flashes, they are important enough that he be kept around and alive. Thus he leads a dual life – computer repairman at the Buy More, a walmart style affair, and super spy analyst person type (at which he isn’t great, unsurprisingly). He’s looked after by two real spies, Casey (played by the ever awesome Adam Baldwin) and Sarah (played by the ever hawt Yvonne Strahowski – who the writers try and get into her underwear as often as possible. It works. Trust me.)

s1 ended with the revelation that the new Intersect computer was almost finished, and that Casey has orders to terminate Chuck when it goes online and he is no longer needed. S2 begins with Chuck finding out about the new Intersect, and how the last few months have changed him as a person, and what he’s going to do to move his life forwards. Of course, nothing is ever easy in TV world is it...

Look for the second part of this blog to conclude my rundown of Television goodness for the new season. ^_^

Yes I know this is cheating. It’s my blog. Sue me.

Moonbuggy.org & Funnies!

Now, normally I don’t rave about other peoples’ websites. I’m not the kind of guy who says, “Yeah, man, I love *this* site or *that* site!” but I am a tad behind on the blogging, and I actually DID wish to discuss my love of the random stuff that comes up on the internet, so I decided to combine these things into a blog.

I am a big fan of the lolcatz internet phenom. Sites such as http://icanhascheezburger.com/ rank highly on my Giggleometer*. This and http://www.weebls-stuff.com/ were a mainstay of my week until a couple of weeks ago when Amanda linked me a rather hilarious animated .GIF file of a manatee slapping into a glass wall. (http://img.moonbuggy.org/manatee-bumps-into-glass/)

You see, moonbuggy.org has a Random Image button. I dunno about you, but if I see any link with the word RANDOM in, I have to push it a few times, just to see how random it actually is. Randomising between 10 or so images is not really all that random. In fact, it’s a bit dull. But moonbuggy pleasantly surprised me, not only with the fact that it seems to have bajillions** of images, but that some of them made me almost wet myself with laughter too.

To this end, and to showcase the rather large number of random images I’ve collected over the years, I’ve decided to open up the FUNNIES directory of my website. It’s not a fancy-pants gallery or anything. It’s a basic server directory. Clink on one of the links, open up the image. 99% of them are pretty self-explanatory from the image titles. Not all of them are Safe For Work so don’t open them while your boss is hovering around.

You can find the lot at http://www.demajen.co.uk/funnies

Hope you get as much of a giggle from them as I have ^_^

~Jon

* not a real device. Requires two AA batteries.
** not a real number. Probably.

Social Who?!

A couple of weeks back, Spence was chuntering on about some application that he’d added on Facebook that he was having a laugh with. It’s called “Social Me” and the premise is very simple. You click through a series of photos of other Social Me users, and next to each photo there are a series of “Tags” which you choose one of to click on that you think best represents this person: examples include “Pretty”, “Sweet”, “Cool”, “Rediculous”, “Cheeky” and so on. Some are nice. Some are not. There’s also a form box that you can fill in for a custom tag if you prefer. As well as showing a picture, you can also upload More Pics, or write an About Me, so if creative people want to do a custom tag that’s not just based on your looks or one pic, then they can get a bit more info about you in order to do so. It’s quite a lot of fun, seeing what people can come up with.

You can filter people in a few ways. The first is simple: Male/Female/Both lets you pick which gender you’d like to look at. Since there is a “Flirt” button and an “I am interested in ...” button, this opens up “dating” (lol) possibilities. The second is more by area: My Friends/Network/Country/Everyone. So if you want to scout out “hot British chicks” you could do, for example.

Now I like this kind of thing, and get easily addicted to them. I like paying people compliments, as well as calling people silly things. It’s a character flaw. So I’ve been playing with it quite a lot, and made a few new friends in the bargain, which is always nice.

However, I began to notice a bizarre trend. Underneath your picture on the main Social Me page, you can set a headline. I tend to use mine for quoting silly things, or making witty and ironic statements about myself with my typical self-deprecating wit. However, I noticed that a lot of girls were writing “Please, no more sexy or drunk or happy or nice tits or fuckable tags please”, and the irony of this just shouted at me. See, a lot of the girls that had set this kind of comment were either smiling at the camera (“Happy”), holding a bottle of booze (“Drunk”), in a bikini (“Sexy”), taking the shot straight down their cleavage (“Nice tits”), or in more elaborate states of undress (“Fuckable”), and it occurred to me: do they not THINK that the subject matter of their photo might be inspiring particular comments about them?! Most people aren’t going to read the About Me for each person. They’re gonna focus in on a huge pair of boobs in a lacy bra and say the first thing that comes into their head, protected by the safety and anonymity of the internet. Duh!

So I changed my headline to something along the following lines: “~If you have a problem with people saying you're Hot or Sexy or Happy or Fuckable or whatever, think what it is about your photo that might lead someone to say that!~”

Fair enough, I thought. Consider it satire, if you will. And if I’m honest, I got a lot of people using the Send Note function to send me little notes about this. It inspired a fair amount of conversation between myself and various people I’d not met before. I was quite chuffed about the whole thing.

Until one person sent me the following note:

“I dont actualy have a problem with any of the above! wots your problem??”

Now I’m not generally an antagonistic person, but that riled me. Had she completely misunderstood the point I was trying to make? I felt I should at least reply to try and explain what I’d meant, just in case I’d come across as an ass. So I wrote the following reply:

“Good for you; I don't either!

I just find it amusing when people with no About Me written moan on their headlines for Social Me-ers to stop tagging them as Happy or Hot when all their photo has is a them smiling or showing their breasts. What do they THINK people are gonna say?!

I'm just being satirical. I'm allowed. It's part of my job :)”

Bit of humour, I thought, would lighten up the mood. Politeness goes a long way. Figured that was self-explanatory enough... right?!

She replied again:

“you know wot i find amusin?? ppl like you!! take your full of small minded shity attitude somewhere else pleas now, iv laughted 4 long enuf”

I chuckled at this on several levels. First of all her spelling is fucking atrocious, and while online I know the rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling are relaxed – hell, I’m lazy when I type too – the amount of effort put into this was great! Now I know I should take my “full of small minded shity attitude” somewhere else. Full of small minded. What the hell?! Either way, it was another insult, and since I was in a conflictory mood, I decided to send her another reply, just to prove how much of a jerk I was, and how right she was. Etc etc:

“Obviously you didn't get the joke. Never mind :)

And if I was small-minded I wouldn't have been able to see the irony in your words:

At the end of the day, I wasn't insulting anyone - except you obviously. I was simply pointing out that people expect too much creativity and imagination from the world at large. Okay, so YOU don't have a problem with people calling you HOT etc etc. That's fine. But I've seen a lot of people who DO moan. I was just pointing out that maybe it's the way that they've presented themselves on the application that provokes such a response.

It's interesting actually though. You're the first person in two days who has actually whined and moaned about my comment. Lots of people seem to agree with me.

But nevermind eh! You go reassess your poorly-spelt insulting attitude, and I'll go reassess the reasons why I'm even bothering to try and be polite. :)”

As you can see, I DID try and be polite and congenial, but she did rub me up the wrong way so I figured I’d have a dig at her. She’s the ONLY person, still, to have made a negative comment about that quote. I’ve actually just put it back on, to see if it inspires any more commentary over the next few hours. Maybe I’ll be able to write an addendum to the blog.

Anyways, if you’re on Facebook, check Social Me out. It’s good for a laugh!