Peter you lost the news.

We'd like to wish you a very previous happy new year.  Sunday's service will of course be in 2012 and next year we'll be all dead due to doomsday (lol) so without further ado we'll leave you with a few downbeat bits and pieces.

For some unknown reason, we can't have nice things anymore, Adobe won't support Vista 64bit so you won't hear truly excellent radio unless you of course go looking for it.   NHK have stopped their support for NHKWorld SD, which means I'm left rudderless at lunchtime without me daily dose of NHKWorld (it does survive in HD format but my TV is not HD.)  Which leaves you with a quandary, where do you go for gentle news and magazine format TV.  

French news in English from France24 (pronounced Vingt Quatre rather than Twenty Four), isn't half bad, and reminds me a bit of old MTV Europe before it lost its soul somewhere in the late 90's.  Their arts program is run by straight haired Kate Humble lookalike Eve Jackson and is pretty darn good. 

Regular European news is provided by nondescript tv channel Euronews it does the job without being remotely interesting.  Best thing ever was a broadcast of Jean Michel Jarres concert for the wedding of the prince of Monaco.  Worst thing calling Brian May, Brian Man, in a tribute to Freddie Mercury.

Fox news seems to broadcast Fox and Friends First Live, a bizarre mix of robots masquerading as presenters and a right wing bias for each and every story.  I don't care about republicanism or the soulless automatons who present it, so its often switched over in a hurry.

China has two news channels that are bland beyond words, and Russia seems to thrive on something called the Keyser report.  Which leaves Arabic slanted news al Jizzura (Al Jazeera) and the soon to be fucked Press TV which is just weird.  Owned by the Iranian government it adds mainly arab issues such as a march to celebrate Ashoura in London and various other pork barrel issues and relations. By that time i've either finished my lunch or Piers Moron is on CNN which means its time to move on.

We'll leave you with the news that Berkeley University have unearthed some recordings from telephone pioneer, Alexander Graham Bell.  Its most interesting, do have a look dear.

Merry Boxing Day

Last Years Boxing day review em up was actually quite well received so here is the year 2011 in review.

Over the past year we have had arabs springing, tyrants falling like ninepins, the tragedy of the Tohoku region earthquake and related fall out of the Tepco disaster and closer to home, rioting scum.

Today we'll not be talking about any of those things but instead be focusing on music.
Here are the best tunes according to me of 2011.

Best tune delivered by an Alison  Moyet lookalike. 
Adele Someone like you. 
A good tune completely overkilled by relentless play on commercial radio, its still good but horribly horribly familiar.

Best Dubstep / Funky / Wonky or what ever the gangsta kids are calling bass house now.
Katy B Easy Please me.
This isn't bad but to me the whole track is just getting warmed up in my opinion, (we'd dearly love a clean acapella of this to add a massive Juno monster style electro house break to) still hate the whole genre as a whole.

Best attempt at a 1990 style Daisy age rap track.
Olly Murs feat Rizzle Kicks Heart Skips a Beat.
Yes it really does sound like the mutant offspring of Beats Internationals Dub Be Good To Me, and thats all due to Rizzle Kicks old school rapping.  Olly is of course the runner up from TVs popular X factor which means I have officially sold out.

Best YTPMV of the year.
Pinkie Pie Swear Flutterwonder. 
Looks like MLP Friendship is creepy is showing no signs of slowing down, but if we get more stuff like this its not too bad. 

Best track ruined by rapping.
Wretch 32 featuring Josh Kumrah Don't Go.
Seriously cut the rap out of this and add some old house style to this and it'll be pretty boss, Wretch 32 brings fuck all to the table and when he's culled from the track it actually improves.

Best acid track of the year.
Acid Symphony Orchestra Live in concert.
I only saw this on youtube a few days ago but damn, these guys know how to jack a silver box.  Composer is of course Jori Hulkonnen (Zyntherius amongst others) and the line up includes Jesper Dahlbeck and Mr Velcrofastener along with the cream of the Scandinavian techno / electro scene.

Best track by Russell Brands wife
Katy Perry Last Friday Night.
Kind of 80's film homage to this, wouldn't sound out of place in a remake of Ferris Buellers Day out.  She's a geek in this and Rebecca Black is her neighbour and that.  Chorus works better over old disco than the main track.

Best Techno.  
Legowelt  The TEAC Life. 
Autistic techno that sometimes misfires, but when it does hit, damn its like 1987 all over again.  Available for free in file format and in 4x12 at decks.de for the purists out there.  Aww yeah.

Best House.
Myriadd Beyond this life EP.
Dark Larry Heard like reverance here, from the guy who used to be Mantra on Bunker Records.  Your getting some dark old school melodies here and nothing can stand in its way.

Best end of television show montage theme glorifing the third reich.
Saga Snow Fell.
You know that music you get at the end of CSI or the show where the main criminal has been caught and they show a montage of shots.   You know the type, the kidnapped child has been reunited with their concerned parents, the masked rapist has been caught and there is a shot of Delko and Calleigh grinning in the lab.  Its that kind of music that plays, just that it glorifies fallen nazis instead of some random folky guitar thing. 

Finally with all these bests there has to be a worst and these tracks actually fit the bill.

Rebecca Black Friday.  Not as worse as Bieber singing under the mistletoe but its pretty close. 

Cher Lloyd Swagger Jagger.  No mark rapping over the old Huckleberry hound song Clementine as you can imagine its awful.

Maroon 5 Moves Like Jagger. The second stones inflicted horror here, complete with bad rock and Christina Aguilera.  I'd rather move like Crouchy if its all the same.

Little Tits Cannonball.  Girlband made up of remnants from X Factor that went on to win XFactor and makes my ears bleed.

Merry Christmas

We'll be adding a couple of things here over the next few days, just think of them as the sixpence in your christmas pudding and that but as a placeholder, we'll add have a happy christmas and leave you with a few talks from the excellent Applemasks youtube channel. 

A Few PSP Updates

An update regarding the PSP, Sony's handheld version of the Sega Saturn (of course not, but that is how its ended up).  We have a few new games to review and poke over we're not sure what we reviewed last time but a kick up the archives will tell us.  We also have new Custom Firmware added so all the analogue stick problems have been abolished.  We use Godman Firmware, and XMB Center which is pretty neat and though you may have your own favourite firmware to use. 

Review wise we'll start off with:

Castlevania: The Dracula X chronicles.

A 2.5D remake of Chi No Rondo for the PC Engine CD and a few unlockables such as the original PC Engine game and Castlevania Symphony of the night.  Rondo of Blood is something you'll be playing a lot of, its the default game and as such its probably the most unfamiliar of the lot.  Its a fairly straightforward pre Metroidvania Platformer, think Super Castlevania with bells on and a few branching paths, taking the merman path on stage 2 will net you Maria if you grab the key as well, and somewhere in stage 3 will unlock Symphony of the night.    Its also old school hard, you'll need your wits about you as your energy will be depleted in no time flat.

Symphony of the night is the least messed with, it has the intro changed, no longer will Dracula say "miserable little pile of secrets" or "HEWmans wish to pay me Tribute".  From the cursory glance, its not bad, though we totally beat it back in the day.
7/10

Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth.

This is one of my favouite games of all time, I ended up spending £50 on this back around 2000, (we originally came across it as a pirate and when we found it for sale we just had to get it officially).  The PSP version cost me £6, preowned, and is for all intents and purposes the same as the PS1 original, except the anime cut scenes are now fully rendered in 3D.  I kinda miss the artwork and that, but they kept the voices intact, so you get Megan Hollingshead as the lovely lady Valkyrie, and Veronica Taylor as Freya and the Ash Ketchumish Fuyuki the Fisherboy ;0).

Its a non standardish RPG, you get a set amount of time to explore and collect the souls of the slain, there are a few dungeons to explore and bosses to encounter, but it plays more like a platformer with Lenneths ability to shoot ice crystals and jump.  Combat is realised through turn based beat em up action, you can chain a few combos and block and counter.  Its pretty good with for once a strong female lead and a nicely written script.  If you find it for sale then please get it.
9/10

UK Championship Snooker.

You were supposed to get an update to Let My Body Exceed Me but both the camera and scanner let us down.  We have a picture but its massive and in PiNGas format, so we won't bother uploading it. 

Thanks to flash being a cunt and not allowing the IFM player on 64bit Vista (yeah we run that so deal with it) you probably won't get inspiring radio from the guys at Intergalactic.fm.  So I'll just have to hot link to IFM directly.

Oh and Freecorder seems to be working with Firefox.  Applians Borderline spyware audio recording toolbar has been a mainstay on my desktop for a while now.  Thanks to my onboard soundcard not letting us do anything but play sounds (really its a challenge to configure music programs, Renoise won't acknowledge our VSTs and its only free stuff like Aodix or tempremental stuff like Psycle that will give us the full DAW experience).

Here are a few tips if you're running freecorder.

Uninstall the Conduit engine, really who wants an app store with a sound recorder, and its works fine without it.

Get rid of the search bar from Firefox toolbars, and scale back in the toolbar options what it displays and has out, oh it'll also grab videos from most places so click the film strip now and again and prune all you don't need from there.

Snooker.
So, the Championships then, not only has it thrown up some good matches and fully showcasing some new talent, but this years looks like to be one of  the oddest yet.  Not only has it thrown up the first black snooker player I've seen, its also seen a lot of the top seeds go out leaving Mark Allen to fight it out with up and coming star Judd Trump for the winners spot. 

Mark came through to the final beating Ricky Walden 9-7 (despite never making it past Semi final in a major tournament before) quite convincingly seeing as he was down 5-3 at one point .

As well as having no real seeds in the main final, its also the first Championship final between two left handed players.  At the moment we haven't a clue what the score is but we will be watching the evening session to see who eventually wins.

2015 Edit.
Massively delayed, but well done to Rory McLeod for winning the Ruhr Open.  I know its a minor title but its his biggest win to date, so once again well done fella.

More race based tat.

I don't enjoy this political stuff much. I'm on the wrong side of the left wing (weakly right wing and life long Lib Dem supporter) and the wrong colour for starters for us to comment without someone screaming that I'm just a  prejudiced cracker, who knows nothing. Here are a few updates and a comment.

An update to Demographics and Stephen Lawrence.

Been watching the Lawrence cold case inquiry with interest, and it seems from reports that from errors of storage that they actually had the equivalent of the Keystone Cops for forensic examination and storage.  I can see this going to end up with an unsatisfactory result, either acquittal or a short jail term for those involved. 

What I failed to mention from that report is that the extent of black on black homicides have risen in my area to more than the Boneheaded Nazi Ponces at the BNP ever achieved.  Its something I would need to research more to get exact figures but for starters here is just one such case, (warning illiterate Daily Mirror link).  As a my only commenter added, its hardly an improvement, and its true.  Gang culture and the riots have really hampered my areas chances of improvement (to be honest Woolwich was in decline long, long before this, due to the closure of the arsenal).  We're getting there with Beresford Square opening and a few shops recovering, but I look around and still see areas burnt out from the riots, clearly we have a long way to go.

Snookers back, and for once its quite interesting, there's a black guy playing and he isn't half bad.  He's called Rory Mcleod and I thought he was a new face on the scene, but it turns out he's been playing since 2005 (he beat Paul Hunter shortly before he tragically died of cancer). 

Sorry for my shock and incredulity in the above, but despite there being no barriers now, sometimes you see something you don't expect and it throws you for a loop.  Like an Indian playing top flight football in Premiership or a white working class lad reading Proust on a train (that'll never happen).  Sadly looking online it seems that he got knocked out by John Higgins (last I saw he was leading 4-3) but once they are good enough to appear in the televised stages, you normally see a lot more of them.